| Author | Message | ||
     Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.96.160 |
Dunno if this has already been mentioned but the Wordsworth Mystery and Supernatural range features lots of olde worlde supernatural stories at cheap prices. Writers include Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, Ambrose Bierce, Rudyard Kipling plus tons of other people I've never even heard of. Inexpensive way of sampling some more obscure authors. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Odd to see a lot of scarce material jumping the gap from expensive limited editions and/or rare old books to the cheapest mass-market paperbacks. The magic thread connecting them is, of course, the phrase 'out of copyright'. I was surprised to see that one of the Lovecraft stories had been tampered with: the editor at Wordsworth removed the last sentence of 'Medusa's Coil', which Lovecraft ghost-wrote for Zealia Bishop – presumably because of its crass racist message. However, falsifying the story in this way seems dishonest. I would have dropped the story and provided a note to explain why – at least then readers know what they are dealing with, and can access the story in more expensive editions if they wish. Would dropping the story altogether be an over-reaction? In this case I think not. Mind you, Derleth changed the ending (introducing a tortuous euphemism for 'negress') when it was first published, and only the work of archivist S.T. Joshi restored the aggressive stereotyping of the original. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.96.160 |
Joel, do you know if any of the other books have suffered similar editing? | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.10.17 |
I would't drop anything, sentence or story - people should read it, keeping in mind the time/political climate that the writer lived in. Puts it into context. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.96.160 |
Funny thing is the first two things I read by P.G. Wodehouse both featured a word that begins with n and rhymes with Tigger and there was no attempt to edit it out. I realise Wodehouse was just using current slang rather than making a deliberate racial statement but it just struck me as odd that he was allowed to get away with it if Lovecraft gets edited. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
In Lovecraft's case, the same time and political climate that produced Jack London (socialist), Dashiell Hammett (socialist) and John Steinbeck (socialist) among its leading writers. Lovecraft was skulking at the back wearing the mental equivalent of a KKK hood. There are people like that still around. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Stu, I think that's the point. Wodehouse's racism is casual and contextual, Lovecraft's is personal and vicious. And of the two, only one praised Hitler and it wasn't Wodehouse. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
I really like much of Lovecraft's fiction, but it's taken me three decades to face up to the fact that there is no point making excuses for his political views or the way he expressed them. They were not the views of his literary friends or the literary culture in which he moved. He wasn't a Mississippi farm-hand: he was a writer living close to New York – and one who considered himself well capable of rising above the views of his society. The sad thing about the efforts of S.T. Joshi and others to preserve Lovecraft's non-fiction writings and raise awareness of them is that the combination of crudely racist letters and pompous elitist essays has done permanent harm to Lovecraft's credibility. He is no longer known primarily as a weird fiction writer who happened to be a racist, but as a racist bigot who happened to write weird fiction. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.96.160 |
Although Wodehouse was the one accused of being a Nazi. Actually, I was wondering, seeing as Wodehouse's wartime broadcasts caused outrage in the UK but the CIA recognised them as an example of how to subtly ridicule an enemy is this the only documented case of Americans actually understanding irony? | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.96.160 |
Oops, sorry, Joel. Didn't see your last post. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.96.160 |
Just thinking about it Warren Ellis wrote a Lovecraft cameo in a Planetary/Authority crossover and the dominant characteristic he gave Lovecraft was his racism. As portrayed by Ellis he honestly believed the mound of strange eggs he'd discovered had been laid by black people. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
IMHO, a lot of Lovecraft's work exhibits his xenophobia...all that fear of outside beings invading our society. I suspected the man was a racist before I ever knew anything about him. Still, he wrote some cool monsters. ;-) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
On reflection, Ally, you're probably right that the unexpurgated texts should be out there to let people make up their own minds. It's a tricky one, though. I can just see some BNP thug thinking "Well, H.P. Lovecraft would have agreed with me!" | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.10.17 |
I know what you mean about some people saying it would support their view, Joel. It's just that if it is upfront I can deal with it and make a judgement. His prose is part of who he was. I didn't know Lovecraft was like that before I read his prose and it certainly made me think about what he was doing and the time that he lived in. Brilliant stories though and creepy as hell. When I read them I always remember that I would have probably disliked him as a person. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.101.203 |
