/lit/ - Literature

>>10206422
Well, if it interests you, then I don't see why it's not worth it to you.

Every time I start reading Lovecraft, I find I've forgotten how good he is. Yes, the prose is sweaty, and it's not the place to seek characterization. But his fundament of ideas is viral, and a subtle vein of satire moves through all of it.
Be prepared, however, for all the shitbirds who will have no takeaway but muh racism.

The only Lovecraft I've ever read was At The Mountains of Madness, and I was slightly bored at some parts but that may have been because I was distracted, contemplating the story now I think its fantastic, and because of this post I'm considering rereading

Certainly not trash
Some of the best sci-fi horror imo
Ligotti reminds me of him in style and theme

he is overrated by many of his fans, but he is underrated by everyone else and still worth a read i think. stay away from the extended mythos beyond his own stories though, it's almost all trash

>>10206448
>racism

the racism thing is a weird one. it's undeniable that he was racist, especially in his early stories, but in many of his stories it's the white people who are fundamentally confused, delusional and weak, and the other races who are more in touch with reality. 'call of cthulhu' is a good example; the voodoo cult, which is a racist caricature, is nonetheless correct in their beliefs and more aware of the nature of things than the white protagonists, professors, police, and so on, who are all, first, dupes, and second, incapable of facing the truth when it is revealed to them

>>10206422
Try "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and maybe "Herbert West, Reanimator", you'll know straight away whether you like him or not.

>>10206466
See, I don't get the Ligotti/Lovecraft connection people want to draw, to me TL seems more influenced by Kafka.

>>10206527
>I don't get the Ligotti/Lovecraft connection people want to draw
The superfluous prose

>>10206519
This opens a can of worms, and I'm not his apologist, but his beliefs about race were very typical for the time. I'm puzzled why he's become the literary Whipping Boy for it.

>>10206422
Good. A lot of people trash his prose but it works for his alienated style; the archaic and verbose nature of it is integral to his innovating brand of cosmic horror. It's as central to his style as his ideas are, and the reason why Lovecraftian is a word now.
People also like to dismiss him because he was racist, even for his time period, but I argue that that led to his themes of alienation and corruption, which although are not nice to think about applied to human beings, work wonderfully well when applied to cosmic beings and humanity as a whole.

Some's good, some's not so good, and some (his earliest stuff) is wut tier. I'd say it's worth it, his complete works are available for free and ain't that long desu

>>10206519
The cultists are always dupes, this is covered and quoted extensively in the game.

>>10206543
cuz of memes like niggerman the cat, the horror at red hook, and others. ur reading a sci-fi horror story, and then hpl interjects with a loud declaration of "I hate niggers" and it's jarring.

>>10206725
i remember when I first started reading lovecraft. people talked about cosmic horror and all that. I decided to read them chronologically, and the first two stories are about a man getting spooked by a mausoleum and getting ptsd from a mermaid.

>>10207046
not to mention his poem "On the Creation of Niggers"

>>10206422
Depends on the story.

His good stories are worthwhile but there's a shitload of trash in there too.

>the white shit

"Colour out of Space" is still probably one of my favourite concepts to come from him

>>10207313
You might want to check out The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce.

>>10207315
Thanks anon, I will

Certainly not trash. My personal favorite of his is:

>The dreams in the witch house

racism is pure evil. Lovecraft is excluded from any merit because of his vile, vitriolic and hateful delusions

>>10206422
His ideas are good, and his writing is trash. But he's readable. If his ideas interest you then give him a shot.

where should I start? Do I need to read the Cthulhu mythos chronologically, from what I’ve heard there are call backs to previous stories. Should I start with a few short stories?

>>10207550
n-nice bait

>>10207702
eat shit motherfucker

>>10207702
From the beginning, like you would with any author.

I'm about 60% through the collection. Even at his worst, he's still lots of fun. I wouldn't call the stories "horror" as they're rather comical by today's standards. Or maybe that's intentional? The writing tends to feel morbidly humorous in such a natural way that I don't think it's simply the work of times changing.

Like, I couldn't help laughing my ass off at the Case of Charles Dexter Ward; there's something really modern and hilarious about Ward's parents repeatedly scolding their son for summoning dead spirits in their attic, like it's just a really weird hobby.

At the same time, the "comedy elements" never get in the way of the narrative or detract from the atmosphere. Things turn appropriately, chillingly serious when they need to be.

I really like his prose too. There's this certain classiness in the way Lovecraft constructs his sentences and he stays true to his style from beginning to end. You can feel in every line that when the typewriter has hit the paper, it has never done so by accident. His voice is simply impossible for anyone else to imitate.

>>10206422
I like Lovecraft a lot, ignore the people complaining about racism, I'm not even anglo saxon and he snarks at my people every now and then (I'm spanish), if I can stomach it, so can you.

>>10206543
Lovecraft was obsessed with niggers when he lived in NYC. Far beyond "typical for the time". He was very neurotic and at some point fixated his anxiety on the "lesser races".

>>10207046
op here, i think that sold me on reading hp just because of how funny that sounds

>>10206610
>Good. A lot of people trash his prose but it works for his alienated style; the archaic and verbose nature of it is integral to his innovating brand of cosmic horror. It's as central to his style as his ideas are, and the reason why Lovecraftian is a word now.

I'm not sure that I'm persuaded by it, but that's one of the best arguments favoring Lovecraft's style that I've come across.

Which books cover Hatsur?

>>10210246
you mean hastur?

>>10210485
I fucking hate you

>>10210642
I don't fucking care

He wrote pulp fiction. Look up the definition of pulp.

>>10206422
>Try to read some Lovecraft
>Have to google every second word because I can't into "old English"
I wish I wasn't so fucking stupid.

>>10211439
>The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation

You find this difficult reading?

Do you like science-compatible mysticism? Architecture? Dream-quests for beauty and innocence? Transcendent, haunting adventurous expectancy in the contemplation of certain aesthetic or imaginative phenomena? The 18th century? New England? Spooky rural areas? Wizards? Mental transference? Ancient aliens? Crumbling towns? Obscure occult books?
Contemplating the smallness of humanity from a cosmic perspective? Scholarly protagonists? Sentences with multiple clauses?
Then you'll probably find something to like in Lovecraft.

