I found my favorite anthology of science-fiction short stories, The Omnibus of Science Fiction, which I bought several years ago. It contains only masterpieces from the late 1920s-early 1950s. Last night I reread the atmospheric piece, "The Color Out of Space," by H.P. Lovecraft. It begins as follows:

"West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs."

Here Lovecraft breaks so many "rules" of good, crisp writing. He loads his prose with adjectives and adverbs and uses many intransitive verbs. Yet this is for a purpose. You can already guess what sort of story this will be - folksy and wild, from the depths of memory. You have already begun to travel with Lovecraft into the darkest recesses of New England forest.

Could I ever write this well? And what is a "gambrel" roof, anyway?

EDIT: Yikes! I just searched on Wikipedia for the answer to the latter question and found this bit in the entry: "The horror writer H. P. Lovecraft often mentioned such roofs in descriptions to indicate an ancient setting." Really? Do tell.  ¶ 10:02 AM