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 Sqorgar wrote:


Why does everybody pretend that Lovecraft is somehow alone in being a product of his time? Lovecraft, Christie, and Wodehouse are seriously some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century (I'd argue any century). It's easy to look down on them with the benefit of hindsight, but holy hell, literature would suffer an inconceivable loss without them.

Edit: Christie is the best selling novelist of all time, third in books behind Shakespeare and the Bible. Her racism would make Lovecraft blush.

This is something I have been wondering about myself actually, Lovecrafts racism gets brought up way out of proportion when compared to other writers or historical people of that era. People can discuss Gandhi, Churchill or Christie without going into detail of their racist beliefs, while every discussion of Lovecraft has to go into detail about it. Which is weird considering how small impact his beliefs have had on modern literature/politics.

I think it comes down to that it generates a lot of clicks and retweets, so it's very tempting avenue to go down for that sort of people.

dyndraig wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:


Why does everybody pretend that Lovecraft is somehow alone in being a product of his time? Lovecraft, Christie, and Wodehouse are seriously some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century (I'd argue any century). It's easy to look down on them with the benefit of hindsight, but holy hell, literature would suffer an inconceivable loss without them.

Edit: Christie is the best selling novelist of all time, third in books behind Shakespeare and the Bible. Her racism would make Lovecraft blush.

This is something I have been wondering about myself actually, Lovecrafts racism gets brought up way out of proportion when compared to other writers or historical people of that era. People can discuss Gandhi, Churchill or Christie without going into detail of their racist beliefs, while every discussion of Lovecraft has to go into detail about it. Which is weird considering how small impact his beliefs have had on modern literature/politics.

I think it comes down to that it generates a lot of clicks and retweets, so it's very tempting avenue to go down for that sort of people.

Maybe it's because his racism can be pointed towards as a major theme in his style of horror, numerous times, and his animus towards different groups of people is something frequently mentioned in what records we have of his correspondences.

Deep-seated racist/xenophobic animus IS a major feature of that entire time period, there is no doubt about it. But it is particularly salient to discuss in the way Lovecraft's particular brand of horror and his canon is constructed, and it is known to be something that plays a major role in Lovecraft's life.

Nobody is pretending that he was ALONE in these beliefs at all, simply that (by the author and the author's friends' own assertion) it was something that played a major part in his life and is clearly reflected in his body of work.

it's no different than talking about depression when discussing the work of Van Gogh, nationalism when discussing the work of Shostakovich, or intellectual property theft when talking about Edison. Just because something can be described as common to the time does not mean that it can't have an effect on the work of an artist or historical figure in particular.

I agree, but it almost always goes way beyond that. it's one thing to discuss an authors themes and drives and it's quite another to condemn, belittle and revoke awards that uses that authors likeness. Which is why I compare him to Churchill or Gandhi, both are men that by today standards had some abhorrent beliefs, but we can still discuss and look at them today in favorable light without feeling the need to drag them through the mud first. Which only becomes stranger when you consider that Lovecrafts racism is quite harmless today, both fans and authors inspired by him have been able to cherish and build on his legacy without promoting his racist beliefs.

the_scotsman wrote:
Maybe it's because his racism can be pointed towards as a major theme in his style of horror, numerous times, and his animus towards different groups of people is something frequently mentioned in what records we have of his correspondences.

I'm calling BS here. Racism is absolutely not a major theme in his work. Worse than Godwin's Law, there should be a Lovecraft's Law, where any discussion about Lovecraft inevitably becomes about how racist he is. This thread started with how bad the ending to House on Haunted Hill was and the disconnect between Lovecraft's work as he wrote it and how it is portrayed in gaming - and how many posts did it take to talk about what a racist that Lovecraft guy was?

And yet, the same few examples keep coming up. The name of his cat, that one poem he wrote, and the black guy from Herbert West, Re-Animator. Like, that's nothing! And yet you've got writers refusing to accept awards with his name on it because he was so, so racist. Agatha Christie was way worse - you ever see anybody refuse an award with Christie's name on it?

Deep-seated racist/xenophobic animus IS a major feature of that entire time period, there is no doubt about it. But it is particularly salient to discuss in the way Lovecraft's particular brand of horror and his canon is constructed, and it is known to be something that plays a major role in Lovecraft's life.

The majority of Lovecraft work had more to say about secrets (cults, unwritten history, forbidden knowledge, strange neighbors) than race. You can make an argument that the people of Innsmouth represent something about race, but when I read it, it was about a secretive cult that hid its malicious desires behind a veneer of normalcy, only to attempt to murder the narrator when he started to unravel their secret. It was about secrets and the terrible consequences of knowing them. Even Herbert West was largely about the horrible burden of knowledge, and the racist part was a few paragraphs that you can easily roll your eyes at and move on.

The vast majority of Lovecraft's work is about Plato's Cave - about the fear of leaving it, and the sinister nature of those who make the shadows dance. It's about being sheltered and escaping the shelter, only to find you can not succeed and can never go back. Lovecraft grew up sheltered and failed to make it as an adult, and his work is about that, not black people. If all you read in Lovecraft is racism, then you need to go back to tenth grade English class. All you've got is one literary hammer and are trying to make every thematic subtext into a nail.

Nobody is pretending that he was ALONE in these beliefs at all, simply that (by the author and the author's friends' own assertion) it was something that played a major part in his life and is clearly reflected in his body of work.

Because he named his cat something? Was his cat a major part of his body of work? Agatha Christie put the n-word in her title, and we just quietly changed the title and moved on. You ever see a discussion about her use of an unreliable narrator in the Murder of Roger Ackroyd that derailed 10 posts in to talk about her views on the Jews?