You might like Lovecraft if you like any of the following...
Mysticism compatible with science
Theosophical allusions
Architecture
Dream-quests for beauty and innocence
Transcendent, haunting adventurous expectancy in the contemplation of certain aesthetic or imaginative phenomena
The 18th century
New England
Spooky rural areas
Wizards
Mental transference
Ancient aliens
Crumbling towns
Obscure occult books
Contemplating the smallness of humanity from a cosmic perspective
Scholarly protagonists
Advanced sentence structure

>>10210024
Thanks. It's hard articulating it but it struck me the most when reading At the Mountains of Madness. His prose is so cold, detached with its own loftiness. It fits in perfectly with his established cosmology; humanity struggling in a strange, bleak universe that is ultimately indifferent if not outright hostile to human life. A more emotionally warm style, or someone subscribing to the iceberg-theory could write with the same ideas, but it wouldn't be so effective. That's why most of the mythos stories by Lovecraft's friends aren't remembered as well.

>>10207046
Hollywood is merely the counter these days, and that as well is jarring.

>>10211447
He probably meant something like this

>But I am not unreadie for harde ffortunes, as I haue tolde you, and haue longe work’d upon ye Way of get’g Backe after ye Laste. I laste Night strucke on ye Wordes that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye ——. And IT said, that ye III Psalme in ye Liber-Damnatus holdes ye Clauicle. With Sunne in V House, Saturne in Trine, drawe ye Pentagram of Fire, and saye ye ninth Uerse thrice. This Uerse repeate eache Roodemas and Hallow’s Eue; and ye Thing will breede in ye Outside Spheres.

>>10206543
He was enthusiastically racist and eugenicist at a time when most people were just vaguely racist, and incorporated these themes into his books more than other writers.

Just contrast him with Conrad or Hemingway in depicting non white people

I've read a few of his stories, admittedly not the biggest ones, but haven't been blown away. Personally I'm not very into short stories though. I prefer something I can sink my teeth into more.

Lovecraft is interesting because in many ways he is a terrible writer. A literal amateur. His stories have absolutely atrocious dialogue that is practically unreadable at points and frankly some of the worst I've ever seen in published fiction, he has a tendency to go off on irrelevant digressions which kill the narrative's momentum and mood, his characters are made out of cardboard, and he's so uptight and oblivious that he sometimes seems to parody himself.

But... his imagery and style are so original and unsettling, his ability to create a mood of suspense, unease, and awe so strong, his plots so thrilling, and his prose so intricate and sincerely beautiful that it makes it all worthwhile. Even in stories I don't really like e.g. The Curious Case of Charles Dexter Ward, At the Mountains of Madness, there is still always some description or image that justifies the boredom you have to sit through

>mfw The White Ship from the South came never again.

>>10211447
That fragment isn't even remotely close to lovecraft's average prose. Horror at Red Hook was a nightmare as a non native.

I find Lovecraft thorougly enjoyable for light entertainment. The style gets repetitive, but at least it's an interesting style.

You guys need to get into Clark Ashton Smith if you haven't already. The Weaver in the Vault is god-tier.

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/241/the-weaver-in-the-vault

>>10212387
Man, that hit me hard when I first read it,

>The barren old trees in the yard have begun to bear small, sweet apples, and last year the birds nested in their gnarled boughs.

Is this the happiest Lovecraft ending?

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/n.aspx

I genuinely despise most people who mention him but he is OK. His influence may be a bit disproportionate to the quality of his work. If you don't like racism then there's no good reason to like him or the themes that he popularized.

>>10213206
>If you don't like racism then there's no good reason to like him or the themes that he popularized
Fuck off

>>10213235
It's true, though.

>>10213239
It is not, learn 2 logic.

>>10213244
>Literally Xenophobia: The Author
Kill yourself and learn what the word 'context' means.

>>10213248
>implying racism pervades his whole ouvre
>implying racist elements nulify everything else

Lovecraft's racism is hilarious, eye-rolling at worst. It's also much more sporadic in his literary work than people are usually lead to believe. Grow up.

>>10213285
>Grow up.
Or maybe YOU could admit that YOU'RE a little bit RACIST like the REST of us have MANNED AND/OR WOMANED UP and DONE
What are you, a 14-yearo-old white girl?

>>10213288
>not taking early 20th century racism seriously means I'm actually a racist

Huh...

>>10213299
Are you really telling me that you have no prejudices whatsoever? I find that hard to believe.

>>10213300
>when you overdose on the soy intake

>>10213390
Well memed, my fellow frog :) lmao kantbot faceberg amirite?

What is the best collection of his stories that is currently published?

>>10206422
I read Call of Cthulhu and thought it was shit, but apparently he wasn't that proud of it either so I don't know.

>>10213398
tfw butthurt that you're losing the memewar

>>10213206

>>10213860
Don't you have some bad jokes or trite observations about blade runner to tweet or something?

>>10207046
This legitimately made me laugh.

How do you go about banishing a shadow back to the abyss?

>>10214811
And I'm not asking in the /x/ way. I'm asking in the referential way regarding Lovecraft and the mythos. Say you have something using forbidden power and plaguing you as a wraith. How do you banish it?

The whisperer in darkness, the silver key, and through the gates of the silver key are my all time favorites.

Bump

I made a reading chart based on Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature." Let me know what you think.

>>10216638
Nice, great job.

>>10211498
basically all the magic crap in lovecraft comes from ONE story, charles dexter ward.

the rest is pure sci-fi.

>>10216638
You can expand the list to contemporary writers but other than Ligotti, I'm not sure whether Laird Barron (Ligotti lite at times), Stephen King (wrote best Lovecraftian story not written by Lovecraft, forgot the name, it's basically about OCD), maybe Ramsey Campbell and DEFINITELY Alan Moore. Seriously, Providence is a comic book but it's the best study and hommage to Lovecraft ever written.

