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/lit/ - Literature

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4670934 No.4670934[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

To those of you who have read stuff from Poe and Lovecraft - what stories did you find were best at either building up an unsettling atmosphere through description or doing a great job of showing fear that was directed at a particular thing or better yet, a person?

>> No.4670955

'The Nameless City' by Lovecraft

>> No.4672170
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4672170

>>4670934
At the Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft's best work. I was spoiled because it was one of the first things by him I read and soon thereafter I didn't find his short stories impactful. They were like abridged, weaker, versions of AMM.

What made it effective was the continual hinting, revelations, false leads, and turns. To sink into Lovecraft's sense of fear can be difficult in the span of a chapter or two. But this goes on long enough you get a strong sense of the ideas he's getting at and why he dreads them so your own sense of trepidation at what's coming next builds up yet your curiosity demands you keep going.

>> No.4672177

>>4670934
As for Poe, Pit and Pendulum is much more vertiginous than, for example, Telltale Heart. Also Cask of Amontillado, rather than Masque of the Red Death.

Coming to Murders in the Rue Morgue, and suspecting that you are several pages among the furniture of another horror tale, you will be astonished to discover instead the novelty of a first of its kind.

The Imp of the Perverse is as close to a suicide note as Poe could get without actually an hero, and should be sought out. It is his fictive manifesto and there is no reason not to take him at his word.

>> No.4672178

>>4670934
>>4672170
I read OP and immediately thought AMM, and I'm glad someone else posted it before me.

The fact that it's written as almost a cold, hard, slate of facts, like some report, really sold it for me.

>> No.4672186

>>4672178
You're welcome.

>>4672177
I've never found a Poe story scary.

The one where he and a friend go sailing surprised me with how much of a, "YOLO, lets get wasted and sail somewherre" attitude they had. It's like "Dude Where's my Car?" from yester-century.

>> No.4672188

>>4672186
I feel like Poe's stories have become staples for children in middle school to read, because they never quite delve past anything introductory.

>> No.4672207

>>4672186
>>4672188
Yes. And spoiler flag engaged:


Poe's single contribution was the invention of the police procedural. The reason he feels so jejune is that there is a straight line between Poe and Law and Order. Murders in the Rue Morgue is the first episode of Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime. Or whatever.

Cask and Pendulum are, I think, his warm-up exercises for what Criminal MInds will call "victimology." Imp could have served as Dostoevsky's outline for C&P, all done in 2500 words. Or it could have been an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street.

Poe was our first tabloid crime writer.

>> No.4672234

The Colour Out of Space by lovey i liked

also Shadow over Innsmouth

>> No.4672412

Poe wrote this one story about a ship stranded int the antarctic. He builds up the hopelessness very slowly and then adds some cannibals.

>> No.4672432

>>4672412
A. Gordon Pym. First description in American lit of taking an arrow to the knee.

You probably think I'm kidding.

>> No.4672469

>>4672178

I don't like AMM as a horror story. It is too science-fictional in its tone to be unsettling, too concerned with the facts of the situation and with explaining itself (recall that it's written as a testimony to explain his opposition to a follow-up expedition) to be really frightening. It is a good story, but I don't feel it fits the OP's request. "The Temple" and "The Mound" are similar in tone: they detail events which would be unsettling to experience, but they are almost too expository in some ways to capture a feeling of fear. I think Lovecraft considered this in itself to be horrifying: "May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!" But I don't.

Lovecraft's scariest stories for me are the shortest ones, where he focuses on capturing a single horrifying situation - "Nyarlathotep", "The Outsider" especially. The dream sequences in "Dreams in the Witch House" are also very good though the whole story is kind of meh. Honestly I don't think being frightening was Lovecraft's calling exactly. He seemed to have more fun writing weird Dunsany-esque fantasy than he did writing "and then a skeleton popped out".

The best story at building up unsettling atmosphere at all is Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows", though.

>> No.4672487

My favourite Lovecraft stories are The Colour Out Of Space for the atmosphere of dread, Celephaïs for the imagery, and Nyarlathotep for the madness.

The Call of Cthulhu has been so copied that it's hard not to read it as a parody now.

I'll have to get around to reading AMM someday.

>> No.4673392

Am I the only one who reads Lovecraft as an absurdist or satirist and not a 2spooky4meCosmicSpookyWeirdWriter?
Seriously, there is nothing scary about Lovecraft; many people find his work almost comical.
Not saying it's bad by any means, btw.