What about calling the cat "Ginger Nam"? Don't you know that only a ginger can call another ginger ginger? You might laugh at this, but anti-ginger prejudice is more serious than a lot of people realize, and a future where we look back on this prejudice and particularly the word "ginger", is not out of the question. You guys seem to think you are at the end of history rather than the middle, and that future generations won't too look at you in the same way you look at Lovecraft. It's worth cultivating a culture of tolerance and understanding for the past, lest you, yourself, become a victim of your own arrogance.

dyndraig wrote:
I agree, but it almost always goes way beyond that. it's one thing to discuss an authors themes and drives and it's quite another to condemn, belittle and revoke awards that uses that authors likeness. Which is why I compare him to Churchill or Gandhi, both are men that by today standards had some abhorrent beliefs, but we can still discuss and look at them today in favorable light without feeling the need to drag them through the mud first. Which only becomes stranger when you consider that Lovecrafts racism is quite harmless today, both fans and authors inspired by him have been able to cherish and build on his legacy without promoting his racist beliefs.

....eh. I googled this, and it appears to be some kind of fantasy writing award that was shaped like an INCREDIBLY weird and creepy rendition of Lovecraft's face (seriously, what the hell? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fb/World_Fantasy_Award_bust.jpg/150px-World_Fantasy_Award_bust.jpg) that got replaced with a cool tree or something.

Ultimately, it seems like a petition got signed by like 2,500 people over the internet (less people than vote on the most popular polls here on dakka) and you have no idea how many of those votes were based on the fact that the little creepy statue thing was ugly as sin.

This always seems to be what this is when people complain about some crazy over-reaction: some guy on twitter or facebook making a post that nobody likes or shares, or some online petition with a couple thousand signatures, or something that very few people actually care about getting changed in some way hundreds of years later. Lovecraft's stuff in the public domain makes millions and millions of dollars a year, Cthulhu is nearly as tired a meme at this point among geek circles as Zombie Apocalypses and Star Wars, and there is still plenty of goodwill towards his work.

It is OK that occasionally people acknowledge the fact that he wrote weird, messed up stuff about peoples' skin color, and that by his own admission this racial animus was a major struggle in his life and relationships. 99.999% of discussion of Lovecraft has nothing to do with his racist beliefs, and is instead the flanderized, meme-ified mainstream geek understanding of Cthulhu.


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 Sqorgar wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Maybe it's because his racism can be pointed towards as a major theme in his style of horror, numerous times, and his animus towards different groups of people is something frequently mentioned in what records we have of his correspondences.

I'm calling BS here. Racism is absolutely not a major theme in his work. Worse than Godwin's Law, there should be a Lovecraft's Law, where any discussion about Lovecraft inevitably becomes about how racist he is. This thread started with how bad the ending to House on Haunted Hill was and the disconnect between Lovecraft's work as he wrote it and how it is portrayed in gaming - and how many posts did it take to talk about what a racist that Lovecraft guy was?

And yet, the same few examples keep coming up. The name of his cat, that one poem he wrote, and the black guy from Herbert West, Re-Animator. Like, that's nothing! And yet you've got writers refusing to accept awards with his name on it because he was so, so racist. Agatha Christie was way worse - you ever see anybody refuse an award with Christie's name on it?

Deep-seated racist/xenophobic animus IS a major feature of that entire time period, there is no doubt about it. But it is particularly salient to discuss in the way Lovecraft's particular brand of horror and his canon is constructed, and it is known to be something that plays a major role in Lovecraft's life.

The majority of Lovecraft work had more to say about secrets (cults, unwritten history, forbidden knowledge, strange neighbors) than race. You can make an argument that the people of Innsmouth represent something about race, but when I read it, it was about a secretive cult that hid its malicious desires behind a veneer of normalcy, only to attempt to murder the narrator when he started to unravel their secret. It was about secrets and the terrible consequences of knowing them. Even Herbert West was largely about the horrible burden of knowledge, and the racist part was a few paragraphs that you can easily roll your eyes at and move on.

The vast majority of Lovecraft's work is about Plato's Cave - about the fear of leaving it, and the sinister nature of those who make the shadows dance. It's about being sheltered and escaping the shelter, only to find you can not succeed and can never go back. Lovecraft grew up sheltered and failed to make it as an adult, and his work is about that, not black people. If all you read in Lovecraft is racism, then you need to go back to tenth grade English class. All you've got is one literary hammer and are trying to make every thematic subtext into a nail.

Nobody is pretending that he was ALONE in these beliefs at all, simply that (by the author and the author's friends' own assertion) it was something that played a major part in his life and is clearly reflected in his body of work.

Because he named his cat something? Was his cat a major part of his body of work? Agatha Christie put the n-word in her title, and we just quietly changed the title and moved on. You ever see a discussion about her use of an unreliable narrator in the Murder of Roger Ackroyd that derailed 10 posts in to talk about her views on the Jews?

What about calling the cat "Ginger Nam"? Don't you know that only a ginger can call another ginger ginger? You might laugh at this, but anti-ginger prejudice is more serious than a lot of people realize, and a future where we look back on this prejudice and particularly the word "ginger", is not out of the question. You guys seem to think you are at the end of history rather than the middle, and that future generations won't too look at you in the same way you look at Lovecraft. It's worth cultivating a culture of tolerance and understanding for the past, lest you, yourself, become a victim of your own arrogance.

This is pretty much troll-bait. If you think that it is impossible to glean a fairly complete and coherent understanding of someone's attitudes through letters sent to and by him over the course of their entire life, there's no point in having this conversation.

