2 f.c. lovecraft

so there's this website (HERE) cleverly entitled "i write like..." (and i warn you in advance, this post is probably going to involve more quotations that you have ever seen in one place outside of a freshman comp paper on ulysses), where a presumably highly scientific "statistical analysis tool" analyzes an excerpt of your writing and determines what famous writer you write like.

so, you may ask, oline, who do you write like?

the answer: h.p. lovecraft.

and who, you may ask, is h.p. lovecraft?

per wikipedia: h.p. lovecraft was "an american author of horror, fantasy, and science fiction." his particular forte was the the subgenre known as "weird fiction."

h.p. lovecraft's "guiding literary principle" was the concept of "cosmic horror," a belief that life cannot be comprehended by human minds and "the universe is fundamentally alien." his works were "deeply pessimistic and cynical" tales in which the protagonists are "subject to a compulsive influence from powerful malevolent or indifferent beings" and glimpse "the horror of ultimate reality and the abyss." eventually, "even running away, or death itself, provides no safety."

h.p. lovecraft's prose was described as "antiquarian" and he was given to "heavy use of esoteric lexicon." his efforts to capture dialect speech were criticized as "clumsy, imprecise, and condescending."

so there you have it. i write like a fatalistic weird man who used archaic words and peopled his stories with characters for whom even death offered no comfort.

this may lead you to wonder, oline, what the hell was your writing sample?

the answer?

a story about eaton family fourth of july fireworks.