I've been working my ass off lately, writing articles and reviews for the magazine of the Finnish Western Society, Ruudinsavu (= Gunsmoke), getting some of my future books together (been working on several projects on Finnish history and the history of misanthropic thought - not much pulpish content here), translating Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature... He's an awful writer, you know? I think there must be more, but I keep forgetting. None of these bring much money, I'm sad to say. I keep reviewing some books from time to time, but for some reason or another they always end up on the boring side - the most recent example being a new thriller by Finnish writer Max Manner, which I barely managed through.
I'll try to work up some decent blog posts in the near future.
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5 comments:
Yes. I've never been afraid to note just how awful a writer Lovecraft was as a handler of words. Even Robert Bloch, more than anyone else except for his colleague Fritz Leiber a direct acolyte who took what Lovecraft did and (soon) improved upon it enormously not least by writing about similar matters in good or better prose, seems a bit more defensive than speaking his measured judgment when noting that Lovecraft was reaching for heightened effects with his prose, hence the clumsy over-the-topness of so much of it...it was clear to me from childhood reading on that he was attempting, and failing, to channel Poe...and it didn't always work for Poe.
Now, that's a sentence worthy of Lovecraft! :D
Now, that's not polite, Juri. And my sentence doesn't once use the term "indescribable" nor the clause "I cannot bring myself to detail the ghastly vision before me" nor close approximations. And Lovecraft's prose in "Supernatural Horror" is better than that of most of his fiction.
But there are dark intimations and prosaic angularity of your grim and brooding blog post comment that has been previously known only to catachtonic Anglo-Saxon race.
I can only reach forward and TOUCH THE POLISHED GLASS!
Yeah, the comic book folks took a few stylistic hints there.
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