Lovecraft's love of Dunsany prevented Lovecraft from finding his own style (which I think he has near the end of his creative period). He really has things under control by the time he produces the stuff he did after he and Sonja divorced. The stuff Lovecraft did in imitation of Dunsany wasn't *bad*, it was just just a very slavish attempt to write like someone who was a better writer than Lovecraft was, and so the seams show painfully clearly.
Many people tend to fixate on Lovecraft's early xenophobia, anti-Semitism and racism, but by the time he was single again, he had gotten past a lot of that. He was, as poor an excuse as this is now but probably more fair in teh long run, a creature of his times. If, by any chance, you're looking for a good, sympathetic biography of Lovecraft, I direct you to ST Joshi's recent book before you look at the hatchet job put together by L Sprague DeCamp in the early 1970s.
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Date: 2007-12-28 02:33 am (UTC)Lovecraft's love of Dunsany prevented Lovecraft from finding his own style (which I think he has near the end of his creative period). He really has things under control by the time he produces the stuff he did after he and Sonja divorced. The stuff Lovecraft did in imitation of Dunsany wasn't *bad*, it was just just a very slavish attempt to write like someone who was a better writer than Lovecraft was, and so the seams show painfully clearly.
Many people tend to fixate on Lovecraft's early xenophobia, anti-Semitism and racism, but by the time he was single again, he had gotten past a lot of that. He was, as poor an excuse as this is now but probably more fair in teh long run, a creature of his times. If, by any chance, you're looking for a good, sympathetic biography of Lovecraft, I direct you to ST Joshi's recent book before you look at the hatchet job put together by L Sprague DeCamp in the early 1970s.