Lovecraft wasn't some classical greek writer living in 200 BC. We don't have a few scraps of stories in 2nd and 3rd hand accounts and a bunch of works attributed to him that could be misattributed throughout the ages. There have been solid, accurate records of correspondences kept by his immediate family and documented by multiple different biographers.

You can make the argument, fairly successfully, that the author is dead and that the work can be easily separated from the attitudes of the author. But doing this whole song and dance of stating that everyone jumps to conclusions and is basing their ideas of the author's personal opinions on just a few examples from his published work is just disingenuous.

The racism is fairly pervasive through his all his stories, but I’ve never once said we should condemn the man himself or deny his works. Just choose some word changes when reading them to children. Modern culture has been very kind to Lovecraft, careful to keep the beat aspects of his work in the public consciousness.


As for “Ginger Nam”..
1. It was an anagram for the cat’s name, and those were the first words that came to mind.
2. I am a ginger.
3. I was not even thinking of ginger as an ethnic group, but rather the character Ginger from Gilligan’s Island. “Ginger” the slur is only known where I live due to a single episode of South Park, and has about as much social impact as that implies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To be even more clear: I had never heard the term “Ginger” applied to a human being as a descriptor rather than a name until that South Park episode, and since then only as a reference to that episode or the “false” racism most people around here thought the show created for humor. I have heard of cats described as ginger much more often.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The racism is fairly pervasive through his all his stories, but I’ve never once said we should condemn the man himself or deny his works..

It's honestly like there's someone who isn't reading what anyone is posting and keep dragging up the same straw man for two pages now.

the_scotsman wrote:
This is pretty much troll-bait. If you think that it is impossible to glean a fairly complete and coherent understanding of someone's attitudes through letters sent to and by him over the course of their entire life, there's no point in having this conversation.

Oh, so you've read them all? I can't imagine you can get a complete understanding of someone by only reading a few select bits and pieces taken out of context and presented within a larger biased narrative.

Look, there's a few major points going on in this discussion:

1) Lovecraft has racist personal views. Okay, I'll concede that. But since Lovecraft barely interacted with other human beings in person, I doubt those views translated into any actions. He wasn't out there lynching anybody. He wasn't refusing them service at any bakeries. He wasn't writing his local government trying to prevent interracial marriages. He wasn't DOING anything. It amounts to an opinion, born from ignorance, and it doesn't quite reach the lofty heights of injustice. The fact that he is dead means that his opinions never will.

2) Lovecraft was more racist than other people of the time. I've already mentioned Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse - both of which wrote during the same 1930s time period, both arguably more famous and well respected. Agatha Christie has sold more books than anyone else, save William Shakespeare and the Bible. Whether Lovecraft was an exceptional racist or an average racist or even a racist lite, you can at the very least say that people who had even more racist works were in no way hampered by it.

3) Racism is a theme that runs through Lovecraft's work. It does not. It's barely in there. There's one or two works that might make you raise your eyebrows once or twice, but the vast majority of his work can be easily read today just fine (which is why we still read his work a hundred years later). To make the argument that Lovecraft is racist, you have to go to personal letters and obscure works of little note - if racism was a fundamental part of his pantheon of works, examples should be frequent, obvious, and well known. The truth is, some idiots with a chip on their shoulder decided he was racist (probably based solely on his cat's name) and thus his works were the product of racism, and combed through his work and personal life with a fine toothed comb to "prove" it in a classic example of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

4) Lovecraft's work should be changed to remove the racist words and scene. Ugh, please. Grow up.

5) We can't discuss Lovecraft without discussing his racism. I can write (and likely have written) millions of words dissecting, explaining, and admiring the works of Lovecraft without once mentioning racism. The fact is, if that is all you can see, then you are blind.

At the end of the day, the discussion is not about Lovecraft's racism. It is a simple-minded virtue signal by people who have no capacity to understand or appreciate literature. The fact that Lovecraft has been singled out amongst his peers has less to do with the extremity of his sins, and more due to the fact that science fiction and fantasy has been colonized by a bunch of people who want to use it as a platform for activism and who have no respect nor understanding of the genre's history, merit, or virtue. Not recognizing or respecting that things written in the 1930s may reflect attitudes of the 1930s is a sign of immaturity, and under no circumstances should be confused for wisdom.

Dude, who are you arguing with on that first point?

As for it being a recurring theme: you might consider that you’re being the only one who doesn’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. It just means you don’t see it.

Much of his horror has to do with tainted bloodlines, shadowy ethnic minority cults, “local” populations too corrupt or stupid to detect the horror that unravels the scholarly investigator of good breeding. There’s also a lot of classism in Lovecraft’s works, a distrust of poor, rural white people of ambiguous breeding.

And we know other authors at the time, like Clark Ashton Smith, who felt that Lovecraft was rather “old fashioned” in his social views. Just because there were other racists of similar caliber doesn’t mean everyone was equally racist at the time. That’s just as ridiculous as saying everyone alive today shares Kratman’s socio-political views. It’s a ridiculous argument on the face of it.

 Sqorgar wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
This is pretty much troll-bait. If you think that it is impossible to glean a fairly complete and coherent understanding of someone's attitudes through letters sent to and by him over the course of their entire life, there's no point in having this conversation.

Oh, so you've read them all? I can't imagine you can get a complete understanding of someone by only reading a few select bits and pieces taken out of context and presented within a larger biased narrative.

Look, there's a few major points going on in this discussion:

1) Lovecraft has racist personal views. Okay, I'll concede that. But since Lovecraft barely interacted with other human beings in person, I doubt those views translated into any actions. He wasn't out there lynching anybody. He wasn't refusing them service at any bakeries. He wasn't writing his local government trying to prevent interracial marriages. He wasn't DOING anything. It amounts to an opinion, born from ignorance, and it doesn't quite reach the lofty heights of injustice. The fact that he is dead means that his opinions never will.

