“Dagon” was one of the first Lovecraft stories I read and is probably one of his more famous, even if the plot is cribbed from Arthur Machen. It’s got great style:>“Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity.”The audiobook is great if you want to read along:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWnV5vBScD0
Grow up manchild
>>24941773What's wrong with Lovecraft?
>>24941773Is the illusion of maturity even worse than puerility?>>24941801I'm guessing "advanced" readers hate him because he is not gatekept enough
>>24941722nonmeaningful shovelware sold by the word>>24941801lovecraft is great but his s-class philosophical work was dream quest and his a-class exploration of natural history and origin theories was mountains of madness
Reading Mountains of Madness and its pretty boring. His writing style isn't the best and once youve heard about one unknowable being youve heard about them all
Dagon's pretty alright for what it is. I think Lovecraft handicaps himself with purple patches in his writing but when he's coherent he's good. Shadow over Innsmouth is my favorite.
>>24943513I love Lovecraft and have read most of his stories but I am yet to complete Mountains. I started it 3 times and dropped it. One of his worst habits was being overly descriptive and in Mountains this is highlighted more so than in any other story of his I think. It's a fucking slog to read through.
>>24942931Dream-Quest is almost unreadable. Extremely unpolished (because it was unfinished), it reads like a 5 year old trying to tell an epic story: "And then he went here and he saw this and that and then he needed to go somewhere else and he travelled and when he got there he saw this and this and that and he met with someone who told him to go yet somewhere else." It's excruciating.My favourite part is when the protagonist stands in front of the gates of a huge city, and the guard tells him that he's only allowed to enter if he can tell of 3 epic past dream adventures he's had, to prove that he's an experienced dream-quester or something. The books then just says "and he did, and he entered the city" without saying anything of his past adventures. It's so bad it's hilarious.
>>24941801He had a cat with a "problematic" name like 100 years ago. Pretty sure that's what they're seething about.
>>24943513That cover is misleading.
for me it's the music of erich zann
>>24944054He repented on his death bed.
>>24944052whew, filtered
>>24944838He was literally praising Hitler in his last years. He went full blown fascist
>>24944861no counterargument
what book does he talk about dreams in
>>24944901All of his dream stories are collected (with a few of his miscellaneous stories) in the Penguin collection The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories. The story that's spoken about in this thread is The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath.
>>24944868He did? Damn. Now he's my favourite author even more.
>>24944955I don't know where anon got that, but he famously turned way more left and against Hitler when he was dying.
I read Dream-Quest recently. I quite liked it. The ghouls were really cool.
>>24944052this has to be a joke
>>24944052
>>24944052>go yet somewhere else." It's excruciating.>My favourite part is when the protagonist stands in front of the gates of a huge city, and the guard tells him that he's only allowed to enter if he can tell of 3 epic past dream adventures he's hadI unironically do this to people. Some people cannot leave work without my say so I order them to tell me cool fuckin' stories from the day.
>>24945116>>24945161This is my genuine opinion. Even Joshi said that "some HPL enthusiasts find it almost unreadable", and Lovecraft himself said that it wasn't any good. It isn't that uncommon of an opinion.
>>24944052I read an essay by Lovecraft about his own writing process and my conclusion based on that information is that the Dream-Quest is just a very detailed synopsis for what would have been a novel of epic length. That's why there is a distinct lack of dialogue and the events move along like a train. Only Nyarlathotep's speech, which was a late addition to the story, could be considered finished content.
>>24941722I'm reading him right now.
>>24943513I'm starting to feel the same way but I'm almost done with his collected fiction so I'll push through it. Plus, he actually has a couple atypical and refreshing stories interspersed throughout his career which helps to keep you going.I think you can only enjoy Lovecraft for more than a few stories if you're sympathetic to him as a person and his quirks and fixations.
>>24943965Felt this way about Charles Dexter Ward. Mountains is too iconic and has too much mythology exposition to skip imo. And I actually like all the arctic and mountain description, it's quite unique in his work.
