I’m currently reading The Lurker at the Threshold. There’s just one problem: Lovecraft puts me to sleep.
I want to like Lovecraft, I really do. I just don’t. At least, not all that much. I like the premise of Lovecraft’s stories, his style, however, is dull. Simply, his language does not engage me and keep me turning pages.
Seeing how this particular novel was, as I understand it, mostly written by Lovecraft’s editor August Derleth, I can forgive some of the dullness. However, I have also read The Lurking Fear and Other Stories and found it only slightly more engaging.
And it’s not that the works were written c. 1920 — I’ve read plenty of novels from the beginning of the last century with no problem and actually enjoyed several of them. Faulkner, for example, is one of my favorite authors (I will acknowledge that his is an acquired taste). If you’ve never read The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying you should. Faulkner has much more engaging dialog and prose than Lovecraft.
I suppose that like Faulkner, beer and wine, Lovecraft too is an acquired taste. But like wine, one I probably won’t develop.
