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I'd first read Lovecraft when I was a young adolescent, which is perhaps the best time to read Lovecraft. Now, I admire him for his style, his monomaniacal precision, the 'weirdness' of his imagination, and the underlying, intransigent tragic vision that informs all of his work. He's an American original, whose influences on subsequent writers in the field (Stephen King, for instance) is all-pervasive.
--
Joyce Carol Oates, Interview with "DarkEcho Horror Online", 1999.

 

H. P. Lovecraft

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Barker is one of the few writers who has altered an entire field: more than anyone since Lovecraft, he has changed the shape, the corporeality of horror.

 

Clive Barker

 

...you could pick any two writers of equal skill, have them read each other's work, and they would both instantly proclaim each other the champion. Unless one of them happens to be Stephen King, because he's a jerk. (God Ran Out of Faces)

 

Ben Croshaw

 

Those individuals looking from within the SF world may lack, or simply disdain, the linguistic and critical skills needed to begin to reveal that in Lafferty's work there is much more going on than meets the eye. The brave individuals who have attempted to do so have either merely produced fulsome praise or attempted to classify Lafferty's writings on the basis of superficialities (i.e., calling him a surrealist). Lafferty's use of displacement is not unique, but so few writers have consciously attempted the process, and their works are so varied, that there are no unifying articles, no language for the critic with a day job to draw on. Some bright lad or lass (with the appropriate dignifying letters following their names) may read this and look for the method of displacement in H. P. Lovecraft, James Joyce, Robert Pinget, Gilbert Sorrentino, Flann O'Brien, R. A. Lafferty, Howard Waldrop, and R. A. Wilson. Now there's a book worth reading. The astute observer will note that all the names on the list are Irish, saving those which are not.

 

R. A. Lafferty

 

You should read in your own field only when you're young. When I was 8, 10, 12, 16, 25, I read science fiction. But then I went on to Alexander Pope and John Donne and Moliere to mix it up.

 

Ray Bradbury

 

Basically, I wish I could read the way I used to read. I did not dissect as I read. I simply became immersed in the story and let it sweep me happily along. Now I cannot help but dissect. I try not to, but I do anyway. I cannot help but see "flaws" and all the ways I think I could have done this better. I would suspect that all writers are like this, to one degree or another. Writers are the gods of their universes, and we are never at a loss to suggest how some other god might better run herhisits universe/s. At least, this is true of me. It is one reason I read so much less fiction than I did fifteen years ago. And, actually, stage magic is not a bad metaphor for this problem I now have as a reader. I am precisely like a magician watching another magician's act. I should be suckered in with the rest of the crowd. I passionately desire to have the wool pulled over my eyes. Only it very rarely happens, as I'm too busy figuring out how it's all being done and how I could improve upon it ... I just can't help but read it as a novelist. This is, from my perspective, unfortunate. I don't want to know how the trick works. I want to be amazed. I want to be convinced of the magic. But this is what I do. I spend my days gluing words together to try and fool other people. And I can't help but try to see how other writers, especially writers who have found more commercial success than have I, make it work. Sadly, I don't even find the mechanics & theory of fiction writing remotely interesting, which makes this doubly frustrating. It's just a reflex.

 

Caitlin R. Kiernan