Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo
I think there's a big difference between the prose of Lovecraft and of Wells or Burroughs. He really doesn't have much sense either of the rhythm of prose or of the appropriate level of detail in an exposition. He overdoes almost everything, and packs too many adjectives together in his long, wandering sentences. He's simply hard to read. His prose is more like a second-rate version of the 19th century Henry James than it is like a 20th century Burroughs. There's a reason he was so much less popular than Wells or Burroughs in his own time. But you make a good point about him trying to describe the indescribable. That's what's great about him.
On the other hand, the long complex sentences might sound normal in Japanese, lol.
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Aye... its just that when I hear high school or college students complaining about 19th or early 20th C. literature --- it is generally always the same list of complaints no matter who the author is. It could be Lovecraft, Wells, Burroughs, or even Mark Twain or Joseph Conrad. They just find the general prose standards of the period to be a bit of an obstacle.