Lovecraft General

Where should I start with Lovecraft? Any flowcharts?

At the Mountains of Madness is genuinely good, everything else I've started to read by him was kind of boring attempts at horror. But that book is brilliant

If there isn't a flowchart, one should be made. He is discussed here often enough for that.

The chart should present distinctly his macabre/gothic tales, his dream cycle, and his Cthulhu mythos.

His macabre stories, from the earlier-mid period, hold up well and are usually an easily read ten pages. The Hound, Pickman's Model, The Outsider, Erich Zann. They're all good starting points.

His Dream Cycle is heavily inspired by Lord Dunsany, and is an acquired taste, too ethereal and esoteric for many. There is some quality here with a broader appeal: Doom That Came To Sarnath, The Other Gods. I am fond of The Quest Of Iranon. If you like Lord Dunsany and the King James Bible vernacular, you will enjoy the dream cycle. But these are among his most dense and forbidding works, e.g. Unknown Kadath. They are for the already converted.

The Cthulhu mythos cycle/cosmic horror can be read in any order. The Call Of Cthulhu, Dunwich Horror, and The Shadow Out Of Time are good and representative pieces of this niche.

a flowchart will only encourage the plebs, do not grow the number of pseuds here.

It could be worthwhile if it was broadened to fundamental weird lit, e.g. House On The Borderland, and other titles from Lovecraft's overview.

It would help in some regards, but to better preserve his legacy, I reckon that he's right. There are plenty of worthwhile people here on Veeky Forums who have read Lovecraft substantially, as well as other great weird and horror writers. Recruiting is the least of the worries.

A good selection of any five of Lovecraft's shorter works, including his critical essays, is barely 100 pages. People who can do the work for themselves will figure it out, and plow through them in no time. Avoid spoon feeding "others".


But if I had to spoon feed, newcomers should start with (with happy face bullet points to offset the bleakness of his narratives):

"Dagon" is basically a shorter outline of The Call of Cthulhu, and is recommended to be read prior to CoC, as CoC is abstruse and wanders into the occasional rambling, multi-page digression.
"The Color Out of Space". This is his masterpiece of science fiction, that lurks outside of his better known mythos. If there were no Cthulhu Mythos, this story alone would cement his legacy.
"The Picture in the House" is an early work by him, and its theme of wandering and horrific discovery parallels that of the new-coming reader. It's a flawless soft intro, and is mainly directed at people grounded in realistic fiction.

"The Dreams in the Witch House", for people into maths and science (though it plays loosely with physical law).
"Pickman's Model", for people into visual art.
"The Music of Eric Zann", for those into music.

And the ascii symbols didn't register through. Thanks, Obama.

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n-no we don't

We literally do. I hate this cuck, and even I know where to start and where to go next and all that shit

not literally everyday but they happen at least every 3 days

would you say the amount of threads about him is -indescribable-?

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I haven't noticed one for a while but people have been asking this question over and over again for as long as I've been on this web forum

There were, at least, four this week

how good are the endnotes?

Good. S.T. Joshi relates story details to Lovecraft's letters, and discusses the origins and publication histories of stories, and some colourful anecdotes. The three paperbacks from Penguin collects most of his stories, non-chronologically. The better stories are in the first two volumes: Call Of Cthulhu and others, and The Thing and others.

Oh no! People on a board dedicated to reading want to read! Stop the madness!

Thank you. I'm well read in Lovecraft's well known and obscurer works, including collaborations about lizard men.

Have you read The Annotated Lovecraft? I thought the notes were rather jejune and overall the text needs a rehaul. How do the Penguin tomes compare to that?

does anybody here like the whisperer in the dark? it's very silly but it's definitely in my favs.

I like it more than Call of Cthulhu, though I acknowledge CoC is the grander work.

It's probably because it's the only of his work that genuinely terrified me, and it's definitely because of its setting. I grew up in a city you see.

Anyone else, when reading an author, start chronologically?

Also, if they have a series (established universe) they rearrange the stories chronologically in universe?

I just took a lovecraftian shit.

