Lovecraft: Hack or Genius?

[Andrew D. Gable]

How does one become a "technically bad writer" and not get published and beloved by millions? I want to know, I need the money!!

Good concepts. Sometimes, I think, if the author has a really good idea, it can show through and make that author shine despite any "technical" problems.

Lovecraft certainly fell into the trap of overusing florid adjectives like "non-Euclidean", "cyclopean", "Stygian", etc. Sometimes, to be honest, his stuff doesn't make alot of sense. He strikes me as really more of an artist than an author. Sometimes he wrote well, sometimes very poorly, but he almost always had really good concepts. And I am definitely a Lovecraft fan.

Arthur Conan Doyle was listed as well, personally I consider him a good author, but then I'm not a critic. He's another. Sherlock Holmes is an extremely enduring sort of image or genre (notwithstanding it was really created by Poe). Bram Stoker? Once again, not always great, but he has Dracula -- an enduring motif. And Lovecraft has the whole bleak, uncaring universe thing.

I'll bet a lot of the reason Lovecraft's remembered so is all the other authors who've followed up, picked up loose ends in his tales, taken dropped names, etc. and made their own tales, which were in turn taken on by others. I know I think that. Honestly, Lovecraft himself isn't that memorable or great an author. But the Cthulhu Mythos -- now that's something. Lovecraft's less an author, maybe, and more of a phenomenon.

And Hand of Evil, the two (really) main influences were probably Arthur Machen and Lord Dunsany. Machen for the "terrestrial" aspect, Dunsany for the weird Dreamlands/fantasy stuff.

And Lovecraft couldn't afford drugs! The man lived off of ice cream!

 

[jester47]

The problem writing horror or terror literature in an effort to write a scary story is that the writer must understand the psychology of the time. Saramago's Blindness is really scary to me. Steven Kings IT is not.

Lovecraft knew what he was. He knew that he was not a great writer. If you had asked his opinion he would have told you that the best was the writer with "Howard" as his last name rather than his first.

He was a genius. However his collection of psychosis limited his outlook and ambition, and thus they limited his tools for conveying his ideas. Hence his hack writing. Indeed many of his stories are him trying to work through his fears and phobias.

Aaron.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Most drugs weren't illegal in his day. All kinds of folks used them. I've never heard that he did, though, in any biographical work I've ever read.

Ummm, you are correct, he was as far as I know a life long tee totaller, no drugs at all, at all. And I gather that Edgar Allen Poe's drug addiction was largely the creation of his biographer, a person who hated his guts. (Not the best choice for an accurate biography...) Much of the rumors about HPL and drug use apparently stems from the embrace of his writings by the counter culture in the '60s and '70s. Now if the subject was Cooleridge...

And yes, drug laws are a relatively recent invention in the States, in some communities Ice Cream Sodas were outlawed before morphine...

The Auld Grump

 

[Terath Ninir]

I'd say Lovecraft has at least a decent audience today. All of the local bookstores have a full shelf of Lovecraft. That doesn't happen unless the books *sell*. Plus, there are any number of tribute anthologies out, which is also the sign of a popular writer.

As for how you become a successful writer with fair to middlin' skill: you don't. Not unless you are a genius in some area that shows through. Lovecraft had that genius in creating a horror mythos. Tolkien had it in creating languages and settings. (When I DM, I feel for him. I can make a cool setting, but I'm only a fair to middlin' DM. ) They are great because those ideas show through very, very strongly. That is not the case with most so-so writers.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Huh?

Lovecraft - Cthulhu - Yig - Tulzscha - Shantaks - Shub-niggurath...They just roll off the tongue, they are cool sounding and create a feeling when you hear them, maybe that is genius.

The drug thing, yes it was a different time, the occult was big, really big, people did a lot of strange things and discussed a lot of strange things. I just do not know if HP was going down to the local drug den hanging with other occultist and sharing ideas and just recording the haze.

I do think he had something but so did a number of other people that were writting in the same period, in a way a golden age for writers.

 

[Alhazred]

Someone made the comment that HLP was a writer's writer, which is very true. His literary criticisms were excellent and his skill as an editor meant that many writers and would-be writers sought his advice (August Derleth, Robert Bloch, etc). However, these skills were never successfully transferred to his own writing ( such as his tendency toward flowery descriptive passages). He was a fair writer and, like most fair writers, muddled through with only a modicum of recognition. (Frankly, I would say the same situation applies to most contemporary writers of fantasy - sword and sorcery, sci-fi, horror, etc). So no, I wouldn't say that he was a hack, but he wasn't exceptional.

