Lovecraft was the classic image of a starving artist who died young and whose work became famous after his death. If he could be resurrected what do you think his reaction would be to learn that he went from a pulp-writer nobody with only a small group as his readers / pen pals and whose crowning achievement just before death was one of his stores making the cover of Astounding Stories — to an internationally-recognized phenom, foundational genius of a new genre and one of the very top of American literature writers?
>>24086806Maybe this is a personal experience thing, but the biggest lovecraft fans I know are black/brown. All the white lovecrafties barely understand his work and started on it after some youtube video essay shit and make some very surface level analysis. My ex was brown and wrote countless articles on him and had a picture of him hanging in her room like a patron saint or something, side by another one of Kierkegaard.
Any other similar authors who use real or semi-fictional (rural) places/regions to tell weird stories in dense prose (maybe something with autumnal and decaying vibes and semi-Northern landscapes, like England, New England, the Pacific Northwest, Northern Germany/France, etc)? I like Lovecraft's more materialistic and grounded approach in opposite to King's supernatural nonsense. I read Ligotti, heard about Barron, Derleth and Ramsey Campbell.
>>24086835The great irony of Lovecraft is that his work is best understood by those who have some experience in residing between cultures. I speak from experience when I say this.
>>24086806Probably amused and a bit embarrassed to see even his lesser work in huge collections. I think he’d be most excited to see how wide the mythos had spread and through every medium as he liked the collaborations in his own day. It’s like his little hobby exploded beyond the small circle of friends to a worldwide audience. There’s a bunch of le funny racism meme answers you could give but I think this is a fair take.
>>24086835>>24087308Under no circumstance would Lovecraft believe two brown people have the intellectual capacity to understand what he was driving at when he was approximating and embellishing the most disquieting parts of New England. If he thought there was any potential in your kind, he would have gone to the ghetto or Mexico.
>>24087346Whence the irony, friendo.
>>24087351Y'all get any rain down your way?
>>24087346>If he thought there was any potential in your kind, he would have gone to the ghetto or Mexico.To play Devil's Advocate a lot of his monsters do come from somewhat tropical backgrounds and are worshipped by foreign and bizarre cultures. Shadow Over Innsmouth is literally about how colonialism and imperialism led to race mixing which is a disgusting burden on mankind, in his eyes. >>24087308I feel it's more that you need to have a somewhat mystical and supersticious mind to fully graso and understand lovecraft, he works within the weird and offputting coincidences and cracks in reality that drive people to post weird findings on /x/ and go mad. A lot of tropical countries from the southern hemisphere still keep that tradition and aren't quite as secularised as europeans became, now incapable of seeing them as nothing short of weird monsters and goofy cults. A lot still have a mystical eye but I feel that's a object of mockery and not intrigue these days. I heard someone a while back say that "there's no such thing as magic in Lovecraft's works, only high usage of esoteric knowledge lost to time that appears alien to us" and I feel that rings true, we mock people for wanting to dive into and search these pathways here, and im sure that was plenty ostracized in Lovecraft's time as his work calls that out plenty of times.
>>24087322This is the best take. I bet he’d be thrilled at seeing his weird fiction horror hobby become a worldwide phenomena and devour all the mythos works which came out after his death.
>>24086835Is there really that much to understand? Why are you no longer with that girl, she sounds cool.
I wonder what he’d make out of Chinese authors writing his kind of stuffhttps://www.amazon.com/Flock-Ba-Hui-Other-Stories/dp/1788691873(Fun book. Have a map of China handy. You’ll need it. Frequently. Also expect to look up dynasties and other historical things frequently.)
>>24088508Both of us live in different countries now, we still talk, she just really hated living in France and moved to Italy.
>>24086806Probably be bewildered by it. Lovecraft was kinda bewildered by his relatively low level of fame during his lifetime. He thought he was kind of a shit writer with strange views in his own life which is why he wasn't protective of his works and worlds in the slightest and was fine with people doing whatever the fuck they wanted to do with his creations during his lifetime.
>>24086835>Maybe this is a personal experience thingmostly wishful thinking coming from an inferiority complex since I don't even believe you had enough "personal experience" to extrapolate that
>>24087394Hit the nail on the head. Lovecraft was a Gothic writer, and a main Gothic theme is the foolish disbelief of civilized people.
>>24086806Lovecraft would be so revolted and horrified by modern America that he would immediately kill himself if you brought him back to life, or else spend the rest of his unnatural lifespan writing sordid, novel-length invective harrangues about how awful and negrified America and Britain have become.
>>24087346Lovecraft denounced his racist ways when he got older. That's the part people don't like to bring up because it isn't as funny. He looked back and basically saw it as an edgy phase in his life.
>>24086806He would not like the canonization of "the mythos". Naming and categorizing goes against what he was trying to write as horror.
>>24090196The moment in some of his final letters when Lovecraft, older and more mature, refers to his black cat as "my young black gentleman"
>>24090196I remember reading a thread where someone posted some of those letters. I was really kind of shocked at such a 180 degree turnaround. But I've never been able to find that thread again.Any links on /lit/ or elsewhere to this material?
