The Worst of H.P. Lovecraft: Gut-Busting Paragraphs of Unintentional Comedy

[Justin Isis]

Straight-up, rules of this thread:

NO discussion of Lovecraft's racism, literary merit, place in history, influence on other writers, etc.

ONLY looking for paragraphs that can't be read out loud without inducing laughter.

Example:

Then one very ancient zoog recalled a thing unheard-of by the others; and said that in Ulthar, beyond the river Skai, there still lingered the last copy of those inconceivably old Pnakotic Manuscripts made by waking men in forgotten boreal kingdoms and borne into the land of dreams when the hairy cannibal Gnophkehs overcame many-templed Olathoë and slew all the heroes of the land of Lomar.

Stumbled early with "zoog" but then regained fortitude until the hairy cannibal gnocchi tripped me up.

[Justin Isis]

Wilcox was a precocious youth of known genius but great eccentricity, and had from childhood excited attention through the strange stories and odd dreams he was in the habit of relating. He called himself 'psychically hypersensitive', but the staid folk of the ancient commercial city dismissed him as merely 'queer.'

[ChildofOldLeech]

Ba Dum Tss! - YouTube

Cricket Sound - YouTube

[Frater_Tsalal]

"Pickman's Model" is one of my favorite Lovecraft stories, but it is pretty amusing to watch the narrator become increasingly over the top/hysterical (to the point of screaming) as Pickman gives him a tour of his studios. I don't know, whenever I picture the following scene in my head I always burst out laughing:

"By this time Pickman had lighted a lamp in an adjoining room and was politely holding open the door for me; asking me if I would care to see his 'modern studies.' I hadn't been able to give him much of my opinions- I was too speechless with fright and loathing- but I think he fully understood and felt highly complimented. And now I want to assure you again, Eliot, that I'm no mollycoddle to scream at anything which shows a bit of departure from the usual. I'm middle-aged and decently sophisticated, and I guess you saw enough of me in France to know I'm not easily knocked out. Remember, too, that I'd just about recovered my wind and gotten used to those frightful pictures which turned colonial New England into a kind of annex of hell. Well, in spite of all this, that next room forced a real scream out of me, and I had to clutch at the doorway to keep from keeling over. The other chamber had shown a pack of ghouls and witches over-running the world of our forefathers, but this one brought the horror right into our own daily life!"

[Speaking Mute]

The method has two parts; first, the sales pitch to get your audience in on the supposed joke - label a passage gut-busting, moronic, hilarious etc. as a lead in - and second, remove a passage from it's general context to effect absurdity. It also helps to select a grammatically complex sentence.

The worst of Thomas Ligotti: gut-busting paragraphs of unintentional comedy:

"There are only those who disappear into the other town, among them the demonic preacher Reverend Cork, who may have been a ludicrous impostor but was never what anyone would call demonic until he disappeared into that trap door in the room where this gentleman...heard him preaching only last night."

This was selected completely at random. It's a complex sentence - people can quibble over whether it's convoluted. "Ludicrous impostor" is certainly, shall we say, artistic language - i'ts not a phrase that a typical English speaker is going to pull out of the blue. But Ligotti is telling a story, not faithfully recording common speaking habits. The italics for "into" and "demonic" come across as ridiculous because the reason for their emphasis is not conveyed in the selected passage. The particularly use of "disappearing into the town" can be seen as silly and awkward due to it's conflict with normal prepositional usage - e.g. "disappearing in the town" Of course, Ligotti emphasized "into" exactly because it was meant to be jarring, but we only know this because we recognize what Ligotti was trying to achieve in the passage. If we were to start out with the assertion that Ligotti was a horrible writer, we could, however, simply pretend we were ignorant of what he was trying to achieve.

Now, I just selected Ligotti because, well, it would seem that the majority of people here would respect him as an author. Again, any author can be treated in this way. Indeed, Dadaists pioneered cut-up methods like this exactly because any text could be reduced to absurdity. Seth McFarlan constantly resorts to it for cheap comedy. It's a parlor trick.

[Justin Isis]

Quote Originally Posted by Speaking Mute

The method has two parts; first, the sales pitch to get your audience in on supposed joke - label a passage gut-busting, moronic, hilarious etc. as a lead in...Again, any author be treated in this way. Indeed, Dadaists pioneered cut-up methods like this exactly because any text could be reduced to absurdity. Seth McFarlan constantly resorts to it for cheap comedy. It's a parlor trick.

