what I feel like reading, but can’t

H.P. Lovecraft.

Next time I read him needs to be all serious with marginal notations and the like, in preparation for the book about him. And I’m in the mood to read, not to annotate.

That’s probably why I took Poe off the shelf last night instead. Closest available double.

Edmund Wilson, who loves Poe and loathes Lovecraft, claims there isn’t a sentence in Lovecraft that could have been written by Poe. I’ve rarely heard such a false statement by a writer I respect as much as Wilson. Lovecraft is in fact saturated by Poe’s style. It’s not just a similarity of scary topics, but a deep conceptual kinship between the two.

There aren’t enough words allowed in my Lovecraft contract to cover Poe as well, but I’ll be referring to Poe sometimes.

Incidentally, China Miéville is also planning a book on Lovecraft. We’re probably going to overlap for a few weeks in Providence this summer.