c01181 No.274[Reply]
>entire board venerating an author
>no thread discussing any of his written work
Disgraceful, /hpl/.
What are your favourites?
What do you utterly detest for being too waffly? Because it's Lovecraft and that's going to come up.
I'm going to kick off with my favourite, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, because I think it contains all the best aspects of Lovecraft, and none of the drudgery.
It gives you a very detailed sketch of a particular area of the New England countryside: the small-town gossip of neighbouring towns mixed with Olmstead's personal experience in Innsmouth provide an increasingly distressing account of its least-desirable elements.
At the same time, Lovecraft's trademark ability to give his readers a peek at all an encompassing horror beyond human comprehension is expressed exceptionally well through the opening and closing sections of the story. We don't see the Cyclopean cities beneath the sea in any detail; nor to we receive much information on the raids and dynamiting of the town. But the implications of an entire town being cleansed, along with Olmstead's fear of and embracement of his lineage do more to exhibit scale than most everything else in HPL's oeuvre.
I reckon.
3de338 No.279
TSOI for me as well. I think story shows off Lovecraft's best qualities as a writer Mapping out his New England geography (Kingsport, Innsmouth, Arkham, etc.) - the scene of the story; the half-decayed town of Innsmouth, harbouring a dark secret behind it's crumbling façade, the dramatic action-esque sequence as Olmstead flees the town (the Gilman House sequence in particular) is a great payoff after the build-up and ominous things we've heard of the town, as well as the feeling of hopelessness and horror when Olmstead finds out the truth about his ancestry.
It also ties it nicely into the overall Yog Sothothery Mythos, without being ridden with references to the other stories. Most of the 'main' stories that centre around the cosmic horrors (The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, etc.), I think, fail to ground the characters enough that the reader can relate to them and feel for them.
My other favourite stories are The Colour Out Of Space & The Rats In The Walls.
I think my least favourite stories are The Music of Erich Zann & The Moon-Bog, but I enjoyed some parts of them as well.
9da096 No.281
>>279>Most of the 'main' stories that centre around the cosmic horrors… fail to ground the characters enough that the reader can relate to them and feel for them.This is a really good point. "The Call of Cthulhu" in particular feels very disjointed when you compare it to TSoI - it feels like we're getting the majority of the story secondhand.
>the dramatic action-esque sequence as Olmstead flees the town(the Gilman House sequence in particular) Given how fond Lovecraft was for obfuscation at times, I'm consistently surprised at how well this was realised.
e17359 No.283
>>281Yeah, in TCOC we have so many characters and layers to keep track of (a story within a story within a story), that it almost feels a little to meta. Not to say it is a bad story, or that it doesn't hold a lot of potential.
I think the part of the door handle being tested in TSOI is more effective and creepier than Cthulhu awakening and attacking the sailors in TCOC.
Out of all the doomed protagonists in HPL's stories, Olmsead is the one I can relate to the most; a young average man interested in genealogy and an antiquarian, while in most stories, the protagonist is a middle-aged professor.