[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 67 KB, 512x628, H._P._Lovecraft,_June_1934.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17703690 No.17703690 [Reply] [Original]

What's his best story?

>> No.17703746

>>17703690

It is different for every person, of course. Part of the fun is discovering which of his stories is best for you, and this will change over time too.

For me, right now it's Through the Gates of the Silver Key, but few would say the same thing.

>> No.17703751

>>17703690
The Mountains of Madness

>> No.17703765

>>17703690
Personally, I find his Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath to be most compelling, and, in extension, his entire dream cycle.

These also benefit from having fewer mass market bastardizations, which allows them to still feel fresh and interesting.

>> No.17705086

>>17703690
I think Shadow Over Innsmouth is up there at least.

>> No.17705248

>>17703751
was the first lovecraft story i read and its still my favorite

>> No.17705281

There’s in my mind only three right answers

>>17703751
>>17703765
And the colour out of space seem to me the only three logical options. If you want him in his most encyclopedic, you want mountains of madness, if you want his most Oneiric the dream cycle as a whole, if you want that “strange” feeling, color out of space captures it perfectly.

>> No.17705542

>>17703690
The correct answer is "The Picture in the House," as the pinnacle of leaving the horror to the imagination of the reader. "The Horror at Red Hook" and "The Festival" are also top tier.
>>17703765
>>17705281
Dream Quest and Colour out of Space are good, but I found Mountains of Madness underwhelming. I have no real criticism, it just didn't click for me.

>> No.17705563

>>17703690

The Whisperer in Darkness
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

>> No.17705585

>>17705542
The festival is underrated. The thing about mountains of madness is again, you need to get absorbed in the encyclopedic feeling of it. In a way perhaps it’s better listened than read, but I think it has some of the strongest impressions of lovecraft’s imagination. But I understand why it wouldn’t be your favorite.

>> No.17705685

>>17705585
That encyclopedic feeling might be what puts me off Mountains. I think Lovecraft is at his best when he gives you a jumble of nonsensical descriptors and leaves you to sort them out. I know people give him shit for it, but I love descriptions like this: "They were not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor vampire bats, nor decomposed human beings; but something I cannot and must not recall. They flopped limply along, half with their webbed feet and half with their membraneous wings." It gives a feeling but not a form, and I think that makes it all the more horrifying. It's the sense of a monster lurking just out of sight, but clearly present. You know it's there, but can't determine what it is or how to categorize it, and it makes it all the more horrible.

>> No.17705695

>>17705685
Nah dude that stuff is fun, you can find a good deal of that in Blackwood (especially the willows) and a similar vague mystical aspect without the horror in dunsany’s work. I personally enjoy the encyclopedic part of lovecraft but I 100% agree he’s best when he’s at his most dreamy and delirious.

>> No.17705722

>>17705695
I'd been working on reading through the works HP references in Supernatural Horror in Literature. I'm reading Poe and Machen now, should I skip to Dunsay and Blackwood?

>> No.17705738

>>17705722
Nah they’re all good and don’t forget clark Ashton smith. Also MR James has an essay where he lays out his favorites which you might want to get to eventually.

https://www.berfrois.com/2015/10/m-r-james-on-ghost-stories/

>> No.17705757

there was an omegle troll thread a month or two ago where someone larped lovecraft-shit, where all I can remember concretely is that the last exlamation of terror was "IS THAT AN ITALIAN". that was the most I've laughed in some time and so I wonder if anyone has the screencap saved?

>> No.17705758

>>17705738
I'm deliberately avoiding Smith for fucking up the mythos. As I understand it he's the one largely responsible for framing the outer gods in a good vs evil context that's at odds with Lovecraft's own.

>> No.17705809

>>17703690

>The Call of Cthulhu
Just because it's famous doesn't mean it's bad. All our favourite HPL obsessions are here:
* FORBIDDEN CULTS
* BARBARIC RITUALS
* SWARTHY LASCARS AND OTHER UNMENTIONABLE RACES
* NON-EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY
* AND MUCH MUCH MORE...

>Shadow Over Innsmouth
The bit where he hears the inbred locals whispering outside his hotel room door is genuinely creepy. Plus the way he finds he's actually turning into one of them is an unexpected twist.

>The Colour Out Of Space
Colour probably shouldn't have the "u" but I'm English and old habits die hard.

>At the Mountains of Madness
HPL at his most sublime (used in the literal sense). Reminds me a bit of Rendezvous With Rama in its description of huge weird structures in a deserted alien environment.

>The Rats in the Walls
Featuring everyone's favourite pet cat. And of course who can resist the lovingly-rendered 'PROTAGONIST TURNS INTO A DROOLING LUNATIC' ending?