2) Lovecraft was more racist than other people of the time. I've already mentioned Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse - both of which wrote during the same 1930s time period, both arguably more famous and well respected. Agatha Christie has sold more books than anyone else, save William Shakespeare and the Bible. Whether Lovecraft was an exceptional racist or an average racist or even a racist lite, you can at the very least say that people who had even more racist works were in no way hampered by it.

3) Racism is a theme that runs through Lovecraft's work. It does not. It's barely in there. There's one or two works that might make you raise your eyebrows once or twice, but the vast majority of his work can be easily read today just fine (which is why we still read his work a hundred years later). To make the argument that Lovecraft is racist, you have to go to personal letters and obscure works of little note - if racism was a fundamental part of his pantheon of works, examples should be frequent, obvious, and well known. The truth is, some idiots with a chip on their shoulder decided he was racist (probably based solely on his cat's name) and thus his works were the product of racism, and combed through his work and personal life with a fine toothed comb to "prove" it in a classic example of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

4) Lovecraft's work should be changed to remove the racist words and scene. Ugh, please. Grow up.

5) We can't discuss Lovecraft without discussing his racism. I can write (and likely have written) millions of words dissecting, explaining, and admiring the works of Lovecraft without once mentioning racism. The fact is, if that is all you can see, then you are blind.

At the end of the day, the discussion is not about Lovecraft's racism. It is a simple-minded virtue signal by people who have no capacity to understand or appreciate literature. The fact that Lovecraft has been singled out amongst his peers has less to do with the extremity of his sins, and more due to the fact that science fiction and fantasy has been colonized by a bunch of people who want to use it as a platform for activism and who have no respect nor understanding of the genre's history, merit, or virtue. Not recognizing or respecting that things written in the 1930s may reflect attitudes of the 1930s is a sign of immaturity, and under no circumstances should be confused for wisdom.

If you really think S. T. Joshi wrote over 1,000 pages on the life, works and views of Lovecraft as some kind of modern SJW virtue-signal in 1996 because he wanted to colonize science fiction to use it as a platform for activism (Because we all know that Science Fiction is no place for people to couch their political opinions that's RIDICULOUS and ENTIRELY counter to the ethos of the genre!!! ) then, as I said, this is pointless to discuss.

S.T. Joshi definitely grinds his axes (for example, atheism). That said ...

HPL affected a persona of being a man out of time. You could call it something like cosplaying a 17th-century gentleman. At the same time, he felt himself to be “modern” in the sense of being a Man of Science, in a similar “play pretend” manner, that didn’t really contradict his self-consciously archaic racist attitudes because, after all, racism is a modern and pseudo-scientific outlook, especially the kind of Darwinist racism that he seemed especially obsessed about (purity versus miscegenation). He shared the universal racism of his time (and to some degree, also our times) but what made him unusual and, to his peers as well us, apparently more racist than usual was his idiosyncratic insistence on adopting this old-fashioned persona. But as he got older, and travelled more, and got over himself, this weird attribute diminished.

Fear Of The Other is nonetheless a pillar of his artistic perspective. It’s not just racism but also sexism. Women rarely appear in his works but when they do, they tend to be fairly grotesque: the infanticidal witch Keziah, Wilbur’s albino mother Lavinia, and especially the gender-bending crypto-sex predator Asenath Waite are stand-out examples.

In a nutshell, being a racist to a weirdly shrill extent was something HPL went out of his way to affect as part of his old-fashioned gentleman from the 1600s “fashion sense” — just like how he insists on anachronistic orthography and vocabulary. His racism and sexism were aspects of both his unconscious as well as his willful prissiness. Pointing this out doesn’t amount to dismissing him or his work. No doubt, some people make this kind of argument (racism = bad therefore HPL = bad) but that’s obviously a childish attitude.

 Manchu wrote:
No doubt, some people make this kind of argument (racism = bad therefore HPL = bad) but that’s obviously a childish attitude.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. At the same time, I can absolutely understand the perspective of being a black fantasy writer and winning some kind of award, then finding out it looks like this and is a dude who pretty publicly considered me to be a separate, subhuman species.

...If anyone has one of these things on their mantlepiece at home and doesn't cover it with a sheet when there aren't literary guests around I will eat my hat. Look at that monstrosity. It looks like if for Tim Burton's latest claymation film he had to design a statue in the home of a creepy tall victorian gentleman fond of pinstripes.

I won’t pretend to know what black writers actually think about HPL. But I think it is possible be inspired by someone who, in their own place a time, would dismiss someone like you. Many writers in the past would certainly look down on many of the people who admire them today, for any number of reasons.

BobtheInquisitor wrote:Much of his horror has to do with tainted bloodlines, shadowy ethnic minority cults, “local” populations too corrupt or stupid to detect the horror that unravels the scholarly investigator of good breeding. There’s also a lot of classism in Lovecraft’s works, a distrust of poor, rural white people of ambiguous breeding.

Lovecraft was a recluse who preferred writing letters to talking to people in person. He almost certainly had social anxiety or at least some sort of generalized anxiety disorder. He wasn't afraid of minorities. He was afraid of personal interaction.

The shadowy ethnic minority cults and the like were more likely a reflection of the contemporary literature of the time rather than a reflection of his actual beliefs. It's more likely that everything he knew about other cultures came from Doc Savage, Fu Manchu, Tin Tin, and Dick Tracy than any personal experiences or beliefs. And if you read that stuff, you'll find the exact same sentiments in some quantity... and yet for some reason, Tin Tin gets a "10 Most Shockingly Racist Moments" list that didn't tarnish its legacy while Lovecraft had a cat named in poor taste used as proof positive that any contributions he's made to literature are tainted.

