Literature: The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft

[Banat]

http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/940/lovecraft3wb.gif
The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft (http://www.noveltynet.org/content/books/lovecraft/index.php)
(in mostly PDF format)

A bookmark. http://thephora.net/forum/images/icons/icon14.gif

[Lionheart]

Great link; thanks for sharing. "Celephais" and "The Rats in the Walls" are my favorites.

[Niko Bellic]

Sweet! Thanks for the link.

[Sinclair]

HP Lovecraft was a pretty good writer. Some of his stuff is a bit goofy though. His best works, I think, are those on the smaller scale, like "Rats in the Walls", "The Shadow over Innsmouth", etc. The "Dreamlands" stuff is just damn silly.

[il ragno]

It's not just Lovecraft (who can get a bit silly).

A surprising amount of the best ghost and supernatural literature from the golden age of roughly 1850-1940 is available for free download. Probably the two best, with the deepest archives, are

http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/authors.html

and

http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/fiction.htm

Not just great ghost/horror stories, but great fiction period, in many cases. I highly recommend both sites.

And the grandaddy of all free-books sites

http://www.gutenberg.org/

[Lionheart]

HP Lovecraft was a pretty good writer. Some of his stuff is a bit goofy though. His best works, I think, are those on the smaller scale, like "Rats in the Walls", "The Shadow over Innsmouth", etc. The "Dreamlands" stuff is just damn silly.
I agree fully. "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," one of his longest works, is nearly unreadable, as it meanders along without any apparent purpose. What I've always admired about Lovecraft, though, is his clear, flowing prose.

[Sinclair]

His poetry is dreadful.

[Excorcism]

HP Lovecraft was a pretty good writer. Some of his stuff is a bit goofy though. His best works, I think, are those on the smaller scale, like "Rats in the Walls", "The Shadow over Innsmouth", etc. The "Dreamlands" stuff is just damn silly.

Yes, that's definitly some of his better works.

[Sinclair]

I play Call of Cthulhu, the pen and paper RPG based on his works, and I find that my tastes lean towards both smaller "adventures" and smaller stories. I don't like the campaigns for the game where the characters are in New York one week and Kathmandu the next, so they can SAVE HUMANITY. I don't like the goofy-ass Dreamlands stories.

But the shorter ones? The ones that are like ghost stories, only much better because it's not all "OH BOOGA WOOGA IT WERE AN INDIAN GRAVEYARD!" Or the ones where the horror is derived from the idea of "genetic pollution", like "The Shadow over Innsmouth".

[Excorcism]

I play Call of Cthulhu, the pen and paper RPG based on his works, and I find that my tastes lean towards both smaller "adventures" and smaller stories. I don't like the campaigns for the game where the characters are in New York one week and Kathmandu the next, so they can SAVE HUMANITY. I don't like the goofy-ass Dreamlands stories.

But the shorter ones? The ones that are like ghost stories, only much better because it's not all "OH BOOGA WOOGA IT WERE AN INDIAN GRAVEYARD!" Or the ones where the horror is derived from the idea of "genetic pollution", like "The Shadow over Innsmouth".

Do you remember the name of the story where there are two grave robbers who happen to stumble upon a jewel necklace on one of the dead bodies and it ends up being that of a werewolves?

[riddlemethis]

Good links, 'rag.

I play Call of Cthulhu, the pen and paper RPG based on his works, and I find that my tastes lean towards both smaller "adventures" and smaller stories. I don't like the campaigns for the game where the characters are in New York one week and Kathmandu the next, so they can SAVE HUMANITY. I don't like the goofy-ass Dreamlands stories.

But the shorter ones? The ones that are like ghost stories, only much better because it's not all "OH BOOGA WOOGA IT WERE AN INDIAN GRAVEYARD!" Or the ones where the horror is derived from the idea of "genetic pollution", like "The Shadow over Innsmouth".
I never have liked HP's beliefs concerning genetics and the way they manifest themselves in his fiction, but I manage to overlook them and convince myself that the old "man of his time" cliché applies here. Loathsomely, it's likely that enjoy his works not in spite of but because of this blasphemous, unnamable, problematical aspect.

[il ragno]

The single most amazing aspect of Lovecraft's work is that it remains in print - has never really fallen out of print since his death.

