Or, in a word, bumpf

[flemmings]

So rushthatspeaks discovers HP Lovecraft being, in essence, HP Lovecraft even while talking about some rather uninspired caverns in Virginia.

Glimpses of far black vistas beyond the radius of the lights-- sheer drops of incalculable depth to unknown chasms, or arcades beckoning laterally to mysteries yet untasted by human eye-- bring one's soul close to the frightful and obscure frontiers of the material world, and conjure up suspicions of vague and unhallowed dimensions whose formless beings lurk ever close to the visible world of man's five senses.

Am I the only person who thinks Lovecraft writes like a fog machine? Formless, inchoate, and dimly menacing, like the gibbering of Those who dwell Down There.

Comments

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I find Lovecraft like that, too. I'm working my way through a Lovecraft fan-fiction (although, it doesn't actually cop to being fanfic) anthology and I've found a huuuge pet peeve of mine are those people who write in a Lovecraftian manner but their characters are largely uneducated. It's very jarring to have a guy named, say, Mickey Two-thumbs, thinking in flowery speech and vocabulary waaaaaay above his demonstrated vocabulary.

Also, Lovecraft hates penguins.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

If Mickey would stick to his native vernacular, I'd have half a chance of knowing what he's saying. As it is, Lovecraft is all bumpfy-bumpfy-high-falutin' phrase, but what the heck does it *mean*? 'Arcades beckoning laterally to mysteries yet untasted by human eye' conjures up no image in my mind at all. He tells me I'm supposed to shudder at something but gives me no reason to do so.

Any man who hates penguins has no soul.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Yes to all of that! Sometimes he gets it just right and I'll get a chilling image but normally his prose is so flowery it's hard to parse out what he means.

Zero soul. He has nothing nice to say about penguins in The Mountains of Madness.