Bumping to squeeze some more from this thread, and keep another one from getting posted.

I'm not familiar with the Annotated Lovecraft. However, the Penguin editions' notes have a good balance of contextual information, about publication history, reception, and how a story relates to other stories by him and other writers (Howard, Dunsany, Poe.)

The end notes, and introductions, are as informative as possible outside of being a biography (and the editor is the go-to Lovecraft biographer and scholar.) Readers will come away with a sense of his time and place, as well as a reading list of books by other authors.

Chronology doesn't really matter. There are no sequels or continuations. The Old Ones are there, but they are nebulous figures, and one narrator's depiction of them may not cohere with another. This is why I don't like the existing flowchart which stresses the importance of reading in an order; it doesn't matter when you read Dagon or Shadow Over Innsmouth.

I just read Joshi's Penguin notes for Call of Cthulhu. They were mediocre. I guess it can't be helped that the man who deals the cards holds back the more vital details, at least with a mass produced publication.

I'm trying to find one of his novels but I don't remember the title.

It's about a young writer who finds a quiet cave (I think) to write and this cave has strange acoustic properties. Horror and madness ensue of course, but I don't remember much more. Help guys!

I still can't bring myself to read At the Mountains of Madness.
Maybe I have burnt our.
Read Color out of space,A Shadow Over Innsmouth,the music of Erich Zann and The Dunwich Horror right after one another.

Guys, can you please help me out?

I've been looking forever for this!

I don't recall that one at all, and I've read all his longer stories. I recall The Festival had some passages of going underground.

You got burned out, but if you want to keep it weird lit, Robert Howard is a faster, more action orientated change of pace.

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote weird-lit stories between Sherlock Holmes too. 'The Terror In The Blue John Gap is very Lovecraftian. Epistolary, first person structure. Feeble, educated narrator. An elusively described cave creature.

This is so weird. I read this collection by the way, it was a long time ago and the stuff was very intriguing.
It was a writer or a student who wanted a quiet place to work on his research project and happened to have a basement. The room has weird physical or acoustical properties, basically if you're in the center you can hear from very far away but the surroudings are dead silent.
I don't really know what happens next...

Forgot the picture.

It could be ossible your memory is combining stories. The Nameless City is about an explorer who enters ancient ruins, including some tight spots, and can hear an eery wind.

The Music Of Erich Zann is about a student who takes up lodgings and hears an old man playing viola to ward off strange sounding spirits.

I'm afraid it's not possible unfortunately. I have a very vivid image in my head of this strange cave that Lovecraft depicts that has these weird properties (I think the narrator even says something about its possible magical uses), and nothing in these stories relays anything like it. It's the same context as The Music of Eric Zann though, an educated and sedentary narrator who rents a house where something abnormal happens.

In any case I already have t.2 of these and ordered the first one today. So I'm going to find out very soon what weird tale I was talking about and I'll be sure to keep you updated.

I really think that is correct here, because what you're describing sounds a lot like an amalgam of Nameless City and Zann

Yeah well you do know many of Lovecraft's stories sound a lot alike right? To take only the most well-known, The Music of Eric Zann and The Dream in The Witch-House are quite similar. The one I'm looking for is of that nature. I'm going to find it but since it was in a weird edition (French furthermore...) and I was young, it's a little difficult. But believe me I will tell you when I'll fin it.

To conclude: we shall know on Monday which story was gnawing at me like some snickering ghost out of Lovecraft's own private hell.

>I'm afraid it's not possible unfortunately.

>memory too shit to remember a fucking title
>oh look at me, I have a vivid memory that forgets nothing, i remember the details, but not the exact words, or the title, so I can't possibly have a faulty memory, especially not about titles!

Give us a break, Severian.

It's been at least 10 years since I read it lad. I've been reading (again) all the novels you suggested, and the details I've mentioned are nowhere to be heard of. The titles are way too generic to be remembered, especially since I'm not a native English sepaker and I have to somewhat retrieve the title of something I read in French 10 years ago on a network which is mainly in English language. Give me a break...

Dreams in the Witch House?