>> No.17705829
File: 452 KB, 1464x2013, 1606329407726.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17705829

>>17703690
https://vocaroo.com/1ezUO3PZiY4W

>> No.17705862

>>17705758
What’s best about smith is his poetry, read him more so not as an extension of lovecrafian mythos and more like a more fantasy inclined and better poet form of much the same dreamy flavors from lovecraft. Here’s the beginning of his poem “the apocalypse of evil” I’m sure it’ll catch your interest.

“ Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.
Like rampant monsters roaring for their glut,
The fiery-crested oceans rise and rise,
By jealous moons maleficently urged
To follow me for ever; mountains horned
With peaks of sharpest adamant, and mawed
With sulphur-lit volcanoes lava-langued,
Usurp the skies with thunder, but in vain;
And continents of serpent-shapen trees,
With slimy trunks that lengthen league by league,
Pursue my flight through ages spurned to fire
By that supreme ascendance; sorcerers,
And evil kings, predominanthly armed
With scrolls of fulvous dragon-skin whereon
Are worm-like runes of ever-twisting flame,
Would stay me; and the sirens of the stars,
With foam-like songs from silver fragrance wrought,
Would lure me to their crystal reefs; and moons
Where viper-eyed, senescent devils dwell,
With antic gnomes abominably wise,
Heave up their icy horns across my way.
But naught deters me from the goal ordained
By suns and eons and immortal wars,
And sung by moons and motes; the goal whose name
Is all the secret of forgotten glyphs
By sinful gods in torrid rubies writ
For ending of a brazen book; the goal
Whereat my soaring ecstasy may stand
In amplest heavens multiplied to hold
My hordes of thunder-vested avatars,
And Promethèan armies of my thought,
That brandish claspèd levins. There I call
My memories, intolerably clad
In light the peaks of paradise may wear,
And lead the Armageddon of my dreams
Whose instant shout of triumph is become
Immensity's own music: for their feet
Are founded on innumerable worlds,
Remote in alien epochs, and their arms
Upraised, are columns potent to exalt
With ease ineffable the countless thrones
Of all the gods that are or gods to be,
And bear the seats of Asmodai and Set
Above the seventh paradise.”

>> No.17705904

>>17703690

I've always been partial to the cats one.

>> No.17705941

>>17705758
>I'm deliberately avoiding Smith for fucking up the mythos. As I understand it he's the one largely responsible for framing the outer gods in a good vs evil context that's at odds with Lovecraft's own.

Smith misunderstood what Lovecraft was about, but his own stories are really good. The prose is luxurious and glistens with the creepy dream-like erotic horror atmosphere we all crave.

Read this and gasp:

>Mercifully, they had lost the strict count of time, and knew not the number of days that had passed, and thought that several more dawns and moons and eves of joyance were before them. They were lying together on a couch in the old palace — a marble couch that the slaves had strewn with luxurious fabrics — and were saying over and over some litany of love, when the sun was overtaken at high noon by the doom astronomers had foretold; when a slow twilight filled the palace, heavier than the umbrage wrought by any cloud, and was followed by a sudden wave of over- whelming ebon darkness, and the creeping cold of outer space. The slaves of Antarion moaned in the darkness; and the lovers knew that the end of all was at hand; and they clung to each other in despairing rapture, with swift, innumerable kisses, and murmured the supreme ecstacy of their tenderness and their desire, till the cold that had fallen from infinitude became a growing agony, and then a merciful numbness, and then an all-encompassing oblivion.

>> No.17705975

>>17705862
>>17705941
I'll give him a shot when I run out of the other modern pre-lovecraft authors.

>> No.17706765

>>17703690
Ive read a couple and I must agree with the first comment, it depends on the person. To me it is "The Thing On the Doorstep"

>> No.17706807

>>17703690
The one with the violinist.

>> No.17706821

>>17705758
Are you sure you're not mistaking him for Derleth?

>> No.17706840

all of them suck.

>> No.17706842

>>17703690
the thing on the doorstep because my ex wanted to be a quirky witch
I hate women so much it's unreal

>> No.17706849

>>17706821
You might be right actually. I'll have to check. Whoever it is that thinks some of the old ones are on team earth is dumb and I don't want to read them.

>> No.17706862

>>17706807
It's called "The Music of Erich Zann"

>> No.17706873

>>17706807
>>17706862
Uhm, akshually, he plays the viol.

>> No.17706925

>>17703690
The Outsider

>> No.17706940

>>17706849
Yeah, Derleth insisted on trying to classify Lovecraft's creations into "elemental" groups situated into some kind of Christian framework and is the guy everyone shits on for some questionable publishing practices after HPL's death.