I don't mind what Derleth did with Lovecraft's work. Other people have done the same with the unfinished works and outlines left by authors. I read the Lovecraft and Derleth works as a teenager, around the same time I also read Robert E Howard's "Conan" tales - and, of course, Howard had his own Derleth in L Sprague de Camp. Back then, I was simply glad to have more material set in the worlds I was enjoying reading about - I didn't make any quality judgements because nothing stood out as an obviously poor imitation.
Recently, though, I found a huge collection of various Lovecraft audiobook readings - which included "The Lurker at the Threshold." Enough time had passed for me to forget the true authorship of some of the less-famous stories, but something about "The Lurker at the Threshold" jarred and made me think "This isn't real Lovecraft - it's more like Lovecraft fan-fiction." And, sure enough, as the OP said, it WASN'T real Lovecraft - it was Derleth aping Lovecraft.
I think the biggest give-away was the way it seemed too eager to tie itself into the Lovecraft universe by name-checking characters from "The Shadow over Innsmouth" in a contrived way. Sure, Lovecraft sometimes used the device of recurring characters (and recurring books) to link disparate stories, and the linking threads that run through his many stories form the apparently coherent "mythos" that he is famed for creating, but Derleth's story was clumsy about making those links where Lovecraft would have been subtle.
In short (!) what I'm saying is that even in a "blind taste test" (a huge collection of Lovecraft Mythos audio readings with no authorship stated up-front of each story) it was obvious that Derleth was the shop-brand cola and not The Real Thing.
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yardlet5
11 years ago
The stories that Derleth wrote were based on notes Lovecraft left with short descriptions.
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