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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 67 KB, 512x628, H._P._Lovecraft,_June_1934.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18553671 No.18553671 [Reply] [Original]

Lovecraft is Overrated. Everyone goes on and on about how great his stuff is so I picked up At the Mountains of Madness and gave it a shot

Why are you fags obsessed with him. This story supposedly is one of his best ones but its crap. He constantly tries to reinforce how scary the situation is via having the narrorator say "I really don't think I can say this cause I'm so scared but I'm going to". This is constantly restated along with descriptions of the location (I assume in an effort to get more mileage out of his story for more $ from the publication he submitted it to).

On top of it we have build up to monsters, with descriptions from the narrorators past studies, and all we are told that he actually sees alive is 6 ft albino penguins. No monstrous squid aliens flying at them. No seeing the dark lake under Antarctica. Nothing but corpses and penguins

This stuff isn't scary. It's literally a hollow shell with an exposition dump.

>> No.18553677

Incel and racist too

>> No.18553686

>>18553671
I bet you dont like the whaling chapters in moby dick either

>> No.18553695

>>18553686
Never read it.
I have read and appreciated stuff that provides key background information, like the catalog of ships in the Iliad. This is not that, not even close. This is garbage surrounding exposition that the author threw in so you'd read his other crap

>> No.18553699

>>18553671

Not enough explosions for you?

>> No.18553702

I bet you don’t like the clothing description, Whitney Houston and Phil Collins discography rundown chapters in American Psycho either

>> No.18553704

>>18553671
I think you went in with the wrong expectations. I know very few people who are genuinely frightened by books. To me, Lovecraft is more of an aesthetic/mindset that I enjoy every now and again.
But yeah a bit overrated for sure.

>> No.18553707

>>18553671
There are hundreds of posts on Reddit and dozens of articles written within the last year expressing this opinion, almost verbatim. What are you bringing to the discourse that's new?

>> No.18553711

>>18553671
Are we obsessed with him?

>> No.18553714

>>18553699
Not enough of the story moving along. Thing is wasted.
Instead of "where's our friends body" we get a bunch of "oh the spires and mountains lala" and vague descriptions of alien art without saying what it actually is

>> No.18553720

>>18553714
you got Lynched, deal with it

>> No.18553722

>>18553695
Do you like reading wikipedia articles about like 'insect mouthpart evolution' or 'early devonian ecosystems' because this is the requisite sort of autism required

>> No.18553740

He's the bridge that spans the gap between Gothic eastern European castle horror and contemporary horror.

>> No.18553779

>>18553722
No I suppose not. I was under the impression that he wrote good horror stories. Not his own imaginary mythology, which I could appreciate if it was interesting. Howard does that exceptionally well and was actually friends with Lovecraft. And yet lovecraft at least based on this can't come close to even the worst stuff by REH

>> No.18554114

>>18553671
Filtered by a book written from the viewpoint of an crazy obsessive scientist who studies rocks because it reads like something written by a crazy obsessive scientist who studies rocks.

>> No.18554281

>>18553714
>vague descriptions of alien art without saying what it actually is
What the fuck did you actually read it or just a summary and you're seething because he's racist or some shit?

>> No.18554386

>>18553704
Really? Nothing really freaks me out more than books.

>> No.18554389

>>18554281
I read the story. He never says what the actual art is. He says they interpreted it to mean -> cue excessive exposition dump

>> No.18554417

>>18553671
He's more important for the ideas and concepts he developed, his prose isn't that good and also isn't for everyone. Better weird fiction would be Arthur Machen before him and Thomas Ligotti after him.

>> No.18554429

>>18553671
>This story supposedly is one of his best ones but its crap
What the Moon Brings
Dagon
Music of Erich Zahn
Shadow Over Innsmouth
Cats of Ulthar
are all better.

>> No.18554480

>>18554429
When I Google his best stories mountains of madness is one of the top results and is in several articles top 5. Safe to say it's considered one of his best. If that's his best I don't wanna see his worst

>> No.18554491

>>18554480
Stop going to normies for your opinions on literature, then.

>> No.18554497

>>18554480
Read two more and see if they take your fancy or if he just isn't an author you like. Dagon is one I quite like

>> No.18554501

>>18553671
His writing sucks 100%

I flipped through like 2-3 pages of his shit, threw it in the garbage.

>> No.18554516

>>18554497
There's 2 more in the book I got. "The whisperer in the darkness" and "the haunter of the dark"
Either one worth using to give him a second chance?

>> No.18554517

>>18554480
>I need other people to form opinions for me
But you're right you don't want to see his worst because they are painfully dull at best and pure schlock at most. That's why I recommended ones that are better than what is considered his best, which on their own are also considered some of his best work.

>> No.18554531

>>18553671
Hé is overrated. Nobody has ever said otherwise. People have been saying he can't write dialogue, can't describe, blablabla. It's all true but it shouldn't deter you from the fact that he's the founding father of his own genre and that his work have inspired thousands of writers around the globe. He's not a spectacular writer, but he sure is a spectacular dreamer.

>> No.18554534

>>18554516
Couldn't tell you, sorry. I'm working through an 800 page collection of his works I got from my local library atm, and I am only a fraction of the way through and haven't read ether of those yet

>> No.18554545

>>18554531
If nobody has ever said otherwise then by definition he cannot be overrated

>> No.18554690
File: 118 KB, 944x748, IMG_20210629_164648.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18554690

Lovecraft has nothing on the horror of pic related

>> No.18554708

>>18554545
He's overrated. A lot of people know of his name and affiliations and think he must be one hell of a writer to be referenced that much even though they never read him.

>> No.18554721

>>18554531
Bro... if you can't write... nothing you put on paper matters. It all sucks. Lovecraft is garbage, I can't make it through more than a couple paragraphs. Utter trash.

>> No.18554813

>>18554531
>he's the founding father of his own genre
I thought Gothic horror and monsters from space were a thing before him

>> No.18554823

>>18554813
I think anon meant cosmic or existential horror

>> No.18554859

>>18554690
A FAT MAN'S ANUS!?!?;???;;;!????!!11!1! IM LITERALLY GOING INSANE!!!!!1!!1!!1!1 NQ

>> No.18555009

>>18554823
Wasn't cosmic horror a thing before him?

>> No.18555128

>>18555009
no.
the idea that “I can’t describe this to you because you’d go INSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANE” came before him, like The King in Yellow, which greatly inspired Lovecraft, but he pretty much invented cosmic horror as we know it. As with all genres everything will have been done before but not all together in the same format like he did.