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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Does anybody read Lovecraft anymore?

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ONLY NICE THINGS

07:31 / 07.03.06

Mick-Travis, MSJTG - I suggest taking a look at this interesting discussion about political correctness here.

My reading of Lovecraft has actually not shown up an awful lot of his various "isms", certainly when placed in the context of a socially retarded shut-in writing basically terrible prose. I mean, we've had people sharing novels on Barbelith that haven't shown much more racial sensitivity than "Cold Air". Possibly I am a very insensitive reader, but it strikes me that much of his madness is from his private correspondence. At which point the question becomes a rather different one - specifically whether a writer's life is a good reason to embrace or reject his or her work. Does one boycott P G Wodehouse for his agreeable collaboration with the Nazis? Dorothy L Sayers for her (alleged) anti-Semitism? Philip Larkin for his dubious attitude to schoolgirls' knickers? That strikes me as a huge question.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:23 / 07.03.06

A similar conversation was had here, only with regards to music. (There was another one with debate about Wagner's anti-Semitism, too, but I can't find it). Some typically good comments from Rizla there, too.

12:09 / 07.03.06

That's exactly it Haus, the question to which I think this thread has been heading all along;

To what extent should we censor our own reading based upon the thoughts of its creators?

To my mind, never.
I'm not a devoted "free-speacher" by any means but I think it takes no small leap of imagination to read any biased work, be it "Mein Kamp", "Number of the beast", whatever, and recognise it for just that.

We should read with an awareness of these thoughts being put across and be able to draw distinction between them and our own.

To boycott Lovecraft would be a ridiculous reaction.

As I stated upthread, horror thrives on a purely animalistic, conservative reaction to our innate fear of the strange and the other.

In much the same sense as we react to the tragic genre, horror can provide us with a healthy purging of these sensations.

Or, perhaps (interesting notion) do you feel that it feeds these responses?

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:27 / 07.03.06

To boycott Lovecraft would be a ridiculous reaction.

But there's a vast space between "boycott" and "not read", isn't there? I haven't read Mein Kampf. I may do so at some point, but it's not high up on my list of books to read. That doesn't strike me as ridiculous; there are just a lot of books I'd rather read.

18:48 / 07.03.06

I love Lovecraft even though he's -ist. But then, I like Zappa, Nazi jazz and De Sade, so it's clear I like things despite their creator's dubious background or beliefs. I read Nietszche for god's sake, Brett Easton Ellis, need I go on? If work has merit, it's worthy of attention.
IMO. I mean IMHO.

18:56 / 07.03.06

...I should confess to having Heinlein on that list too, I love his work even though he's a sexist racist pervert who was stuck in the late '50s. One of my earliest memories of noticing rascism was in 'The Day After Tomorrow' where half a dozen white male military scientists defeat the Pan-Asian invasion using advanced weapons tech and disguising themselves as a religion. I remember thinking 'hang on a minute...' (at age eight) '...that seems a bit wrong somehow.'

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

19:04 / 07.03.06

Lovecraft IS difficult to read, but I find no other writer can give me the deep-down shivers quite like he can. I read a lot of horror--well, more than is probably healthy, let's say--and still he's the only one who can give me nightmares every time.

I believe I have a Lovecraftian-tribute story sitting somewhere around here on my hard-drive; part of my dream of writing a comic about the Cthulu Mythos (and yes, I know it was August Derleth who began it) at some point.

08:24 / 08.03.06

I have an unfinished short I'm pursuing to refute Derleth- maybe we should have a Mythos Shorts contest (not like summer pants on a squid, y'know, stories)? In Creation?

Wanted to say as well Brett Easton Ellis was the deliberate mistake in my last post, as he is an example of a misogynist character not writer (American Psycho). Keeps you on your toes.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:15 / 08.03.06

Excellent idea, Quantum- I can dust off my unfinished pirate/Mythos opus and actually come up with an ending this time.

