/lit/ - Literature

>>7784947
i like call of cthulhu, dunwich horror and haunter of the dark the most. mountains of madness is alright. havent read charles dexter ward yet.

>>7784947
my friend made me read this guy a few years ago.

the only things i remember that were even worth reading were

At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow Out of Time

The Mound was ok
Charles Dexter Ward was ok

I think his best and my personal favorite was The Colour Out of Space

>>7784947
It's called the "Dream Quest" because it will put you to sleep.

>>7784947
I want to eventually move to New England and nothing can change that.

Reading his stories chronologically you notice a very gradual but steady increase in prose quality, as in he gets less and less purple as time goes on. From circa-1930 forward, I have no issues with his prose anymore.

If he hadn't died young he could have put out legit masterpieces.

>>7784947

The White Ship is amazing. The prose is near his best

>>7784947

Started reading him when I was 13 and have been obsessed with cosmic horror ever since.
Other writers in the genre tend to be better though, like Arthur Machen in The Great God Pan.

>>7785351
New Englander here. Don't come to MA; it's a meme. Maine is too bleak.
I think Vermont or NH are your best bet. I know it doesn't have that 'coastal town with history of whaling' feel but there are plenty of lake towns and NH does have a small coastline.
Connecticut and Rhode Island aren't worth mention.

>>7785499
RI is what I had in mind. Thanks for the headsup senpai.

>>7785515
Hope you like cold weather, low speed limits, and shitty roads.

Rhode Island looked pretty cool in that Jim Carrey movie where he gets cucked and then develops an evil double personality.

>>7785528
I like cold weather and low speed limits, and shitty roads don't bother me.

>>7785542
I mostly frequent /o/, so I wasn't a fan. Spent some time in Newport over the last 8 or so years.

>>7784947

When he's on his game, you're in for a good time. You should try some tabletob 'thulu. You almost never win and always end up dead or found hysterical in a gutter. Live in Boston, always going down to Rhode Island, checked out some of these places. New England is wonderful and horrifying.

I haven't read any in a while, but I would say some of my faves are Cool Air, Statement of Randolph Carter, The Temple, Pickman's Model, and The Outsider. Rats in the Walls gets a mention for Nigger Man.

He has this knack for impending doom. Reading Lovecraft is like having the sword of Damocles above your head and knowing exactly when it's going to fall, yet still being surprised when it happens. You could have the plot of any of his stories spoiled for you and they would still be a joy to read.

Also if you like beer, Narragansett (a Rhode Island brewery) has been doing a Lovecraft series, with a new beer every few months. Lovecraft Honey Ale, Innsmouth Olde Ale, Reanimator Helles Lager, and I Am Providence imperial red ale.

>>7785555
>5555

I liked call of Cthulhtu
I haven't read anything else from lovecraft.
But I have downloaded shadow over innsmouth and ATMoM
So I'm going to get straight into lovecraft's finest works according to you guys.

The rats in the walls: I loved the reveal in the end, very cozy.
The outsider: Very spoopy.
The temple: Very archaic and desolate of hope, absolutely dreadful.
The statement of Randolph Carter: Loved the atmosphere and panic of the characters.

I love a dozen more but these are some of my faves.

I haven't read anything by him in years, but I loved him when I was 16/17. The Music if Eric Zahn was my favourite; short, weird, and blessedly unexplained. One of Lovecraft's biggest problems is that he tends to get too onto his world-building and take away some of the mystery.

I'm about to start the last story from pic related. This was my first outing into Lovecraft and I have to say I really like his stuff.

Favorites so far are The Hound, The Rats in the Wall, The Color Out of Space, Nyarlathotep, The Whisperer in Darkness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Will read more after I read a few other books.

>>7785683

>Lovecraft beer

Why, though?

How can you make a beer in the style of a story? Sounds like it's just a marketing ploy.

which Lovecraft story frightened you the most?

for me it has to be either Whispers in the Dark, The Hound, or Color Out of Space

>>7785387

Is this a good collection? I've heard mixed reviews; apparently it's got a lot of typos and that fancy binding likes to peel off.

>>7786295

There's two other Penguin collections, and iirc they all have Joshi's fantastic supplements. I prefer the collected Penguin volumes to "Complete" editions like >>7785387 because huge tomes like that tend to be handbreakers.

I swear to god Infinite Jest gave me carpal tunnel

>Captcha: Select all images with mountains
THE MADNESS, IT KNOWS

>>7786353

The reviews are why I went with >>7786295.

>>7786346

The Hound had me most creeped out from what I read. The next couple days when I walked out in the dark to go to work I was looking over my shoulder half expecting to hear the immense howl.