And we know other authors at the time, like Clark Ashton Smith, who felt that Lovecraft was rather “old fashioned” in his social views. Just because there were other racists of similar caliber doesn’t mean everyone was equally racist at the time. That’s just as ridiculous as saying everyone alive today shares Kratman’s socio-political views. It’s a ridiculous argument on the face of it.

In the 1920s and 1930s, eugenics was quite possibly the biggest thing in science. They had organizations, clubs, and political parties all built around it. Planned Parenthood was started by a card carrying eugenicist, and the Supreme Court made it legal to sterilize the mentally disabled. They held wildly popular contests to find families with the fittest genes. It's only after WW2, when Hitler took the idea to the logical extreme, that people started to go, "Oh, I see where maybe this line of thought can go".

It is impossible to argue that, during a time when eugenics was a scientific fad that was driving actual governmental policy and when Agatha Christie can release a book called "Ten Little N-Words" years after Lovecraft died and it become a best seller and one of the most beloved detective novels of all time, that Lovecraft's much milder views were somehow old fashioned. Pretending otherwise is to ignore history in favor of cherry picked enlightenment.

the_scotsman wrote:If you really think S. T. Joshi wrote over 1,000 pages on the life, works and views of Lovecraft as some kind of modern SJW virtue-signal in 1996 because he wanted to colonize science fiction to use it as a platform for activism (Because we all know that Science Fiction is no place for people to couch their political opinions that's RIDICULOUS and ENTIRELY counter to the ethos of the genre!!! ) then, as I said, this is pointless to discuss.

Not Joshi. In fact, after they changed the Lovecraft award and denounced the writer, he returned the awards he previously won and complained about appealing to the worst sort of political correctness. He, at least, could appreciate that Lovecraft was a flawed human being who produced works worth recognizing in the current year. I think it was probably the events surrounding this particular award refusal which started off the "nobody gets to talk about Lovecraft without talking about racism" train. 2013 is generally considered the point where people started fighting back against this crap, so this award in 2011 seems to fit into the timeline.

Manchu wrote:Fear Of The Other is nonetheless a pillar of his artistic perspective.

I think that is the wrong way to look at his art. As someone who had crippling social anxiety, to the point where I was basically a shut in during my 20s, Lovecraft's work put into words what I was going through better than anything I've ever read before or since. "Fear of the other" is too distinct. It's more nebulous than that. Instead, his work was about the loss of control, the uncertainty of self, and the utter dread of marching along towards an end you are powerless to avoid. It's a person who is afraid of cockroaches knowing that, in five minutes, he's going to be forced to sit in a vat of cockroaches and there's nothing he can do about it.

The other thing that is endemic to his work is, as I said about, Plato's Cave. The idea that your world is small and controlled, but the outside world is dangerous and beyond your imagination. In many of his stories, the protagonists are generally pushed along by a curiosity - a need - that comes from finding a crack in facade. When you realize that the shadows on the wall are not what they seem, can you still feel that your world is small and controlled? You can not go back.

If you look at something like Pickman's Model, the protagonist is never in any danger, nor is he really in any potential danger. Instead, he simply knows something which cracks the veneer of what he used to consider normal life. He knows something that he shouldn't, and he can never go back to that naivete. He's not going to go down and deal with the threat. He'll just know that when people disappear, the real reason why. He'll know the truth beneath the headlines, and it will be a constant reminder that there is no safe for him anymore, and there never will be. That's what drives people insane in Lovecraft's stories - living in a constant state of oppressive anxiety that you can never escape from. I know that feeling all to well, and Lovecraft's prose makes me think he did too.

Also I'm not sure why Lovecraft not using female protagonists makes him sexist.

Sqorgar, you make a lot of solid points. The “cosmicism” that STJ has made his central interpretive thesis of HPL’s work is certainly a crucially important theme. But so is Fear Of The Other. In fact, it’s not just that the latter is a lower order category that fits into the former. As you say, the cosmic horror angle is not Fear Of The Unknown at all; to the contrary, it’s fear of knowing even a tiny sliver of what you shouldn’t that then, at least by implication, cracks the whole facade of ignorance. But what makes the Other fearful, by contrast, is precisely ignorance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Also I'm not sure why Lovecraft not using female protagonists makes him sexist.

Did someone argue that?

 Manchu wrote:
Sqorgar, you make a lot of solid points. The “cosmicism” that STJ has made his central interpretive thesis of HPL’s work is certainly a crucially important theme. But so is Fear Of The Other. In fact, it’s not just that the latter is a lower order category that fits into the former. As you say, the cosmic horror angle is not Fear Of The Unknown at all; to the contrary, it’s fear of knowing even a tiny sliver of what you shouldn’t that then, at least by implication, cracks the whole facade of ignorance. But what makes the Other fearful, by contrast, is precisely ignorance.

But that's what I'm talking about. Knowledge isn't "Other". It is "Self". What have I wrought? How do I unlearn what I have learned? How do I live with what I now know? Most of Lovecraft's stories are first person, and that is fundamental to the dread and anxiety his stories have. It's not just to have an imperfect narrator, who's own ignorance allows the horrors to be hidden. It's also to express self-doubt, anxiety, insecurity, and regret. The stories are about the change in mindset of the narrator, from secure to insecure, and a great many of them don't actually involve the narrator even meeting the horrors - only hearing about them. The reason they go insane is the loss of reason and identity that comes from the disassociation of the reality they experience and the reality they now know to be true.