>>10216773
I'd rather save that for another chart -- one not grounded in Lovecraft's essay. I'm working my way through a huge swath of horror books and will try to come up with some more chart ideas at the end of the process. I agree with a lot of your suggestions and I'll take a look at Moore's book. Sounds rad.

>>10216792
It's pretty good. Read the one he wrote before it even though it's shit, forgot the name. It's a continuation. What makes Providence click is that it's written for people who know Lovecraft well so it's very rewarding to get all the references (this sounds like indie 'comedy' script writing tier but it's not).

>>10216836
Thanks for the info. Are you talking about Necronomicon? It looks like The Courtyard is also somehow connected.

>>10216949
yeah

>>10216638
Nice chart, but I don't think Vathek is a good choice to be first. It's so unrepresentative. I'd put Otranto there in a heartbeat. Or just expand the first section with Otranto, the Old English Baron, and even Sir Bertrand

>>10217022
The placement within a category is just chronological. And Lovecraft didn't praise Otranto, so I didn't include it, since the whole conceit of the chart is to show the books Lovecraft thought were both important/influential *and* great. You could make a general gothic horror chart of your own to post -- you seem to know your stuff. Also, Vathek is dope, albeit unrepresentative.

>>10216638
I seem to remember him hyping up Lafcadio Hearn in the essay, maybe that was somewhere else.

>>10207056
>>10206725
Oh yeah, like the alchemest.
>Well, your great great...ect... grandfather screwed me over so I have been killing all of his decedents when they reach a certain age.
>How do I keep doing it? why with my eternal youth and endless gold from my philosophers stone. Yes I do live in a cave underneath the castle... for some reason. Yes I do kill about one person every twenty or so years.

>>10217185
To get it to manageable size, the criterion I used was "those works or authors that are both praised and given more than passing mention by Lovecraft." Hearn only gets a short paragraph where Lovecraft mentions a couple works. There are a ton of authors who get similar treatment. By contrast, Dorian Gray, for example, gets a slightly longer paragraph devoted entirely to it and so was included. The others that made it onto the chart had even more space devoted to them. It was definitely a judgment call to decide what constitutes more than passing mention, but I think I was pretty even-handed while going through the essay.

>>10206422

Just read his imitators and you will realise his archaic style is a big plus. Great writers have made cosmic horror bland and prosaic trying to adapt his mythos for themselves.

>>10217064
Ah, fair enough, then. I remembered him being kinder to Otranto than he actually is. And I agree, Vathek was good stuff.

http://arkhamarchivist.com/lovecraft-recommended-reading-list/
Is this a good reading list? I wanna read some after I come back from my morning run. Thanks.

>>10217256
Pretty solid list, for sure. Can't think of anything I would add, though I think it could be pared down.

>>10217256
>I come back from my morning run

milk or newpapers?

>>10207046
>niggerman the cat
kek is this real

wtf im interested HP Lovcraft now

>>10217294
Rats in the Walls (ft. Nigger-Man) is a phenomenal story.

>>10217294

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkupUtNYeAA

Posting rare Lovecrafts

>>10217334

>""I could not write about "ordinary people" because I am not in the least interested in them. Without interest there can be no art. Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos - to the unknown - which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination. The humanocentric pose is impossible to me, for I cannot acquire the primitive myopia which magnifies the earth and ignores the background."

> One should come to realise that all life is merely a comedy of vain desire, wherein those who strive are the clowns, and those who calmly and dispassionately watch are the fortunate ones who can laugh at the acts of the strivers. The utter emptiness of all recognised goals of human endeavour is to the detached spectator deliciously apparent - the tomb yawns and grins so ironically!"

> "all rationalism tends to minimize the value and importance of life, and to diminish the total quantity of human happiness. In some cases the truth could cause suicide, or at least precipitate a near-suicidal depression.""

>>10217334
>>10217337
I was in Providence on Tuesday looking for Lovecraft stuff and I happened to find an exhibit at Brown about his travels, which had a lot of letters and postcards. Found some cool stuff there and environs. Will dump some photos if there's interest.

>>10217369
Here's a postcard he sent to R. H. Barlow in '34. I suspect it served as the inspiration for their '36 collaboration "The Night Ocean".

I've read all of Lovecraft's stuff but lately I've been wanting to get into the expanded mythos. What authors would you recommend? Is August Derleth any good?

>>10217461
>Is August Derleth any good?
No. Somehow he manages to both excessively obsess over the 'system' of the mythos and reduce it to a hackneyed good-vs-evil cosmic struggle, which Lovecraft would have despised. In general, I think the 'mythos' understanding is a bad way to read Lovecraft and associated authors. They were trying to go for an effect of verisimilitude through the semblance of a shared lore, not trying to do worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding.

Anyway, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith wrote some fine stories that have certain interconnections with Lovecraft's work.

>>10217490
>Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith

This.

Howards horror stories are underrated in general.

>>10217497
"Worms of the Earth" is amazing.

>>10217505

I love his Southern Gothic horror stories. I wonder if he was the first person to write that kind of story?

>>10217514
Dunno. I think Lovecraft encouraged him to make his stories more regionally grounded -- as opposed to typical old world or darkest Africa stuff -- so I wouldn't be surprised if it was an innovation on REH's part.

Bumper

>>10212801
I just got finished reading the five-volume Collected Fantasies. CAS is a fucking god.

>>10212210
lol'd

>>10216766
Is this bait?

>>10212274
He criticized the Nazis for being pseudoscientific with their racial theories and thought that the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons and Teutons was a matter of culture, not biology.

Not immediately relevant, but I thought it was funny that his extreme racism was relatively sophisticated for the time.

>>10219153
Yeah, CA Smith is an incredible writer. Also agree Howard is underrated, and not just his horror

My favorite is "The Thing on the Doorstep". Fucking spooky shit

>"If you only knew as I do, just how horrible it is!"