It's often a retreat for nervous, anti-social sociophobe types to flee to the 'protection' of fascistic-type views. Happened with Elroy Leonard as a teen, for instance. It's a warped sensitivity or fear, one being not turned into self loathing but rather the loathing of others. Ally; yes, that last line feels right. And it makes sense that such stories should be written from such painful places. And ... should we still read him? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Yes, I think so. The worst-offending stories are also the worst on other grounds, the crudest and least convincing – one may as well skip them. If you've already read the whole of Lovecraft's fiction, as I have (ahem... three times... in 30+ years of genre reading), it makes sense to be selective. 'The Shadow Out of Time' doesn't offend or disappoint at any level. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.10.17 |
I'll keep returning to him too - amazing writer but I'll be selective. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.98.9.4 |
Lovecraft wasn't alone. Check out Enid Blyton's the Three Gollywogs - a 60's or 70's edition preferably - before they changed the character names. The three title characters are called Golly, Woggy and Reggin - that last name is an anagram of the actual name used in the book. All the stories in the book revolve around the fact that all te gollywogs look the same and you can't tell the difference. They go to visit their Aunt Coalblack in one of the stories. the list is endless of the things in that book that would never ever get printed today outside of a KKK manual. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.101.203 |
Thing is, if you keep black people down, deprive them, they aren't going to be pleasant to hang around, are they? It's only logical. I'd like to hope that if HP and Enid were around today they'd feel different. | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.208.214.24 |
I think these paperbacks are an excellent idea - they give you a taste of authors you might not want to spend a fortune on. I've got a few of them - mainly authors Ash-Tree haven't revived. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
They didn't have the essential salts. | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.208.214.24 |
That's because the pages weren't crisp enough | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.144.40.190 |
I absolutely abhore racism, but lets not be too PC here...if the word nigger is used then surely we can type it without fear if it is being used in the context of discussing racist terms? Why disguise the word? gcw | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.182.93 |
While there's obviously no defense for Lovecraft's racism, I don't agree that he was a vicious man, nor have I ever felt, on reading his work, that he would be a particularly unpleasant individual to meet (eccentric and flawed, yes). For what it's worth, his views did seem to be changing as he got older. I also completely disagree with Joel's statement that "he is no longer known as a weird fiction writer who happened to be a racist, but as a racist bigot who happened to write weird fiction." | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.104.79 |
>>I absolutely abhore racism, but lets not be too PC here...if the word nigger is used then surely we can type it without fear if it is being used in the context of discussing racist terms? >>Why disguise the word? Just thought it would be funny following on from Joel's comments about a "tortuous euphemism". Especially as Tigger is probably one of the most inoffensive words in the English language. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Suppose Nick Griffin started writing Ligotti-esque weird fiction and brought his eye around your town for a book signing. Would you read his works? Suppose Shannon Matthews' mother brought out a yearly chapbook with rather excellent stories in the vein of Aickman and Blackwood? Yeah, now I think we can see things a lot clearer. A LOT clearer. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
:-) | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
A LOT clearer. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Huw – I only meant to suggest that one aspect of Lovecraft's personality was vicious. We know that he was considered a kind and courteous man by those who knew him well. He was considerate of Sonia, except when telling her that he didn't want to meet members of her family unless there was "a majority of Aryans" in the room. He was good to his friends, including ones whom he knew to be Jewish. But given his expressed support for Hitler's genocidal views, and his remarks in letters that non-white races deserved extermination, the word 'vicious' in regard to his racism (and that alone) is surely no exaggeration. You commented: "I also completely disagree with Joel's statement that "he is no longer known as a weird fiction writer who happened to be a racist, but as a racist bigot who happened to write weird fiction." I hope you're right to be honest. But S.T. Joshi has been saying for a long time that his goal is for Lovecraft to be better known for his letters and essays than for his fiction. That would, sadly, be the inevitable consequence. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
He really said that about Hitler? Sheesh. What a cock. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.216 |
Is it a relatively modern thing when judging literature to go looking for the author? Julian Barnes asks this in his book FLAUBERT'S PARROT. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Surely not. Byron's views of Keats' poetry were coloured by his experience of the author. The Victorians were massive gossipers and often wrote under pseudonyms to avoid their work being judged from what else was said about them. Indeed, until modern times women generally published under pseudonyms because they wouldn't be taken seriously without male-sounding names. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Read another way, however, Barnes' question could refer to exactly that. In the past, people half-expected the author to be hidden from readers of the book. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
In relation to Lovecraft, if one is reading his bloody letters (in their 47 or however many extant volumes) one is entitled to judge them as expressions of his personality. That's exactly what they were. Some separation of the stories from their author is possible – but the letters? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.216 |
