Lovecraft: A Look Behind The Cthulhu Mythos - Criticism

Criticism

Carter writes as a fan of Lovecraft, but not uncritically. Surveying Lovecraft's work, he says:

He has no ability at all for creating character, or for writing dialogue. His prose is stilted, artificial, affected. It is also very overwritten, verbose, and swimming in adjectives. His plotting is frequently mechanical, and his major stylistic device, which becomes tiresome, is the simple trick of withholding the final revelation until the terminal sentence--and then printing it in italics, presumably for maximum shock value.

Carter frequently excoriates Lovecraft for his lack of professionalism, and bluntly condemns what he finds to be Lovecraft's racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism:

is loathing of "Jews and foreigners" was something more than merely the snobbery of one of "pure" English descent, soured by the provincialism of his Rhode Island background. It was, I suppose, nearly if not actually pathological.

Read more about this topic:  Lovecraft: A Look Behind The Cthulhu Mythos

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