>>10219944
Also, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" and "At The Mountains of Madness"

>>10206422
Some of his stories are fucking brilliant, but I'm not much of a fan of the popular stories like Call just because they were dull

>>10219957
>"Beyond the Wall of Sleep"

Really underrated story. It has some beautiful passages:

>"You have been my friend in the cosmos; you have been my only friend on this planet—the only soul to sense and seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again—perhaps in the shining mists of Orion’s Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia. Perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight; perhaps in some other form an aeon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away."

>>10219999
Yes, that's exactly the one I like. Good quads

>>10216638
Tweaked the chart to make the explanation more prominent in response to criticism in the /sffg/ thread. Final version. Keep an eye out for more horror charts in a few months.

>>10220499
Are Emily Bronte and Oscar Wilde fitting and how so? Anyone who's read them pls share your insight.

>>10220499
>Keep an eye out for more horror charts in a few months.

Cool. [Books written from 2000 to current year list: Christopher Buehlman, Suicide Motor Club -- shitty title, but a good vampire novel. I'd give it a B+. Buehlman has some pretty high-grade writing chops, folks.

Currently reading Michael Rowe, Enter, Night. It's decent, but Rowe can't manage dramatic scenes as well as Buehlman. Some of the mechanics are a little clunky. But there are some very good parts, too. Chapters 1-5 are quite strong. I'm currently in the home stretch of the book, and am not entirely confident that he's going to stick the landing. That said, it's a decent book, overall (B-) and I didn't feel like I wasted my time reading it, as I felt reading, eg, Doctor Sleep. Although, that said, Enter Night's comparatively modest achievement really sets off the impressiveness of what King achieved in the imperfect but often very potent and inspired Salem's Lot.]

>>10220533
From the Lovecraftian essay:
>Quite alone both as a novel and as a piece of terror-literature stands the famous Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë, with its mad vista of bleak, windswept Yorkshire moors and the violent, distorted lives they foster. Though primarily a tale of life, and of human passions in agony and conflict, its epically cosmic setting affords room for horror of the most spiritual sort. Heathcliff, the modified Byronic villain-hero, is a strange dark waif found in the streets as a small child and speaking only a strange gibberish till adopted by the family he ultimately ruins. That he is in truth a diabolic spirit rather than a human being is more than once suggested, and the unreal is further approached in the experience of the visitor who encounters a plaintive child-ghost at a bough-brushed upper window. Between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw is a tie deeper and more terrible than human love. After her death he twice disturbs her grave, and is haunted by an impalpable presence which can be nothing less than her spirit. The spirit enters his life more and more, and at last he becomes confident of some imminent mystical reunion. He says he feels a strange change approaching, and ceases to take nourishment. At night he either walks abroad or opens the casement by his bed. When he dies the casement is still swinging open to the pouring rain, and a queer smile pervades the stiffened face. They bury him in a grave beside the mound he has haunted for eighteen years, and small shepherd boys say that he yet walks with his Catherine in the churchyard and on the moor when it rains. Their faces, too, are sometimes seen on rainy nights behind that upper casement at Wuthering Heights. Miss Brontë’s eerie terror is no mere Gothic echo, but a tense expression of man’s shuddering reaction to the unknown. In this respect, Wuthering Heights becomes the symbol of a literary transition, and marks the growth of a new and sounder school.
>Oscar Wilde may likewise be given a place amongst weird writers, both for certain of his exquisite fairy tales, and for his vivid Picture of Dorian Gray, in which a marvellous portrait for years assumes the duty of ageing and coarsening instead of its original, who meanwhile plunges into every excess of vice and crime without the outward loss of youth, beauty, and freshness. There is a sudden and potent climax when Dorian Gray, at last become a murderer, seeks to destroy the painting whose changes testify to his moral degeneracy. He stabs it with a knife, and a hideous cry and crash are heard; but when the servants enter they find it in all its pristine loveliness. "Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was."

>>10221082
Holy shit my phone autocorrected Lovecraft to Lovecraftian

Can we talk about Songs of a Dead Dreamer instead

>>10221103
Can we talk about Teatro Grottesco instead?

>>10222469
can we talk about The Conspiracy instead

>>10222480
Can we talk about My Work Is Not Yet Done instead?

>>10221082
>Miss Brontë’s eerie terror is no mere Gothic echo, but a tense expression of man’s shuddering reaction to the unknown. In this respect, Wuthering Heights becomes the symbol of a literary transition, and marks the growth of a new and sounder school.

This is a striking remark, both as a commentary on WH, and on Lovecraft's own work.

>>10221082
That's enlightening, thanks.

>>10219999
>>"You have been my friend in the cosmos; you have been my only friend on this planet—the only soul to sense and seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again—perhaps in the shining mists of Orion’s Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia. Perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight; perhaps in some other form an aeon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away."
I can't get enough of that one, great story.

>The Color out of Space
West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

>>10222884
>The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night.

Don't know why, but this line always gets me.

>"In the morning mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs beyond Kingsport. White and feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. And later, in still summer rains on the steep roofs of poets, the clouds scatter bits of those dreams, that men shall not live without rumour of old, strange secrets, and wonders that planets tell planets alone in the night. When tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conches in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager mists flock to heaven laden with lore, and oceanward eyes on the rocks see only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff’s rim were the rim of all earth, and the solemn bells of buoys tolled free in the aether of faery."

Last night I read the story "From Beyond" under a gibbous moon after waking up from a nightmare of ancient cyclopean euclidean geometry and probably an ancient being or two, and it was an undescribable, unfathomable, maddening, experience.

The concept was actually really good, but the typical "account of the scientist friend gone mad" and a mustache twirling villain that explains everything before dealing the deathstroke almost ruined it.

another one I remember fondly was the one with the submarine crew that goes crazy and the last standing man goes out on a scuba diving suit and finds an ancient city.

>>10223787
you mean non-euclidian geometry?