12:28 / 08.03.06

[threadrot]
Considering that American Psycho, Patrick Bateman, is explicitly based on Ellis' father, one cannot assume that Bret himself is misogynistic. Ellis and his father had a physically and psychologically abusive relationship. Ellis hated his father, and the contempt for Patrick Bateman is almost dripping off the pages of American Psycho. Therefore, I don't think one can assume that Ellis' morals are the same as his characters, considering Ellis hates his own characters.
[/threadrot]

16:27 / 09.03.06

after watching the "Juggernaut Bitch" video, Lovecraft's racism seems positively mild.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

18:33 / 09.03.06

Quantum suggested:
maybe we should have a Mythos Shorts contest (not like summer pants on a squid, y'know, stories)? In Creation?

good idea. Format-wise, would making each story a file from within the "Cthulhu cult" box referred to in Call of Cthulhu? It could be that it has moved on over the years, and more and more information has been added to it - beyond the initial artifacts: the thing in the clay, and Inspector Legrasse's tale, etc...

--not jack

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

01:40 / 10.03.06

My reading of Lovecraft has actually not shown up an awful lot of his various "isms", certainly when placed in the context of a socially retarded shut-in writing basically terrible prose. I mean, we've had people sharing novels on Barbelith that haven't shown much more racial sensitivity than "Cold Air". Possibly I am a very insensitive reader, but it strikes me that much of his madness is from his private correspondence.

I do think a certain undercurrent can be found in tales like "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", where the captain who has been abroad to these terrible foreign parts has encouraged the pollution of the locals' blood with this awful foreign DNA and rendered them somewhat subhuman... I don't think it's going too far to see racism in there. I still think it's a classic story, though.

08:29 / 10.03.06

Well yeah, it doesn't exactly take a genius to pick up on the racial parallels in '..Innsmouth.'

Corrupted bloodlines, race-mixing etc seem to have been ideas that freaked HPL out throughout his life, at least if the extent to which they reoccur in his work is anything to go by.

Oh yeah, and the one short story I've ever written that I'm satisfied with is a post-Lovecraftian one, so I'll gladly add that to the pot if we're throwing down.

10:24 / 20.03.06

I think his atmosphere is great.

And his psychology is pretty cool.

But his work is, by our standards (by that I mean the standards of the average contemporary reader), frankly not that interesting or easy to read. Its filled with arcane words and the pacing drones. And there are a number of scientific "facts" in his work that have been proven wrong by now. But modern readers have thier prejudices the same way readers in 1910 or 1830 had theirs.

And his work is filled with sexism, racism and classism and all the other bad -isms but at the same time, who writing at that time didn't do that? I mean looking at it in the context of the pulp fiction at the time, he probably wasn't any worse then most of his contemporaries. And I think thats something that needs to be considered when any work of literature is read, look at the context it was created in. Edgar Rice Burroughs had "negress" in Tarzan. A lot of the "scientific romances" of the time involved white people killing large amounts of dark skinned savages. Fu Manchu was about the most racist book on the face of the Earth (and I'm including the Turner Diaries here), I think it used the phrase "yellow peril" about once a page. Robert E. Howard wrote stories that had quite a bit of racism. At the time though, racism wasn't seen as being anywhere near as bad as it is now. I mean the average White person in the late 19th and early 20th century would be abnormal if he didn't harbour tendencies that would seem pretty racist by today's standards.

We also need to consider that Lovecraft was writing fiction for magazines that were generally considered...well...less then literary.

Honestly, I'd probably assign one Lovecraft story to a Spec Fic class I was teaching but I'd use an annotated version. And probably teach him as one of the forefathers of it as we know it along with Wells and Verne and a few others. Because I don't think his influence can be questioned.

So in other words I use a lot of words but I don't actually come to any kind of conclusion.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

16:08 / 22.03.06

well, it's gone and done now:
beyond Cthulhu

add your ineffable horrors to the files.

--not jack

07:00 / 27.11.06

I actually have to admit I love the racism and sexism in his books, it's so funny. I don't think they'd be the same without them. The first time I read about "The mad Arab" I nearly pished myself.

07:22 / 27.11.06

I haven't read much Lovecraft, I think I took a stab at Mountain of Madness years ago, but don't think I finished it. I do have collections of his stuff though, more because people have referred to his writing in other things that I've read so I've always planned to plough through some Cthulu myth at some point. However, with reference to his ..ism's - I don't think this will put me off, Ive read E R Burroughs and Doc EE Smith and a few more of those older generation sci-f, fantasy, horror writers, and although the isms are more apparent because of their anachronistic nature, I've always had a feeling that they are of the time, and that, as long as I didn't put a book down and think 's/he's right, those natives/women are weak and stupid, darn it!' I've always laughed them off, I guess. There are more modern writers that are guilty of similar ism's, but most people seem to put them down to 'not being able to write women/ethnics' very well, so perhaps this is just a hyper version of this - I mean Lovecraft was a bit of a mummy's boy loner in a wealthy neighbourhood wasn't he?

