Greatest Horror Writer Of All Time If...

muravyets · Sep 8, 2013

callalily61 said:
Total fangirl moment: F Paul Wilson is going to be at B'con in 2 weeks, and he replied to my tweet about getting him to sign my copy of Midnight Mass. Squee!

Don't hate me, but LeFanu never induced the slightest shiver in me. I've read all his seminal works and without exception my reaction was

Hey, to each his own, eh? There's no rule that says anyone has to like any particular writer just because someone else does.

Yes, yes, yes! For years "Colour" could scare me in broad daylight, even after several re-reads. HPL has humongous limitations, but he could make my skin crawl like no other.

Now here we have common ground.

I love living in "Lovecraft country" because all that lovely New England countryside just oozes primordial creepiness when taken in context. You can make a tour of it:

Innsmouth is definitely up among the Cape Ann towns, based on his descriptions of the region.

Pickman's Model is practically a walking tour guide of old Boston.

The Shunned House is a real building in Providence, RI, reputed to be haunted with a moldy spot in the cellar.

My personal favorite of Lovecraft's space-monster shaggy-dog stories is The Whisperer in Darkness with all that mad nonsense in Newfane and Townshend, VT, and there's just something hilariously apt about that setting. You have to know the area, I guess.

And Colour -- the setting is so totally Amherst and the Quabbin Reservoir. So totally.

It's amazing to me how, if you drive through these beautiful areas, but with Lovecraft in mind, they take on a truly scary atmosphere. You wouldn't think he was that effective a writer, but dammit, he sticks with a person.

Tinman · Sep 8, 2013

callalily61 said:
Total fangirl moment: F Paul Wilson is going to be at B'con in 2 weeks, and he replied to my tweet about getting him to sign my copy of Midnight Mass. Squee!

Lily. Cool. Midnight Mass is a good book, and a good short story before it became a novel. I'm more into his short stories (Soft and others) and his Repairman Jack novels.

kobold · Sep 8, 2013

Not to kick a dead zombie, but about HPL:

Daniel Handler (or is that Lemony Snicket?) has written a review of a Lovecraft anthology here

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17HANDLER.html?_r=0

in which he nicely deciphers Lovecraft's enduring strength (what Joyce Carol Oates called 'crude visceral power'). While HPL's overwrought style can and does generate real laughter, the persistence of his trademark insane narrators (living all alone with their dusty tomes in a spooky little old house in the woods on a cliff by the ocean) together with those coughed-up 'eldritch antediluvian cloven-hoofed horrors of a batrachian nature from the ebon blackness' (kudos muravyets!) become unsettling when taken as an entire body of work, piled story upon story upon story, their repeated and unrelenting tone having an unsettling cumulative effect. Lovecraft himself may not have been aware of it.

I do not believe he was a great writer, perhaps not even a very good one; he seems to have never met an adjective he did not like (though he did manage to craft the occasional nicely-turned phrase-- hell, even the worst authors have their moments). However, genre writers of that era routinely submitted to magazines that paid by the word (sometimes as little as a half-cent per word). So there's that.

'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' is woefully under-read.

True: 'The Colour Out of Space' may be his best story. Again, I wonder if even he realized as much.

And it's been awhile since I've read old HP, so I guess I don't remember 'The Horror of the Middle Span'? Can someone summarize it for me? Is it strangely similar to all his other stories?

Calla Lily · Sep 9, 2013

I've been several times to Cape Ann and once to Boston, but never with HPL in mind. I'd love to tour the area in that mood one day.

"Middle Span" is somewhat typical, but not as good as "Dreams in the Witch House": Antiquarian moves into uncle's old house, researches into Forbidden Things from directions left by uncle, the town Distrusts Him and All His Family, uncle and hot babe familiar invade nephew's dreams, strange deaths happen in town, and uncle (who was never "really" dead) + familiar tell nephew they have to skeddale. The Middle Span part is part of a defunct bridge with an Elder Sign on it, and the implication at the end is the villagers have imprisoned uncle, nephew, and familiar in it again.

