/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12016826]

>terrify the shit out of people without relying on dumb supernatural cliches
>prove “tell, don’t show” actually works
>literally starve for your art
>maintain artistic integrity by refusing to publish accessible genre fiction for normies
>roast einstein
>inspire countless derivative works, film adaptations and heavy metal songs
>ivory tower academics call you a problematic hack while they languish in obscurity

is Lovecraft the ideal /lit/ snob?

[Anonymous No.12016833]

>>12016826
sure. he even hated jews.

[Anonymous No.12016837]

>>12016826
Forgot the part where he married a Jew despite his raging antisemitism.

[Anonymous No.12016838]

>>12016833
Yeah, but who doesn't? Jews even hate themselves

[Anonymous No.12016841]

>>12016826
no he was an uneducated NEET who was too afraid of people to properly commercialise his art

[Anonymous No.12016842]

>>12016826
He's my favourite racist.

[Anonymous No.12016848]

>>12016837
He was an old-school 'better elevate these heathens' type racist.

[Anonymous No.12017115]

>>12016826
His works arent scary and people think the "cthulhu mythos" is omg so deep. It's campy and silly. He is great at climaxes in his stories that can make you go "ohh shit!" but otherwise he was just a pompous, nerdy coward. If he was a racist, that's fine, racists can write good stories, this one is overrated though

[Anonymous No.12017143]

>>12016837
there's no shame in falling for the khazar-milkers, it's happened to the best of us

[Anonymous No.12017383]

>>12017115
Most people agree that The Call of Cthulhu is a middling at best Lovecraft story and Cthulhu is only mentioned in a handful of others. Can you name an author whose works you consider ‘scary’?

[Anonymous No.12017395]

>>12017383
R.L. Stine

[Anonymous No.12017410]

>>12017383

>>12017395
^is not me

M R James' Canon Alberic's Scrap Book is the first thing to legit make me afraid of the dark/whats behind my back since i dont even know when.

Other than really good storytelling, unlike Lovecraft, MR James seemed to understand primal things that caused fear in human beings and his are the only horror stories that actually make me scared rather than just entertained.
Read MR James and Canon Alberic's Scap Book in particular!

[Anonymous No.12017418]

>>12016826
Also Lovecraft was not a snob, he didnt mingle in any circles nor had he friends nor was he respected. He cared alot about his image and he did a good job at securing and immortalising it. He made sure his works are being taken more seriously as high literature rather than pulpy horror stories, which they are, and very verbose and tedious in details at that.

[Anonymous No.12017512]

Niggerman

[Anonymous No.12017526]

The Outsider is his best work imo. It encompasses the theme of social isolation very well. I actually find his most popular stories pretty mediocre except for The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

[Anonymous No.12017535]

Cthulhu a shit

Nyarlethotep is my Eldritchfu

[Anonymous No.12017610]

>>12016833
>he even hated jews.
He hated niggers, he married a Jew.

[Anonymous No.12017655]

>>12017410
>Canon Alberic's Scrap Book
This shit right here. Very clever how the horror happens as the protagonist is immersed in his book oblivious to his surroundings, much as you reading it are also immersed and oblivious

[Anonymous No.12018453]

>>12017535
>not Shub-Niggurath

[Anonymous No.12018476]

>>12017418

I'm pretty sure he was friends with Hart Crane, who was, indeed, a snob.

[Anonymous No.12018509]

>>12018453
Shubby has no actual personality unlike Nyarly or even Yog-Soggoth

[Anonymous No.12018523]

What did he say about Einstein?

[Anonymous No.12018668]

The Outsider, Statement of Randolph Carter and Celephais are his only outstanding stories

[Anonymous No.12018712]

>>12018523
>math and physics are for fucking NERDS!

[Anonymous No.12018744]

>>12018712
Chad Lovecraft

[Anonymous No.12018771]

>>12016826
Yep, it’s no coincidence that avant-garde philosophy is obsessed with him. Lovecraft is based.

[Anonymous No.12018966]

>>12018523
>Recent lectures of interest [include] the Michelson-Morley experiment. The last-named, deliver’d at the college Monday night, was by Prof. Dayton C. Miller, former colleague of Morley and present continuer of the experiment. He furnish’d startlingly convincing proof that the real results of the experiment do NOT shew that total absence of effect of the observer’s motion on the speed of light which forms the underlying assumption of the Einstein theory. Instead, there is merely a lack of the full difference which the observer’s motion ought (according to the old theory of time and space) to make… Miller himself offers no dogmatic solution, but suggests that a drift in the luminiferous aether (assuming, contrary to Einstein, that such exists) in the direction of the earth’s motion would account — on the basis of the old pre-Einstein universe of non-relativity — for the fact that the observer’s change of place in space gives some of the effect demanded by the old concept, but not all of the required amount. If Miller is right, the whole fabrick of relativity collapses, and we have once more the absolute dimensions and real time which we had before 1905.

