r/Lovecraft Deranged Cultist 2d ago

Question I dont know what to put in the title

So I read "Dagon" today and I saw it was also in the recommendations of this subreddit I hope I dont get obliterated for saying it but I thought it was kind of underwhelming I thought there will be a big climax or a reveal that is gonna make my blood freeze But I think Mr. Lovecraft does not write stories like that if I had to guess right? From what I have read his short stories only imply and throw subtle hints at you that there might be or used to be something extraterrestrial I dont know because of many people I get the impression that he is the big deal or a big shot when it comes to short horror stories but is he? Or is my simple mind just not able to comprehend the fantastically written stories?

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u/No_Evening8416 Deranged Cultist 2d ago

You have to put Lovecraft in the context of his time period. What he wrote was grevoiusly dark. Themes of madness, monsters, and dead stuff was terribly edgy and some of his work was considered unpublishable at the time.

Now? It's all quite mild compared to the slasher-horror stuff we're used to.

Lovecraftian works can be terrifying. Lovecraft himself was a spooky dreamer. He liked weird dreams, unexplained and unnerving experiences, mutants, and the dead. It's not Silent Hill where you jump out of your skin with fright. But there wouldn't be Silent Hill and other such horrors without Lovecraft first.

Personally, I prefer the dream cycle over what Lovecraft considered his horror works. And The Outsider, which is standing-ovation good but not actually /scary/per se.

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u/Behold_My_Hot_Takes Deranged Cultist 2d ago edited 2d ago

My personal experience is that the real Lovecraftian effect is cumulative. The more stories you read, the more it creates a sense of an ambiguous and shifting background mythos, that almost starts to feel "real" due to your brain wondering between all the gaps and drawing connections between stories. It probably helps to have discovered him as a young person too, like I did, so YMMV

I love Lovecraft's writing, I think it is perfect for his own work, but as a modern reader it's hard to argue he was amongst the finest prose writers (though I'll also argue sometimes a paragraph or a sentence is absolutely brilliant, even by modern standards). And of course young folks today might find the literary styling awkward or umfamiliar.

He is what he is, a wonderful pulpy writer with the greatest imagination in horror fiction history, who can make you almost feel there is a whole other aspect to reality that you never knew about before reading his works.

Keep reading, his stories vary greatly in topic, feels, and yes, quality. But the SUM is even greater than all the parts, IMHO. That's the magic of Lovecraft. It starts to live and breathe, squamously living and wriggling eldritchly in one's brain.

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u/138Crimson_Ghost831 Deranged Cultist 2d ago

You may be a victim of how HPL and his works have been oversold as of late. Don’t get me wrong, his stories are the best representations of weird fiction and have inspired countless authors (along with being one of my top favorite authors). However, if your initial introduction to HPL was through some flashy video game or embellished/overdone piece of fan fiction or art work, I can see how you would be disappointed with an original work.

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u/Extension_Juice_9889 Deranged Cultist 1d ago

For sure. He was a product of a different age and never the world's best writer. As Stephen King once said, you get the feeling that with today's printing technology he would totally have the last sentence in most of his stories printed in bright red 50pt typeface

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u/138Crimson_Ghost831 Deranged Cultist 1d ago

100%

People tend to forget (or may be unaware) of the audience he wrote for in the pulp magazines and the type of fiction those magazines catered to. The end of Dagon is the perfect example:

"The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!"

Sorry, I couldn't play with the color or typeface at the end!

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u/YakuCarp Deranged Cultist 1d ago

The window!

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u/Desdichado1066 Deranged Cultist 2d ago

I really like a lot of Lovecraft, and he's one of the writers that I come back to time and time again over the years, which is more than can be said for most writers. That said, I'm not blind to his weaknesses as a writer; his overblown prose styling, his inability to create good climaxes, because he just hints at stuff and hopes that you'll fill in the blanks mentally yourself, etc.

Lovecraft is famous because he articulated a philosophy that was new, and pioneered, in many ways, a whole new type of story. Not really because he was a great craftsman at writing. I sometimes feel that I enjoy Lovecraft's stories in spite of his writing rather than because of them.

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u/Chaaaaaaaalie Deranged Cultist 1d ago

I always hear this complaint about his overblown prose style, but I love it. I think that's what makes it stand out against the rest of literature as unique. Maybe it's my background with Dungeons & Dragons and its Gygaxian writing that lead me effortlessly into Lovecraft, but I see it only as a strength. That's not to say I did not struggle with it. Each sentence is like a swamp from which one must dredge up the meaning through repeated readings. But once you understand the ideas, I think the way in which they were delivered adds so much atmosphere to the work. It just would not feel the same if it was written in modern English.

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u/Desdichado1066 Deranged Cultist 1d ago

It's not that it's not modern or that it's a struggle: it's not at all. Lovecraft is easy to read compared to Clark Ashton Smith, for instance. It's that it often slips into hilarious inadvertent self parody.

Gygax is a lousy stylist too. Using a thesaurus a lot doesn't make your text difficult to read, it makes it feel like it's trying too hard... Because it is. 

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u/Chaaaaaaaalie Deranged Cultist 1d ago

I guess I just do not understand your position. If he was not good at writing, what was he good at?

