Lovecraft as bad writer?

When I read Lovecraft as a teenager I was looking for suspense and thrills. I did not find it. Instead I found the strange choice of wide distance from the supposed action. Decades later I started rereading Lovecraft exactly for that distance.

It’s a choice to see everything through a filter of disbelief in reality (now). A state of shock that fades out sound and puts the world seemingly in slow motion. The distance he creates also reminds me of what I imagine clinical depression to be like. Lovecraft’s Cosmic Horror is mostly existential and I can’t stop reading him for the out of body experience he provides.

Cthulhu is a stupid looking monster, but it also turned into an universal icon of the wish that everything would come to an end - jokingly of course, because nonfundamentalists don’t believe in Judgement Days, but sometimes wish for it anyways. Cthulhu turned into that fix in geek culture. Dark Gnosis: look it up.