Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft or Stephen King: of these four horror writers who do you prefer?
Barker for me.
shareKing
shareI imagine most people will go with King.
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MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft...
Good thread topic ! I like all of these guys but Poe for me because I read him voraciously during my formative years.
shareAs much as I like King Poe can say more about madness in a few pages with the likes of "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Fall of the House of Usher," or, of course, "The Tale-Tale Heart" than King can say in a thousand pages of one of his many doorstops.
shareI love short stories and Barker is a master of the form. "The Forbidden," which was the basis for "Candyman," is one of my favorites, and so much better than the film. I implore fans of the short story form like myself to check it out.
shareI'm also a lover of short stories. When it comes to Poe, how about 'Berenice ? ' That one really creeped me the fuck out !
shareThat's the one with the teeth? Yeah, that's pretty messed-up. I said I liked Barker best but I can't imagine Barker, or any of these writers, getting anywhere without first poring over Poe's demented genius.
shareYes, but the short story form was created by E. A. Poe, without whom we may have never had the short story, so I choose Poe as the best and most influential writer in the group; and he was incontestably the best poet of the four.
sharePoe and Barker are the best prose stylists of the bunch while Lovecraft is certainly the clunkiest (though I love the guy and have read inspired work like "The Outsider" more times than I can count). And also the clunkiness serves Lovecraft well since his writing can often feel like something written by Cthulu himself -- ancient, not of time and space ...
shareI think I would have to go with Barker as well.
shareAnother person we should consider: Richard Matheson. According to King he was his biggest inspiration and reading some of Matheson's best work -- "Nightmare at Twenty Thousand Feet," "Long Distance Call," "Duel," "Disappearing Act," and tons of others -- it's easy to see why.
shareI know that Daphne du Maurier isn't known as a horror writer per se, but I would put her up there. I much preferred her short of The Birds, to Hitchcock's adaptation.
shareShe's more a writer of the uncanny -- though subtle horror certainly exists in almost everything she writes.
shareWe listened to The Birds as a radio play a couple of weeks back and it was a different story altogether. I enjoyed it.
shareBarker is sensual, erudite, violent and playful all at once.
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Rawhead Rex, Dread, The Yattering and Jack, In The Hills, The Cites, Scape-Goats -- so many good stories to choose from.
sharePoe. Haven't read Barker or Lovecraft. Have heard good things about Barker from someone whose tastes in literature I respected, but horror isn't my thing.
The only thing of King's I read was The Stand, and I didn't like it. Too long, meandering, too many characters, and neither the story or the writing engaged me. (Sorry, MissMargo and other King fans.)
But, I did see and love The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and thought Dolores Claiborne was very good. Misery too.
Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Lala...
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