Torgo · Sep 9, 2013

I find Lovecraft too clunky to be actually scary, but he's completely fascinating as a sort of mutation of Dunsany and Poe etc. The obsession with sickness and alienness - even the racism, or xenophobia - is a really interesting, visceral kind of horror that I think was genuinely new.

For me the great thing about HPL was that he inspired an awful lot of better writers. Right now I'm reading Laird Barron, who writes remarkable stuff in the same kind of cosmic/weird vein.

Has anyone mentioned William Hope Hodgson? The Carnacki stories are classics, I think.

Calla Lily · Sep 9, 2013

Someone mentioned Hodgson upthread. His House on the Borderland is fascinating, despite a few glaring plot holes.

I enjoy Mythos stories from several writers: REH, Frank Belknap Long, Bloch, and even sometimes Derleth. Derleth's unrelenting effort to keep HPL published can never be underrated, but I find his Mythos stories (and I own several) to be "good tries" rather than, "Wow!"

Torgo · Sep 9, 2013

callalily61 said:
Someone mentioned Hodgson upthread. His House on the Borderland is fascinating, despite a few glaring plot holes.

I enjoy Mythos stories from several writers: REH, Frank Belknap Long, Bloch, and even sometimes Derleth. Derleth's unrelenting effort to keep HPL published can never be underrated, but I find his Mythos stories (and I own several) to be "good tries" rather than, "Wow!"

Derleth's additions to the mythos seem to kind of miss the point, too - the quasi-benevolent Elder Gods like Nodens etc.

Phaeal · Sep 9, 2013

callalily61 said:
Ah, Jonathan Edwards. If I had a TARDIS, one of my stops would be to attend the first delivery of that sermon.

I think I'd go back a little farther and drop in on Cotton Mather.

Phaeal · Sep 9, 2013

Oh, and Stephen King, STEPHEN KING,

STEPHEN KING.

Calla Lily · Sep 9, 2013

You troublemaker, you.

Heck, I'd also nominate whoever actually wrote the Book of Revelation. Or at least whatever he was smoking when he wrote it.

<--knows she's going to Hell.

Phaeal · Sep 9, 2013

Hell might not be able to handle some of us. I'm planning to start a condo complex in the vacant void next door.

Also, of course, HPL, for whose name we don't have a sufficiently crabbed blackletter font. From tiny gems like "In the Crypt" to masterworks like "The Shadow over Innsmouth," "At the Mountains of Madness," "Charles Dexter Ward," "The Colour Out of Space," "The Shadow Out of Time," and The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, just too deliciously weird.

And you can say what you like about Koontz's style, but that damn tragi-terrible creature in WATCHERS still gives me nightmares.

So does Preston and Child's Museum Beast, though I'll be cool as long as D'Agosta and Pendergast are there to protect me....

Calla Lily · Sep 9, 2013

Watchers was pretty much the last book of Koontz' that I liked. Every book after that seemed to me to worship at the feet of the Almighty Golden Retriever (or whatever breed of dog he gives demigodlike powers to).

"We are watchers, all of us, watchers: guarding against the darkness." (I think that's almost an exact quote.)

I really liked Phantoms. The evil critter in that book fascinated me. And Peter O'Toole was perfect in the movie. Then again, I'll watch O'Toole read the phone book.

And you know I worship with you at HPL's feet.

kobold · Sep 9, 2013

By Yog-Sothoth's name don't make me separate the two of you--

Calla Lily · Sep 9, 2013

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

Haggis · Sep 9, 2013

See, that's why I could never get into Lovecraft. I don't read French.

kobold · Sep 9, 2013

Respect your Elder Gods.