>> No.4673399
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4673399

OBJECTIVE BEST LOVECRAFT STORIES:
>Through the Gates of the Silver Key
>^(You should read the Silver Key first though)
>Shadow out of Time
>Dunwich Horror
>At the Mountains of Madness
>The Shunned House
>Colour out of Space
>Under the Pyramids
>Cats of Ulthar
>Rats in the Walls
>Shadow over Innsmouth

>> No.4673402

>>4673392
Nothing is actually scary, what are you twelve? Dying in a car accident or having brain cancer is scary. Who gives a shit about words.

>> No.4673441

>>4673402
You're probably someone who would be terrified to hear "You're the father".

>> No.4673445 [DELETED] 

>>4673399
Pretty good list, although I'd ditch The Shunned House and Cats of Ulthar (the second is pretty good, but too short to be one of the best).
Add in Music of Erich Zann and Pickman's Model.
It's weird that you choose TTGOTSK too without including Dream Quest.

>> No.4673452

>>4673399
Pretty good list, although I'd ditch The Shunned House and Cats of Ulthar (the second is pretty good, but too short to be one of the best).
Add in Music of Erich Zann and maybe Pickman's Model and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
It's weird that you choose TTGOTSK too without including Dream Quest.
Personally I find the whole Randolf Carter Dream Cycle stuff a bit tedious.

>> No.4673454

>>4673441
So you're an immature idiot, who would have figured. How close was I with twelve? Wanna name a scary story Mr. Scaredypants?

>> No.4673460

>>4673452
Yeah but through the gates is all about azathoth and is pretty out there in terms of being a cosmic trippy story. Pickman's Model is ruined almost immediately by the title of the story.

>> No.4673501

>>4673402

You must be fun at the movies.

>Denying yourself the brief joy that suspended disbelief affords

>> No.4673530

Definitely Poe's Berenice. It builds slowly, then climaxes fiercely. There's a lot of tension in the story and given that for most of the story the protagonist is sat in his chair this is quite impressive.

>> No.4673541

>Edgar Allen Poe
>H.P. Lovecraft
>Thomas Ligotti

Why do all the good horror writers write like they just got pulled from the 1590s? It's never

>I heard a noise in the hallway

It's always

>My pulse quickens to recall the abject terror that gripped my feeble heart as some unholy machination of phantasmagoria transmogrified itself in the space beyond the foyer!

If I wanted Romanticism I'd read some fucking Wordsworth.

>> No.4673552

>>4673541
You might like Stephen King anon.

>> No.4673563

>>4673552

I do.

Fuck it I'll t8k the b8, m8.

And I do like Thomas Ligotti, Lovecraft, and Poe, in small doses. I just think it's a bit self-defeating to be a modern writer like Lovecraft or Ligotti who insists on using archaic grammar and vocabularies.

>> No.4673567

>>4673541

Because Gothic literature is not the same as Horror literature.

>> No.4673580

>>4673567

It's a subgenre, don't split hairs.

>> No.4673581

>>4673580
Yeah, it's such a subgenre it predates horror by two hundred years.

>> No.4673582

>>4673580

No, Gothic is a separate genre that combines Horror & Romanticism, hence the aesthetic of Gothic writers is different to pure Horror.

>> No.4673594

>get kinda bored by /tv/
>check out /lit/, maybe they're no total plebs
>Poe and Lovecraft in one sentence

k bye

>> No.4673597

>>4673563
I used to like Stephen King when I was younger. He seems to phone in a lot of his books, though, the last decent one I read by him was Bag of Bones.

>> No.4673606

>>4673594

Good riddance.

>> No.4673607

>>4673594
Poe isn't pleb. He's a major innovator and theorist of the short story.

>> No.4673609

>>4673607

Not to mention he basically invented the Crime genre. Forget about him, he's from /tv/.

>> No.4673617

>>4673597
Yeah but who is the modern master of horror?
Is it Danielewski?
Can't really be the master if you only write one book, right?

>> No.4673663

>>4673607
my point exactly - that's why he doesn't belong in one sentence together with lovecraft.

>> No.4673684

>>4670934
I don't think it's fair to compare Poe with Lovecraft. Sure, both were horror writers and Lovecraft considered Poe to be one of his greatest inspirations but for me the way they dealt with horror is completely different. Lovecraft is a more modern writer whose work revolves around "cosmic horror", Poe was more a romantic and gothic writer. I like them both, though.

My personal favorites are, from Poe: The pit and the pendulum, Berenice, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (a not very well known one), The Murders in the Rue Morgue, etc. I have read most of his work except for arthur gordon pym which I plan to read soon

as for Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness for all the reasons the people above me mentioned. Also The Outsider, Polaris, The Music of Erich Zann

Poe never disappoints, Lovecraft sometimes does.

>> No.4674087

>>4673684
Get on that, anon. Pym is pretty awesome.