/lit/ - Literature

in the middle of reading call of cthulu for the first time. I quite enjoy the way the cult is presented, going in my expectations were for the classic "dudes with robes" and shit like that buts more akin to savage animalistic pagan shit, though the reference to the immortal chinamen leaves me to guess thats its perhaps more like a little bit of both

>tfw I know for a fact I always enjoy lovecraft while I'm reading it but then I don't remember a word of it afterwards

>>16697512
derleth a shit

>>16697633
Same, I couldn't give you a summary of At The Mountains of Madness or The Festival to save my life. The only one that stuck with me was The Whisperer in Darkness (because I read an explanation of what happened at the end on Wikipedia).

>>16697633
you do read while visualizing the story in your mind right anon?

>>16697512
I like it, I like the prose, I also like the settings, the forgotten villages, the run down farmlands, the dusty churches, and abandoned castles. Of course, I don't dislike his more eldritch works, the few that I have read, in general, I like his stories, though I oftentimes don't see the horror element, I also need to read more.

I like the people who influenced him more than him.
I also like some of the people he influenced more than I like him.

>>16697512
Lovecraft autist here. Discuss what?
>>16697614
Yeah, I like how the cult has existed since the very origin of humans and it exists independently in different parts of the world.
>>16697973
>I like the people who influenced him more than him
Understandable.
>I also like some of the people he influenced more than I like him
Yikes.

Thomas Ligotti is the only lovecraftian author that has actually managed to disturb me. Let's talk about that.

>>16697512
I'm gonna say his cat's name.
Also, how did Lovecraft emerge from obscurity after his death? Was it a Van Gogh type deal where a family member tried to up-sell them after their death or what?
>>16698487
I read The Last Feast of Harlequin. It was very atmospheric but I feel like it fell short at the end. Any stories you recommend by him?

>>16698627
because of robert bloch, august derleth, and ballantine adult fantasy

>>16697512
>Im gonna Im gonna A̷̮͉͉͐͂̀̀́̏̈́̄̀͊̓͘̕͠ĺ̵̛̘̏͋͑̀̾͐̀̒̿͑̓ẖ̷̻̫̣̮͔̠̦̭̫͔̱͂͑̊̋͂̂͊͜ī̴̛̤̯̤͂́̽͝k̸͔̜͕̙͚͇͓̩͂̄̃̀̑̉͒͐̇̈̐̈́͘̚͘ͅğ̷͕͎̥ư̴̒̾̇̂̍̒́̀̍͘͝ń̷̮̒g̴͈̺͇̝̘̈̄̋͂̍͑̉̏͌̂̕͜g̷̢̨̠͚̝̼͔̭̬̭̞̦̮̙̀̂̄̐̄̄͝ḩ̵̢̬̰͉͕̹̥̮̩̭̪͕̦̎͂͜o̶̬̝͇̠͖͚̔̃͛̍̓́́

>>16697512
I actually prefer his non-muthos stories to the Old gods stories. The alchemist, the temple, the music of Erich Zan. thats all way more interesting

I picked this up yesterday in the spirit of Halloween. I've never ever read Lovecraft before despite hearing about him over and over but yeah this is some really fun stuff. I'm just plodding along in chronological order. I read Dagon first which actually kinda spooked me, the plain of mud was such a neat, evocative concept. I could feel myself there and picture the horror of the brief glimpse of the Dagon, fucking eerie dude. I also really liked The Nameless City too. I didn't think the idea that our entire prehistory was wrong and there was a whole unaccounted for series of events and here this guy was being physically confronted with the evidence would spook me so hard but it did.
Herbert West - Reanimator was a slog tho. Anyways I'm enjoying it. Honestly I've never read a short story anthology, the bite sized chunks are refreshing compares to fat novels.

>>16698479
yea i guess i should say I specifically liked the bit about the police raiding the ritual site in the swamp with the insane mongrels animalistically howling and screeching and dancing around the fire surrounded by corpses, the the idea of the inuit tribe was pretty good too

>>16698693
dagon was the first one I read and I thought it did a great job at establishing an atmosphere and stimulating your imagination for a dinky little 5 page story. I just read the nameless city yesterday and thought it was enjoyable enough, but if you liked that one, you will probably love at the mountains of madness

>>16697512
Any other captivating books besides these?

>>16697512
dont google his cats name

What's /lit/'s opinion of Hypnos? It's hardly ever discussed, but I love how bizarre it is as a whole and how similar the dream "plungings" are to psychedelic trips even though Lovecraft had never taken drugs (maybe as medicine when he was kid lol).
Also, it sort of feels like it belongs in a trilogy together with The Tree and The Green Meadow.

>>16698813
That's fucking retarded

>>16698813
Systematizing Lovecraft is the most reddit possible thing you could ever do

>>16698763
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who likes Lovecraft and doesn't like At The Mountains of Madness. Maybe Lovecraft did too good of a job of showing that the elder things "were men," because that story has always been mediocre to me. The Festival, The Picture in the House, and Dream Quest are probably my top three.

>>16697633
That's strange I don't have a problem with that. I could probably off hand give a vague outline of each story.

>>16698876
Lovecraft was very interested in drug use so I'm sure his knowledge of them informed the story. He and Clark Ashton Smith would talk about weed in their letters to each other, and I'm pretty sure that CAS, being the worldly heartthrob that he was, did experience them firsthand. It's been years since I've read Hypnos, or really any Lovecraft, but I recall enjoying it.

