Literary Horror discussion

I've always found it hard to "grade" Derleth as a writer. Many of his genre stories (both Mythos and non-Mythos) are just gut-wretchingly horrible. But every so often he would produce something quite good (e.g., "Lonesome Places", 1962). His regional writing has largely been forgotten, but the little of it that I've read is (in my opinion) pretty decent.

Randolph wrote (in part):

I went to his [Derleth's] house once in the early '80s in Sauk City, WI, Place of Hawks it was called. He was dead by then of course. His grave is actually sort of in the back yard if I remember correctly. There was a nice sort of shed or outbuilding really close to it that had all the books piled up in it and some stuff for packaging stuff, etc. I didn't have the gumption to knock on the door of the house. It was a nice autumn blue sky Wisconsin day.

Ditto, Randolph, although my visit was probably sometime in the mid to late 80's. A friend and I drove up from Madison. I also recall spending an afternoon looking through some of the Derleth papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society.