How did Lovecraft do it?

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I don't sneer at Lovecraft, or Howard, or E.E. Smith P.H.D. Their writing style may be obsolete, but the story telling keeps them "coming back for more".

And still today, among people who want a rattling good read, and don't give a hoot about literary standards. I read E.E. Smith and Cabell....

I know, I read several of those old authors myself and that's what I grew up on.

So did our literary standards change that much, or were they changed for us?

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by teh603

I know, I read several of those old authors myself and that's what I grew up on.

So did our literary standards change that much, or were they changed for us?

I think it was literary snobbery. Writers who felt they were "better" because they used bigger word, better, more flowery description, and more subtle shadings of meaning. That's great, except they forgot story telling while they were at it.

They, of course, would say that story telling is for simpletons and people with no taste. Not for the superior people they were writing for. Read some of the prefaces by Cabell for his works. And no reader wanted to admit they were just "common people"...

But in the long term, people read H.P Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Raymond Chandler, and the early Fantasy/Science Fiction of the late 30's and 40's. Very few people read, Hal Sinclair, Joseph Hergesheimer, Burton Rascoe, Ellen Glasglow, or even Cabell (although a few people, like me, read Cabell).

Just embedded snobbery...

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

But in the long term, people read H.P Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Raymond Chandler, and the early Fantasy/Science Fiction of the late 30's and 40's. Very few people read, Hal Sinclair, Joseph Hergesheimer, Burton Rascoe, Ellen Glasglow, or even Cabell (although a few people, like me, read Cabell).

Three of my favorite authors! They might not have been very good writers (though Chandler had a brilliant way with words) but they could tell stories that held your attention from the first word until the last, and they created worlds and characters that I will never forget. And that would be why I read them

Matter of fact, I enjoy reading their works a lot more than I enjoy reading a lot of "good" literature. Robert Howard's stories about Conan and Kull were never, ever, boring.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I think it was literary snobbery. Writers who felt they were "better" because they used bigger word, better, more flowery description, and more subtle shadings of meaning. That's great, except they forgot story telling while they were at it.

They, of course, would say that story telling is for simpletons and people with no taste. Not for the superior people they were writing for. Read some of the prefaces by Cabell for his works. And no reader wanted to admit they were just "common people"...

But in the long term, people read H.P Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Raymond Chandler, and the early Fantasy/Science Fiction of the late 30's and 40's. Very few people read, Hal Sinclair, Joseph Hergesheimer, Burton Rascoe, Ellen Glasglow, or even Cabell (although a few people, like me, read Cabell).

Just embedded snobbery...

Hey! Don't forget me. I collect him, too.



Don

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Hey! Don't forget me. I collect him, too.



Don

I hadn't...although a few people, like me, read Cabell

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by teh603

So I got to reading some Lovecraft stuff I got off a website of free ebooks- his stuff is in the public domain now so its legal- and I found myself marvelling at his simplistic writing style. ...

Have you read Edgar Rice Burroughs?

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I think it was literary snobbery. Writers who felt they were "better" because they used bigger word, better, more flowery description, and more subtle shadings of meaning. That's great, except they forgot story telling while they were at it.

Just embedded snobbery...

An outrageous example of this snobbery occurred on a book program on BBC 4 a couple of years ago. They were discussing a modern book which was described as a "scientific romance".

One of the panellists "a noted author" said that he agreed they should describe it as a "scientific romance" and not science fiction because it was well written.

Excluding "expletive deleteds" words failed me.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Quoth Phogg:

The showing, if you pay close attention to the mythos, could not be done. What makes the elder gods and unmentionable horrors cause madness is the concept that their existence stretches into more dimensions of reality than our normal reality even has, and that in proximity to them humans develop an ability to percieve them . . . but do not develop brains that can process the added dimensions of reality. . . . This was truly a novel concept in Lovecraft's day, and it is an integral part of the overall mythos not re-explained in every story.

