HP Lovecraft

[nightwalker]

I'm reading Haunter of the Dark and its great. Does anyone here read Lovecraft as well? Or is horror and gothic too off-topic?

[nemesis]

Lovecraft is a variable author. I am not keen on his more fantasy writing. His brooding stories where he writes of himself as being locked in a room feeling scared are the best such as the Haunter of the Dark. He excels in that. I think he also hated his mother. Read the Thing on the Doorstep for that.

[brian]

Crikey, how come I haevn't replied to a thread about HP Lovecraft?

Read all his work when I was about 18. Some of his horror was very memorable - "The Color Out of Space" still ranks to me as the defining moment of horror literature for myself.

Some of his short-stories were also very accomplished - I can't remember a lot of titles - such as a great one set on a U-Boat discovering R'lyeh (where dread Cthulhu dwells) was one. "Quest of Iranon" was a great piece of melancholic short fantasy writing.

Some of the story titles mentioned already are certainly very good - I'll add "The Dunwich Horror" to the list, and "Shadow over Innsmouth".

HP Lovecraft was an astonishingly under-rated author for his time. I've read a lot about him, though not an actual biolgraphy. At one point I actually sought out his influences - Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen are names I remember reading (although only Poe was of any real note from what I read).

Yes, HP Lovecraft

Always thought about writing a novel in his mythos. It would have to be set in the 1920's, though, and I don't know enough of the period to actually write about it.

[nightwalker]

I'm reading the third book with a lot of the stories mentioned in. This is great and easier to read than Poe. Do many people know about him? I only know a few.

[brian]

Poe is a classic writer, and a little more technically orientated than Lovecraft. Poe tends to experiment a lot.

Lovecraft is simply atmosphere.

[nemesis]

Poe was very much the more experiemental and technically gifted of the two writers. Bierce had a very sharp wit and was killed during the Mexican Revolution. Lovecraft lived an oppressed life and communicated it perfectly.

[brian]

Certainly agree there.

[Arch]

I used to RPG with Call of Cthulhu. I tried reading some of Lovecraft but he wasn't very consistent. There were some good stories on the Cthulhu Mythos but there weren't always common. The story Call of Cthulhu wasn't all that great either. I recognise some titles above which has got to be a good thing meaning good stories I liked. Innsmouth, yeah. *smiles*

[retroauro]

Lots of good stuff from Lovecraft.Among my favs are
The Rats in the Walls
The Call of Cuthulu
The whisperer in darkness
The Terrible Old Man
and Pickmans Model
and does anyone names their horrors better .Cuthulu,Yog-Sothoth,NyarlothotepThe THING from the catacombs of Nephren -Ka and that most hideous book-The Necronomicon.I think that Lovecraft along with Poe and Ray Bradbury is among the 3 best horror writers ever.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Ah, another HP Lovecraft fan!

There's a more recent HPL discussion around here you may want to jump into, here: http://www.chronicles-network.net/fo...ead.php?t=1022

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

China Mieville on HPL:

I'm currently very interested in Lovecraft, the pope of horror pulp: by all reasonable standards his prose style is terrible. But you can't put it down. There's something compelling about it. This neurotic fascination with language and what I like in fiction -- in any form -- is fiction that is conscious of its own use of language. Some pulp, and some non-pulp, uses language basically just to pass on information, which is a bit boring. What Lovecraft ironically shares with the Modernists like Joyce is the absolute physical awareness of the shape of the language itself. They do it in very different ways.

From here: http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchiv..._mieville.html

[I, Voyager]

Ahh a HPL thread!

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Indeed, Voyager old man. Care to elucidate further?

[I, Brian]

Hi I, Voyager - and welcome to the chronicles-network!

Especially as you have an interest in both HP Lovecraft - and apparently Trans Global Underground , too.

A friend of knivesout, perchance?

[Tsujigiri]

Horror and gothic too off topic....have you been to a playgoup recently?

One of my daughters 6 year old playmates informed me he likes drinking blood and is waiting for the return of the 'Great Old Ones'.....

What the hell happened to Winnie the Pooh.

ok....lets try and have a less predictable response than 'Cthulhu ate him'