[Anonymous No.12019070]

>>12017418
There was a literal "lovecraft's circle".

[Anonymous No.12020412]

>>12016841
>NEET
>still better traveled than many anons with an impressive correspondence of writers and friends

[Anonymous No.12020420]

dude niggers lmao

[Anonymous No.12021380]

>>12016826
he was something alright...
https://www.scribd.com/doc/209492106/HP-Lovecraft-Against-the-world-against-life-lovecraft-bio-Houllebecq-pdf

[Anonymous No.12022032]

>>12017610
>implying /pol/ wouldn't die for Ben Shapiro's sister

[Anonymous No.12022085]

>>12017383
I actually don't think Call Of Cthulhu is his best work, not by far.
It is a great story for adventure and build up, and I like how it tells stories inside other stories, but it's far from his scariest.
Pickman's Model is one I have a soft spot for, as it is literally a guy looking through a gallery of paintings and describing them second hand to us.
Whisperer in Darkness is a top entry too, conveying a guys fear through letters.
And that chase scene in Shadow Over Innsmouth is heart pounding.

>>12017418
Don't be a retard anon, he exchanged letters and met up with his contemporaries all the time. IIRC he was devasted by his friend Robert E Howard's suicide.
He named a character in one of his stories after Clarke Ashton Smith, who he praised as a genius.

>>12017512
Based

[Anonymous No.12022110]

>>12017535
NyarleTHOTep

[Anonymous No.12022404]

>>12016837
and? I'd marry an oven-dodger too if she were decent

[Anonymous No.12022504]

Where/how do I get started with Lovecraft?

[Anonymous No.12022554]

>>12022085
>Robert E Howard
I always get a kick out of this seemingly mismatched friendship. HPL crafts this meticulous tapestry of unimaginable monsters far surpassing man's ability to comprehend, and Howard runs with the idea but throws in a Chad hero who skullfucks the monsters anyway.
>Clarke Ashton Smith
Are all his stories Lovecraft-related? I'm getting a collection of his Hyperborea stories in the next few days, and if I like them I'll move onto the Zothique stuff.
>>12022504
Anywhere because his stories are online and in the public domain. Everyone has their favourites. Either read them in release order or take recommendations. Rats in the Walls is my favourite.

[Anonymous No.12022580]

>>12022504
anywhere is fine
most of his books have references to each other but it's usually offhand, you won't be in the dark if you haven't read Shadow Over Innsmouth when he mentions humanoid fish monsters in another story

[Anonymous No.12022608]

>>12016826
Lovecraft looks like Aradesh from Fallout 1 + 2

[Anonymous No.12022632]

>>12017143
Good lord.

Also, it's happened to me too. I don't understand why I seemingly like leftist Jewish types.

[Anonymous No.12022638]

>>12016826
he's a good monster creator, not a good writter

[Anonymous No.12022958]

>>12016837
Fucking based af

[Anonymous No.12023278]

>>12022554
>Clarke Ashton Smith
>Are all his stories Lovecraft-related?
Not at all. He did his own weird/fantastical thing that Lovecraft admired for the sheer scope and brilliance of its ideas and imagery (plus they became friends through correspondence.) After Lovecraft died people writing Lovecraftian pastiches ended up including references to Smith's works, but unlike other of Lovecraft's friends he never really went out of his way to tie his work to the cthulhu mythos

[Anonymous No.12024082]

>>12023278
They sound very interesting to me in any case. The book arrived today and I have all tomorrow free to get into it. IDK exactly what to call it, but I really love this area where pulp, philosophy, myth, history, adventure, spoops and so on intersect.

[Anonymous No.12024133]

>>12016826
>ivory tower academics call you a problematic hack while they languish in obscurity
But he is enjoying a massive renaissance amongst the more autistic of the speculative realists.

[Anonymous No.12024154]

>>12018523
He rightfully critiqued his nonsensical jewish physics.

[Anonymous No.12024289]

>>12016837
Who hates jews more than a jew? Perfect match

[Anonymous No.12024319]

>>12017115
All you've done here is display that you have an unsophisticated understanding of the cold outside.

[Anonymous No.12024447]

>>12016833
>>12016837
The Platonic /lit/ snob.

[Anonymous No.12024467]

>>12017418
Jesus fucking christ never ceases to amaze me how people on this board can spout lies with absolutely no compunction

[Anonymous No.12025298]

>>12018966
In English, Sheldon.

[Anonymous No.12025367]

>>12017115
>His works arent scary
This is true of all horror stories. Who gets scared reading a book?

