I would counter by arguing that some of his best works are the stories of the Dreamlands. Start with the parable the “The Cats of Ulthar” (and read it aloud to someone else), continue to the poetic and sing-song “Celaphais” (again, best read aloud), and then on to the great “Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” These stories are great for their sort of structure-less meandering and moments of vivid description. The stories are more about the sensory experience than a twist or a moment of discovery or realization. (I think I’ve read all of his stories and I go back to these three regularly.)
See, I thought someone would say this, and I had already written and deleted a disclaimer that “many people would recommend the Dream Cycle, but I’m personally not a huge fan...”
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is my favourite Lovecraft story.
There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic Ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
I would counter by arguing that some of his best works are the stories of the Dreamlands. Start with the parable the “The Cats of Ulthar” (and read it aloud to someone else), continue to the poetic and sing-song “Celaphais” (again, best read aloud), and then on to the great “Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” These stories are great for their sort of structure-less meandering and moments of vivid description. The stories are more about the sensory experience than a twist or a moment of discovery or realization. (I think I’ve read all of his stories and I go back to these three regularly.)
See, I thought someone would say this, and I had already written and deleted a disclaimer that “many people would recommend the Dream Cycle, but I’m personally not a huge fan...”
Clearly I should’ve left it in!
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is my favourite Lovecraft story.