>>24086806Sometimes I'm astonished for how much important he have become for the horror genre than even Poe. Really, who even reads Poe nowadays? Lovecraft at least brought a new perspective to the genre and I don't think there was anything more influential to it since then.
>>24090771I also remembering reading them and being shocked but could enver find them again. Lovecraft saying that racism was a tool to divide the working class and he was a fool to fall for it was basd. People think of him as supremely racist when before he died he was an open communist. Like the Mountains of Madness the elder things arent scary because they're alien but framed as being men, who loved science art and had socialist government>>24090353That and the firther centralisation of Cthulhu as anything of note in the grand scheme of things. He's a big player for earth but its just one of an infinite number of high priests of Yog-Sototh
>>24089718lol I bet he’d wright about someone from 1800s New England time-traveling through the alien angle to current-day America and finding that humanity has suddenly degenerated to the point of borderline non-sapience and ending with the rise of an insect creature which grew from the mountains of filth and attained a nascent intelligence — an origin story of the next rulers of the Earth following the fall of mankind which he mentioned a few times in his works.
>>24091017Actually I bet he’d use the fact that modern humans saw his pulp fanfic-writing in higher popularity then the greats like Poe as proof that humanity was degenerating.
>>24091024It was the Shogoths which were scary — if there were no Shogoths then it would just have been a weird fiction tale, not horror. But here’s the important point: it’s not actually the monster which is scary, it’s the empathetic reaction of the reader to the characters who are terrified out of their minds. When they’re flying out and the character hazards a look back and lets out a soul-rending scream for which he took the secret of to his very grave is the true power of Cosmic Horror.
>>24091306>the character hazards a look back and lets out a soul-rending scream for which he took the secret of to his very grave is the true power of Cosmic Horror.Well said. I wonder what he saw, a second bigger mountain range behind the city, a cosmic portal to unknown realities, a mountain covered in Shoggoths?
>>24086806I think Lovecraft would learn of pic related and get very very upset.
>When, long ago, the gods created Earth In Jove’s fair image Man was shaped at birth. The beasts for lesser parts were next designed; Yet were they too remote from humankind. To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man, Th’Olympian host conceiv’d a clever plan. A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure, Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.>H.Piss Lovecraft
Anyone notice how Lovecraft loves purple prose but still manages to pull it off? I think the secret is that he can accurately latch on to a feeling or an image so when he lays on the purple prose you can feel that feeling / image being magnified as opposed to just being distracting.
>>24091678You know anon I just read the Colour out of Space manga and reading this passage I thought the same thing. The purple prose refocuses the reader to truly consider and reflect on what hes saying, and not just padding out a sentence. >Unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know; from realms whose mere excistence stuns the brainThe whole quote is a marvel but that line is just fantastic
>>24091678Lovecraft is a very indulgent writer and that's his biggest strength and his biggest weakness
>>24087360I'm not brazilanon, but he's cool.
>>24086835>ex was brown and wrote countless articlesAnd what was her (its) favorite story? Don't bother answering though, I'm pretty sure it wasn't Celephais, i.e. THE work of Lovecraft. >side by another one of KierkegaardYou browns are completely mindbroken. How the fuck can someone adore both Lovecraft and a ghastly christkike freak?
>>24087322Hell, probably even the popularity of a second-rate RPG like Call Of Cthulhu (despite the woke bits here and there) would be enough to have him giddy for a straight month
>>24086806How did he feel about gays? Because the current “Weird Fiction” community is filled with homos and troons.
>>24086835I'm white and have been reading him since the early 2000s. It was easy to find his work through Barnes & Noble classics. Once I was done reading Goosebumps I went straight to Lovecraft, Blackwood, and others.
>>24086806If he were alive now he’d be making capeshit probably. I’m sure he’d be happy to be famous.Also I keep making the mistake of reading it at night, thinking it’ll be fine because 95% of his shit is bad and not scary, then hit the 1/20 story that’s actually scary and feel like shit with adrenaline pouring through my body until the sun comes up and it’s safe again.
>>24086835….really? I’m reading him for the first time now and he’s kind of racist as hell to the point of it being a theme in the stories.
>>24086884You can tell he was heavily inspired by Poe and Mary Shelley>>24087394The white ape made me laugh out loud the entire time. He really beats you over the head with zero subtlety of just “what if…you found out your great great great grandma was black…ooOoOh!”
>>24091306So much of his writing is “then he saw the worst shit ever! The horror!” “can I see it?” “No.”
>>24086884The Terror by Arthur Machen is good rural-spooking fun.Also recommend The Willows by Algernon Blackwood if you haven't read it yet.
>>24094501The Willows is great. For another one of Lovecraft’s inspirations check out the King in Yellow stories, specifically the Repairer of Reputation and the one about the painter forgot what it was called. For a modern take on Lovecraft I highly recommend The Fisherman by Lagan.
>>24093671Pseud.