I guess the argument that I'm making is that the horror in Lovecraft comes not from the monsters or the mysteries themselves, but from the mental weakness of the protagonist. In many cases, they end up defeating the monsters in the heat of the moment or solve the mysteries, only to suffer forever after in the knowledge that they lack the mental fortitude to truly process, understand, and adapt to what just happened. It's a fear of self.

Lovecraft constantly writes about mentally edging towards oblivion, and I think it is because his own anxiety was constantly threatening to overwhelm him. And from personal experience, this anxiety is not something you can share with others, making you feel like you are suffering alone inside from a secret knowledge while everyone around you just sees business as normal.

Again, no argument that all of that is a valid part of HPL’s work. But there are other elements as well, including Fear Of The Other.

Sqorgar, you keep saying that Lovecraft is being tarnished, his legacy viewed as tainted. Where are you getting that from? Lovecraft is one of the most well-known genre authors, and his legacy is everywhere. The Cthulhu mythos is beloved by millions. Heck, Cthulhu is a household name. Only Stephen King has had as much impact on mainstream culture as a horror writer...well, maybe Poe. I have not seen anyone saying we should tear down Lovecraft and deny his works. It seems like you are defending against an attack that only you perceive.

A very psychological analysis of Lovecraft. There are many schools of literary criticism, also known as lenses- it's one of the most interesting things about studying literature. Lovecraft does tend to emphasize the danger to the mind, rather than physical danger in his writing. But generally, that danger is not posed from the Self, but from an outside, usually foreign force- the Other.

An example of a Self/Self conflict would be something like Wilde's 'Picture of Dorian Gray', or Poe's 'The Telltale Heart'. Both stories show a protagonist slowly slipping into madness or truly horrific hedonism.They pose the question aren't we all far more evil than we truly let on? Are we good because we are good, or just because we fear the consequences of our true desires?

Contrast that with Lovecraft's general plotline- as you said, it is that curiosity that gets them into trouble- the clay mold, the old relative from a town, that weird house, a strange color etc. But almost always, we have something else at work, some strange or unknown force that harms our character with unwanted insight. This remains the Other, especially as it is generally from a foreign culture, a rejected text, or an ancient and banned religion.

Contrast the Picture of Dorian Gray and Telltale Heart with Lovecraft's closest analogue- The Rats in the Walls. Yes, the man loses his grip on sanity- but it is because of an entire underground city. There's even an entire inhuman race to be the Other.

Agree Manchu. It can be both. Equally. The concepts are not mutually exclusive. Lovecrafts horror is always a fear of the unknown other. The Outsider shows this greatly. Though it shows the fear of the other from an outside perspective for the most part.

It's both the anxiety and mental weakness of the protagonist as revelations edge it towards madness AND the incredible fear of that which is not man. The sheer terror that sends men and women screaming.

It's a constant in his work just as much as the protagonists personal traumas.

Yeah. Im glad that this persons work means a lot to you personally, and it has something of a similar impact on me. But that is 100% a personal interpretation of a work, and thats ok. I got my understanding of lovecraft's personal biases from the book you just said is fine.

Cthulhu is a MASSIVE property, lovecrafts books are reproduced ENDLESSLY. It is everywhere and has thoroughly soaked into the most mainstream of mainstream pop cultures alongside star wars and marvel and dungeons and dragons.

This imaginary denunciation brigade because 9 years ago they replaced an impossibly gakky and creepy bust that is to Howard Phillip what Beavis is to Neil Patrick Harris with something, anything else exists only in your mind.


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Hang on, wait a second, im at home now, and I realized I can go to my damn fridge and crack open a god damn HP Lovecraft themed LIGHT BEER. Narragansett I Am Providence.

God damn, those PC monsters have nearly taken lovecraft away from us!

Manchu wrote:Again, no argument that all of that is a valid part of HPL’s work. But there are other elements as well, including Fear Of The Other.

I just don't see that in his work, but the really great works of literature are ones with many interpretations, and the debates between these interpretations are always illuminating and born from a deep seeded respect and admiration. One of the best debates I ever read on the internet - and this was a while ago, on usenet - was a discussion of whether Star Trek TOS was a better show than Star Trek TNG. It was a trivial subject matter, but it became about morality, science, philosophy, and history in short order, and delved deeply into all of them. The two people arguing walked away agreeing to disagree, but both better for it.

BobtheInquisitor wrote:Sqorgar, you keep saying that Lovecraft is being tarnished, his legacy viewed as tainted. Where are you getting that from? Lovecraft is one of the most well-known genre authors, and his legacy is everywhere. The Cthulhu mythos is beloved by millions. Heck, Cthulhu is a household name. Only Stephen King has had as much impact on mainstream culture as a horror writer...well, maybe Poe. I have not seen anyone saying we should tear down Lovecraft and deny his works. It seems like you are defending against an attack that only you perceive.

Aren't you the one who admitted to changing the original text to sanitize it when you read it to your child? Apparently, your child is old enough to appreciate Rats in the Walls, but too immature to handle the English language?

There's really two things at play here. The first is that I absolutely HATE the fact that any discussion about HP Lovecraft becomes about how racist he was within a dozen posts or so. This is a fairly recently thing. I read Lovecraft twenty years ago, and thank god, it wasn't like this then. I was able to purchase Lovecraft books at a bookstore (remember those?) without feeling like I was going to end up on an FBI watchlist.