Actually, Joel, Barnes may have asked: *why* do we feel the need to go looking for the author? I read FP years ago and it contained an extended meditation of this issue. I must reread it. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.216 |
I wonder, though. Wasn't it the Romantic period (1810s-ish) in art which brought the artist under such scrutiny? I suppose that's what I meant when I misremembered Barnes' question. Doesn't this tie in with the "invention of the self" Foucault bangs on about? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.215 |
Does this issue exist in other art forms? While assessing artistic output, does anyone go hunting around in, say, Beethoven's life for evidence of ignominity ? Let's face it, they'd find it: just ask his nephew Carl. And there was Ludwig writing his Ninth Symphony - the ode of joy, a paean to brotherhood - while all the time he was driving the poor lad to suicide. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.215 |
Wagner, I guess, but again it's the *words* - the librettos - that give him away. I'm really free-associating now... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Philip Larkin made the excellent decision in his lifetime not to publish his rude poems (apart from a couple of outstanding merit) or his novel about lesbian schoolgirls. After his death ALL his poetry, the good, the bad and the ugly, was published and so were his erotica, his racist and sexist letters, etc. The result was a serious decline in his overall credibility. Why do literary estates allow foolish publishers to do these things? It's still possible to admire the three fine poetry collections that Larkin wrote, as long as one sort of forgets that it was *that* Philip Larkin who wrote them. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.215 |
>>>Why do literary estates allow foolish publishers to do these things? Money, probably. Or if the literary estate consists of said-artist's family, an attempt to show the world what the bugger was really like. I jest. Or half-jest. But that makes me think: maybe many artists are privately ignoble in some way or another, and maybe many keep those foibles wholly private. How do we know Jane Austen wasn't a social elitist who believed that peasants must burn, if she never left an 'audit trail' of evidence to show us this? Okay, so that's a silly example, but the point stands. n'est ce pas? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.215 |
Ergo, do we expect our canon of Great Artists to be socially and morally unimpeachable? And is that a realistic expectation given that they're only human like the rest of us mucktubs? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
As Victor Borge once said: "Ah, Mozart - he was happily married, but his wife wasn't." | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
>>Does this issue exist in other art forms? Not really, but I think that's because reading someone's writing is such an intimate experience. You end up with someone else's thoughts and feelings planted directly into your head. It's only natural, then, to want to know more about the life, opinions, or circumstances of an author who affected you strongly. And when those opinions don't live up to snuff, well, there is disappointment and, often, complete dismissal of the author and his works. On the other hand, some authors of (arguably) inferior books have achieved the status of respectability solely through their (real or perceived) extraordinary biographies. Wm S. Burroughs comes to mind -- many of the beats, actually -- as well as contemporary writers like Mary Gaitskill and JT Leroy (although now that Leroy has been found to be a fraud, that respectability seems to have been revoked). | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.238.19 |
Joel, don't forget Lovecraft went through a process of progressive humanisation as he grew older. There's a letter of him where he more or less literally says "What an ass I was in those days!" Apart from that I do feel that the barest scrap can and should shed additional light on any author's work and not be kept under lock and key (in the JHL Library vault or elsewhere). Say Derleth managed to destroy the really obnoxious letters, wouldn't that have created a dishonest portrait? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
>>>There's a letter of him where he more or less literally says "What an ass I was in those days!" Ah yes, the essentialist view of human personality problematises all of this. If we regard views and opinions are evidence of fixed underlying traits, we're apt to misrepresent the individual (which is not to excuse such ignoble behaviour). | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
>>Not really, but I think that's because reading someone's writing is such an intimate experience. I don't think the issue is 'intimacy'. Little is more intimate than music. I think the issue is one of discourse: that is, words give us less ambiguous access to the artist's conceptual thought wherein such demons lurk. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
J.T. Leroy unmasked as a fraud? Tell me more. I don't feel one has to read his two superb novels as autobiography to appreciate them, but if he created a false identity to help promote them he deserves a slapped wrist. SARAH is brilliant. Writers are, in general, liars, flakes, freeloaders, con artists and apt to be economical with the truth. Let's not judge them as more than writers. Hubert and Huw, I accept your points regarding HPL. It's his rebranding as a 'great' non-fiction writer that annoys me. He wasn't. He was a pompous bore with some appalling views (and the praise for Hitler was expressed late in his life). His fiction is mostly excellent (well, at least two thirds of it) and deserves to be appreciated. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.238.19 |