07:38 / 27.11.06

Okay, I just read the wikipedia entry for Lovercraft - and his attitudes make sense - his dad died of syphilis (although it doesn't say it there, it almost implies that dad got it from someone that wasn't mum), being consigned to an asylum in the process (where years later mum would go). He was an only child, raised by mum and two aunts, married an odler woman of eastern european origin, couldn't find work, blamed every immigrant in New York, died in poverty, harbouring dreams of being a member of the anglo-saxon elite upper-class. So he's just an angry writer. Now, I don't agree with his views on almost everything it seems, but (and perhaps because of his anger, hatred and anarchronistic style) people seem to think that he wrote good horror - which is kind of what you'd be looking for from a horror writer. I'm kind of interested to give him more of a go now...

Kiltartan Cross

06:40 / 28.11.06

He's worth a read, if only because his work has been the inspiration for so many others (The Colour From Space being a prime example). There's a contradiction inherent to the broad nature of the Mythos; reading a great mass of similarly themed horror can be (is) boring, but at the same time you need to read the whole lot so as to have a grasp of the whole and pick up on some of the more subtle cross-referencing between stories. The Mythos backstory flies quickly between the sublime and the silly, and isn't entirely cohesive, but the general concept (at least as envisioned by HPL) of an uncaring universe - as opposed to one of good/evil duality - is pretty damn cool. My personal preference is for his Dunsanian stuff over the Mythos. Perhaps that's childish.

Gotta include a quick plug for the fairly recent Dagon, which (with one rather gratuitous scene excepted) is a splendid adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

08:09 / 28.11.06

I actually have to admit I love the racism and sexism in his books, it's so funny.

You're a Bernard Manning fan aren't you?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:20 / 28.11.06

I had the wonderful experience last night, when my alarm went off for work, of the radio coming on in the middle of Start The Week and the first thing I heard being: "So. Patti Smith- tell me about HP Lovecraft".

14:34 / 28.11.06

Gotta include a quick plug for the fairly recent Dagon, which (with one rather gratuitous scene excepted) is a splendid adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Kill Me.

I do believe that's one of my favorite soft-porn horror moments ever.

It's a fabulous horror movie filled with throw away HPL greatness. The sweatshirt alone makes me smile. The bit with the door lock just makes me laugh insanely.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:19 / 28.11.06

Dagon director Stuart Gordon (see also Reanimator, From Beyond) also did a wicked adaptation of The Dreams In The Witch House for the Masters Of Horror TV series.

lord nuneaton savage

19:34 / 28.11.06

Which is good, admittedly, but no director on earth could hope to make Brown Jenkin as scary as he is in you head.

19:44 / 28.11.06

I'm holding out for del toro's at the mountains of madness.

lord nuneaton savage

08:05 / 29.11.06

Oh, my friend. Such wonders await...

11:02 / 29.11.06

Yeah, 'Dagon' is a hoot - one of the best straight-to-video horrors of recent years, Lovecraft-related or otherwise; I love how because it was a Spanish co-production it's set in Spain; because, yeah, that'll work; a dark, rain-lashed, gothic fishing village populated by furtive, pale dudes in cowls... in Spain.
Also enjoyed the protagonist's Bruce Campbell-esque slapstick antics... what's his big line when all the Innsmouthers start drooling at him about how it's his destiny to serve Cthulhu etc.? "Fuck that! I'm not gonna live in the sea and worship some dumb-ass fish god!" - if only Lovecraft's characters had been that concise. I seem to remember there are also a few bits that are genuinely quite nasty and gratuitous, but then, y'know, I guess maybe it's refreshing to see a horror film that's actually a bit horrible.

What tone does Gordon take with "..Witch House"? It's my favourite Lovecraft story, and not one that I would have thought would really adapt well to a knock-about gore fest..

