Originally posted by blakbuzzrdThrow Samuel Beckett into the same bin while you're at it.
Hmm. Yeah, I do disagree. Lovecraft does a consistent job not of describing the indescribable, but of describing the indescribability of the indescribable. That isn't sublimity; it's banality.
Well--can you suggest a horror writer who does a better job than Lovecraft?
Originally posted by AmauroteIt seems that King's Dark Tower series has sprouted--a Concordance.
There are actually three direct techniques to describing in horror, as demonstrated by Stephen King in Danse Macabre: you leave the door closed (Shirley Jackson is an example of this), you open it wide (King himself is an example of that), or you half-open it. [...] If you want an example of a really over-rated writer of weird tales, I'd go fo ...[text shortened]... y time. The man wrote fewer great stories than MR James, and a good few of those were hackwork.
Poe seems to be one of those writers more remarkable for their influence than for their work itself. Among other things, he inadvertently shaped the course of French literary history when Baudelaire assumed him as his double. I certainly can't read all of his work--stories like "Valdemar" are just too obvious, like splatter films--but some of it, like "The Man in the Crowd", maintains a mysterious after-glow for me.
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Originally posted by Bosse de NageI have a serious inferiority complex from not having read the DK series, Bosse, I must admit - other than William Horwood's Duncton books, which are currently sitting downstairs in my living room taunting me, it's the one fantasy series out there that sounds terrific, even if I really hate the Randall Flagg references I've read about so far.
It seems that King's Dark Tower series has sprouted--a Concordance.
Poe seems to be one of those writers more remarkable for their influence than for their work itself. Among other things, he inadvertently shaped the course of French literary history when Baudelaire assumed him as his double. I certainly can't read all of his work--stories l ms--but some of it, like "The Man in the Crowd", maintains a mysterious after-glow for me.
"The Man of the Crowd" is terrific, you're absolutely right, easily the best of this stories - that along with Tell-Tale and "The Fall of the House of Usher" are clearly his claims to greatness, but of those even Usher is arguably inferior to MP Shiel's House of Sounds. He was obviously first and foremost a poet, but my only real problem with Lovecraft is that he so obviously venerated someone who was markedly his inferior. And people still buy this because Poe has a literary veneer that trumps Lovecraft's undeserved pulp reputation. I can only think of one Lovecraftian story that I genuinely didn't like - "The Unnameable", which just felt like his one off day - and even that had some engaging ideas.
If you liked The Great God Pan, you've read one-third of his best work already, and for someone committed enough to read Ligotti's sometimes tough oeuvre it wouldn't take up more than a day or two of your time. Read The Three Impostors (it's contrived but the stories it contains are first-rate) and "The White People" (which is no more than a longish short story) and I think you can see why Lovecraft rated him so highly. I'm not so convinced by all of his stories - he became a bit of a war propagandist in later years, and it marred his work - but he has a very interesting conception of Nature and a nice revisionary mythos about the "Little People" as a kind of primal evil that ordinary crime only echoes poorly - it's fair to say that "The White People" is basically a story about the nature of evil.
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Originally posted by AmauroteI've got a battered copy containing four longish short stories by Machen somewhere in my study, but searching for it would be akin to hunting for the Purloined Letter.
If you liked The Great God Pan, you've read one-third of his best work already, and for someone committed enough to read Ligotti's sometimes tough oeuvre it wouldn't take up more than a day or two of your time. Read The Three Impostors (it's contrived but the stories it contains are first-rate) and "The White People" (which is no more than a s fair to say that "The White People" is basically a story about the nature of evil.
What do you think of Lovecraft as a poet?
Found it! The Novel of the Black Seal (Corgi, no date (title page torn out by an unknown hand)...containing the title story, The Red Hand, The Inmost Light, and The White People...Damn you, Amaurote, I shall have to drag myself away from Terry Eagleton...
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Originally posted by Bosse de NageGreat. I'm not a big fan of HPL's poetry, I must admit, but then I'm not as big a fan of poetry in general as you are - I did love "Nemesis" [? I'm not sure if that's the title, in one of his stories, I believe], but for me it's all about his prose.
I've got a battered copy containing four longish short stories by Machen somewhere in my study, but searching for it would be akin to hunting for the Purloined Letter.
What do you think of Lovecraft as a poet?
Found it! The Novel of the Black Seal (Corgi, no date (title page torn out by an unknown hand)...containing the title story, The Re ...[text shortened]... The White People...Damn you, Amaurote, I shall have to drag myself away from Terry Eagleton...
I'm reading TED Klein's The Ceremonies at the minute, it's great so far, apparently Klein based it on "The White People", although aside from some sinister chanting in dark places I'm not quite seeing the connection just yet...
I've been meaning to ask you about Ligotti, I know you're a huge fan of his. So far I've read only Noctuary, Grimscribe and My Work is Not Yet Done, but as clever and talented as he is, I'm not still not sure what to make of him. I think "Nethescurial", "Mrs Rinaldi's Angel", "Nethescurial" and "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" are terrific, but I can't quite work out whether I like the whole philosophical horror genre. It's original, all right, but is it scary? As crude as it sounds, I can't help feeling that Ligotti needs to analyze less and scare more - couldn't help but compare Noctuary a little unfavourably (which isn't to say it's not a great book) with Ramsey Campbell's Dark Feats. Campbell isn't remotely as literary as Ligotti, and he's more uneven, but his best hits those heights and terrifies again and again precisely because it updates the key themes of the mythos but doesn't explain: "The Man in the Underpass" is maybe the best Lovecraftian short story of the last twenty years, but I'm not sure Lovecraft would have approved.