>>7786314

Well, the themes have more to do with naming the beers, not sure how much it plays into the style/taste, but they've all been pretty good. Could be a marketing ploy, but they do appear to be proud of the culture of Rhode Island, founded the year HP was born.

http://www.narragansettbeer.com/

>>7784947
Anon, I just wanna say I appreciate how hard youre having to strain to make this "Better Call Chthulu" meme work and Im sorry its just flying over everyones head and theyre responding to you in an earnest fashion.

I don't think I've ever thought to share this anecdote on 4chan before, but this discussion about Lovecraftian Horror and living in New England makes me want to.

I am a lifelong Vermonter who grew up on a failing family dairy farm on the outskirts of a post-heyday rural community. Our property was about a mile outside of town, sandwiched between a river and forested hills stretching up into the Green Mountains, right on the Canadian border. My siblings and I grew up pretty close to nature compared to the average contemporary American kids. Saw plenty of foxes, raccoons, deer, moose, black bears, and what have you growing up. Also, plenty of mice, rats, and other tiny critters picking in the house regularly, being so close in proximity to wilderness.

Our house was about 150 years old, so it'd developed it's own personality and voice through creaking stairs and familiar gaps for whistling wind. I got freaked out once when I thought I heard a ghost as a kid, which I'm fairly sure now was just an owl nesting in the maple tree next to the house, who shut up every time my parents came to check on me. It would also freak me out hearing stuff scratching in the walls growing up, but I'd always figure it was just mice or birds in the attic, ignore it and go to sleep. But I developed my rituals for helping myself feel safe; locking the door when I heard creaking in the hallway, checking the closet before I laid down. Typical kid stuff that went away as I got older. With the exception of one peculiar safeguard against the entry point that had always made me feel inexplicably uneasy: the vent.

>>7787171

The heating system for the house was this clanging monstrosity of an oil furnace in the stone and mortar basement. When it came on, you could hear it rattling to life up on the second floor, then it would push hot (and nose-bleedingly dry) air to different wall and floor grates through a network of rusty old vents. The one in my room was set right above the frame of my bedroom door. And I hated that fucking vent. More than the scratching in the walls or the ceilings, what freaked young me out was the shuffling noises I'd hear coming out of that vent. Not a skittering or clattering, as of paws or anything like that; a drawn out kind of dragging, that was suggestive of something pulling its weight along. It got to the point that I just permanently shut the grate as a kid, because I had so many moments at night where I'd hear that shuffling in the vent get louder and stop suddenly, while I stared from my bed on the other side of the room with the lights on, staring at it and being too short without a chair to shut it.

Dream Quest was the best thing he wrote, stop memeing.

>>7787222
in your dreams

even lovecraft admitted it was a trial run. he would have written a kadath tale to surpass it had he lived long enough.

>>7787218

All right, I'll try to wrap this up so I can go to bed.

Anyway, the culmination of this happened when I was 16, long after I'd stopped really giving a shit but still shut that vent at night out of habit since I could reach it easily. It was about 6:00 AM (I remember the day exactly, because it was the morning my parents drove me to Boy's State and I had to get up early for the trip.) I was standing in the bathroom, half-assedly brushing my teeth in a groggy morning fugue, when I start to hear a noise. It didn't register with me for a moment what it was. Until I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Coming from the bathroom floor vent. With no dramatization /lit/, I turned slowly to look towards the vent, toothbrush hanging limply out of my mouth, and saw 6 - 8 black tendrils sticking two feet into the air straight out of the grate, probably about a half inch thick each. They weren't jointed like spider legs or completely movable like a tentacle. They just kind of gyrated slowly in the air, sort of testing it, for about 15 seconds while I watched stupefied before stopping, slowly retracting into the vent, and then shuffling away. When it was dead silent, I went straight to my parents and told them what I'd seen. I don't know that they believed me, but my mom heard noise from the vent 20 minutes or so later when she was using the restroom and put the laundry hamper on top of it as it freaked her out.

This is really /x/ feeling, but I swear it actually happened. Good old New England. Haven't heard anything from that vent since, but I'll be honest; I still sleep with the lights on at my parents house.

>>7787259
Cobwebs stained by soot. Myth busted.

>>7787270

Cobwebs wouldn't move that stiffly. Or retract.

>>7787270

Also it was an oil furnace.

>>7785683
>You should try some tabletob 'thulu.

Muh nigga. Delta green is the best though. I love the idea of a bunch of 2Tacticool4u operators being reduced to gibbering retards.

Total fucking imbecile here. I've never read any Lovecraft, but I want to get into the Cthulhu Mythos or whatever they are called. What would you recommend starting with?

>>7787302
the cthulu tabletop is legitimately the best thing in the entire mythos desu.

Anyways, I liked Colour out of Space. All of Lovecraft makes people like King look like hacks.

What's the best lovecraft video game?

