Is H.P. Lovecraft a good writer or a bad writer and why do you think so?

Rosewood

Rosewood

Member
What the title says, really. Is he a good writer or a bad writer? For the sake of the discussion we're setting aside his thinly veiled racism and anti-semitism and the like. Separating the art from the artist as it were.

I feel sort of split myself because there's good arguments for both sides.

So, let's hear it!
 
HP Lovecraft is a case of a man with interesting ideas who got obsessed with those ideas to the point that they became a crutch and, when considered objectively, are executed repetitiously to the point of self-parody. When you read enough of his stuff, especially within a relatively short amount of time, you see the same ideas and the same descriptions getting recycled. At some point, when he says something like, "a horror truly beyond description," your gut instinct is to say "how about you give it a shot, ol chum."

But yeah, arguably his most interesting story is about the time travelling aliens and the story about Herbert West. The rest of the body of work is pretty average. Even "Call of Cthulhu" is pretty average.
 
I think that's a fair assesment, he did have a tendency towards similar plots even when the stories themselves were radically different.

And I agree that Herbert West was a good story though I personally found Call of Cthulhu quite interesting, it's one of his longer stories and the build-up to Cthulhu's reveal was quite good though Cthulhu's appearance itself was a bit of a letdown ironically xD

Thanks for your post!
 
Oh there was this one incident where he was hired to ghost write a story about ghosts occupying some kind of Native American burial mound. Guess what happened with that project? I'll give you one guess.
 
I think his story writing is generally very good for the genre he's trying to create. His writing is functional without being dry. Sometimes his writing can feel a little vague in places, but creating uncertainty and dread is part of the mood he's trying to evoke in the reader. It's not commanding high vocabulary or brimming with nuance, but it's effective in trying to communicate the unimaginable and indescribable through the medium of words.
 
He was formulaic, yes, and the descriptions could be better, and give more for the imagination to play off of, but to call him a bad author would be wrong.
Once, I used to point towards his cultural impact as being evidence he was good, but I'm changing a bit on that position, because horrible bands like the beatles were massively influential and the backgrounds to the lackluster vocals could pass for elevator music, so I don't think that's fair to bring in.
 
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