Now there's an Old One.

muravyets · Sep 9, 2013

kobold said:
Not to kick a dead zombie, but about HPL:

Daniel Handler (or is that Lemony Snicket?) has written a review of a Lovecraft anthology here

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17HANDLER.html?_r=0

in which he nicely deciphers Lovecraft's enduring strength (what Joyce Carol Oates called 'crude visceral power'). While HPL's overwrought style can and does generate real laughter, the persistence of his trademark insane narrators (living all alone with their dusty tomes in a spooky little old house in the woods on a cliff by the ocean) together with those coughed-up 'eldritch antediluvian cloven-hoofed horrors of a batrachian nature from the ebon blackness' (kudos muravyets!) become unsettling when taken as an entire body of work, piled story upon story upon story, their repeated and unrelenting tone having an unsettling cumulative effect. Lovecraft himself may not have been aware of it.

I do not believe he was a great writer, perhaps not even a very good one; he seems to have never met an adjective he did not like (though he did manage to craft the occasional nicely-turned phrase-- hell, even the worst authors have their moments). However, genre writers of that era routinely submitted to magazines that paid by the word (sometimes as little as a half-cent per word). So there's that.

'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' is woefully under-read.

True: 'The Colour Out of Space' may be his best story. Again, I wonder if even he realized as much.

And it's been awhile since I've read old HP, so I guess I don't remember 'The Horror of the Middle Span'? Can someone summarize it for me? Is it strangely similar to all his other stories?

Yeah, pretty much. Callalily summed it up well. I'll just add that I think he handled his effects very well in that one.

seun · Sep 10, 2013

HP Lovecraft, Poe, MR James, Clive Barker (for his short fiction) and Gary McMahon are particular favourites.

As for Richard 'I love writing about rape so much, I put it in every single one of my books' Laymon, that guy either need therapy or locking up. Or both.

Jcomp · Sep 10, 2013

If you can't say King, my first thoughts were Poe, Bloch, Matheson and Bradbury. In no particular order.

seun · Sep 10, 2013

Jcomp said:
If you can't say King, my first thoughts were Poe, Bloch, Matheson and Bradbury. In no particular order.

Damn it. I forgot about Matheson and Bradbury. They can go in my top five of seven writers.

quicklime · Sep 10, 2013

matheson and old bradbury......anyone browsing this forum who has not read "The October Game" really, really should. It is like ten pages, you can find it online free and easily, and it's a great story. Bradbury's more recent horror got pretty soft, but he used to be brutally good at it.

Phaeal · Sep 10, 2013

Hey, just get the whole October Country, which features such eerie Bradbury masterpieces as "The Next in Line," "The Small Assassin," "The Jar," "Skeleton," and "The Man Upstairs."

I think "The Jar" holds special interest for fantasy writers, with the observations it makes on the power of our imaginative stories and the consequences of pricking those bubbles, especially the more poisonous ones.

quicklime · Sep 10, 2013

Phael,

I agree, but it is missing (ironically) The October Game.

"The Lake" is in TOC, that story alone is worth the price of the book. (funny how we point to very different stories, but that's my favorite piece Bradbury ever did, and even though people think I'm a mean bastard here, that story makes me tear the fuck up....)

kobold · Sep 10, 2013

[he said in a hushed and reverent tone] To this very day

I stand in awe

of

THE OCTOBER COUNTRY. All hail the Wizard of Waukegan.

And he was an early Lovecraft acolyte-- even corresponded with him, I understand. As did Bloch, et al.

Just sayin'.

Rhoda Nightingale · Sep 11, 2013

quicklime said:
Phael,

I agree, but it is missing (ironically) The October Game.

"The Lake" is in TOC, that story alone is worth the price of the book. (funny how we point to very different stories, but that's my favorite piece Bradbury ever did, and even though people think I'm a mean bastard here, that story makes me tear the fuck up....)

Okay, thanks, because I just skimmed my copy and I thought maybe I'd missed it, or I got a weird edition or something. That is weird.

Since we're talking October, I have to say one of my favorite Bradbury pieces is "The Halloween Tree"--middlegrade, not really scary, but absolutely beautiful.

Greatest Horror Writer Of All Time If...

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