See thread rules!!! No one here is claiming Lovecraft isn't good/important/an effective writer/etc. This thread exists for a specific purpose. The humor content in Lovecraft is higher than most other writers.

Quote Originally Posted by Frater_Tsalal

"Pickman's Model" is one of my favorite Lovecraft stories, but it is pretty amusing to watch the narrator become increasingly over the top/hysterical (to the point of screaming) as Pickman gives him a tour of his studios. I don't know, whenever I picture the following scene in my head I always burst out laughing:  "By this time Pickman had lighted a lamp in an adjoining room and was politely holding open the door for me; asking me if I would care to see his 'modern studies.' I hadn't been able to give him much of my opinions- I was too speechless with fright and loathing- but I think he fully understood and felt highly complimented. And now I want to assure you again, Eliot, that I'm no mollycoddle to scream at anything which shows a bit of departure from the usual. I'm middle-aged and decently sophisticated, and I guess you saw enough of me in France to know I'm not easily knocked out. Remember, too, that I'd just about recovered my wind and gotten used to those frightful pictures which turned colonial New England into a kind of annex of hell. Well, in spite of all this, that next room forced a real scream out of me, and I had to clutch at the doorway to keep from keeling over. The other chamber had shown a pack of ghouls and witches over-running the world of our forefathers, but this one brought the horror right into our own daily life!"

I lost it earlier, during the following passage...

Now, Eliot, I'm what the man in the street would call fairly 'hard-boiled,' but I'll confess that what I saw on the walls of that room gave me a bad turn. They were his pictures, you know - the ones he couldn't paint or even show in Newbury Street - and he was right when he said he had 'let himself go.' Here - have another drink - I need one anyhow! There's no use in my trying to tell you what they were like, because the awful, the blasphemous horror, and the unbelievable loathsomeness and moral foetor came from simple touches quite beyond the power of words to classify. There was none of the exotic technique you see in Sidney Sime, none of the trans-Saturnian landscapes and lunar fungi that Clark Ashton Smith uses to freeze the blood.

...due to the air quotes around "hard-boiled" and "let himself go," as well as the incongruity between the narrator's characterization of himself and the way he casually mentions lunar fungi and trans-Saturnian landscapes (common conversational topics among "hard-boiled" types?).

[Jeff Coleman]

Quote Originally Posted by Speaking Mute

This was selected completely at random. It's a complex sentence - people can quibble over whether it's convoluted. "Ludicrous impostor" is certainly, shall we say, artistic language - i'ts not a phrase that a typical English speaker is going to pull out of the blue. But Ligotti is telling a story, not faithfully recording common speaking habits. The italics for "into" and "demonic" come across as ridiculous because the reason for their emphasis is not conveyed in the selected passage. The particularly use of "disappearing into the town" can be seen as silly and awkward due to it's conflict with normal prepositional usage - e.g. "disappearing in the town" Of course, Ligotti emphasized "into" exactly because it was meant to be jarring, but we only know this because we recognize what Ligotti was trying to achieve in the passage. If we were to start out with the assertion that Ligotti was a horrible writer, we could, however, simply pretend we were ignorant of what he was trying to achieve. ...Seth McFarlan constantly resorts to it for cheap comedy. It's a parlor trick.

I like what the author has done here, inserting "i'ts" and a misplaced "it's" into his pedantic commentary. 'It"s rather subtle, and quite meta.

Also, "Seth McFarlan."



(Jest Joshi ng, to clarify).

Edit: (Seriously, just playing around. I like your posts here, Speaking Mute. No intention to be an actual dick. My rapper/horror writer name is now Jeff McFarland, by the way. I invite you to parse my cosmic wonders, which will surely be forthcoming, at your leisure.)

[miguel1984]

A hairy cannibal gnocchi? Sounds like Italian food come to life.

[dr. locrian]

This one always makes me chuckle, from "Dreams in the Witch House" :

"Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folklore, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension."

I want to go back in time and write that sentence myself. It is far from "the worst" of Lovecraft -- it is sublimely comic, whether intentional or not.

[ramonoski]

I'll play. From "The Lurking Fear" (emphasis mine):

Quote

And yet, as I have said, vague new fears hovered menacingly over us; as if giant bat-winged gryphons squatted invisibly on the mountain-tops and leered with Abaddon-eyes that had looked on trans-cosmic gulfs.

Also, I've always found something unintentionally comical about the ending of "Dagon". Not so much how it's written, but how the narrator just has to keep on writing even when whatever eldritch atrocity is already upon him ("God, that hand!"). For all his fear and ragged nerves, he had some of that true grit.