Topic: H.P. Lovecraft and his vocabulary

[Mooning Freddy]

Just finished reading "The Call of Cthulhu" for the first time. Must say I liked the story a lot, not only for its contents but even more so because of its literary style. Lovecraft's use of synonyms, old phrases and words to describe the horror of the mystery is amazing.
The richness of Lovecraft's vocabulary makes the story not only quite a difficult one to read for a person of our time, but forced me to look up words in a dictionary virtually in every sentence.
This also made me wonder. The story was written in 1928. Yet the richness of language in it reminds me of the literary traditions of earlier times, like the Victorian era. Of course, there are other 20th century authors with literary style as impressive, like Tolkien, but I can think of few of them.

Interestingly enough, it seems like Lovecraft was intentionally making an effort to make the language of his works as rich as possible, and even posted a list of rules for novice authors in that regard:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/32284/11-tips-hp-lovecraft-had-novice-writers

I would like to hear your comments about this epic story. Also, do you know of any other modern authors who place such importance on vocabulary in their works?

[Dracula9]

Lovecraft was the shit. Shame he was super racist, but obviously a good part of that likely had to do with the times.

BOAT TO THE FAAAAAAAAAACE!

[Ratty]

Lovecraft was a man obsessed with the past in many ways, possibly because he'd grown up reading about it in old books in relative isolation due to an overprotective mother. His family had also been more influential and well-off before he was born, so he no doubt grew up hearing about how much better things were then. (This personal obsession is commented on and possibly parodied in the novella "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" and can be observed in many of his stories through things like narrator's love for Colonial American architecture) This came through in his verse as well as his choices of subject matter. But it did mellow a bit with age and experience. The "collaborative" (usually this just means something he ghost wrote) works of his that I've read are mostly written in a much more mainstream commercial way.

If you're looking for more Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos stories to read I recommend "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and then the novel "At the Mountains of Madness". Both very good stories and essential entries to understanding more of the mythos.

[X]

I have several books of Lovecraft's works, though I've yet to break into some of them. His story of Cthulhu was the one I had been waiting to read in one of the books for quite a while. I also have the companion book to his work: The Necronomicon. it is also interesting to note that lots of his other works are Sumerian-influenced ie using the names of the old gods and such. Dagon is a good example. Half man, half fish. Yet in the Lovecraftian universe this creature bares a striking resemblance to the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Though I've no doubt that that creature in turn was inspired from Lovecraft's work.

Lovecraft was the shit. Shame he was super racist, but obviously a good part of that likely had to do with the times.

Sadly yes. Had he been alive today then we'd know for sure whether or not it was an 'era' thing.

[Mooning Freddy]

Sadly yes. Had he been alive today then we'd know for sure whether or not it was an 'era' thing.

"Mark Twain once said: a man who always tells the truth doesn’t have to remember what he said. And that’s great. But Mark Twain also said: there once was a big black guy named N***er Jim. So I don’t know if a 100% of the things he said were perfectly awesome"
~Louis CK

Yeah, lots of great people in history were kinda racist, or even very prejudiced. Remember Henry Ford? Arguably the greatest industrialist of the 20th century, whose revolutionary production methods are studied in every business school? He's also remembered as one of the most vocal American antisemites, who believed in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and was sympathetic to the Nazis.

[Ratty]

X and Freddy if you want all of Lovecraft's stories they're more easy to get now than ever. Barnes and Noble published a hardbound omnibus edition of his solo works a couple years back just called "H. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction", if you get that make sure to get the edition with the purple ribbon (this included fixes to countless formatting mistakes in the previous edition). It's also been reprinted by another company since but I believe they cut out a couple stories he wrote as a kid. His "collaborative" stories (which usually means he ghost wrote them for someone else) are compiled in two volumes you can get (and I think are print on demand titles) "The Crawling Chaos and Others" and "Medusa's Coil and Others". There's also a collection of his poems but I believe only a relative few of those were related to cthulhu or horror in general.

[Dracula9]

As an owner of The Complete Fiction, I can and do vouch heavily in favor of getting a copy. You get everything plus older unpublished stuff, plus some prefaces to each of the stories, which are neat.

[Gunlord]

"The story was written in 1928. Yet the richness of language in it reminds me of the literary traditions of earlier times, like the Victorian era."

Well, Lovecraft was a huge fan of the Victorian era, especially of Poe. It makes sense it would show up in his work

[Abnormal Freak]

As an owner of The Complete Fiction, I can and do vouch heavily in favor of getting a copy.

I gotta thank the folks in this thread for reminding me I need to pick up a copy. Years ago I was researching which copy of Lovecraft tales to get, and this publication—the corrected 2011 edition in particular—is the one everybody recommended and it still seems to be the best available. It's 20 bucks at bn.com so I'll nab me one.

On the subject of early 20th century pulp fiction, I was wondering what are some good collections of Robert E. Howard stories. My brother lent me a Kull book that I need to finally get around to reading.

[Ratty]

I gotta thank the folks in this thread for reminding me I need to pick up a copy. Years ago I was researching which copy of Lovecraft tales to get, and this publication—the corrected 2011 edition in particular—is the one everybody recommended and it still seems to be the best available. It's 20 bucks at bn.com so I'll nab me one.

On the subject of early 20th century pulp fiction, I was wondering what are some good collections of Robert E. Howard stories. My brother lent me a Kull book that I need to finally get around to reading.

"The Complete Fiction" is good though the smaller type and weightiness of the tome might make it a little hard to read for some people. And like I said the title is a bit misleading since to get all of his stories (including some ones important to the mythos) you need to get the two volumes of stories he co-wrote that I mentioned. "The Complete Fiction" includes only 1 of his collaborative stories, "Under the Pyramids" which is a story he ghost wrote for Harry Houdini. Yes that Harry Houdini.

I believe Dell reprinted collections of Howard stories within the last decade but they've been out of print for a while now, the Kull book your brother lent you is probably part of that series if I had to guess. Probably just have to look around on the secondary market for those. If you want big collections of pulp material I've enjoyed "The Vampire Archives" ( http://www.amazon.com/Vampire-Archives-Complete-Tales-Published/dp/0307473899/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463044405& ) and have but have not yet got to read much of "The Big Book of Adventure Stories" ( http://www.amazon.com/Big-Book-Adventure-Stories/dp/030747450X/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=61eGVRtrm2L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR122%2C160_&refRID=1RFH48AA2FEVWE8KAYBM ) from same publisher. They've also released a few other massive largely pulpy compilations like "The Big Book of Pulps" (which I think concentrated on the crime/detective pulps) "The Big Book of Ghost Stories" (though I think larger percentage of stories in that may actually predate pulp area) and "Zombies Zombies Zombies!" but I've not got my hands on those yet.

[Dracula9]

I believe the purpose of The Complete Fiction was purely stories he wrote himself, rather than everything he ever wrote.

A bit misleading depending on who you ask, but the main parts of his mythos as told by him are all there.

That being said, getting the collaboration stories is also a good idea since there're a lot of them.

[Mooning Freddy]

Stumbled across this comic and lolled.