I can certainly see the appeal of Lovecraft, and I don't have much to say that hasn't already been covered in any random review of one of his short stories you could chance upon. His building of atmosphere is up to par and perhaps even excels past some of the more well-respected literary horror I've been reading, and digging into some of these stories in the '20s must have been an absolute trip. That said, it's tough for me to adequately critique it given my modern biases considering his style has inspired so much genre media since the time when he was writing, be they short stories, novellas, television, film, or even video games.
His prose probably wouldn't be described as tight and I couldn't shake the feeling that some of these short stories could have been produced by one of my high school contemporaries clad in goth garb back in 1999. I can understand the praise for his ability to build atmosphere though I found many of his stories don't give me the claustrophobic sense of mind-altering madness he probably intended. Many of his creepy-crawlies thus far have felt more cartoonish than anything actually inspiring otherworldly awe, visceral revulsion, or knee-jerk, xenophobic odium. I do long for the sense of cosmic foreignness Lovecraft seems dead-set on inspiring.
Maybe I just need a few more reps of Lovecraft to fall into a groove and acquire the taste. I'll push further into this come next Halloween season — there's just too much on my plate right now.
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