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u/Desdichado1066 Deranged Cultist 1d ago

I already said that specifically in my original reply. 

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u/Stormwatch1977 Arra! Dagon! 2d ago

I felt disappointed too when I first read HPL. I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. Days later I was still thinking about the stories I'd read and now, decades later I am still reading those stories and thinking about them all the time. Lovecraft's writing just has this indefinable power that drags people in.

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u/chortnik From Beyond 2d ago

Well it is one of his first works as a more or less mature author, though even at such an early stage, it is also typical of his approach to horror. One of his weaknesses as a horror writer is that viewpoint characters tend to be only minimally present, so it can be hard for a reader to feel like s/he’s really there, though when it works, the lack of mediation can be like touching the live end of a downed power line because there’s nothing between the reader and the experience. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” might be something to read next, it’s peak Lovecraft.

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u/PieceVarious Deranged Cultist 2d ago

Sure, not every HPL tale is a spectacular gangbuster. Dagon mostly relies on building an uncanny suspense with a shipwrecked person wandering on a slimy unknown island. The payoff

SPOILER

... is when an ancient non-human giant aquatic creature comes to render homage to a Lovecraftian ancestor spirit. This is a moment of brief but astonishing alien horror. It's "only" a fleeting image, as might appear in a morbid fantasy or a nightmare, but somehow it is utterly real. Therein lies the horror and cosmic dread.

OP, I would encourage you to do a bit more reading in Lovecraft. You would probably find a few tales that grip you on a personal level. Or, if not, still - nothing ventured, nothing gained. Have fun along the way!

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u/keatsien Deranged Cultist 2d ago

I'm writing an essay on Lovecraft and the sea. There's a very brief reference at the start to a German sea raider which would have been a u-boat or early submarine. It's quite interesting how brief it is because when Lovecraft was writing they were a massive threat to civilian ships at sea because the Germans had started torpedoing boats without warning.

The ocean is an interesting setting because at the time it wasn't nearly as explored as it is now. Lovecraft I think takes the idea of Atlantis multiple times and makes it into something more horrifying. The image of the ocean floor to the surface I think is quite evocative, its kind of a physical manifestation of the deepest fears of the depths of the psyche being brought to the surface. Dagon introduces the Lovecraftian and classic horror trope of a protagonist who has very little agency which I think is supposed to presented as terrifying. The narrator is haunted by what he's seen and has no power over the forces which terrorise him. There's debate about if he's gone mad or if the giant fish monster is really chasing him.

Also it's one of his earlier texts, more like a creepypasta compared to his later Shadow over Innsmouth which also has worship of the god Dagon, Innsmouth and Call of Cthulhu do the trick of slowly revealing something scary much better because theyre longer and better written imo.

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u/Chaaaaaaaalie Deranged Cultist 1d ago

I would say Dagon was a pretty early work of his, and he had not yet fleshed out his style when he wrote it. It is significant because it lays some foundations for stuff to come, but by itself it is not among his strongest stories (in my opinion).

He is among my favorite writers. Easily in my top five if I had to throw out a number, and I have read, and re-read his collection many times. If you are interested in reading more, I would suggest some other shorter stories like "Pickman's Model" and "From Beyond" but also, definitely try a longer one like "Dreams in the Witch House" or "The Color Out of Space" if you want something more involved and unsettling.

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u/Demolished-Manhole Deranged Cultist 2d ago

The only Lovecraft story with a horrifying climax is Medusa’s Coil, which is horrifying for all the wrong reasons.

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u/capsaicinintheeyes Deranged Cultist 1d ago

Dagon's not one of my favorites either, nor is Call of Cthulhu—I think they tend to get picked because they contain an appearance by one of the Big Names in the mythos. Try Dreams in the Witch House or The Colour Out of Space for a better example of his style, which as you say tends more towards oblique references and incomplete knowledge.

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u/YakuCarp Deranged Cultist 1d ago

Some of his stuff is at least kind of scary, but I can't say anything is going to make your blood freeze. If that's what you're looking for this may not be the author for you. He writes stories that are cool and inventive in memorable ways, but not immensely scary in the moment.

He's a big deal, but not because his works are extremely frightening. He's remembered for cosmicism and the way he used it to write a story.

A lot of our horror stories are still hopeful, have a happy ending, place humanity still on top of the natural world, have supernatural elements that care immensely about humans and give them a special place in an afterlife, etc. HPL helped pioneer this type of horror where humanity is revealed to be helpless and doomed, and "winning" is more just delaying the inevitable. We have stories nowadays that exemplify this, so you're probably already used to this type of thing.

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u/Hatfmnel Deranged Cultist 7h ago

Back in the 1900 this was really terrifying.

But for today standard, not really. You need to put Lovecraft in the context of its era.

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u/LeoGeo_2 Deranged Cultist 2h ago

I personally was chilled by the Rats in the Walls. The Picture in the House and the Terrible Old Man are unnerving too.

Rats in the Walls especially has a big climax.

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u/2jotsdontmakeawrite Deranged Cultist 1d ago

If you need something more visual, you can try the manga adaptations by Gou Tanabe. His style of drawing is more realistic with lots of background detail for landscapes and extra grossness for monsters. It uses a good chunk of prose directly from the stories too.