Poe v. Lovecraft

The monster is so horrifyingly horrible. I am so startled by the monster. What does it look like? Oh well it's too complicated to describe, but uh... Tentacles! And colors that don't exist, and shapes that are inconceivable. I am scared just writing about the monster that a friend of my uncle's step son saw. ELDRITCH!

Muh Ligotti

I agree that Lovecraft is overrated, but Poe isn't too scary either. No doubt a terrific writer, but his stories are more disturbing than scary. Or maybe it's just that I'm not scared very easily?

I think Poe is a much, much better writer Lovecraft or King, but I've been scared by King's work a lot more. Lovecraft, not so much.

>muh space moster in the ocean
vs
>come to drink some amontillado, my friend

Poe is scary

>a hundred years ahead of his time

I guess it depends on your preference, but I find Poe to be genuinely scary.
Realism scares me far more than "le spooky monsters from the abyss!"

Oddly enough, my teacher reading The Cask of Amontillado at a Halloween party when I was 13 is probably what got me into literature in the first place.
She literally gave a flawless reading of it and sucked everyone in for like 45 minutes.
I also wanted to bang her but that's a different story.

Lovecraft is scarier and he got the right idea about describing the monsters in a vague way but Poe is the better writer.

>reads story
>puts it down
>picks up dictionary
>ahh, i see
>ooooooooo spooooooky

Fuck off. Nothing spooky about anything written pre WW1.

I guess it depends on your preference, but I find Lovecraft to be genuinely scary.
Nihilism scares me far more than "le spoopy swinging blade!"

>needing a dictionary for anything less than 400 years old.

when it comes to poe, i'll stick with T.S. elliots verdict on him. he essentially said that poe was a remarkable and exceptonal man, but his emotional developent had been arrestet at some point in his youth, making his work something like the literary equivalent of Linkin Park. That explains all that emo, edgy tryhard, pseudo-scholar, pseudo-mystic stuff in his stories.