>>10223539
"But even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath. I knew it the moment I came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley; for no other name could fit such a thing, or any other thing fit such a name. It was as if the poet had coined the phrase from having seen this one particular region. It must, I thought as I viewed it, be the outcome of a fire; but why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres of grey desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields? It lay largely to the north of the ancient road line, but encroached a little on the other side. I felt an odd reluctance about approaching, and did so at last only because my business took me through and past it. There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only a fine grey dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood or lay rotting at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old chimney and cellar on my right, and the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapours played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight. Even the long, dark woodland climb beyond seemed welcome in contrast, and I marvelled no more at the frightened whispers of Arkham people. There had been no house or ruin near; even in the old days the place must have been lonely and remote. And at twilight, dreading to repass that ominous spot, I walked circuitously back to the town by the curving road on the south. I vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for an odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul."

>>10223876
nah the geometry in this one was actually quite tame.

>>10206422
lmfao. this guy actually reads books.

>>10216949
The order is The Courtyard - Neocomicon - Providence.

>>10224061
Thanks, I recently ordered all of these ($$$).

I'm so glad there's enough people who read horror here to have a solid horror subcommunity and pretty regular horror threads. I've gotten a lot of great recommendations here.

>>10206422
One of the best.

>>10224061
>Neocomicon
Took me two hours to notice that typo. What the hell.

>>10224514
Same

>>10223787
the temple

A powerfully imaginative author with an unmistakable style that fits his stories perfectly.

Overrated by fans, underrated by everyone else and ruined by normies

>>10226084
good summation

The thing that's always fascinated me the most about Lovecraft is his scientific mysticism:
>What has haunted my dreams for nearly forty years is a strange sense of adventurous expectancy connected with landscape and architecture and sky-effects.... I wish I could get the idea on paper -- the sense of marvel and liberation hiding in obscure dimensions and problematically reachable at rare instants through vistas of ancient streets, across leagues of strange hill country, or up endless flights of marble steps culminating in tiers of balustraded terraces. Odd stuff -- and needing a greater poet than I for effective aesthetic utilisation
.
>I am probably the least sensuous of all living beings; being almost exclusively visual and quasi-abstract in imagination, and tending to view and enjoy all things as a passive, detached, and sometimes remote spectator. Those arts which appeal most to the ideational imagination—the sense of drama, pageantry, historic flux, collective organisation, or escape from the natural limitations of time, space, and natural law—are undoubtedly those which appeal chiefly to me. Even my strong love of architectural and decorative beauty is probably largely dependent upon the historical bearings of the forms and motifs in which I delight. I am not wholly insensible to abstract form, but seem to relish the associative element in art more instantly and acutely than the lyrical or mathematical element . . . I don't really revel in anything unless it reminds me of something else either real or visionary—unless it opens up visual avenues of linked pseudo-recollections leading to sensations of ego-expansion and liberation . . . usually bringing in the element of time, somehow based on the past, and harbouring hints of an elusive, intangible kind of adventurous expectancy.

I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to refrain from suicide—the reasons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to atone for its dominantly burthensome quality. These reasons are strongly linked with architecture, scenery, and lighting and atmospheric effects, and take the form of vague impressions of adventurous expectancy coupled with elusive memory—impressions that certain vistas, particularly those associated with sunsets, are avenues of approach to spheres or conditions of wholly undefined delights and freedoms which I have known in the past and have a slender possibility of knowing again in the future. Just what those delights and freedoms are, or even what they approximately resemble, I could not concretely imagine to save my life; save that they seem to concern some ethereal quality of indefinite expansion and mobility, and of a heightened perception which shall make all forms and combinations of beauty simultaneously visible to me, and realisable by me. I might add, though, that they invariably imply a total defeat of the laws of time, space, matter, and energy—or rather, an individual independence of these laws on my part, whereby I can sail through the varied universes of space-time as an invisible vapour might … upsetting none of them, yet superior to their limitations and local forms of material organisation. … Now this all sounds damn foolish to anybody else—and very justly so. There is no reason why it should sound anything except damn foolish to anyone who had not happened to receive precisely the same series of inclinations, impressions, and background-images which the purely fortuitous circumstances of my own especial life have chanced to give me.
.
>There is in certain ancient things a trace
Of some dim essence—more than form or weight;
A tenuous aether, indeterminate,
Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.
A faint, veiled sign of continuities
That outward eyes can never quite descry;
Of locked dimensions harbouring years gone by,
And out of reach except for hidden keys.

>It moves me most when slanting sunbeams glow
On old farm buildings set against a hill,
And paint with life the shapes which linger still
From centuries less a dream than this we know.
In that strange light I feel I am not far
From the fixt mass whose sides the ages are.

>I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to refrain from suicide—the reasons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to atone for its dominantly burthensome quality. These reasons are strongly linked with architecture, scenery, and lighting and atmospheric effects, and take the form of vague impressions of adventurous expectancy coupled with elusive memory—impressions that certain vistas, particularly those associated with sunsets, are avenues of approach to spheres or conditions of wholly undefined delights and freedoms which I have known in the past and have a slender possibility of knowing again in the future. Just what those delights and freedoms are, or even what they approximately resemble, I could not concretely imagine to save my life; save that they seem to concern some ethereal quality of indefinite expansion and mobility, and of a heightened perception which shall make all forms and combinations of beauty simultaneously visible to me, and realisable by me. I might add, though, that they invariably imply a total defeat of the laws of time, space, matter, and energy—or rather, an individual independence of these laws on my part, whereby I can sail through the varied universes of space-time as an invisible vapour might … upsetting none of them, yet superior to their limitations and local forms of material organisation. … Now this all sounds damn foolish to anybody else—and very justly so. There is no reason why it should sound anything except damn foolish to anyone who had not happened to receive precisely the same series of inclinations, impressions, and background-images which the purely fortuitous circumstances of my own especial life have chanced to give me.
.
>There is in certain ancient things a trace
>Of some dim essence—more than form or weight;
>A tenuous aether, indeterminate,
>Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.
>A faint, veiled sign of continuities
>That outward eyes can never quite descry;
>Of locked dimensions harbouring years gone by,
>And out of reach except for hidden keys.

>It moves me most when slanting sunbeams glow
>On old farm buildings set against a hill,
>And paint with life the shapes which linger still
>From centuries less a dream than this we know.
>In that strange light I feel I am not far
>From the fixt mass whose sides the ages are.

