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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2819 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 14, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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With all the shoggoth talk nowadays, I finally got around to reading (listening to) At the Mountains of Madness. There were definitely some good parts, but it kind of dragged in the middle. You probably couldn't cut it down as short as The Call of Cthulhu (the only other Lovecraft I've read), but this should have been a two-and-a-half hour audiobook instead of a four-and-a-half hour audiobook. One thing I haven't seen remarked upon is that the shoggoths were created by the Elder Things to facilitate construction and economic growth before they became too powerful to control, making the metaphor quite apt.

HPL's poetry is much less remembered than his prose, but I like much of it. Astrophobos in particular strikes a chord in me I can't quite describe.

I'm going to repeat my take that when you think of the great authors who more or less founded genres, the giants of the field, Lovecraft is remarkable for being the worst writer in the category. But he does belong in the category, he really did found a distinct genre that has been massively influential. But compare him to Poe, Tolkien, Wells, Homer, Austen, Foster Wallace, Joyce and other category defining writers and he comes up not just short but pathetically so. The closest I can get to a writer who was so bad at his craft but so influential would be De Sade, and the Divine Marquis at least wrote in a less accessible, more difficult genre and era.

What are better writers in the same category though? I've heard a few names, like August Derleth, but apparently nobody reads them at all (including me).

And Lovecraft isn't that bad of a writer anyways, IMO. I've read everything he has written, twice, and enjoyed it. The only really bad story was https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Medusa%27s_Coil which is so hilariously racist it's good actually!

O, that reminded me, if you want to read something really REALLY bad, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lair_of_the_White_Worm by Bram Stoker after he suffered a couple of strokes apparently. Words can't do it justice.

the Divine Marquis

Oh, you're being ironic, right.

As a nonbeliever who has always been repulsed by the entire concept, I've nevertheless read enough to believe he seemed to have leaned extremely hard toward being the exact opposite of that.

It's actually a fairly common nickname for him among a certain subset of writers/thinkers who considered his philosophy fascinating.

I do think he falls under a similar category as Machiavelli, where the surface level of his writings reflect a morality that is disgusting, while the philosophy that underlies it is somewhat more interesting.

Machiavelli's writings are amoral, but not self-induldgent porn. Concerned with useful knowledge of how things are, what works, and concerned with the public good (secure, well ran states).

De Sade, from what I gather was a somewhat psychopathic sadomasochist hedonist who couldn't stay on the right side of law despite being an aristocrat and having unlimited funds to bribe people with , and whose pornographic novels were rendered worse by included elaborate rationalisations explaining how morality is meaningless so he can really do whatever he wants.

I really don't understand why Napoleon didn't have him hanged for the sodomy and rape charges that resulted in de Sade having to run away to Italy. Maybe he thought prison was more cruel, that's up for debate.

Supposedly, he showed some value by satirising the cretins of the enlightenment, chiefly Rousseau, but that doesn't redeem him one bit in my eyes.

What about De Sade may anybody find fascinating? He's not a good writer and his books are calcavades of whatever indecent actions he can think of. You'd have a similar product if you'd asked a rambunctious teenager to write "the naughtiest story ever."

If you like Lovecraft's general vibe, I strongly recommend The Rats in the Walls, which is both short enough to be read in one sitting and more purely frightening than anything else I've read by him (and I've read a lot).

It's a shame that's the one with the unnameable cat, because it's harder to promote it more broadly.

At the Mountains of Madness is probably to the Cthulhu fanbase as the Extended Directors Cuts are to the Lord of the Rings movie fanbase. Yeah, some other Lovecraft stories were better edited, suggestive-by-subtraction, and well-paced jewels of horror (Innsmouth or Call). But at a certain point you're a super-fan and want a buffet.

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