Actually, this is a key idea of Hinduism and occurs in the cornerstone texts of the religion: The Upanishads, Srimad Bhagavatam and, most famously, the Bhagavad Gita, in the scene in which Arjuna begs Lord Krishna to show him His true face and is horrified when Krishna does: All of the incomprehensibly vast levels of scale and duration and duality come rushing at Arjuna until he stands on the precipice of madness. At which point Lord Krishna returns to His human form and explains to Arjuna that human perception is incapable of registering what He actually is, and that He assumes various familiar forms so that human beings who perceive Him will not go completely mad.

This is one of the reasons I've always found certain Hindu paintings far more frightening than Lovecraft or any other horror writer: The dwarfing sense of time and space, in which we become motes within motes in universes the size of motes, and even the ethics seem vertigo-inducingly alien in terms of the viciousness of huge cycles of creation and destruction. Hinduism wishes to reconcile all of the opposites and variables by allowing them to spin out, and the effect is like a musical piece in which every numeric value for every aspect -- phrasing, harmonic rhythm, melodic rhythm, hemiolas, canonic intervals, timbre, etc., etc. -- is so wide, and takes so long to repeat, that waiting for all the parts to coincide on the same beat would take eons. Being suddenly forced to hold that in your head might feel like falling out of a plane above several decillion heavens, in the incomprehensibly large forehead of a creature that is made of nothing but infinite space, infinite melody and infinite blood.

[dadioflex]

I don't think there's any comparison between Lovecraft and Howard/Burroughs/Smith. Those last three all wrote perfectly readable fiction that wouldn't come as a shock to a modern reader. Lovecraft had a style of his own. I struggle to read Lovecraft at times, but eg the Herbert West stories are perfectly approachable.

EDIT: N.B. this comment addresses a point made by Ralph Sir Edward. Apparently this was confusing some people. You can find his comment if you look up the... no not physically up, oh God, now you've fallen out of your chair. You need to scroll the window... NO not the room's window, the window on the computer screen.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Et Nosferatu, Brutus?

(Sorry -- that doesn't have anything more to do with what you said than what you said has to do with what I said in the previous post. I just couldn't resist given the twist of Kinkski in your avatar.)

[dadioflex]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Et Nosferatu, Brutus?

(Sorry -- that doesn't have anything more to do with what you said than what you said has to do with what I said in the previous post. I just couldn't resist given the twist of Kinkski in your avatar.)

To be fair I never read your comment and wasn't directly addressing it. I've made a note to read it later if I have time. The nature of un-nested comments can be troubling to a beginner, but you'll pick it up.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Oh, I knew you were addressing Mr. Edward. It looks as if it's I, not you, who failed to make himself understood.

I was making a horrendously bad joke by substituting Nosferatu for tu in "et tu, Brute?" As in, you, too, [enjoy performances by that] brute [who played] Nosferatu? I realize that's obscure, but I'm often up all night working when I pause to post here.

I, too, am a fan of Klaus Kinski. That's all I really meant.

The reference to thread disjunction was written in the same giggling mood. No censure or smugness intended.

[xg4bx]

i think because he seemed to write everything in journal form lol. almost every story featured someone writing a chronicle


i loooooove lovecraft but his stuff can get very redundant and repetitive. thats why i have to be in a mood to read it, i certainly can't just pick it up for fun willy-nilly.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Some people call Cornell Woolrich the Lovecraft of noir insofar as you see him whipping himself into a frenzy when he's supposedly writing about other people. I've tried to read him, but I don't find him nearly as fun as Lovecraft describing people scared senseless by things that can't be described.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

I don't think there's any comparison between Lovecraft and Howard/Burroughs/Smith. Those last three all wrote perfectly readable fiction that wouldn't come as a shock to a modern reader. Lovecraft had a style of his own. I struggle to read Lovecraft at times, but eg the Herbert West stories are perfectly approachable.

EDIT: N.B. this comment addresses a point made by Ralph Sir Edward. Apparently this was confusing some people. You can find his comment if you look up the... no not physically up, oh God, now you've fallen out of your chair. You need to scroll the window... NO not the room's window, the window on the computer screen.

I suspect that most english as second language reader would find Howard's Breckenridge Elkins stories unreadable without a glossary. Same for Damon Runyon (I wrote a glossary for his works here on MR).

I don't care for Lovecraft's subject matter, but he created his own style. I find it different but somewhat readable. I don't find Henry James particularly readable, either....