I should perhaps clarify, when I call Lovecraft a scientific mystic I mean that very precisely. He had what can fairly be called aesthetic-spiritual-scientific visionary experiences that were highly significant to him ("adventurous expectancy" is a term he sometimes used to describe such experiences).

>>10216638
The House on the Borderland is something else. I've never read anything like it.

>>10226277
>>10226281
This is really what I relate to the most about Lovecraft, because that sort of feeling he describes is highly significant to me too. It's like a vague memory, an essence or a sensation of recognition, indefinite but intense and with a quality of immutability and permanence, which is sometimes triggered by viewing or thinking about a certain landscape or architectonic feature. It is often accompanied with a urge to express it into words or art, but being so elusive and unlike any other sensation, this is exceedingly difficult. It's something beyond conceptualization, being "sehnsucht" the only concept I'm aware of that comes closest to it. And somehow, Lovecraft manages to effortlessly convey it into words.

From a 1930 letter to Clark Ashton Smith:

>“My most vivid experiences are efforts to recapture fleeting & tantalising mnemonic fragments expressed in unknown or half-known architectural or landscape vistas, especially in connexion with a sunset. Some instantaneous fragment of a picture will well up suddenly through some chain of subconscious association—the immediate excitant being usually half-irrelevant on the surface—& fill me with a sense of wistful memory & bafflement; with the impression that the scene in question represents something I have seen & visited before under circumstances of superhuman liberation & adventurous expectancy, yet which I have almost completely forgotten, & which is so bewilderingly uncorrelated & unoriented as to be forever inaccessible in the future.”

From a 1931 letter to August Derleth:

>"Certain collocations of scenic or architectural details have the most powerful imaginable effect on my emotions—evoking curious combinations of poignant images derived from reading, pictures, and experience. Old farmhouses and orchards move me about as profoundly as any one kind of thing I know—though general rural landscapes are also supremely potent. They give me a vague, elusive sense of half-remembering something of great and favourable significance—just as city spires and domes against a sunset, or the twinkling lights of a violet city twilight seen from neighboring heights, always inspires a vaguely stimulating sense of adventurous expectancy."

>>10226281
Incidentally, is Fungi from Yuggoth the most underrated work of his?

He knew how to set an atmosphere:

"Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species—if separate species we be—for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world. If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night. No one placed the charred fragments in an urn or set a memorial to him who had been; for certain papers and a certain boxed object were found, which made men wish to forget." - First paragraph of "Facts concerning Arthur Jermyn and his Family"

I appreciate that despite how much he incorporated science as a horror theme in his stories at his time, they still hold up today. Much of it is attributed to how he doesn't fully go into it, but instead uses it to build up your imagination. I like to read his stories in David Attenborough's voice.

qts read it

Post your editions of Lovecraft and your thoughts on them.

These are paperback, but pretty cheap. I guess paperbacks are okay if you're careful.

>>10227273
I have the blue tentacle themed one volume. It's pretty cheap but also didn't cost much and looks good enough.

>>10227202
you posted this in the other thread too. Why?
Is this you? Do you want validation?
stop

>>10227342
I have this one. It's a bit voluminous, but it looks great, even more so for its price.

>>10227273
In addition to pic related, I've also had the original B&N collected fiction. The updated one fixes a lot of typos, and retains Joshi's introduction and story-intros -- unlike the Knickerbocker -- which I like. The notes in the Penguin editions are great. I wish there was a single volume edition that was comprehensive and also had the scholarly apparatus of the Penguins, but right now the B&N 2nd edition is the best we have, even if it's a little gaudy.

The left-most edition has a great selection and is much more portable than the collected fiction. The Horror in the Museum has all his collaborations/ghostwritings, many of which are forgettable but some of which are great (like "Till A' the Seas" and "Night Ocean").

>>10217369
>>10217378
That's pretty cool, thanks for sharing.

>>10227544
There's more.

>>10227583
the basis of "The Shunned House" -- in much better state now

>>10227597
"About the hidden churchyard of St. John’s—there must be some unsuspected vampiric horror burrowing down there & emitting vague miasmatic influences, since you are the third person to receive a definite creep of fear from it . . . . the others being Samuel Loveman & H. Warner Munn. I took Loveman there at midnight, & when we got separated among the tombs he couldn’t be quite sure whether a faint luminosity bobbing above a distant nameless grave was my electric torch or a corpse-light of less describable origin! Munn was there with W. Paul Cook & me, & had an odd, unaccountable dislike of a certain unplaceable, deliberate scratching which recurred at intervals around 3 a.m. How superstitious some people are!" (Letter to Helen V. Sully, 17 October 1933)

>>10227603
near the John Hay Library at Brown

>>10227612
another bit from a letter to RH Barlow that references Howard and Clark (hard to read!)

>>10227615
goofy excerpt that was on the wall at the Brown exhibit

>>10227619
HPL's home from 1926 to 1933

>>10227630
HPL's home at the end of his life (and that of the protagonist of "Haunter of the Dark").

>>10227637
These are nice, thanks Anon.

>>10227597
Funny how closely it resembles my conception of the Shunned Housed based on Lovecraft's description.

>>10227603
Great shot. It really looks like an ominous place.

>>10227583
>>10227612
>>10227615
>>10227619
>>10227630
>>10227637
Very nice!

>>10227273
I own these three.
The wordsworth ones do the trick for their price, I have no problems with them.
The Hungarian edition isn’t that bad, contains the most important stuff someone with a passing interest would need. I’d say sometimes it improves his prose a little but, makes the adjectives a tiny bit more diverse.
I liked the Dunwich horror in both languages a lot, I was scared adequately each time I read it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gviofDcypzE

This guy is my favourite voice to narrate Lovecraft.

>>10217334
>>10217337
How tall was he?

>>10227273
Mine are the Arkhamhouse editions. At the time I got them they were the collection available in hardcover. Though corrected text at the time, they've been succeeded by further corrected editions. The covers are in a wonky children's books style like the covers of a Harry Potter book.

