On a whim I recently reread three classic H. P. Lovecraft stories, Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Granted, these aren't my favorite Lovecraft stories (those would be The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath, At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) but they are considered three of the foundations of the entire Cthulhu Mythos idea.
Rereading those three stories cemented in me the idea that Lovecraft has some good ideas from time to time... but he was a singularly untalented writer. His prose is belabored and clunky, his dialogue is terrible, his characters are wooden and flat, and there's little tension in them. His "nameless horrors" are an example of "extreme cop-out"---more horrible than words can describe being a phrase he paraphrases frequently.
Still, for some reason that I can't quite explain, I keep turning back to Lovecraft. What is it that draws me back to stories that always leave me unsatisfied; that make me say, "boy I wish someone else would run with this idea" or even "I wish someone else would insert a different idea in this story?"
I don't know. But now I'm tempted to turn to The Colour Out of Space or even The Whisperer in Darkness even so...
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