..but then I can think of very few film-makers of any kind who'd really be able to pull off an effective, serious Lovecraft adaptation.

12:07 / 29.11.06

He's worth a read, if only because his work has been the inspiration for so many others (The Colour From Space being a prime example).

Of all the stories in my Lovecraft anthology, TCOOS is probably the best. Cthulhu is the most well known seeing as it has mystery, pirates and a big squid monster getting brained by a ship, but TCOOS is the one that leaves me with the greatest sense of dread. It has fantastic build-up (the slow rot of everything on the farm) and the biggest pay-off, for me, isn't the alien colour's final display but the moment when the protagonist rounds the corner and finds his friend, or what's left of him. Pure, fucking horror.

In the back of the anthology it says that Lovecraft never considered TCOOS a story proper but an "atmospheric exercise", which rings true as the story itself isn't much cop (the narrator being a complete titwit fr'instance) but for those pages you are there and you are unsettled.

12:25 / 29.11.06

Directors who could do HPL... now there's a thread right there.
Alfonso Cuarón? (Prisoner of Azkaban meets Children of Men meets Nyarlathotep!)
David Slade who did Hard Candy? Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame?
Ridley Scott?? James Cameron?!?
SAM RAIMI? JOHN CARPENTER!? PETER FUCKING JACKSON!!

Crux Is This City's Protector.

13:00 / 29.11.06

When it comes to Lovecraft adaptations, the best I know is audial. Movies run the risk of being TOO visual, you know? I feel like Lovecraft suffers for every scene that's not an atmospheric shot of a hand opening a door, or steps creaking, or creeping runes on the cover of an ancient, leatherbound tome, et cetera.

But there's a band called Axis of Perdition (whom I believe were namedropped in the Interesting Metal thread) whose bread and butter is producing the kind of frenzied, disoriented horror of your average lovecraft story in audial form. Industrial, nutty black metal with absolutely heaping helpings of bizarre and disturbing atmosphere. Lots of weird noises, dig, and a sensibility—song titles and the like—straight out of that style of fiction, all long unpronounceable names and a quasi-abandoned sanitarium theme.

In fact, some songs even have somebody reciting Lovecraft (or an imitator) over/under the chaos. For anything the man's work loses in being brought fully into the light, it gains being pumped through the headphones in the midst of twenty minutes of sonic mindfuckery.

13:19 / 29.11.06

Peter Jackson could be a go-er, if he kept to restrained Heavenly Creatures form and didn't just film CGI Great Old Ones rampaging around with an OTT orchestral score for three hours.

A John Carpenter Lovecraft film would be HILARIOUS, but not really a serious proposition.

Most of the rest I'll leave to the peanut gallery.

In terms of currently working name directors, I say David Lynch or nobody.

lord nuneaton savage

14:53 / 29.11.06

Carpenter's "Mouth of Madness" is certainly Lovecraftian and rather good, too.

Just thought I'd get that in before Macready came round and bit your face off.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:51 / 29.11.06

Yeah, In The Mouth Of Madness is one of the best Lovecraft movies never to actually refer to its source material!

I loves it, I does.

Incidentally, Houllebecq's "HP Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life" is actually out in a UK edition now, and is well worth picking up.

In a way, Lovecraft's racism and general misanthropy, while a long way from being anything I'd call "funny", are themselves a part of what makes his fiction work- here was a man who wasn't just trying to scare his readers because it's fun to be scared sometimes- he was genuinely filled with fear and revulsion at the world.

An interesting (though almost certainly pointless) thought experiment, and one which I find myself using to justify my love of the man's work, is to consider whether Lovecraft would have had the same attitudes were he alive today? I seem to remember (probably from Derleth's own biography of HPL) that August Derleth claimed to have disabused him of many of his notions about race towards the end of his life. Mind you, Derleth was a notorious revisionist (and not just, I gather, in the purely literary sense) and may have just wanted his friend to be remembered in a better light.

17:21 / 29.11.06

One more vote added for "In the mouth of madness". I haven't seen any of the other adaptations (or 'inspired bys') but this one certainly captures the sense of hopelesness. The ending is an absolute corker - still gives me the tingles...

The Houllebecq's a great little essay: I agree with a lot of what the man says..shall have to track that one down

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