While I agree with some of the author's criticisms of Lovecrafts style his calling HPL 'arguably the worst...' blah blah blah, is sheer nonsense. For a chap who writes a column called Book Notes you have to wonder how many of the things he's actially read...
Volume showcases Lovecraft's flaws
..."Lovecraft is arguably the worst well-known writer in the history of American letters. He is not simply bad but floridly, studiously bad, though he was capable, in archaic, turgid prose, of creating an atmosphere of dread that seems to spread from the chair in which the reader sits to the shadowy siftings where the borders of the universe falter and fail.
In order to accomplish this feat, however, at least once in every story, Lovecraft's prose explodes in a fit of chaotic, gothic incoherence, and we read with appalled fascination, as we would watch, horror-stricken and mesmerized, a snail attempting to swallow a lava lamp."...
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