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Has Lovecraft become required reading?
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<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 5016685" data-attributes="member: 2205"><p>Why? I don't think it demonstrates anything in particular.</p><p></p><p>Well, that's factual incorrect on many levels. I didn't say that you're enjoyment of Lovecraft was bizarre, I said your enjoyment in particular of his <em>flaws</em> was bizarre.</p><p></p><p>And Lovecraft is not extremely popular and never has been. He's extremely influential; I'll give you that. But not popular. He's a niche cult icon, not a mass market figure.</p><p></p><p>How enjoyable a piece of literature is is indeed a subjective evaluation. The elements of writing <em>craft</em>, however, are not. There are pretty concrete rules about what well-written prose looks like and what it doesn't look like. Ask <em>any</em> professional editor. Lovecraft had <em>terrible</em> writing craft. That's a pretty easily demonstrable, objective claim to make. It's not really an opinion, or if it is, it's such an overwhelmingly consensus opinion that it might as well not be.</p><p></p><p>This is a pet peeve of mine. You cannot interchangeably use 'high fantasy' and 'sword & sorcery.' They're actually two fairly different subgenres. The last sentence I quoted there, about cosmic horror and sword & sorcery, is particularly wrong; cosmic horror has been a part of sword & sorcery since literally the very first sword & sorcery story, and most of the classic, iconic sword & sorcery mileus feature a pretty hefty dose of it.</p><p></p><p>That's because to you D&D is high fantasy. Not sword & sorcery.</p><p></p><p>Not that I'm one to think that this matters, and in fact I'm occasionally irked with other people do this as if it's meant to be an argument killer. But, as a curious aside at least, if nothing else, Gary Gygax strongly disagreed with you on that. He <em>always</em> saw D&D as a sword & sorcery game, not a high fantasy one, and from the get-go he included cosmic horror elements. Often watered down and made more accessible (compare mind flayers to Cthulhu, for example, or shoggoths to the various jellies and oozes) but unmistakeable in their origin nonetheless.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 5016685, member: 2205"] Why? I don't think it demonstrates anything in particular. Well, that's factual incorrect on many levels. I didn't say that you're enjoyment of Lovecraft was bizarre, I said your enjoyment in particular of his [I]flaws[/I] was bizarre. And Lovecraft is not extremely popular and never has been. He's extremely influential; I'll give you that. But not popular. He's a niche cult icon, not a mass market figure. How enjoyable a piece of literature is is indeed a subjective evaluation. The elements of writing [I]craft[/I], however, are not. There are pretty concrete rules about what well-written prose looks like and what it doesn't look like. Ask [I]any[/I] professional editor. Lovecraft had [I]terrible[/I] writing craft. That's a pretty easily demonstrable, objective claim to make. It's not really an opinion, or if it is, it's such an overwhelmingly consensus opinion that it might as well not be. This is a pet peeve of mine. You cannot interchangeably use 'high fantasy' and 'sword & sorcery.' They're actually two fairly different subgenres. The last sentence I quoted there, about cosmic horror and sword & sorcery, is particularly wrong; cosmic horror has been a part of sword & sorcery since literally the very first sword & sorcery story, and most of the classic, iconic sword & sorcery mileus feature a pretty hefty dose of it. That's because to you D&D is high fantasy. Not sword & sorcery. Not that I'm one to think that this matters, and in fact I'm occasionally irked with other people do this as if it's meant to be an argument killer. But, as a curious aside at least, if nothing else, Gary Gygax strongly disagreed with you on that. He [I]always[/I] saw D&D as a sword & sorcery game, not a high fantasy one, and from the get-go he included cosmic horror elements. Often watered down and made more accessible (compare mind flayers to Cthulhu, for example, or shoggoths to the various jellies and oozes) but unmistakeable in their origin nonetheless. [/QUOTE]
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