NP but Ursula Le Guin on the Unreadable HP Lovecraft.

[Mark Thibodeau]

I can't believe I'm about to wade into this, but here goes...

Lovecraft's writing? I'm a fan. I'm also a fan of Herman Melville, Tolstoy,
Kafka, James Joyce, Dos Passos, William Burroughs, Bowles, Maugham, TS
Eliot, Ezra Pound, Beckett, Nabokov, Borges, Marquez, Ballard, Phillip K.
Dick, William Gass, Cormac McCarthy, Lee & Kirby, Alice Munro, Ramsey
Campbell, Don Delillo, Alan Moore, Houellebecq, George Saunders, Otessa
Mossfegh, and (of course) Thomas Pynchon, not to mention so many more that
I'm leaving out, either due to brain fog or time/space constraints.

Because, you see, old HP was quite capable of producing lovely prose. See
"The Colour Out of Space" for probably his most superbly "literary"
creation... the opening paragraphs alone being magnificently evocative of
ancient and autumnal New England that one feels transported to the forests
primeval of Wordsworth's paradisiacal Acadia in "Evangeline". He was also
adept at evoking some truly effective moments of otherworldly fright. On
more than one occasion, his words have "got" me.

Just as a for instance, read the LeGuinn "critique", then read the first
three paragraphs of Colour:

...

West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods
that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope
fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught
the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and
rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New
England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now,
the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously
beneath low gambrel roofs.
The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there.
French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have
come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard
or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not
good for the imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It
must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ammi Pierce has never
told them of anything he recalls from the strange days. Ammi, whose head
has been a little queer for years, is the only one who still remains, or
who ever talks of the strange days; and he dares to do this because his
house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads around Arkham.
There was once a road over the hills and through the valleys, that ran
straight where the blasted heath is now; but people ceased to use it and a
new road was laid curving far toward the south. Traces of the old one can
still be found amidst the weeds of a returning wilderness, and some of them
will doubtless linger even when half the hollows are flooded for the new
reservoir. Then the dark woods will be cut down and the blasted heath will
slumber far below blue waters whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple
in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep’s
secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of
primal earth.

...

Be honest now... Is that really the WORST writing you've ever read? Does it
not draw you in, just the teensiest bit?

Cheers!
yer old pal Jerky


On Tue, Jun 7, 2022 at 8:44 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Obviously you must know you are asking us all to jump into a bottomless
> rabbit hole.
>
> Is “See Dick run!” good writing?
>
> David Morris
>
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2022 at 7:41 AM Darah Kehnemuyi via Pynchon-l <
> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>
> >  I find this interesting. And so I'd like to ask, with a language as
> > malleable and fluid as English, and putting aside outright illiteracy,
> what
> > constitutes "good writing"?   Do you know it when you see it ?  Do your
> > expectations bias your opinions?Aye, Twas brillig and the slithey toves
> > ...                  D.
> >     On Tuesday, June 7, 2022, 05:54:34 AM EDT, Mark Kohut <
> > mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159779989456465&set=a.10150369514816465
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>