/lit/ - Literature

>>19436322
>best story
None of them

>worst story
All of them

>most overrated work
All of them

>most underrated work
None of them

>personal favourite
None of them

>>19436322
at the mountains of madness
under the pyramids
From Beyond
Call of Cthulhu
On the creation of niggers

>>19436322
Is this the racist incel writer?

>>19436338
It's alright anon. Being homosexual isn't some dirty secret anymore. You can be comfortable with yourself these days.

>best
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
>worst
Probably one of his "comedy" stories that aren't funny, like Ibid or his retarded Samuel Johnson story. But from the actual canon mythos, probably Dreams in the Witch House. It's way below his standard.
>most overrated
At the Mountains of Madness
>most underrated
The Haunter in the Dark
>personal favorite
The Street because fuck leftists, it is 100% correct.

>>19436347
I actually don't remember the street at all.
Shitting on Witch house is bold but I get it, Brown Jenkin is a bizarre and cringey villain.

>>19436340
Call of cthulhu as underrated. That's probably his most well known work.

>>19436322
>Nethescurial
>The Frolick
>Conspiracy Against the Human Race
>the one that had Conspiracy Against the Human Race as a plot point
>Gas Station Carnival

>>19436359
The Street is the story about the street that is a utopia when it is ethnically homogeneous, but becomes a den of iniquity and a Sodom and Gomorrah when greasy Italians and brown people move in, and the Street comes alive and in order to preserve itself as a defense mechanism, all of the houses destroy themselves killing anyone that was inside.
It makes people seethe and it's not included in many modern compilations which is probably why you might not have read it.

>>19436370
>worst story
>The Frolick
Why?

>>19436347
What is the street and why is it a smack in the face of the left?

>>19436365
Fugg I meant From Beyond as underrated and CoC as overrated.

>>19436375
Holy fucking based. I have undoubtedly read it but ages ago maybe when I was a kid because I made my way through it all methodically. Never picked up on the undertones at the time as I was a run of the mill kid raised by liberal parents.

>>19436385
It's an allegory about how multicultural mutt societies are unnatural and don't work.

>The story traces the history of the titular street in a New England city, presumably Boston, from its first beginnings as "but a path" in colonial times to a quasi-supernatural occurrence in the years immediately following World War I. As the city grows up around the street, it is planted with many trees and built along with "simple, beautiful houses of brick and wood", each with a rose garden. As the Industrial Revolution runs its course, the area degenerates into a run-down and polluted slum, with all of the street's old houses falling into disrepair.

>After World War I and the October Revolution, the area becomes home to a community of Russian immigrants. Among the new residents is the leadership of a "vast band of terrorists," who are plotting the destruction of the United States on Independence Day. When the day arrives, the terrorists gather to do the deed, but before they can get started, all the houses in the street collapse concurrently on top of each other, killing them all. Observers at the scene testify that immediately after the collapse, they experienced visions of the trees and rose gardens that had once been in the street.

>>19436342
>>19436347
All this from an antiquated mummy who was on the other side until 1931! Well—I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today ... & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections. Flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with the humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well .... I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showings-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 ... only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snonbish, self-centered, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get out more around 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done ..... except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all. Here's hoping that Henneberger (quite a get-rich-quick Wallingford in his way) won't try to blacken me with the letter!

>>19436395
I always loved HP for his quirky racism and his description of "nautical looking negro" but this is some other level. Thanks anon.

>>19436370
>best story
>Nethescurial
If the best Ligotti story is a Lovecraft ripoff then you don't actually understand him.

All of Lovecraft's stories set in Kingsport are kino. They truly make you feel you are in a creaky old New England seaport where all the houses were built in the 1690s. It's a shame he only wrote like 5 stories set there though.

>>19436380
Not to say I didn't enjoy The Frolick, if I looked through Teatro Grottesco or Grimscribe I'd probably remember something that I could say was worse. For me I felt dissatisfied by how Ligotti went out of his way to obscure the crimes, it never bugged me after my first read but after a couple more it comes off as more annoying then suspenseful especially when the more I hear about actual real life criminals makes the list of possible human violations smaller and less viscerally terrifying. Right after it Les Fleurs demonstrates that you can keep the exact process of mutilation vauge while maintaining a sense of disgust and fear of the information you aren't told.
I know the real horror of The Frolick is in putting yourself in the position of a parent and I could appreciate it for that but I wanted a bit more than what I got.

>>19436424
Nethescurial is my favorite Ligotti story because it was the only piece of Lovecraftian fiction I've seen that connects to the real world and hit at my own feelings. The idea that there is something inherently terrible about existing is something that trickled through my brain for most of my life and that was the first story I read that actually gave it a sort of cosmic weight which I felt was appropriate for it.
Nethescurial isn't a good story because it's about spooky crab god. Nethescurial is a good story because it actually follows through with what it presents about an idea that infects everything in your life and refuses to leave. You can see that same idea echoed in Ligotti's works as a whole and that idea has genuinely been with countless people as they have taken their own life.

