Current Events > Is Lovecraft actually any good? What is Lovecraftian horror to you?

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What are the staples of Lovecraftian horror, do you think?

Repeated use of the words "eldritch" and "unfathomable", and creatures with curiously tricky names.

Sunhawk posted...

What are the staples of Lovecraftian horror, do you think?

Racism

Lovecraftian horror is about existential dread. Knowing that humans are like insects to other unknowable entities, and that the universe doesn't care about us.

Whatever you do DO NOT Google "What Did H.P. Love Craft Call His Cat"

I like some of the short stories he has written. What defines Lovecraftian Horror to me, is the oppressive feeling of something unknowable creeping at the corners of your mind.

https://youtu.be/X2glYVf6Oy4

Also, look up what he named his cat.

Zikten posted...

Lovecraftian horror is about existential dread. Knowing that humans are like insects to other unknowable entities, and that the universe doesn't care about us.

Pretty much this. Cthulhu isn't scary because he wants to kill humans, he's scary because we are less than gnats to him.

I never read any of his stuff, but a lot of cosmic horror inspired by him is really cool.

like, Bloodborne, for example.

__aCEr__ posted...

Racism

racism is the core of Lovecraft's hereditary degeneration stories.

his cosmic horror stories are edgelord angsthiesm

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/0/7/AAW5a5AADyHb.jpg

has sunhawk not read houellebecq's hp lovecraft: against the world, against life?

cosmic dread

the realization that we exist amongst beings that we cant even fathom without losing all earthly sanity

Guy was horrible but he basically invented cosmological horror.

My favourite story of his, The Thing On The Doorstep, isnt cosmological horror though.

Glob posted...

Guy was horrible but he basically invented cosmological horror.

My favourite story of his, The Thing On The Doorstep, isnt cosmological horror though.

Kinda how I feel about Beyond the Wall of Sleep

I adored love craft when I was younger but Ive soured on him as I got older. Ironically not for the obvious reason most people cite (unremitting racism even in his writing itself) but mainly because as I got older I realized how frustratingly written and kitschy his writing is.

A lot of people think lovecraft (and Clark Ashton Smith for that matter) is dense and wordy because of its age, but people didnt generally write like that in that time period. Lovecrafts prose is very very purple in an antiquated sense. Hes also absolutely terrible at writing characters and the vast majority of his stories are almost entirely interchangeable nameless academics who are more or less self inserts.

He was very good at coming up with cool concepts but not that great at putting them to paper. Some of his work does hold up though; From Beyond is very good, as is Call of Cthulhu. The Colour Out of Space is also pretty good. But there is also a lot of dreck, especially among his earlier published stuff

Most of his stuff is short enough that even if it's not "good" it doesn't overstay its welcome and is perfectly entertaining. My favorite is Shadow Over Innsmouth.

"At the Mountains of Madness" on the other hand is just too damn long and you really start to notice Lovecraft's shtick start to wear thin. Really solid beginning and some cool ideas towards the end but overall ugh.

It has asian boobs in it

MarcyWarcy posted...

I adored love craft when I was younger but Ive soured on him as I got older. Ironically not for the obvious reason most people cite (unremitting racism even in his writing itself) but mainly because as I got older I realized how frustratingly written and kitschy his writing is.

A lot of people think lovecraft (and Clark Ashton Smith for that matter) is dense and wordy because of its age, but people didnt generally write like that in that time period. Lovecrafts prose is very very purple in an antiquated sense. Hes also absolutely terrible at writing characters and the vast majority of his stories are almost entirely interchangeable nameless academics who are more or less self inserts.

He was very good at coming up with cool concepts but not that great at putting them to paper. Some of his work does hold up though; From Beyond is very good, as is Call of Cthulhu. The Colour Out of Space is also pretty good. But there is also a lot of dreck, especially among his earlier published stuff

I also think it comes across as lazy if you read him in larger doses that he describes so many things as being indescribable or beyond our comprehension.

K181 posted...

https://youtu.be/X2glYVf6Oy4

Also, look up what he named his cat.

Wasn't he only like 7 or 8 when he got that cat?

Glob posted...

I also think it comes across as lazy if you read him in larger doses that he describes so many things as being indescribable or beyond our comprehension.

He was aware of that at the time as well and he even has a story called The Unnamable that riffs on the idea. I tend to give him more leniancy in that department because it's clearly more a concept that he found scary than pure laziness, at least to me.

I wish theyd make a movie out of Mountains of Madness

Inb4 Stephen King > Howard Phillips

I think the best description I read is that it's like being an ant, except suddenly, for a brief moment, you comprehend what it's like to be a human being.

But then you go back to being an ant, and you remember being human, even though it doesn't make sense to you anymore, and you obsessively tell all your ant friends about it.

Basically, there are things we just should never know.

He was racist and his writing is infected by it, but at the very least he's no longer here to profit off of his works, unlike contemporary morally repugnant authors. I fully understand if you would prefer to pass, of course.

ultimate_reaver posted...

He was aware of that at the time as well and he even has a story called The Unnamable that riffs on the idea. I tend to give him more leniancy in that department because it's clearly more a concept that he found scary than pure laziness, at least to me.

I get that to an extent, but its not like he did it a few times. Its everywhere in his writing.

It would kind of be like if Stephen King only ever wrote about shapeshifting clowns.

Irony posted...

Wasn't he only like 7 or 8 when he got that cat?

Yes, but then as an adult he saw fit to use the name as a blanket term for any black cat, and used that cat name in a story of his (later editions of which wisely tamed the name down considerably).

The entire Randolph Carter cycle is quite good. Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath and the Silver Key are standouts.

I also really like The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. I also like The Strange High House in the Mist.

__aCEr__ posted...

Racism

So edgy

"This thing is so horrific that seeing it will drive you mad. I cannot describe it."

jumi posted...

"This thing is so horrific that seeing it will drive you mad. I cannot describe it."

(Immediately followed by a whole page of description)

I've never really thought he was a good writer. Lovecraft imitations like Bloodborne are often better than Lovecraft's own fiction.

Too much architectural descriptions. But I like Shadows over Innsmouth.

HP Lovecraft was afraid of "aliens" and some kind of inescapable, hereditary madness. Both of his parents went insane and died in the same psychiatric hospital. I think he also allegedly wrote "Shadow over Innsmouth" finding out he was part Welsh.

wanderingshade posted...

HP Lovecraft was afraid of "aliens" and some kind of inescapable, hereditary madness. Both of his parents went insane and died in the same psychiatric hospital. I think he also allegedly wrote "Shadow over Innsmouth" finding out he was part Welsh.

So fish people are actually just an allegory for Welsh? Lmfao

I'm not a big fan of his work, but I do think he keys in on the truly scariest form of horror - the fear of the unknown and unfathomable.