[ExI] Kripke is in trouble!

[Harvey Newstrom]

Anders Sandberg wrote on Wednesday, May 08, 2013 5:09 PM:
> think of Lovecraft: his adjectives rarely explain anything.

 

I have my own pet theory about Lovecraft's ability to instill fear without
detailing his monstrous creations very much.  I have analyzed Lovecraft's
writings, and I believe I have determined his method for doing this more
effectively.

 

Most people claim that Lovecraft is vague in his descriptions, such that the
reader has to fill in their own ideas.  And the general hypothesis that I
have heard is that readers fill in their own personalized ideas of what
would be fearful.  But I don't think this is true.  Lovecraft has very
detailed descriptions in his writings.  He just doesn't describe his
monsters in very much detail.

 

Instead, I think Lovecraft was more direct and insidious than that.
Lovecraft bypasses all but the briefest descriptions of the fearful
triggers.  Instead, he jumps directly into describing what fear itself feels
like to the protagonist.  He spends more time directly describing what the
protagonist is feeling in response to the fear than describing what is
triggering that fear.  I believe that this is a more direct communication to
the reader, telling the reader exactly what to feel and how to feel, than
the indirect communication used by other authors to try to trigger those
feelings in the reader.  I believe this is what makes Lovecraft a true
genius of the genre.

 

I have never heard this theory expressed anywhere else.  I would love to
hear what other people think of my hypothesis.

--
Harvey Newstrom <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
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