I think Lovecraft was pretty decent at describing the horrors in his books. It was more like “they saw something that the human mind was unable to process” or stuff like that.
Great meme though :)
Yeah that’s what I thought too. The horrors are described well, they just typically don’t get described through their physical form. As you say, because the human mind cannot comprehend it. There is a lot more focus on impressions, comparisons, and effects, rather than on a real physical description. Personally I thought it was quite neat!
Yeah, its more about how it twists the human mind and the reaction of those involved or influenced.
Yes and also, people’s reaction to the horror of often what gives it its punch. Like how the shark in jaws or even the alien in Alien are both good designs, but the actual reason they’re so scary is because of how all the characters around them react to them.
Exactly. Horror writers are tasked with making the next person who reads the page feel horrified. But what horrifies a person is very individual. But showing that the thing creates fear in whoever experiences it, actually succeeds in conveying what’s intended: fear itself.
His mental constitution must not have been very high for his mind to be shattered upon seeing a checks notes Jewish person.
And he was married to a Jewish woman. So if you think “wife bad” boomer humor is bad, hoo boy…
The idea of Italians befouling the hamlets of New England with their swarthy presence and animalistic hand gestures gave him conniptions.
I’ve been listening to Lovecraft audiobooks and at no point he mentions Jewish people in any of his work. His racism and hate was very blatant towards black people, native American and foreigners, especially of Asian origins. In one of his stories, he explicitly attack kurds, black and Chinese people all at once.
I genuinely want to know where people got the info that he hated jews. I mean, it’s not like it’s something Lovecraft wouldn’t do, but what perplex me is his hate for Jewish people is often the only thing people mention, while his hate for black and Asian people was so much more explicit in his work.
I genuinely want to know where people got the info that he hated jews
Read his biography and the letters he wrote outside of his fiction. He has several antisemitic rants in personal letters he had written.
I always hated Reanimator because it was one of the few times he actually described a black man and it was awful lol
Dude was afraid of basically everyone that wasn’t Northeastern White, his life history makes it sorta understandable, he barely liked being around people at all it seems
‘Indescribable horrors’ when I say they just look like a big squid man.
That very same vagueness works to great effect in Harlan Ellison’s short story “How’s The Nightlife On Cissalda?”, like so, the very first sentence:
“When they unscrewed the time capsule, preparatory to helping temponaut Enoch Mirren to disembark, they found him doing a disgusting thing with a disgusting thing.”
My idea of “unspeakable horror” contracted significantly after learning of the Daemonculaba. Don’t look it up.
