I have to disagree with your view of Lovecraft. He mastered the emotion he wanted to get to his readers. Lovecraft's era was one of transition. The last parts of the unknown world were being mapped out, and Realativity was just being proposed. Lovecraft pefectly depicts that sense of dread, that there is no battle of good and evil. That nothing is actively working against man and that the universe has no desire to destroy man. In fact the universe has no desire at all, it is completely indifferent to man, not caring whether or not we live or die. Lovecraft took the man vs. nature conflict and changed it. Man against The Universe. Its a one way struggle, it is not The Universe against Man. There are no Heroes in Lovecraft's work and very few repeating protaginists. People never won, they got by and coped with what happened or they lost.j$ wrote:*resists urge to point out that you can't punctuate*
Your argument is flawed "You can exactly throw a 400 page novel in a 30 page leaflet." Assuming you mean 'can't' here, Lovecraft never wrote anything longer than a novella. For the most part he wrote short stories, so it really makes no difference whether his stories appeared in magazines or collections of short stories.
He also wrote many of his stories years berfore they saw publication so you can't even claim he was rushed.
There are plenty of good American writers; Lovecraft wasn't one of them. He did, however, have a great imagination (when he wasn't ripping off Poe and Lord Dunsay, amongst others)
j$
Yeah, so I like Lovecraft. Thats just my take on it though. I'm sure plenty of other people will see it otherways.