September 28th, Year XXXX

What makes Lovecraft's work unique and how does he write? This is my priority question right now and getting to this answer will both be easy and not so easy. The sources are going to be Lovecraft himself, I will be reading a lot of his works, both his original ones and some of the adaptations, like the graphic novels. I will be looking for trends and seeing if there is anything that might make it special beyond just his new ideas. Because I know part of the reason he was revived and is revered as a great writer is due to his idea of cosmicism and a different look on horror. But is there more than that? is there something in his writing that is unique or something he does very well, such as descriptions of the surreal or the process of madness and his telling of the characters spiral into it? 

Well look at the first paragraph of The Call of Cthulhu, "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."A reminder that this is the very first paragraph of his most popular story. One thing I've noticed is that the first paragraph of most of his stories are similar in fashion. In fact they arguably may be the strongest parts of his writing. All of his hooks jump you into a scenario, almost starting off with the end of the story. It gets you to think about what led to this, or how this is even relevant to anything. You already feel madness seeping in, especially when you start to think of this passage in particular, and I think this is his strongest opening yet, perhaps it has some correlation to why it's his most famous story as well. I think that this is a part of his uniqueness. His ability to set a "seed" of madness in the very beginning and then take you on journey with this in the back of you mind constantly, then it comes back up in the end, leaving you with the context of the "seed". But it doesn't even solve anything, if anything it only leaves you with more questions. I think the constant questions about things that are left vaguely explained is another aspect of "madness" he sows into his works, for example Cthulhu is only ever described as something the size of a mountain. The rest comes from a statue from a dream. So what does this eldritch thing actually look like, you're curious especially since it's presence alone is enough to drive people to madness.