Lovecraft 101

Hey there, I never read Lovecraft before, and I want to know what some of his best/most popular work is. Specifically, I'm more interested in the psychological/driven insane stories rather than the monster stuff.

I would recommend you pick up The Dunwich Horror and Others published by Arkham House. It contains his most popular pieces and is split pretty evenly between psychological and monster stories.

Get ready for the most boring reading of your life. I'm serious. Lovecraft had good imagination, and is worth reading if only for that, but he was a very, VERY bad writer. His buildup concepts he followed... they sucked, oh God did they suck.

Anyway, read Search for Unknown Kadath. Best thing he ever wrote. It was so personal he didn't even publish it. Should've been writing stuff like that all along, in my opinion, instead of chthulhu teenager fodder.

Shadow Over Innsmouth is kind of cool, but only if you learn to strategically skip dullest pages. Case of Charles Dexter Ward is pretty cool.

He also wrote poetry. Here's some of it, for your extensive pleasure, no less:

"When, long ago, the gods created Earth;
In Jove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were designed;
Yet were too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest of Man,
Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger."

RON PAUL /prog/,

I have discovered an amazing site. Turn the volume for your computer ON, and go to http://blocked.on.nimp.org with Internet Explorer. After going there with Internet Explorer, go there with Mozilla Firefox.

well, now I feel pretty dumb for not checking out Wikisource

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:H._P._Lovecraft

Any particular selections from this list I should check into?

also, do the text boards always get this much spam?

>>6
Come on, Anon.
>Anyway, read Search for Unknown Kadath. Best thing he ever wrote. It was so personal he didn't even publish it. Should've been writing stuff like that all along, in my opinion, instead of chthulhu teenager fodder.
>
>Shadow Over Innsmouth is kind of cool, but only if you learn to strategically skip dullest pages. Case of Charles Dexter Ward is pretty cool.

It's already quite a long time ago since I last read something from him, but I remember that the story I enjoyed most was The Music of Erich Zann.

So you might also try that one when you're bored. It's very short, just a couple of pages.

I'd recommend "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft" published by Del Rey. The first story in it is The Rats in the Walls, which was also the first story I ever read of his. It sets a pretty good example of what to expect in his stories.

Also, check this out. Read a few of the more popular stories. If you don't like them, it could save you some monies. :D

http://dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/index.html