When I found this thread, I was initially excited about it - but once it became about racism, I became afraid to post in it. I've been called a racist by a mod here for thinking Black Panther was a terrible movie, and I've seen posts edited, jokes deleted, and people banned for having the wrong opinions - this is no longer a forum that I feel comfortable having a dissenting viewpoint in. I actually have a policy not to post anywhere but New & Rumors and game-specific forums. Nothing with, you know, the possibility for opinions. But this is about an author that has been dead for a hundred years. Why should I worry about being called a racist for defending him and potentially getting suspended or even banned? Along with Robert E. Howard, he's one of my favorite authors of all time but here, and most other places, he's become the "female space marines" of literary discussion.

The other issue is that there is a very deliberate, and ignorant attempt to recontextualize Lovecraft, as a person and of his work, such that it transforms into a form of activism. Not too long ago, there was some pen and paper RPG that was released based on Lovecraft that started with a full page denouncement of Lovecraft as a racist, despite the entire RPG being entirely based on his creations. There's the World Fantasy Award, which originally featured Lovecraft's image on it, but changed after people complained that he was this big honking racist - that's now a bigger legacy of the award than the people who won it! When Locke & Key was made for Netflix, they changed the name of the town from Lovecraft to Matheson. You've got that Lovecraft Country show which has tag lines like "American racism is the ultimate eldritch abomination" with articles about it that start with "HP Lovecraft, father of the Cthulhu mythos, was, even by the disgusting standard of his day, a scumbag racist pig."

It just goes on and on and on. So many cases of people using Lovecraft as a springboard for making it all about them. After all, why celebrate something complicated, when you can just tweet about it being racist and get so, so many likes and attaboys? Why do something worthy of recognition when you can just get it by condemning somebody who actually accomplished something?

Being racist is the least important and least interesting thing about H.P. Lovecraft, and focusing too much on it makes you miss the good stuff about his work. Racism is one of those topics that just sucks all the air out of the room. Nobody can breathe and you can't move on unless you somehow address it. Why can't we just say, "the 1930s were complicated, Lovecraft was complicated, but we're adults and we can handle it" and move on to talk about what a brilliant work of art Shadow Over Innsmouth is?

Sqorgar makes a good point about how HPL’s racism is often brought up to the exclusion of everything else about him and his work, at least in the click-bait-o-sphere. which sadly informs quite a lot of the internet-surfing population.

 Sqorgar wrote:
Why can't we just say, "the 1930s were complicated, Lovecraft was complicated, but we're adults and we can handle it" and move on to talk about what a brilliant work of art Shadow Over Innsmouth is?

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is (among other things) a transparent metaphor for miscegenation/race mixing. Trying to brush off the racism of the story's author is doing it just as much a disservice as any of alleged wrongs you've mentioned.

Taking a deep look at a work involves understanding the author and their life. A lot of Lovecraft as a person ended up in his stories - his anxieties, his fears, his beliefs etc. Trying to cut out one aspect of his life and saying no one can talk about it because to talk about is to somehow bash him is cutting out an avenue of understanding his work. It's diminishing those stories.

And when it comes to the really obviously racist stories it does call into question what the motive is for attempting to normalize Lovecraft.

 Manchu wrote:
Sqorgar, you make a lot of solid points. The “cosmicism” that STJ has made his central interpretive thesis of HPL’s work is certainly a crucially important theme. But so is Fear Of The Other. In fact, it’s not just that the latter is a lower order category that fits into the former. As you say, the cosmic horror angle is not Fear Of The Unknown at all; to the contrary, it’s fear of knowing even a tiny sliver of what you shouldn’t that then, at least by implication, cracks the whole facade of ignorance. But what makes the Other fearful, by contrast, is precisely ignorance.


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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Also I'm not sure why Lovecraft not using female protagonists makes him sexist.

Did someone argue that?

One of the above posts did that and added to the sexism by saying the antagonist female characters were grotesque. Which they should be if they're half fish people ya know?


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 ScarletRose wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
Why can't we just say, "the 1930s were complicated, Lovecraft was complicated, but we're adults and we can handle it" and move on to talk about what a brilliant work of art Shadow Over Innsmouth is?

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is (among other things) a transparent metaphor for miscegenation/race mixing. Trying to brush off the racism of the story's author is doing it just as much a disservice as any of alleged wrongs you've mentioned.

Taking a deep look at a work involves understanding the author and their life. A lot of Lovecraft as a person ended up in his stories - his anxieties, his fears, his beliefs etc. Trying to cut out one aspect of his life and saying no one can talk about it because to talk about is to somehow bash him is cutting out an avenue of understanding his work. It's diminishing those stories.

And when it comes to the really obviously racist stories it does call into question what the motive is for attempting to normalize Lovecraft.

Where is it stated that it's a metaphor for race mixing instead of being a regular horror story?

I'm poking my head in just to say Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors, and ill just say im in agreement with sqorgar.

ive heard it enough, yes-yes, i get it. he apparently didn't like anyone who looked like me.

I do not care, because of what I enjoyed from his work. he changed things, and his work and work like it are some of my favorite things ever to read. to me his work prods at how a person struggles with the unknown and the scale of it all, but sure, lets preface it every time about something ive had to hear my whole life and im supposed be angry about- again.

talk about poisoning one of the most interesting wells... I stayed out of this thread for similar reasons when i saw the topic come to this- like it always does now.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Also I'm not sure why Lovecraft not using female protagonists makes him sexist.

Did someone argue that?

One of the above posts did that and added to the sexism by saying the antagonist female characters were grotesque. Which they should be if they're half fish people ya know?

You seem a little confused (for example, mixing up protagonists and antagonists). So take another look at my post:

 Manchu wrote:
It’s not just racism but also sexism. Women rarely appear in his works but when they do, they tend to be fairly grotesque: the infanticidal witch Keziah, Wilbur’s albino mother Lavinia, and especially the gender-bending crypto-sex predator Asenath Waite are stand-out examples.

