What are your thoughts on Lovecraft and his ilk.
What say you about the works of that mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred? Is it content of worth? Or just vaguely descriptive blather?

>>24544672 (OP)
I write in the weird tradition of Lovecraft, CAS, George Sterling, Arthur Machen, and Ambrose Beirce.
>What say you about the works of that mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred?
It's an extra-poetic literary object that has a life of its own.
>Is it content of worth? Or just vaguely descriptive blather?
Are you trying to sound more complex than needed? What do you mean?

>>24544672 (OP)
Good stuff. Samey, but you have to keep in mind everyone reads his writing wrong today. They were serialized back in the day and those breaks, constant cliffhangers and reusing the same formula is much more evident when you read them in collected form.

>>24544672 (OP)
He’s not a good writer but he had a good idea. I don’t even think he’d object to that characterization. He was very much into his writing circles and wrote an insane amount of letters so I think having his legacy be a shared universe and central idea would have appealed to him.
>>24546425
This anon has it right. It’s hard to get a genuine feeling for how this was supposed to be read. This is also a problem for Arthur Conan Doyle, Dickens and others. The art of the serial form dies when compiled. It’s the binge watch of tv shows. It also makes the flourishes seem trite and repetitive, because you’re reading the life’s output of a single writer in a row. In the magazines you’d have more variety and a lot worse attempts at horror and adventure to which a Lovecraft tale or other early writer would have stood out more.