H.P. Lovecraft: Mad Abdul Alhazred's Non-Euclidean Chatroom

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > H.P. Lovecraft: Mad Abdul Alhazred's Non-Euclidean Chatroom

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

It's something of a shame August Derleth will probably never be given the appreciation he deserves, not just as an editor and publisher, but also as a writer. His works are really no less divergent than most neo-Lovecraftiana when it comes to Lovecraft's basic philosophy, and while they're admittedly less interesting to me than, say, Ramsey Campbell's eight great essays into the Lovecraftian atmosphere or T.E.D. Klein's two excellent novellas, they're hardly worse than what you can read in the typical anthology of new Lovecraftian works.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2015 17:50

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 18:57

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Nanomashoes posted:

Lovecraft is actually a really terrible writer, and a massive racist to boot, and should just be forgotten forever like every other weird tales writer.

Wow! Major slam on Tennessee Williams out of nowhere!

# ¿ Jan 10, 2015 16:10

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Mr. Squishy posted:

"Really odd" seems a good summary of Lovecraft's politics. Even given the time he was weirdly intense about race.

It's not just that- he went from fascist in the 1920s (the Yithians in The Shadow Out of Time are meant to seem advanced when Lovecraft describes them as a fascistic technocracy) to a something more akin to a dirigiste economy with overtones of Catholic Distributism by the rise of Hitler, despite his anti-Catholicism.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 03:31

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Nuclear Tourist posted:

I'm not sure I see the point of posthumously shaming white, male authors from the early 1900's because they had opinions that were stupid or don't fall into today's standards of political correctness. Hemingway was a machismo chauvinist. Joyce was a major league perv. Jack London was a xenophobe. Lovecraft was a xenophobe (part of his life, at least). They were all fantastic storytellers, as well as products of the time they lived in.

In other news, gently caress yeah Lovecraft beer

There's a pretty big difference between being gross in the bedroom, being racist but somewhat ashamed of it, and writing the poem "On the Creation of Niggers".

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 16:01

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Stravinsky posted:

What the heck, why does this forum have such a hard on for finding scifi/fantasy writers problematic?

I don't know why people who have grown up in a world where racism and sexism are understood to be bad would want to disassociate themselves from it.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 18:50

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Norman Spinrad: horrible Social Justice Warrior.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 19:06

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Bendigeidfran posted:

I mentioned this a bit before, but I don't think Lovecraft really is a cosmic nihilist. Or at least he's not consistently a nihilist. I've been reading The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath lately and there's a lot of whimsical, genuinely nostalgic stuff there. The bits about Kuranes dreaming up an English seaside-town for himself reminded of Tolkien, even.

H.P's views on reality were pretty foul and hopeless, but his mythos has its bright spots full of meaning. Though with the Tolkien comparison I feel like Lovecraft's Polaris is worth mentioning. Because it reads a lot like something set in Middle-Earth: there's a shining city full of virtuous, tall people that's beset by a horde of monsters. Much of the story is lamenting that all the poetry and age-old elegance of the city Olatho� is going to disappear forever. But where Tolkien's destroying monsters are industrialism, the passage of time, Orcs, and the more ambiguous "Evil Men", Lovecraft's monsters are literally the Inuit peoples migrating from Asia.

I think that H.P.L was capable of finding worth in things; he was just really paranoid and felt that colored people, the poor, etc. were trying to tear down everything he loved. And even then I feel like the more horrific Mythos stories were exercises in perspective/mood more than something related to his over-arching worldview. If you're some random New Englander who's about to get eaten and losing control of their mind, of course you're going to feel like the universe is fundamentally malignant. But if you're like Randolph Carter and actually understand the cosmology and what Azathoth is and whatever, you'll pay them no mind and go on having adventures with forest fairies and cats. It's an interesting balancing act.

Kadath and Polaris are all "Dunsany stories" from earlier in his career when he was mostly inspired by earlier fantasists. His own voice is very much leaning towards cosmic indifference and fatalism, which comes through mainly through his citations of quantum mechanics and relativity, which had destroyed and recreated the physical world in a stranger image, and "folklore", which refers to works like The Golden Bough and The Witch-Cult in Western Europe that had torn down conventional religion. Some of his last stuff seems to have moved to something more optimistic, but overall Lovecraft was concerned very much with the fact that things were falling apart, the center was not holding, and there isn't even a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2015 08:14

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

navyjack posted:

Germane to the HPL and Racism topic, I'm working out some ideas for a cosmic horror-themed group of fantasy stories, and I've tripped over a few land mines like the Tcho-tcho and the miscegenation issues with the Deep Ones already. Most of the time, you can keep the cool aspects and jettison the problematic baggage (or at least replace it with your OWN problematic baggage), but what else should I look out for?

For the record, I'm not directly referencing the Mythos, or even trying to sand off the serial numbers. I'm trying to take the stuff that scares me about cosmic horror and look at through a different contextual lens.

The big issue, the thing which keeps Lovecraft's bigotry eternally relevant, is that his works are largely structured around a rejection of the alien, the strange, the unusual. This isn't endemic to cosmic horror, and stories like The Shadow Over Innsmouth and At The Mountains of Madness go beyond total rejection. But it is a big issue.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Or go for pitch black comedy and have an Eichmann-esque character who encounters the Great Old Ones and is completely unphased because he doesn't have the imagination or the moral capacity to understand why they're horrifying.

Haha.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2015 03:15

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 18:57

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Peztopiary posted:

Lumley's mythos is more or less the proper response to Lovecraft. I love H.P. but his protagonists all respond the way he would i.e. defeated before they begin. At least try fighting. Ants will attack an elephant, regardless of the elephant's notice.

Actually, the proper response to Lovecraft's mythos is embracing the strange. If you meet a starspawn on the street, shake its hand, etc. Going all existentialist is basically accepting Lovecraft's vision on its own terms.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2015 07:33

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