>>10228185
>that spooky skeleton on the Mountains cover

>>10228176
6'5 masterrace

>>10228209
5'11" master manlet

>>10228144
He's good, but I prefer this one

https://youtu.be/mLMlo_0oIs0
https://youtu.be/K6l3pU3L-W8

>>10227106
I also have had such experiences, which is likely why Lovecraft's descriptions ring a bell. I too have read about "sehnsucht" and so on, trying to find others who have experienced something of the sort. I wonder how common the experience is. I'm not sure whether it is rare, or whether it is more that most people who have it don't parse it through the same cognitive filters as people like I, you, and Lovecraft do.
I also sometimes wonder at the connections between these experiences and the sort of experiences described in enlightenment literature (Zen Buddhism, certain strands of Western philosophy, etc.) in which the ordinary thought process and ego-center gives way to some sort of deeper involvement, or perception of involvement, with Being.
The main difference between the Lovecraft-style experience and philosophical enlightenment/transcendance seems to be that the Lovecraft-style experience has a certain aesthetic/sensory component, and it has a certain atmosphere of poignant haunting nostalgia. The word "pseudomemory", which Lovecraft sometimes uses, points well at what the thing feels like.

>>10227106
I also have had such experiences, which is likely why Lovecraft's descriptions ring a bell. I too have read about "sehnsucht" and so on, trying to find others who have experienced something of the sort. I wonder how common the experience is. I'm not sure whether it is rare, or whether it is more that most people who have it don't parse it through the same cognitive filters as people like I, you, and Lovecraft do.
I also sometimes wonder at the connections between these experiences and the sort of experiences described in enlightenment literature (Zen Buddhism, certain strands of Western philosophy, etc.) in which the ordinary thought process and ego-center gives way to some sort of deeper involvement, or perception of involvement, with Being. I've had some experiences of a great sense of dignity and meaningfulness somehow bound up with the perception that the ordinary thought-process creates a false sense that hides this great, deep dignity. These experiences are different from the Lovecraft-style ones, but it seems that there is a connection. In the Lovecraft-style experiences, too, there may be a sense of profound dignity beyond cognitively-processed stress and the travail of the thought process that is bound up with considering the future.
The main difference between the Lovecraft-style experience and philosophical enlightenment/transcendance seems to be that the Lovecraft-style experience has a certain particular aesthetic/sensory component, and it has a certain atmosphere of poignant haunting nostalgia. The word "pseudomemory", which Lovecraft sometimes uses, points well at what the thing feels like.
It is as if one "comes to" after an experience of enlightenment, and feels the sense of enlightenment receding, lighting up its pathways with infinitely beautiful aesthetic radiance as it recedes. There is a sense of poignantly beautiful, heart-aching meaningfulness and aesthetic perfection.

>>10227106
Cont.
Actually, some aspects of The Matrix and associated media come close to the same sort of thing. The famous passage from The Matrix rings a bell: "You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me." From The Animatrix, "World Record" is suggestive. So is "Deja Vu" from the Matrix comics.
I suspect that perhaps these experiences are actually just brief glimpses of what being alive is like for a person who has overcome all psychological destructive factors and stressors and perceives objectively, without the draining presence of worry and fear concerning the future.
The normal childraising process is effective at turning a Cro Magnon baby in to a psychologically modern human being in under 15 years, and creating a psychological structure that is capable of handling the human awareness of death (see Ernst Becker, etc.). However, the childraising process also, as part of its normal operation, creates all sorts of pathologies in its rush to accomplish its purpose. A child is taught various simplified, immature cognitive approaches to reality, either because the adults themselves are psychologically crippled or because adults fear the child would not be able to handle the truth, or both. The ordinary adult has not truly resolved issues that have to do with time and death, but has only sort of papered a cognitive structure over them.
Aesthetic/spiritual/scientific breakthroughs can all serve to bring us closer to a more direct perception of things. Art, mysticism, and scientific endeavor, in different ways, expand the human beyond the ordinary "crippled" psychological structure. The Lovecraft "adventurous expectancy" fits somehow, I'm not sure how but somehow, into this. One of the things that make Lovecraft fascinating is precisely that he worked along all three lines - he was an artist with a mystic sense and also a strong interest in hard science.

>>10219574
Not OP or anybody, but I followed the other anon's post about "On the Creation of Niggers": it portrays blacks/etc as in-betweeners for humans and animals. Did his racial view fluctuate a lot, or do you think that the poem would be just a creative portrayal of what you mentioned?

>>10227106
Cont.
I should also note that, when I analyze these experiences along psychological lines, I do not mean to strip true mystic depth from them. When I say that perhaps these experiences are glimpses of psychological health, I do not mean to suggest that it is the sort of psychological health that can necessarily be achieved mulling over bits of one's cognitive trivia while lying on the stereotypical psychoanalyst's couch. No, it's a deeper sort of health, having something to do with success at being-unto-death and a great dignity. There's something objective about it, it's not simply the replacement of one delusion-system by another. Hence the connection to science and philosophy.
Science has attained great success at explaining material phenomena, but it has not managed to address the hard problem of consciousness. Indeed, I suspect that the hard problem is fundamentally unaddressable along merely physicalist lines. There are true mysteries concerning time, coming into existence, death, consciousness, and so on, which are beyond the reach of standard material analysis. There is some point at which these great mysteries touch the physical revelations of science, but I do not know where this point is. I only know that there is no actual contradiction between mysticism, philosophy, and science. There are, of course, contradictions between vague occultism (masquerading as mysticism), organized religion (masquerading as philosophy), and reductionist physicalism (masquerading as science). But there are no contradictions between actual mysticism, philosophy, and science.