When virtually every female character is some kind of hideous villain, it’s adds up to a theme or pattern.

Where is it stated that it's a metaphor for race mixing instead of being a regular horror story?

Have you read Shadow Over Innsmouth? The story is about how the people of the town interbreed with Deep Ones. And this all started because Captain Marsh brought foreign practices back with him from abroad.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Sqorgar, you make a lot of solid points. The “cosmicism” that STJ has made his central interpretive thesis of HPL’s work is certainly a crucially important theme. But so is Fear Of The Other. In fact, it’s not just that the latter is a lower order category that fits into the former. As you say, the cosmic horror angle is not Fear Of The Unknown at all; to the contrary, it’s fear of knowing even a tiny sliver of what you shouldn’t that then, at least by implication, cracks the whole facade of ignorance. But what makes the Other fearful, by contrast, is precisely ignorance.


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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Also I'm not sure why Lovecraft not using female protagonists makes him sexist.

Did someone argue that?

One of the above posts did that and added to the sexism by saying the antagonist female characters were grotesque. Which they should be if they're half fish people ya know?


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 ScarletRose wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
Why can't we just say, "the 1930s were complicated, Lovecraft was complicated, but we're adults and we can handle it" and move on to talk about what a brilliant work of art Shadow Over Innsmouth is?

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is (among other things) a transparent metaphor for miscegenation/race mixing. Trying to brush off the racism of the story's author is doing it just as much a disservice as any of alleged wrongs you've mentioned.

Taking a deep look at a work involves understanding the author and their life. A lot of Lovecraft as a person ended up in his stories - his anxieties, his fears, his beliefs etc. Trying to cut out one aspect of his life and saying no one can talk about it because to talk about is to somehow bash him is cutting out an avenue of understanding his work. It's diminishing those stories.

And when it comes to the really obviously racist stories it does call into question what the motive is for attempting to normalize Lovecraft.

Where is it stated that it's a metaphor for race mixing instead of being a regular horror story?

Do you usually read books that give you like a little answer key in the beginning that gives you a guide to the work?

multiple of lovecrafts stories involve the author finding out, to his horror, that there is a corruption in his blood that relates him to a subhuman, brutish race that dooms him to a future of degeneracy. And the author wrote numerous letters concerned about the dangers of misegenation, it's not a tough read to put forth.

Personally, I connect with innsmouth and similar stories through the lens of someone whos had to come to terms with the fact that I have a family history of alzheimers and I will pretty much guaranteed die not knowing my loved ones unless I die young. The horror conveyed through innsmouth provides the kind of cathartic relief some people get from watching a horror movie focused on one of their phobias.

Theres also an extremely good movie adaptation that relates the same story to the feeling of returning home to a religious community that you were raised in and are now estranged from, that has now become alien and unwelcoming because of your removal.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
A very psychological analysis of Lovecraft. There are many schools of literary criticism, also known as lenses

We probably see Lovecraft brought up in this context a lot honestly because he was such a prolific communicator in his life. We have a lot more about him, his opinions, and his beliefs than we do for many modern authors. The closest to him we have today are Stephen King and Brandon Sanderson maybe, in terms of writers who produce a lot of content about their craft and what they think about their work. Though I won't be shocked if in 100 years people have their own opinions about them and the rest of us. Such is time.

Even then though, I'm not sure we'll ever get another other than Lovecraft who was so incredibly self-critical. Many of his works that are most well remembered today were among his least favorite stories! Shadow Over Innsmouth is probably one of his most well known works but Lovecraft thought it was pretty bad. It's the only thing he wrote that was distributed as a book in his life. He thought Call of Cthulu was 'middling' but it's become his most famous piece (his friends literally lied to get it published and Robert Howard thought it one of his greatest works). This guy beat himself the feth up in ways that I think many writers relate to, and it's probably played a big part in his ongoing recognition in such circles. For all his flaws he was remarkably human and it is so easy to get lost in regarding the nature of humanity and human error. EDIT: Meanwhile, Lovecraft was very fond of his Dreamland's stories, but even Lovecraft fanatics rarely give most of those stories much attention compared to his more horror oriented works.

 Manchu wrote:
No doubt, some people make this kind of argument (racism = bad therefore HPL = bad) but that’s obviously a childish attitude.

I've definitely seen people make this argument. The most hilariously bad example I can think of is someone who said we should ditch Lovecraft and instead tell stories that are about the oppressive uncaring cosmos and the horror of existential irrelevance. That they were advocating literary tautology was apparently lost on them.

Lovecraft is probably one of the most broadly written about writers in the world today. For a man who had a at best a cult following in his own life, his work has had profound influence on our culture. There's a lot of other people like that, but I think Lovecraft gets this kind of treatment more than others precisely because of how often he used the subject of critique and analysis as well as his "man out of time" (I like that characterization) personality.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Where is it stated that it's a metaphor for race mixing instead of being a regular horror story?

I'm going to be honest and say this question is utterly baffling. The entire story is about a man discovering a race of mutant fish men procreating with human women to make more mutant fish men while engaging in barbaric and savage practices and the story's grand reveal is the horrific discovery that the protagonist is a mutant fish man himself.

There's something asinine in complaining about people talking about Lovecraft's racism while not being able to grasp the most obvious kind of subtext in one of his least subtle works. It's literally like there's two different conversations in here, the one where people are talking about the man and his work and the other where people are just complaining about people talking about his racism. In a thread that directly invites talk about the man himself, not just appreciation for his work.