Lovecraft General Discussion Thread

Edgar Alan Poe began translating him in French, and he became popular from there.

1) His only worth reading is color out of space.

2) Too fluffy and edgelord pleb-tier. And for a guy who loves describing things, he sure likes to describe things as "indescribable."

3) Elliot Rodger

4) Yes.

He's also an anti-semite that married a jew.

But, as he said, she was very "race-conscious", so it's ok.

This is true, but I read somewhere that later in life he became much less of a racialist

Yeah, I read it in a biography. He practically denounced it on his deathbed, admitting that he was ignorant and fearful of those whom were different, well something along those lines.

Also, I really enjoy the hell out of Mountains of Madness

- The Color Out of Space, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, Dreams in the Witch House, The Rats in the Walls Nigger Man alone makes it worth reading, probably a few more that I can't remember right now

- It's shite

- I would suggest reading other Weird Fiction authors like Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, William Hope Hodgson, and Robert W. Chambers

- No doubt about it

YO DIS NIGGA IS SHITTIER THAN STEPHEN WE WUZ KANGS!!!

God-tier
>Reign On Me
>Punch Drunk Love

Good-tier
>Happy Gilmore
>Billy Madison

Mid-tier
>Click
>Big Daddy
>The Wedding Singer

Shit-tier
>Mr. Deeds
>The Longest Yard
>50 First Dates

Absolute Abominable Garbage-tier
>Jack and Jill
>That's My Boy
>H.P. Lovecraft goes overboard

>I make up for my low self esteem by being an ass on Veeky Forums

No, I actually make up for it by plowing you mom.

>He's also an anti-semite that married a jew.

Holy shit! That will essentially be me in the future.

I hope you were wearing a hazmat suit.

Also, nice trips.

Jokes on you. My mom has STIs

-At the Mountains of Madness left the greatest impression on me because of the environment I read it in. I read it over the course of a few days in a study hall in junior high, which had no fucking heat in the middle of winter. Freezing while reading about the protagonists' journey into Antarctic alien ruins and discovering that humanity is a cosmic joke is probably the most immersive literary experience I've ever had. I haven't even reread the story since because I don't want to potentially ruin it. Other favs are The Whisperer in Darkness (one of the best "shock" endings to an HP story), The Colour Out of Space (apparently a favorite on this board), and The Rats in the Walls.

-I guess his writing is "bad" from an objective standpoint, but I think it works in a way. Everything in his stories, from the plots to the prose to the dialogue, is alien and bizarre.

-Of earlier authors, I think Blackwood and Hodgson (House on the Borderland) would be of the most interest to those who enjoy Lovecraft. Blackwood's The Willows is a masterpiece of atmosphere and seems to have been quite influential to Lovecraft's themes of human insignificance in the face of incomprehensible entities. The Wendigo and The Man Whom the Trees Loved are also fantastically strange.

For more contemporary authors, T.E.D. Klein has written some solid Lovecraftian tales (Dark Gods) without them coming across as amateur pastiche. He also wrote a great novel called The Ceremonies which is a giant love letter to Arthur Machen and the gothic horror tradition. Thomas Ligotti's early work (Songs of a Dead Dreamer & Grimscribe) have quite a few obviously Lovecraft-influenced stories. It's still present in his later books, but his plots got more abstract as he went.

-probably

I started reading a collection of all his works without knowing anything about him. I am about 25% through because Colour Out of Space had me hooked, but so far nothing has come even remotely close to as good. Should I move on?

Is it his complete works or just a small assortment of stories? he has a lot of duds, especially among his earlier writings.

It's a complete works.
I've read
-The Nameless City
-The Festival
-The Colour Out of Space
-The Call of Cthulhu
-The Dunwich Horror
-The Whisperer in Darkness
-The Dreams in the Witch House
-The Shadow Over Innsmouth
-The Shadow Out of Time
-At the Mountain of Madness

And the only ones that I enjoyed were The Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

I want to move on to other books that have more substance because I feel like 90% of what I have read of Lovecraft has been the same exact story, but I don't want to miss out on anything if there are some hidden gems way later in the collection.

>best pieces
The Music of Erich Zann, Through the Gates of the Silver Key, Dagon, At The Mountains of Madness

>his style
Overly obsessed with architecture, suffers from "Tolkien effect" (thinking that simply describing all of the things in an area serves as a good way to set up a scene) at times and is too ambiguous at other times. Overall a good horror author, probably one of the best, but he has his flaws.

>similar authors
Tolkien, Ligotti

>autistic
I don't think so. More likely that he had a lot of internal struggles that he didn't want to recognize.

>Jokes on you. My mom has STIs

Jokes, on you. I gave them to her, mate.

>I want to move on to other books that have more substance because I feel like 90% of what I have read of Lovecraft has been the same exact story

that tends to happen with big collections of horror stories by the same author. if you're feeling burnt out, there's no need to force it. read something else and come back when you're in the mood for indescribable cyclopean ruins.

- What are his best pieces?
The Thing on the Doorstep, the Music of Erich Zann, At the Mountains of Madness, Herbert West - Re-Animator

- What do you think of his style?
Sometimes too focused on pointless details and droning on about things like architecture or the stock of local folk, but really, really good when it gets into the descriptions of horrid scenes.

- Who are some similar authors that you would suggest?
Probably Poe and King, similar style of cosmic or simply indescribable horror

- Was he possibly autistic?
It's become too much of a buzzword, probably not

I'm reading lovecraft right now. He's treated me perfectly fine, and if you apes would just adapt to the older style prose your problems would vanish I suspect

>The Call of Cthulhu, Dreams in the Witch-House, The Unnamable (just for the sheer meta nature), The Silver Key. Honorable Mention for the Whisperer in Darkness, as it is his most underrated work.

>Very 18th century, dry, and flowery. Couldn't write characters for shit, but probably the best writer for describing scenery.

>Poe (obvious), LaBaerre, Chambers, and Dunsany. I don't get the people reccing Stephen King, and this is coming from one of the few people on Veeky Forums to admit being a huge fan of his.

>Oh hell yeah

His best pieces are the ones written by August Derleth.

Come at me bro.

possibly the worst opinion EVER posted here

sick burn kiddo, go back to the playground.

>focus whole career on indescribable monsters
what a fucking sham.

read ligotti instead.