>>10227106
Cont.
I should also note that, when I analyze these experiences along psychological lines, I do not mean to strip true mystic depth from them. When I say that perhaps these experiences are glimpses of psychological health, I do not mean to suggest that it is the sort of psychological health that can necessarily be achieved mulling over bits of one's cognitive trivia while lying on the stereotypical psychoanalyst's couch. No, it's a deeper sort of health, having something to do with insights into the nature of reality, and a concomitant great dignity. There's something objective about it, it's not simply the replacement of one delusion-system by another. Hence the connection to science and philosophy.
Science has attained great success at explaining material phenomena, but it has not managed to address the hard problem of consciousness. Indeed, I suspect that the hard problem is fundamentally unaddressable along merely physicalist lines. There are true mysteries concerning time, coming into existence, death, consciousness, and so on, which are beyond the reach of standard material analysis. There is some point at which these great mysteries touch the physical revelations of science, but I do not know where this point is. I only know that there is no actual contradiction between mysticism, philosophy, and science. There are, of course, contradictions between vague occultism (masquerading as mysticism), organized religion (masquerading as philosophy), and reductionist physicalism (masquerading as science). But there are no contradictions between actual mysticism, philosophy, and science.

>>10227106
Cont.
I should also note that, when I analyze these experiences along psychological lines, I do not mean to strip true mystic depth from them. When I say that perhaps these experiences are glimpses of psychological health, I do not mean to suggest that it is the sort of psychological health that can necessarily be achieved mulling over bits of one's cognitive trivia while lying on the stereotypical psychoanalyst's couch. No, it's a deeper sort of health, having something to do with insights into the nature of reality, and a concomitant great dignity. There's something objective about it, it's not simply the replacement of one delusion-system by another. Hence the connection to science and philosophy.
Science has attained great success at explaining material phenomena, but it has not managed to address the hard problem of consciousness. Indeed, I suspect that the hard problem is fundamentally unaddressable along merely physicalist lines. There are true mysteries concerning time, coming into existence, death, consciousness, and so on, that are probably beyond the reach of standard material analysis. There is some point at which these great mysteries touch the physical revelations of science, but I do not know where this point is. I only know that there is no actual contradiction between mysticism, philosophy, and science. There are, of course, contradictions between vague occultism (masquerading as mysticism), organized religion (masquerading as philosophy), and reductionist physicalism (masquerading as science). But there are no contradictions between actual mysticism, philosophy, and science.

>>10228637
He wrote that when he was 22 supposedly to win the approval of his mother and aunts, who were pretty racist themselves.

>>10228679
He only softened his racial views a bit later in life on discovering traces of subhuman Irish ancestry in his own background (the inspiration for the Shadow over Innsmouth). So he transferred it to races that he deemed haven't fully assimilated.

>>10228679
Neat. It's weird to imagine an author (who's now popular) writing something to suck up to his relatives. Might be naive for me to think of it like that, though.

>>10228729
>Might be naive for me to think of it like that, though.
Yes, it is.

>>10228733
What was his relationship like with his relatives? I feel like I remember reading something about it being strained or strange.

>>10227359
Jodelle is invading your subconscious and rewriting it

>>10228224
>The White Ship
underrated one

>>10228620
>>10228624
>>10228637
>>10228674
>>10228679
>>10228721
>>10228733
>>10228775
Fuck y'all for killing our thread. Pls everyone continue the discussion of editions and Providence pictures.

>>10212342
>dialogue that is practically unreadable at points and frankly some of the worst I've ever seen in published fiction
what an absurd thing to say about Lovecraft given the amount of garbage that exists.

>>10213288
>Or maybe YOU could admit that YOU'RE a little bit RACIST like the REST of us have MANNED AND/OR WOMANED UP and DONE
are you for real? jesus christ this sentence is cringe

Why was he so triggered by basketball Americans?

>>10227673
Your Haunter of the Dark seems a shade darker than mine >>10227273
, though that's probably due to lighting.

Interesting that you'd say that translations of Lovecraft can have slightly improved. Haven't read his works in translation, but could try and do a contrastive analysis sometime. Pic related, one of the editions with translations in Russian.

>>10229885
>slightly improved prose

>>10207550
Hello /leftypol/

>>10229885
>but could try and do a contrastive analysis sometime
That sounds like a good idea, maybe I will do that someday with one of the stories.

Pickman's Model

>>10230172
pretty spooky

>>10228729
>>10228775
Lovecraft was basically a NEET and lived with his mother/aunts for the most part of his life.

>>10230193
In a sense, the letter-writing habits of Lovecraft and his friends also prefigured modern Internet communities, as does Lovecraft's involvement with amateur journalism.
I think this explains a certain (although not the major) part of Lovecraft's appeal to modern Internet culture. He was a NEET autodidact who spent a lot of his time corresponding with people by writing.

>>10230193
In a sense, the letter-writing habits of Lovecraft and his friends also prefigured modern Internet communities, as does Lovecraft's involvement with amateur journalism.
I think this explains a certain (although not the major) part of Lovecraft's appeal to modern Internet culture. He was a NEET autodidact who spent a lot of his time corresponding with people by writing.
That said, he wasn't a shut-in. There were phases of his life in which he led an active face-to-face social life, and he enjoyed traveling.

>>10230221
Shame he could never realize his dream of travelling to Europe

Good thread.

I can't bear Lovecraft in large quantities, a story once in a while is fine, but reading two or three wears me down quite a bit in all honesty.

Bump

>>10230377
I used to read his shorter stories one every two nights for extra spooky, but The Case of Charles Dexter Ward killed me, I didn't expect it to be so long.

>>10206422
After looking at OP pic for several days, it suddenly struck me: CHADthulu

Was reading a Ligotti interview yesterday, where he drew an HPL before/after line at the year 1926. He said Lovecraft's stories after '26 become too wordy, and that's when he developed his rep as a bad writer.

Now I've read most of HPL's stuff, although not recently, but never read it with an eye to that distinction.

Sound or not, lads?

>>10232083
Not sound. The Hound was written in 1924, yet it's more excessive than most of his later works.

>>10224514
>>10225097
Haha, you'll also notice that this anon >>10216949 misspelled it too!

>>10232070
old owl meme

>>10232843
yeah, it's a riff on the owl, but the pose is quite chad.

>>10232851
wasn't cthulhu supposed to be slimy and bloaty and gross, not a macho man?

Are Derleth and the other Mythos writers worth reading or just bad fan fiction?

>>10232895
in general no, but see this post: >>10217490

>>10232070
Virgin Dagon vs Chadthulhu

>>10217334
Nice one.