Comments on: Lovecraft Does Alger: Capitalism, Terror, & Bears http://chronolect.com/archives/825 writes, reads history, listens to hip hop, never gets enough sleep Fri, 18 May 2012 10:58:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: David Wiggin http://chronolect.com/archives/825#comment-1314 David Wiggin Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:08:39 +0000 http://chronolect.com/?p=825#comment-1314 Been grooving on the Lovecraft bits of postage lately. Completely agree w/all of it. Love him or hate him (and there's plenty to love AND hate) the guy wrote what he wrote with no apologies and no one's been able to do what he did quite the same way. The only Lovecraft-fanboy pastiche I've read that didn't seem like a fail was Borges'- and even that was just aiight. Guy also doesn't get enough respect for being a red-blooded AMERICAN fantasy writer. Unlike Poe or Blackwood, his stories almost exclusively take place in the US. Lovecraft's New England is a dark, tangled, ancient, and inbred place in an entirely different way from the crumbling castles and impenetrable forests of the Old World. "Pickman's Model" (in addition to being a generally awesome story) is an intimately tied to it's Boston-ness. "The Horror at Red Hook" and "Cool Air" are early 20th century New York stories. USA! USA! Whoo! Been grooving on the Lovecraft bits of postage lately. Completely agree w/all of it. Love him or hate him (and there’s plenty to love AND hate) the guy wrote what he wrote with no apologies and no one’s been able to do what he did quite the same way. The only Lovecraft-fanboy pastiche I’ve read that didn’t seem like a fail was Borges’- and even that was just aiight.

Guy also doesn’t get enough respect for being a red-blooded AMERICAN fantasy writer. Unlike Poe or Blackwood, his stories almost exclusively take place in the US. Lovecraft’s New England is a dark, tangled, ancient, and inbred place in an entirely different way from the crumbling castles and impenetrable forests of the Old World. “Pickman’s Model” (in addition to being a generally awesome story) is an intimately tied to it’s Boston-ness. “The Horror at Red Hook” and “Cool Air” are early 20th century New York stories. USA! USA! Whoo!

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