>>16699020
Never been a fan of At the Mountains of Madness myself, either. Lovecraft's biggest flaw as a writer is that he was never content to leave anything to the imagination (contrary to his idol M. R. James and many other masters of the English ghost story) and AtMoM really showcases Lovecraft at his least subtle. Not an ounce of mystery is left by the time the story ends.

>>16699059
True. I'd always keyed in on how vague he is about everything in The Festival but never noticed how explicit he is in AtMoM. I know people give him shit for it, but I love "They were not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor vampire bats, nor decomposed human beings..." It gives me a laundry list of bits and pieces to try and fit together somehow. Compare that with the honest to God dissection of an elder thing in AtMoM.

>>16699073
I actually think The Festival is totally out of character for his writing, even with that description of the creatures taken into account. That story seems to me to be the source of Ligotti's take on Lovecraft. I like that it was written too early for Lovecraft to explicitly tie it into the mythos.

>>16699090
I think most of Lovecrafts better stories don't really touch the mythos at all. Erich Zahn doesn't, Charles Dexter Ward doesn't, Picture in the House doesn't, Horror at Red Hook somewhat does but it's more about evil minorities. Honestly I think Lovecraft's best is when he's channeling his fear of tainted blood, either an ancestral curse or foreign admixture.

>>16699116
I agree. I prefer his Dream Cycle stories to most of his other stuff.

>>16699059
>Lovecraft's biggest flaw as a writer is that he was never content to leave anything to the imagination
I haven't read TOO much of his stuff yet but from what ive read, this seems strange to me, almost everything ive read by him so far seems to rely very heavily on what isn't said in order to give some sort of lasting impact from such short tidbits of story

>>16699214
I think anon means the way Lovecraft describes the setting in a clinical way and also tells us what emotions the characters are feeling. He does that all the time in Mountains of Madness which makes it read like a professor’s report— which it is. I like that aspect of his writing because the long descriptions of settings make the world feel really concrete and also like the narrators are struggling to hang onto reality because their minds are slipping away, and then when his narrators refuse to or simply can’t describe the horrors it feels like they’re grasping for words to describe something they can barely comprehend.

I started a few months ago but have slowed down. I did finally get around to Call of Cthulu and it was pretty good but surprisingly I would say Dagon was better. I'm not even being a contrarian faggot about it. Those few pages were ridiculously fucking good. The Temple is probably my second favorite I've read so far as well. Great imagery and I can easily see it being adapted into horror kino.

>>16698660
>muthos
ok pseud, i'll play.
upsilon's anglicized transliteration is "y".
writing "muthos" outs yourself as a faggot, since no man worthy of respect would even think of using the fucking way of writing a letter as means of asserting his wit.

>>16697633
Lovecraft is good at experiential writing. A lot of literary fags try hard to make their work seem meaningful but make no effort to involve the reader in the scenes they describe. This may be why. Also I'm the same.
>>16697656
Mountains of madness drags on desu.
>Muh science expedition
>Muh cosmic horrors
>Muh lack of evidence or explanation
Should of been a short story.
>>16697962
Try to read his stuff in order.
>>16698813
>The colour out of space
Aka nothing happens the book
>>16698895
Also this
>>16699696
>Liked Dragon
>Didn't like the call of chthulu
Read the shadow over innsmouth.

>>16699059
>Not an ounce of mystery is left by the time the story ends
I don't agree. The mystery was never about the Elder Things or the Shoggoths but about the higher mountains beyond the Mountains of Madness (which might be the Plateau of Leng or might be connected to it in some way) and the underground sea beneath them. This is pretty much confirmed by Danforth's vision and incoherent babble about seemingly unrelated things at the end of the story.
>Lovecraft's biggest flaw as a writer is that he was never content to leave anything to the imagination
This is demonstrably false, but I do agree that sometimes he goes out of his way to explain something that shouldn't really be explained.
>>16699073
>>16699090
Lovecraft's description of the hybrid beasts in The Festival is by no means uncommon. As a matter of fact he uses that literary device where he namedrops some things (which sometimes are even contradictory) to describe something without actually describing quite often (see the description of the lizard-people in The Nameless City or Cthulhu's description in The Call of Cthulhu for example)

>>16700596
>Aka nothing happens the book
Retard.

>>16700603
>Muh colour
>What is it?
>Dribble on forever about random details
>The end
One of his worst desu. At least Re-animator had lots of narrative even if it was shit.

>>16697688
A lot of people here say they don't, or even that they don't know how to do it, which is a bit weird to me because for me it's an automatic process, I can't turn the "movie in my head" off when reading fiction.

WHEN, LONG AGO, THE GODS CREATED EARTH

>>16700614
>I share the board with braindead plebs like these
Yuck.

>>16700633
Okay psued.

You're screwed, Jack

>>16697688
>subvocalizing and imagining the story as you read
Pure kino.

>and then A SKELETON POPPED OUT
Was the last time I laughed at a book, why did it have to be the ending?

bump

>>16702154
OP here. Any of you fags ever read H.P.L whilst high and or drunk? Discuss how this coloured your reading experience and recall.

>>16702837
No not really the language makes it difficult.

>>16698627
Lack of quality writing available in competition in the genre after his death. Plus easily gained /kept (((publishing rights)) post mortem.

>>16703013
Eh. After you have read a bit you understand the flow of it. Lovecraft describes his World to you in great detail if you miss something if will be come up again many more times later.