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http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2013/08/30/cthulhu-fhtagn-in-defense-of-h-p-lovecraft-george-r-r-martin-and-other-bad-writers/
[font size=5]Cthulhu fhtagn: In Defense of H.P. Lovecraft, George R.R. Martin, and Other Bad Writers[/font]
Peter Damien did notice that Lovecraft would have turned 123 this year. He wonders why anyone cares:
Because the fact is…he was a godawful writer. He was so bad. I really cannot stress this enough. I’m aware that the quality of a writer’s fiction is very much a matter of personal taste and not objective (and those people who mistakenly believe it is objective and matches up to their own tastes are always wrong). Still, I think we can safely agree that he was really awful as a writer, given that even people who are fans of Lovecraft don’t seem to defend his writing very much. ....
Yet Damien’s definition of good writing is too narrow. He argues that Lovecraft’s “ideas were themselves amazing things. It’s just that Lovecraft lacked the capability to do anything useful with them himself.” If that were simply true, however, no one would read Lovecraft–or remember anything that he wrote. Lovecraft was a terrible crafter of sentences and had a rather distinctly brute-force approach to exposition. Despite these shortcomings, the fictional universe he created is unforgettable, right down to the ludicrous pseudo-languages he invented for his various creations.
Lovecraft’s profound influence as a creator of worlds suggests that he was a better writer, in the crucial sense of articulating and communicating his ideas, than his more technically accomplished competitors. To criticize his stilted dialogue or Gothic affectations is to miss the point. Clumsy as he is, Lovecraft is remarkably good not only at transporting his readers to places that don’t exist, but at bringing them back with mementos from the journey. What more can we ask of a writer in the overlapping group of genres that includes SF, horror, and fantasy?
Lovecraft has a recent counterpart in George R.R. Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones series. Like Lovecraft, although in a rather different style, Martin writes terrible sentences. But he has other virtues, particularly the ability to balance and pace dozens of parallel storylines and viewpoints.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Purple_Prose
[font size=5]Purple Prose[/font]
is an overly descriptive form of writing commonly used by amateur authors, fan-fiction writers, owners of thesauruses, and H.P Lovecraft. Unlike other elaborate prose, Purple prose is so extravagantly exuberant that it utterly destroys any trace of coherence and floods the writing with enough pretentiousness to simultaneously cream the pants of a hundred aristocrats. The "writing" technique is mostly used to pad out the length of literary works, and/or to mislead readers into believing the work has any sort of quality; the few people who do use Purple Prose as a genuine means of writing are, to quote the minds of most readers of Purple Prose, "babbling nincompoops". Many experts, such as the esteemed professor of English Robert A. Ferret, believe that Purple Prose is the literary form of Gobbledygook, but this comparison is unwarranted: while Gobbledygook simply muddles the English language, confusing most readers, Purple Prose assaults the English language, forcibly removing all that is good in it, until it's changed to a strange, hideous form that allows "life fluid" and "blood" to be synonyms.
The term Purple Prose was created by the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, who compared it to sewing patches of purple cloth onto clothing, as purple dye was highly expensive; therefore, having purple-dyed clothing was a convenient, if not overly tacky, sign of great wealth. To quote him, he states in the timeless Ars Poetica: "If you can realistically render a cypress tree, would you include one when commissioned to paint a sailor in the midst of a shipwreck?" Truly a poetic smart arse. ....
... H.P Lovecraft's horrific descriptions of cosmic beings wouldn't be as frightening if he only described Yog-Sothoth as a "slightly unpleasant fellow", who "wasn't one to be trifled with much". ....
In Summary
I could go on insulting Purple Prose, its mother, and all its other relatives, but that would be a waste of time. Poking fun of Purple Prose would be like poking fun at a legless centipede: it's interesting to watch the frail creature writhe in pain and horror, but any insult made at the insect's expense is ultimately useless since the sheer piteousness of the bug supersedes all attempts at abuse.
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