>>7788988

These stories are Mythoscore :

>Dagon
>The Call Of Chtulhu
>At The Mountains Of Madness
>The Dunwhich Horror
>The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward
>The Shadow Over Innsmouth
>The Colour Out Of Space

Read them and see if you like them. Personally I think Cthulhu Mythos Lovecraft is best Lovecraft.

>>7786360
>>Captcha: Select all images with mountains
>THE MADNESS, IT KNOWS

This just happened to me too. RUN.

>>7789124
Thanks!

>>7784947
Reading a 20th century racist classist

>>7789142
Man of his times. Also, you can like Hitler's paintings, without liking him

>>7789142
>not reading an author on the grounds of his opinion
Celine says high.

I fucking hate how he uses these obscure ass adjectives and adverbs and I have to stop and look them up.

>>7790496

Not really. He was way more racist than average, and also an atheist when the "men of his time" were predominantly Christian. I think the times had nothing to do with it.

I still like his stories tho, I couldn't give less of a fuck what he thought about black people.

>>7785795
The Rats In The Walls is absolutely amazing. And it's also a very short read.

>>7791018
I kinda like it, it can add to the atmosphere some times and make the reader feel more uneasy.

But yeah, sometimes it gets a little over the top, like someone looking through a thesorous just to sound smart.

>>7784947
>le spooky racism man

In regards to Lovecraft and racism, there's a new book that came out called the Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor Lavalle. I'm not shilling the book, but his take on it is interesting. He's a black man who loved Lovecraft but as he grew older began to recognize his racism, however his explaination for it on NPR I think is brilliant:

"I would say that what Lovecraft was getting down on the page a great deal was his fear of everything - everything. He feared women; he feared anyone who wasn't white; he feared Jewish people. I wouldn't be surprised if he feared, like, cars as well. Like, he was just so afraid of the modern world. And he managed to - rather than making it a one-for-one and just having those groups of people who he feared and hated show up in the books and stories as people acting terribly, he came up with these strange and impossible creatures because really on some level, he was almost trying to capture the depth and breadth of his terror."

>>7792421
There's no indication that Lovecraft shares the feelings of his protagonists, he just happens to be systematizing perceptions on these subjects.

Watching so many people express their judgement on the author on the basis of his myths is simply embarrassing.

It's wrong to assume that artists choose subjects because they like the subject for itself, or because it expresses something direct about themselves.

Artists are mainly systematizers who are interested in illustrating an aspect of consensus thinking, not people who are attempting to score in political arguments.

I view Authors as being more like journalists than speech writers, but maybe you'll disagree?

>>7792529

>There's no indication that Lovecraft shares the feelings of his protagonists

Top kek

How about his letters, fool?

>>7792529
Bro he really was racist there's no denying it.

>>7792559
Let's say that letters are admissible as facts.

What can the letters prove about Lovecraft?

>>7792598

I really can't stand sophisms. You know he was racist as fuck and so does everyone else, what's the point?

>>7792598
There's always this lovely poem.

On the Creation of Niggers
by H. P. Lovecraft

When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Iove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger

>>7792598
Oh also he really owned a cat named nigger man

Good thing he wasn't born in this age, we would have got no stories because he would have been shitposting all day long on /x/, /pol/ and /r9k/.

>mfw died at 46
What a fucking waste.

>>7792529
Interesting perspective. I'm >>7792421.

Anyone can take what they want from Lovecraft, but it takes some mental gymnastics to believe Lovecraft didn't harbor a fear and distrust of people of other ethnicities. Hell, I can see why some believe he outright hated black people.

I'm not condemning him for it, nor am I saying he's a bad author. In fact he's one of my favorite authors, and his stuff effected me almost emotionally. No matter what people say, I'll always like his stuff. Hence why I like Lavalle's take on it.

>>7789142
>>7790496
>>7791421
>>7792421
>>7792559
>>7792592
>>7792598
>>7792619
>>7792704
>>7793044
Pic Related: What Lovecraft probably looks like to people that don't like his writing.

Racism was an acceptable thing back then. Doesn't mean I agree or approve.

Well horror usually depends on fear of the other, the alien, the unknown. So you really can't go wrong with a racist as a horror writer.

>>7784947
I'm writing a cosmic horror story in which the eldritch cultists are based on transexuals/ furries/ sjws. Driven by self rigtheous perversion to mutilate themselves and others into polygendered half animal monstrosities. Worshippers of Dark Forces, their ultimate goal is the destruction of humanity, which they have come to see as oppressive.

>>7793234
And worse of all: they seem to have casted a foul spell on the world's media, who has only praise for their atrocities. Their critics are branded as nazi bigots and dragged away to uncertain fates. Our protagonist feels like the only sane person left on earth.

>>7793234
sounds pretty terrible bruh

>>7793211
Hey I like him, was just trying to show this anon >>7792529 that he was in fact a racist though.

