From The Quietus, Nick Talbot , August 31st, 2014:
Towards the end of a recent interview with Alan Moore on his relationship with the writer Iain Sinclair our conversation drifted towards another topic: Moore’s upcoming Lovecraftian work Providence. A huge number of writers, including Ramsey Campbell, Colin Wilson, Steven King and Robert Bloch have contributed to the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’, the shared fictional world created by H.P. Lovecraft, in a tradition Lovecraft himself encouraged via voluminous correspondence with younger acolytes. As a result of his creative generosity, Lovecraft occupies a rare status as a writer whose vision has taken on a life of its own. While much written work suffers a reductive blow when undergoing adaptation, by respectfully borrowing elements from Lovecraft’s world, new comics, games and films contribute to its expansion, and the Cthulhu Mythos creeps further into popular culture every year.
Yet Lovecraft has rarely been judged a good writer, and many decades of critical derision – often objecting to his tendency for baroque adjectives – relegated him to the status of an eccentric hack in an already ghettoised genre. But as the Cthulhu cult became too popular to ignore, the last decade has seen a growing stream of Zeitgeist-wary cultural theorists publishing analytical works focusing on various aspects of his vast imagination, and Lovecraft is now finally taken seriously as a writer of ideas.
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