– in recent memory, courtesy who else but H. P. Lovecraft:
“And yet, as I have said, vague new fears hovered menacingly over us; as if giant bat-winged gryphons looked on transcosmic gulfs.”
– from “The Lurking Fear”
Don’t you just HATE it when those giant bat-winged gryphons look on your transcosmic gulfs?
(Also, the semi-colon is [sic]. Lovecraft abuses them as if he were being paid by the punctuation error rather than the word.)
I’m reading a fat paperback collection of Lovecraft right now, to get in the Halloween spirit, and thinking of making a drinking game. Drink for every “demoniac,” every “unutterable,” every “hideousness,” every “unutterable cacodaemoniacal hideousness”…
– E
hmm, better nix the drinking game, you won’t get past 3 pages before the words get too blurry to read!
Indeed! Some Googling actually furnished me with a ready-made Lovecraft drinking game, which includes the further challenge of having to read out loud while drinking. I’m tempted to hold a post-Halloween party purely to rope some of my friends into doing this.
Aeons later…
Worst? I think you mean best! I love this writing style. I don’t always want to read efficient sentences that are terse and to the point. It’s supposed to be the thoughts of someone on the brink of insanity and soul-annihilating terror… admittedly in one of his more inane stories about degenerate Dutch electric gorillas.
(I got here by searching for “transcosmic gulfs”)
Oh, for sure, Lovecraft delights me (as do plenty of other purple-prosers), but I also can’t read this sentence without laughing out loud.
Pleased to have furnished you with a Transcosmic Gulf Station!