[Anonymous No.12025447]

>>12018966
>>12025298
Lovecraft saw a lecture, which countered aspects of Einstein's experiments: this lecture and the countered aspects are reflected on superficially. Interestingly, this lecture seemed to be predicated on a now debunked concept (luminiferous aether) and so in citing it anon seems to have not made Lovecraft appear like some Chad-science-man, but rather as an antiquarian in the realm of the sciences, in line with the way in which he already was w/r/t society.

[Anonymous No.12025450]

>>12022110
gnyarleHOTEP

[Anonymous No.12025538]

>>12016837
coochie is coochie even when is kosher

[Anonymous No.12025559]

>>12016826
His prose is awful, and he didn't really scare me. I've always said the work inspired by Lovecraft is far more interesting than anything he wrote. His pulply stories like Herbert West-Reanimator or the Color Out of Space are fun reads, but I wouldn't consider them great literature.

[Anonymous No.12025567]

>>12025559
>The Color Out of Space

I mean From Beyond. That's probably my favorite Lovecraft story.

[Anonymous No.12025584]

>>12016826
Kinda, his understanding of fear was made by his rampant paranoia of literally everything and was basically NEET whos family put themselves on a pedestal regardless of them falling into disarray. He looked down at people when he is at the bottom of a pit.

[Anonymous No.12026179]

>>12025447
>a now debunked concept (luminiferous aether)
[citation VERY needed]

[Anonymous No.12026243]

>>12025584
and that's why he's our guy

[Anonymous No.12026361]

>>12016826
>dumb supernatural cliches
What's this? Zombies are perfectly natural. In fact, they killed Socrates.

[Anonymous No.12026462]

>>12022608
shut up /v/tard

[Anonymous No.12027243]

>>12025447
Higgs field is an aether
all scalar fields are aethers

[Anonymous No.12028205]

Can somebody help me identify a weird fiction short story? I remember getting linked to it from 4chan (probably /tg/ or /v/) and went on to read it online, but I can't fucking remember the name and I can't find it again.
What I remember
>has a melodramatic name like "The City Under the Mountain" or "The People Below"
>written in the first half of the 20th century, Lovecraftian style horror but not Lovecraft himself, no Cthulhu mythos type stuff like At the Mountains of Madness
>set in the 1910s I believe, possibly as late as the 1930s, someplace cold and forbidding, possibly Alaska or the Yukon
>involves 5 spooky looking mountains that look suspiciously like the fingers of a grasping hand
>small expedition of explorers (less than 5 men) encounter some rambling frostbitten crazy guy whose limbs have been worn to stumps from crawling a vast distance
>the other explorers aside from the protagonist abandon the venture, but he explores to the source of the wild man's ramblings in the mountains
>finds an entryway down below into a subterranean realm, it's pitch black so he can't see anything and has to slowly crawl down stairs, but he hears ominous indecipherable speech
>reaches the bottom and gets spooked by cyclopean architecture and idols depicting heathen gods and possibly ghostly spirits of the inhabitants, and hurriedly scrambles back up the stone staircase in the same way as the man he encountered earlier, and his hands and feet get injured, but he escapes and presumably survives
would really appreciate help with this

[Anonymous No.12028530]

>>12025559
One of the mistakes people make when reading Lovecraft's work is expecting it to be horror, in the modern use of the term. This is actually false... despite how common the term "Lovecraftian horror" has become. Lovecraft didn't write horror, he wrote "weird fiction", an old genre which combined elements from fantasy, horror, and science fiction. His stories weren't intended to provoke fear, they were just supposed to be strange and unsettling. If you are saying that his writing is "awful" because it doesn't scare you, you are missing the point entirely.

>>12016837
Considering that the marriage only really lasted two years, I think he learned his lesson.

[Anonymous No.12029230]

Lovecraft's prose is truly horrific, unutterable and should surely drive you mad to even look at it

[Anonymous No.12030089]

bump

[Anonymous No.12030206]

>>12017143
indeed

[Anonymous No.12030210]

>>12016826
Lovecraft is exciting to read because he was one of the last authors untouched by modernity.

[Anonymous No.12030220]

>>12028530
>they were just supposed to be strange and unsettling

Profoundly unsettling.

[Anonymous No.12030335]

>>12030220
>>12028530

[Anonymous No.12030411]

>>12030335
JUST

[Anonymous No.12031074]

>>12017610
he still hated jews, he only married her because she had money at the time and was willing to support his literary career, he basically sold his arse to a jewish widow for cash

[Anonymous No.12031809]

>>12017610
>he married a Jew.
This is antisemitism 101.

[Anonymous No.12031832]

>>12025447
Luminiferous aether are certainly not "debunked" and Einstein thought it had been a mistake to remove it from his exposition of his theories.