"Lovecraft's writing is a kind of purple poetry, notoriously parody-able. Of course such language can be done badly, and is not a necessary corollary of Weird Fiction (see, for example, the more robust register of Hodgson in many of his short stories, or Blackwood's melancholy ruminations). However, at its best Lovecraft's (and others') writing achieves affect because of, not despite, its prose, a crime against a certain au courant middlebrow minimalism , that will in passing extol barer prose as "spare", as if logo-parsimoniousness were a self-evident virtue ; or, even more absurdly, as "precise", as if the word " table " is somehow more like a table than a prolix descriptive alternative."