Forget his racial beliefs for a second and fix on his turgid, purple prose a moment. I hold great affection for writers of his period - most are vastly superior to our own - so trust me when I assure you that HPL was heavy, overly ornate sledding even then. That it would be Lovecraft who remained "current" and "relevant" when so many better writers of his era have tumbled down the rabbit-hole, out of memory, is pretty bizarre. One thing that HPL has got going for him, and maybe it's the key to his longevity, is his wacked-out sincerity. He is truly committed to his pet obsessions the way Phillip Dick and Jim Thompson were to theirs, and it lends an unfakeable integrity to his prose: from a good distance away you can ruthlessly judge it and find it laughable, but up close there's no doubt you're in the presence of The Real Thing, and its authenticity as sui generis awes you a little.

[Sinclair]

I find Lovecraft a billion times more readable than "The Scarlet Letter". Damn English 11.

[il ragno]

Try some Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare or L.P. Hartley and then see how Lovecraft sits in your pantheon.

[Sinclair]

If only I had time. Forget looking for books to read for entertainment purposes, I don't even know where my textbooks have gone.

[Geist]

The single most amazing aspect of Lovecraft's work is that it remains in print - has never really fallen out of print since his death.


Ragno, to completely move you away from this discussion, do you like Wilkie Collins?

[il ragno]

Haven't read enough of him to hold an informed opinion, besides "A Terribly Strange Bed" and "The Dream Woman", but I liked what I read. As best I can recall, I thought Collins wrote in an admirably clear, direct voice that has travelled well over the years.

I understand that his more famous novels like THE MOONSTONE supposedly succumb to Victorian-era melodrama, but surely you can allow for that failing in a Victorian-era writer.

[Geist]

Haven't read enough of him to hold an informed opinion, besides "A Terribly Strange Bed" and "The Dream Woman", but I liked what I read. As best I can recall, I thought Collins wrote in an admirably clear, direct voice that has travelled well over the years.

I understand that his more famous novels like THE MOONSTONE supposedly succumb to Victorian-era melodrama, but surely you can allow for that failing in a Victorian-era writer.

True, you'd really enjoy the Woman in White or Heart and Science, he is an exceptionally clear writer but always a good writer and to maintain the two is to mark a good writer from the average, plus he has an anecdote every two pages which will raise a smile from any aspiring writer.

[il ragno]

IIRC, Collins was either a contemporary or a close friend of Dickens'...perhaps both. And, I think, like Dickens, Collins' prose benefitted from appearing in the mass-circulation weeklies so much English popular ficton was written for back then. While the serialization format may have encouraged both men to inject more cliffhanger-style melodrama into their narratives than absolutely necessary, the huge audience they were writing to, crossing class lines, imposed a need to keep their prose simple and straightforward while keeping one eye on the loose plot ends at all times.

Ths period of literature was really when the art of plotting - England's great contribution to storytelling - came to the fore, but too often conveniently forgotten is that this enforced restraint and discipline added, not detracted, to the reader's absorption and the tale's power. (In the hands of a superior craftsman, of course.)

[Geist]

IIRC, Collins was either a contemporary or a close friend of Dickens'...perhaps both. And, I think, like Dickens, Collins' prose benefitted from appearing in the mass-circulation weeklies so much English popular ficton was written for back then. While the serialization format may have encouraged both men to inject more cliffhanger-style melodrama into their narratives than absolutely necessary, the huge audience they were writing to, crossing class lines, imposed a need to keep their prose simple and straightforward while keeping one eye on the loose plot ends at all times.

True, the Woman in White is a classic case of this actually, it is quite the thriller.

The period of literature was really when the art of plotting - England's great contribution to storytelling - came to the fore, but too often conveniently forgotten is that this enforced restraint and discipline added, not detracted, to the reader's absorption and the tale's power. (In the hands of a superior craftsman, of course.)

True, it is only in the last year or so that I've started to read novels by the likes of Collins and Dickens and they tend to be a masterclass in how to have a good plot, pageturners for sure.

[WFHermans]

"The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" is one of the greatest novels of all time. H.P.Lovecraft is one of the best american writers. Only Jack Vance is better.

Thanks for the pdf-list (http://www.noveltynet.org/content/books/lovecraft/index.php). A good list, incomplete and not chronological but there are some shorter pieces there I didn't know. I am now rereading his books chronologically. They're making especially his racist material hard to find, but keep looking.

It's a pity he died at such an early age, before worldwar two. I'm afraid he would have fallen for the propaganda of the Roosevelt clique, and was an Anglophile anyway.