... writing by writing almost exclusively in the passive voice. His prose is swollen with adjectives (quite the opposite of Hemingway's style), and his "horror" seems terribly childish at times
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According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft – as with Edgar Allan Poe in the 19th century – has exerted "an incalculable influence on succeeding generations of writers of horror fiction". Horror, fantasy, and science fiction author Stephen King called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." King has made it clear in his semi-autobiographical non-fiction book Danse Macabre that Lovecraft was responsible for King's own fascination with horror and the macabre, and was the single largest figure to influence his fiction writing.
Lovecraft's writing, particularly the so-called Cthulhu Mythos, has influenced fiction authors including modern horror and fantasy writers such as Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Bentley Little, Joe R. Lansdale, Alan Moore, Junji Ito, F. Paul Wilson, Brian Lumley, Caitlín R. Kiernan, William S. Burroughs, and Neil Gaiman, have cited Lovecraft as one of their primary influences. Beyond direct adaptation, Lovecraft and his stories have had a profound impact on popular culture. Some influence was direct, as he was a friend, inspiration, and correspondent to many of his contemporaries, such as August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber. Many later figures were influenced by Lovecraft's works, including author and artist Clive Barker, prolific horror writer Stephen King, comics writers Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Mike Mignola, film directors John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, Guillermo Del Toro and artist H. R. Giger. Japan has also been significantly inspired and terrified by Lovecraft's creations and thus even entered the manga and anime media.
Early efforts to revise an established literary view of Lovecraft as an author of 'pulp' were resisted by some eminent critics; in 1945 Edmund Wilson expressed the opinion that "the only real horror in most of these fictions is the horror of bad taste and bad art". But "Mystery and Adventure" columnist Will Cuppy of the New York Herald Tribune recommended to readers a volume of Lovecraft's stories, asserting that "the literature of horror and macabre fantasy belongs with mystery in its broader sense." In 2005 the status of classic American writer conferred by a Library of America edition was accorded to Lovecraft with the publication of Tales, a collection of his weird fiction stories.
According to scholar S. T Joshi: "There is never an entity in Lovecraft that is not in some fashion material". Graham Harman said that the leading figures at the initial speculative realism conference were astounded to discover that though they shared no philosophical heroes, all were enthusiastic readers of Lovecraft. Seeing Lovecraft as having a unique—though implicit—anti-reductionalist ontology, Harman says "No other writer is so perplexed by the gap between objects and the power of language to describe them, or between objects and the qualities they possess."
Perhaps you just don't "get" Lovecraft....
Many thanks for your comment. I'd like to know what an anti-reductionist ontology is. I know he had a big influence, but I was surprised to find that John Carpenter was inspired by him.
I've seen three movies based on his stories. The first was a black and white movie about finding Chtulu on an island. That was decent. I also liked the Dunwhich Horror and the tale about the tourists stranded in a strange coastal town where everyone had gills. I've read nearly half his collected works. His so-called horror tale about cats left me snoring, as well as his indescribable encounters with mysterious symbols. The New England fungus story also bored me. I must say his story about discovering himself as a ghoul is true horror.
Vivid he isn't. He uses very little dialog. To my mind he makes little use of suspense. When not writing in the first person, his characters are poorly defined.This is a problem for all who write short stories, but I think he failed.
Perhaps if he hadn't written for magazines paying him by the word, his prose would have been less turgid.
Again, thanks for your literate comment.