>>7792367
Lovecraft likely had quite a vocabulary though, learning to read and write from a very early age and spending really most of his time being educated, even by his .. questionable mother. Say what you will of his fictional stories, reading his letters(he wrote a bunch) and such it's obvious he was well articulated and had the gift of the written word. Doubt he was much of an orator.

Anyhow, my favorites were always
The Shadow Out of Time - This one is rarely mentioned, but ought to be. I mean, it's just wonderful.

The Silver Key - That depressing fucking intro hit so close to home when I was a young spergbaron of cyclopean edginess that I love it for that alone.

Through the Gates of the Silver Key - This one goes off the rails, guys. You thought Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath was crazy? Oh boy.

I really do enjoy all his lengthiest stories, though. The odd pacing and repetitive narrative structure and such I don't really mind. I like that I can read me some more Lovecraft, and know that I'll be getting more of the same stuff I thought was great about the other ones. Not all authors are like that, and the ones that are, will likely be criticised for it. Maybe that's not invalid at all, but I can appreciate it rather than dislike it, if I liked the original style. But then again I'd also point that out in authors whos style I didn't like. So whatever.

Other honorable mentions are The Outsider, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Music of Erich Zann, Whisperer in Darkness. And his letters, they're great.

>>7784947
Which of his stories break away from the "modern skeptic investigates/stumbles upon something seemingly supernatural and looses his shit when it turns out it really is supernatural."

Its not a bad formula but I just wonder if he did anything different from this

>>7793320
Oh for sure. I don't disagree with that at all, I was more saying I can understand why people may find his writing style off-putting, I just worded it awkwardly. I'll admit, I like the more famous choices, The Shadow over Innsmouth, Dagon, The Dunwich Horror, The Colour Out of Space, etc. I'm definitely the typical pulp fan.

>>7793211
Legitimately laughed at that.

Is his idol, Lord Dunsany, worth reading?

>>7793564
You can't know til you read him, breh. Just because someone says to you he is shit and they didn't like him, you still can. Read Lord Dunsany and find out for yourself.

>>7793586
B-b-but w-what if I like the wrong thing! Strangers on the internet might call me a pleb!

>>7793600
>not reading whatever sounds interesting
P L E B

>>7793211

10/10. Reading some of his short stories lately, a lot of them boil down to.

>I was doing some boring shit
>Shit got weird
>Shit got crazy
>I ran away after and never went back to the tenebrous place where I saw that crazy weird Mephistophelian shit

anybody have that lovecraft copypasta

like the one that's describing him having sex, written like he would write it

thanks in advance

>>7785387
I have this addition, its really good but im sure its missing a heap of other stories, I also have the eldrich tales by the same publisher which has more of Lovecraft's work in it

>>7787222
Too Howard honestly.

>>7794837
I've got the Conan series by the same publisher. The authors where friends in the pulp fiction world and there's even a bit of crossover into Conans world. You even start to enjoy the authors long introductions of Conans pectorials. (NO homo)

>>7793514
All of the Dream Cycle stories.
Pickman's Model if you count Pickman instead of the narrator.
Herbert West: Re-Animator
Cold Air

>>7786314
its just marketing
the Innsmouth Olde Ale did not taste fishy

Do modern editions of Lovecraft works come with that complimentary preface/introduction about how the author was a xenophobic/racist meanie meanie.

I see a lot of that kind of shit these days. I don't need to be fucking propagandized before I read "dangerous ideas".

>>7795694
Its not propaganda its fact. I like his writing but he was racist it is a fact and there's nothing wrong with talking about it in fact it would be dishonest to pretend he wasn't.

>>7794185
That sounds hilarious

>>7795795
it's irrelevant. works by evola, hitler, etc don't need a preface of the opinions of a bunch of literally whos to tell you what to think before you read a book telling you what to think

>>7795795
>it's not propaganda, it's fact
these things are not mutually exclusive, you dumb nigger

>>7795912

Guys i think we accidentally summoned HPL.

God damn it, Herbert.

>>7787259
That's what you get from building your house on the grounds of old Indian cemetery. Serves you right you disrespectful bastard.

Anyone here like "The Rats in the Walls"?

>>7796179
Its p good. Nigger man is even funny when you know he really had a cat called that.

>>7795909
>>7795912
There is nothing wrong with calling a racist a racist.

>>7796261
>theres nothing wrong with calling a racist a racist
yeah, but if you frontload your "book" with 50 pages of nobodies crying about the author and his opinions we're not gonna buy the fucking thing

>>7796560
His work shouldn't be condemned for it but it shouldn't be ignored either.

bump

>>7793320

Holy shit you weren't kidding about Through The Gates Of The Silver Key. I just finished it and what the fuck. Poor fucking Randolph.