>>19436417
Oh yes he saw the light in his maturity. Realised the racism was due to a lack of knowledge about how poverty and history weighs down so heavily on the modern Brown and black man.

Gosh how clear it is all now. And nearly a century after his death that understanding is so mature and widespread that we have dedicated trillions in the West to putting it right. The result?... blacks live like animals and every multi racial society is collapsing or straining under the weight.

If only HPL could have made it to 86 and he might have returned to the wisdom of his youth.

>>19436322
>best story
Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
>worst story
Nyarlathotep and Azathoth
>most overrated work
IDK
>most underrated work
The Hound
>personal favourite
Dream Quest, Dagon, Doom That Came to Sarnath, Shadow out of time

just finished Shadows over Insmouth
lol, guy goes insane because he's great-grandmother was non-white

which other stories are worth it?

I really liked "The Silver Key" reading too much Lovecraft seriously made me depressed like he transferred some of his depressing energy to me, but The Silver Key was a bit different, first off the main character had some sort of political ideology which I assume was autobiographical and second it had a positive happy note to it. It seems like Lovecraft was really happy when he remembered his childhood and wished he could go back, there were positive vibes in the story.

Did his marriage affect his writing?

>>19436948
It worsened it, because Lovecraft's writing depended on a combination of hysterical xenophobia and chronic malnutrition

>>19436491
But it is too generic. I don't critique Ligotti's intent with it, but The Tsalal is a more powerful and original rendition if Ligotti's philosophy.

>>19436513
cope

I've only read "The Shadow out of Time". What else should I read?

>>19436613
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath also has a positive and hopeful tone towards the end

>>19437496
"In the mountains of madness"
It's extremely kino

>>19437522
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHxuWBzBbpw

>>19436338
Nigger!

>>19437522
Thank you, added it

>>19437623
>FB_IMG

>>19436322
>best story
The Colour out of Space

>worst story
The Evil Clergyman, boring as hell

>most overrated work
Dagon, it's in a lot of anthologies but it's amateurish and dull

>most underrated work
Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. I say underrated because the Cthulhu cycle gets far more attention than the dream cycle and I think the latter is superior

>personal favourite
The Haunter of the Dark, his most atmospheric story for me, the only one that I actually found scary instead of just entertaining

>>19437496
Whisperer in darkness
Haunter in the dark
Innsmouth
Hound
Outsider

>>19437722
Can confirm on Evil Clergyman. Just listen to an audio version and literally cannot remember it. It was like an hour ago.

Dragon is very foundational though. It is a simple tale of an encounter and the implications. It is not as baroque as the nameless city or sarnath etc. Is it not an early story?

As for the dream cycle... literally everyone here says this. I honestly do not see it that much. All the "city of el and city of nib sankninto the jewelled desert and the wizard of narr did scrawl mighty manuscripts in those cities and..." gets really tiresome. I like the "ordinary" stories of little protestant towns being beset by an evil and an academic delving into a tomb. That is why I love whisperer in darkness so much. What makes the dream cycle appeal to you?

>>19436513
>every multi racial society is (headcanon)

Innsmouth
Red Hook
Call of Cthulhu
Dreamquest
Whisperers in the Darkness

Polaris is his best work

>>19436470
It's written in a more "normal" conventional way because he thought he wouldn't get published otherwise, a few of his other early stories are the same way.

>>19438557
Kek find me the liberal utopia that has large portions of its population from dramatically different backgrounds.

Don't recall the name, but my favorite was the story about the violin player at the top of an apartment building.

>>19439342
The music of Erich Zahn

Anyone have a pdf of Zero HP Lovecraft's book? It's not on libgen

>>19439383
Zero?

>>19436322
>best story
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
>worst story
The Tree
>most overrated work
Whilst Shadow Over Innsmouth also fits this fairly well; Call of Cthulhu is easily the most wanked over undeservedly.
>most underrated work
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
>personal favourite
What The Moon Brings

>>19436322
>the whisperer in darkness
>herbert west or the street
>shadow over innsmouth
>celephaïs
>the dreams in the witch house

>>19439626

>The Street is his worst
Found the degenerate rootless cosmopolitan.

>>19436322

I inexplicably enjoyed the Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

>>19439423

Some RW twitter e-celeb

>>19439725
I literally just think it's his worst constructed story. Unlike He, his hateboner for the city supersedes any actual literary merit here. The fact you are unable to see this only tells me you prioritize politics over actual literature.

>>19436612
You'd probably like "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family"
It's along those same lines, only less subtle

>>19439754
Why inexplicably? I remember it not being so bad except some huge exposition dump about a family history that was a bit much?

>>19437496
rats in the walls and the colour out of space

*gigachad.jpg*
Rats In the Walls is Lovecraft at his best.

>>19436322
You guys convinced me to read him. I'm gonna go on a binge tonight.

>>19442016
>>19442016
Nice one lad. Enjoy :)

>>19436338
Omg the edge

>>19436421
same
he is truly our boy
next time you find a leftist talking about anything related to Lovecraft like "Bloodborne" or "In the Mouth of Madness" tell him: so you're racist
then pay attention to his face very closely