Lovecraftian Horror

He also portrayed the Venusian natives quite sympathetically in In the Walls of Eryx. There is an ongoing development in his portrayal of the other, going from completely negative and unknowably scary to a more diverse direction, that some things different from us can be quite okay, in their own weird way. His xenophobia towards non-white non-upper-class humans also seems to become a bit toned down towards the late 30's, with his racism becoming closer to what was typical of the time-period, with a bit less hysterical shrieking in his purple prose.

Though he also still tends to include something even more "alien" in said stories. Elder Things - Shoggoths. Great Race of Yith - Flying Polyps. And so on.

Yeah, but I still see it as some type of progress, which even he himself commented on in his letters. He lamented that he hadn't really gone through the emotional development typical for a young adult, but rather roughly a decade later. That is why I am very curious about What Could Have Been, had he lived at least a decade longer and hopefully further matured as a person?

Hard to tell. I really hate saying this, but many of Lovecraft's virtues as a writer are tough to separate from his vices as a man. Without his intense xenophobic & racist streak, I wonder if he'd been able to paint as compelling a picture of horrifying, nauseating otherness as he managed. And without his obsessions, isolation, and crippling personal weirdness, I wonder how successful he'd have been at evoking such things in his works.

If he'd lived longer, HPL might've become a healthier and a happier man—and I certainly would like to think so! But as a writer he might've become far less interesting.

Yeah, I agree that you can't really separate the two sides of him, because his writing is fueled by him being so scared of almost everything in the world. And there is always that risk of him becoming a less interesting writer with added emotional health, but I think it would be a fine trade-off. I generally prefer his later stories for leaning towards being less virulantly racist, when many of his stories go for sci-fi, so I hope that he might have continued on as a pioneering author in that genre. On the other hand, he might also have worked even more on the Dreamlands.

They aren't any stories that actually take place in Arkham or Miskatonic U, right? They always just seem referenced.

Herbert West took place partially at Miskatonic, because the narrator and West went to medical school there.

There's also several scenes at Miskatonic U in The Dunwich Horror and several of the characters dealing with the matter are faculty there.

"The Dreams in the Witch House" takes place wholly in Arkham. The protagonist is a math student at Miskatonic, though most of the action takes place off campus.

Edited by Jhimmibhob on Dec 20th 2020 at 2:27:47 PM

The main character in The Whisperer in Darkness works at Miskatonic and the crew in At the Mountains of Madness also features professors from there. Everybody at the university seems to have at least browsed through a chapter of the Necronomicon at one point.

Anyone have any good modern lovecraftian books to recommend ?

I already finished stuff like ballad of black tom for example so I'm on a binge.

There are occasionally short-stories to be read for free on the Lovecraft eZine, like this one referring to lore about Ithaqua:

https://lovecraftzine.com/magazine/issues/2012-2/issue-20-december-2012/wind-walker-by-neil-john-buchanan/

Does anyone know if The Atomic Sea is any good?

Well as the author of Cthulhu Armageddon (Cthulhu meets Fallout), I recommend the following:

• The Andrew Doran books by Matthew Davenport (Indiana Jones vs. Cthulhu cults)
• The Harry Stubbs series by David Hambling (1920s Detective mysteries ala Call of Cthulhu)
• The Titus Crow series by Brian Lumley, particularly the audiobooks
• The Call of Distant Shores by David Niall Wilson
• Tales of the Al-Azif

I hear that a lot, but there are actually any sources on that? If I recall correctly, Lovecraft had an unnerving appreciation for Hitler. :|

Interesting article about the popularity of Call of Cthulhu in Japan.

This particular bit left me quite amused:

It should always be stressed that HPL didn't become tolerant by any modern standards, but his xenophobia seems to have toned down towards a more regular 1930's racism that didn't raise too many eyebrows at the time. I've unfortunately not had the opportunity to read his published letters, beyond quotes in articles, but he himself does acknowledge that it is a pity that he didn't mature earlier in life. This includes reflection over how his interaction with a growing social circle more or less forced him to adapt, so that his mind could handle different opinions and influences better. He had to at least be a bit more open-minded to be able to interact with his literary friends, who were more of a product of their time than he was and even they encouraged him to broaden his horizons.

In the end, he was still xenophobic and classicist, though in his later writing there are changes in tone when describing minorities and aliens, that imply that his views might have softened slightly. Either way, he was a complex person with several off-putting opinions and values, but I mostly feel pity for him and wish that he could have sorted out his issues in life.

Notably, HP Lovecraft did throw down his appreciation for fascism that lasted a month because, of all people, Robert E. Howard tore into him for it and pointed out the Nazis would kill people like them too. Also, that they were crude assholes too that it was beneath anyone smart to like. It was a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for Conan's author, IMHO.

"I might also point out that no one has ever been hanged in Texas for a witch, and that we have never persecuted any class or race because of its religious beliefs or chance of birth; nor have we ever banned or burned any books, as the “civilized” Nazis are now doing in “civilized” Germany." - Robert E. Howard

And it worked too.

"Nazism, on the other hand, really will do some harm; for there is systematic discouragement of certain types of research and opinion and art, plus a persistent propaganda in favour of definitely false scientific opinions." - HPL

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 4th 2021 at 9:49:45 AM

Well he did write The Hour of the Dragon. A scarily predictive fantasy take in rising Nazi Germany taking over France before ww2.

Nothing wrong with being a classicist.

Also his discussions with Howard on barbarism vs. civilization are very intriguing. Howard is a figure who gets a lot less literary or philosophical study than Lovecraft but I've been reseaching and learning a lot more about him lately.

In Lovecraft's day as now, liberalism/conservatism is a spectrum that can be found among several axes—economic, cultural, etc. Near the end of his life, for example, Lovecraft became a reluctant convert to FDR's New Deal. On the one hand, that's a sort of "liberalization"—but of the sort that also described Dixiecrats of the same era! So, had Lovecraft lived, I doubt he'd have ever "softened" in a way that would satisfy any subscriber to today's fashionable ideologies.

It is kind of funny that the rural Texan is the guy who loves foreign cultures, history, and has Fair for Its Day depictions of brown people. Not perfect and a few VERY racist parts but you can tell the guy generally LIKES meeting new people and seeing new things.

While HPL the Northern fishing village guy who lived in New York is terrified of everything not WASP.

I've found it quite sad that he would likely not have fit in even with most of his fellow contemporary WAS Ps, being the walking anachronism he was. The man seems to have mostly identified with people of his grandfather Whipple Phillips' generation, but even more with an idealized version of their 18th-century ancestors. The lifestyle HPL wanted to lead wasn't really feasible anymore in the 20th century, unless his grandfather's fortune hadn't evaporated, which could have made it possible for him to live a carefree life of inherited wealth.

Guy was a Nervous Wreck who was afraid of damn near everything that didn't fit into a very narrow worldview that considered non-Euclidian geometry, colors outside of the spectrum visible to humans, non-white and/or poor working people, and seafood to be cosmic horrors.

Lovecraft's work was all fueled by his utter fear of the world outside of his room.

Both Howard and Lovecraft were men out of their time and they knew it. Howard wanted to be some ancient Celt or Briton fighting off Roman invaders.

It's something that draws me to them.