Writing abilities aside, his ideas were, in my humble (and non-English major) opinion tremendous. His writing evokes the bewilderment, despair and uncertainty toward the future which consumed many people subsequent to the Great War, through the decadence of the Roarin' Twenties (Prohibition and the rise of organised crime, the early days of fascism and the growth of the Soviet Union, corruption in government, accusations of rampant corporate greed) and the collapse of the stock market in October 1929. The Cthulhu Mythos reflects and even magnifies these fears and feelings - humanity is irrelevant and headed toward eventual extinction, whether through its own ineptness or the machinations of alien entities which barely notice our existence.

Ultimately, I think that Lovecraft was a genius (although I think 'genius' is perhaps too strong), but his genius was hampered by his writing. Which is too bad, but I love his stories nonetheless.

PS: I didn't read the original article, the link to which was posted in the first post. I do, however, intend to read it - after supper.

 

[barsoomcore]

Nobody else ever did what Lovecraft did when he was on top of his game. The Rats in the Walls, The Lurker on the Threshold, The Dunwich Horror -- these are tremendous stories that pack a huge emotional wallop.

I think the truth is that HP was interested in ideas that are almost IMPOSSIBLE to write about. He's constantly groping for ways to express ideas that cannot be expressed. The WHOLE POINT of half his horrors is that they cannot be described -- which is obviously a bit of a problem when it comes time to describe them. Sometimes he knocked it out of the park and sometimes he swung and he missed. More often he missed, but I think he did better than other writers who have gone after the same thing.

When he's bad, he's pretty much unreadable. There's a lot of schlock in there. And I'm always cautious about recommending HP to people who are unfamiliar with his work -- I try to mention a couple of the better stories and let people know what they're in for. Certainly plenty of people don't find him much to their taste.

A hack? Yeah, I think so. But then, I'd say he was also a genius. A very focused, narrow sort of genius but within those borders, nobody touches HP.

 

[shady]

From Stephen King, "On Writing"

"HP Lovecraft was a genius when it came to tales of the macabre, but a terrible dialogue writer. He seems to have known it too, because in the millions of words of fiction he wrote, fewer than five thousand are dialogue."

I'd say he was generally a genius with relatively (for a writer who has remained popular to this day) poor writing skills. Of his contemporaries, there were others with a similar mythological genius and better writing skills (Howard) or better writers with slightly less encompassing vision (Smith, Leiber). For longevity of popularity, it looks like vision wins.

And King for that matter is a far better writer (though not quite as good as he thinks he is) but has nowhere near the imaginative sweep of Lovecraft.

Bear in mind none of them were creating these mythologies and continuities without the huge genre underpinnings we now have.

Whatever, as others have written, hack is a derogatory term, and too easily wielded. I think UK mainstream criticism would regard most fantasy and SF writers (maybe excepting Banks and possibly Mieville, and for some reason children's authors) as hacks.

If you mean regular and prolific turnover "just for a living" then equally Moorcock could be considered a hack. And he isn't, is he?

 

[barsoomcore]

Oh, I think Moorcock's earned a "hack" label. There's a lot of schlock surrounding the Eternal Champion.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Moorcock, but he's sure embarrassing at times.

I think that's how I describe a hack -- a writer who puts out material I'm actually embarrassed to read. Which is where, for example, Fritz Leiber avoids hackiness -- I'm never embarrassed by any of his stuff. He's such an amazing stylist, I'm always impressed by his work.

Howard teeters on the edge. The Vale of Lost Women gets pretty close to embarrassment...

 

[Hand of Evil]

Oh, I think Moorcock's earned a "hack" label. There's a lot of schlock surrounding the Eternal Champion.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Moorcock, but he's sure embarrassing at times.

I think that's how I describe a hack -- a writer who puts out material I'm actually embarrassed to read. Which is where, for example, Fritz Leiber avoids hackiness -- I'm never embarrassed by any of his stuff. He's such an amazing stylist, I'm always impressed by his work.

Howard teeters on the edge. The Vale of Lost Women gets pretty close to embarrassment...

Have to agree, like so many others they just did not know where to stop, Farmer another one and a big one John Norman!