Not only was the praise for Hitler expressed relatively late, it was expressed before the onset of the war! Recall that Lovecraft died in 1937. I saw J.T. Leroy on television a couple years ago http://www.vpro.nl/programma/ram/afleveringen/16145501/items/16145575/ and he really grabbed me, so I bought SARAH and THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS. The latter is a tremendous albeit thin collection; SARAH didn't work for me at all, but it might have if it had been included in THE HEART. Literary hoax or not? Impossible to say, but here's one article that dispells the Leroy myth: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/14718/ | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
A large part of the appeal of Leroy's books was that they were interpreted as thinly veiled memoir (about a young cross-dressing truck stop prostitute). This is largely due to the stories mirroring Leroy's own biography. However, it is more than rumor that Leroy never existed -- he was the creation of a middle-aged former would-be rock star named Laura Albert, who had talked a couple of friends and relatives into masquerading as Leroy during his infrequent public appearances -- Albert herself admitted the hoax and was convicted of fraud in 2007. >> I don't think the issue is 'intimacy'. Little is more intimate than music. I disagree, actually. Music can directly move me, but there is little that's personal or intimate about it. Play me a piece of music and I'll have difficulty guessing anything about the personality or nature of its creator. Literature, on the other hand, provides insights -- sometimes only tantalizing, fragmentary insights -- as to the character of the creator. Literature often leaves me wanting to know more. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.181.240 |
Joel, it's been a long time since I read any of Lovecraft's letters, or any biographical writings about him, but I cannot remember him saying specifically that he supported genocide. I really hope that he didn't. His racist views were bad enough, but if he espoused genocide that would be even more unforgiveable. Did he actually say this? The only thing I really remember regarding his stance on Hitler were his remarks that, while he "liked" him (I believe his words were "I know he's a clown but, by God, I like the boy!"), he also found his methods "crazy". As Hubert pointed out, Lovecraft died in 1937, two years before the war, and certainly long before the atrocities of the Holocaust took place. I'm certainly not arguing that he was right in his racist/political views - I find them contemptible, myself - but I think we should be clear about whether HPL actually supported mass extermination, or whether he was simply misguided, thanks to his own prejudices, in voicing support for some of Hitler's twisted notions of cultural conservatism and racial 'purity'. Again, I admit that I haven't read all of the letters, and those that I have read were read many, many years ago, so I may simply be unaware of them (I doubt I would have forgotten such an egregious stance). | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Huw, it may depend partly on how literally one takes his comments. Given that genocide was the underlying agenda of MEIN KAMPF, Lovecraft's enthusiasm for the book can be read as tacit approval of its implications. However, it may well be that the realities of the Holocaust would have appalled him – he may (not being the most realistic of people) have seen Hitler's racial beliefs as attractive in intellectual and aesthetic terms rather than recognising that they amounted to a political programme. (And no, I'm not being sarcastic.) Lovecraft definitely did advocate the extermination of non-white races, but only during his New York breakdown phase. Perhaps one shouldn't take his comments from that time too literally. However, while many people have pointed to the liberalisation of his views in later life, I'm not aware that he ever withdrew his expressions of support for the KKK or accepted that black people might actually have human rights. At an intellectual level, Lovecraft was very much committed to the idea that both democracy and the multi-ethnic society were decadent and wrong. As S.T. Joshi has observed, this belief became more nuanced and subtle in his later thinking but definitely did not change. It's nice to think, as Richard Lupoff suggests in his novel LOVECRAFT'S BOOK, that the realitites of the Holocaust would have dramatically changed Lovecraft's thinking about racial and political issues. We'll never know. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.36.144 |
Thanks, Joel. I think we are on the same page, after all. ;-) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Never mind Lovecraft – I've just read the article about JT Leroy. My world has ended. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.238.19 |
I sent a mail once to Leroy several years ago (his e-mail address is in the back of SARAH) and actually received a short reply weeks and weeks later. The writer on the other side assured me he/she was really pleased to know his/her work was known so far afield and that he/she would be glad to hear more. Somehow I never sent a reply  The stories in THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS are masterful and haunting, but once one realizes they may be figments of some hoaxter's imagination they lose a lot of their power. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
Joel/Huw: To what extent do you think Lovecraft's racism (perhaps xenophobia is a better word) informs his fiction? (This question demands an interpretive answer, I know, but I'd like to see what either of you come up with.) Additionally, do you know if racist groups (American or otherwise) have embraced gool ol' HP in any way? | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.34.15 |
I don't know of any racist groups embracing HPL (although I've encountered at least one repugnant individual over on the alt.horror.cthulhu group who seems to champion his racist views). On the first point, I think that it did inform his fiction, to an extent. To do the topic any justice, I'll have to get back to you after reading a few of his stories again. I seem to recall certain stories, such as 'The Horror at Red Hook', having an element of xenophobia, but I really need to go back and read them to make sure. It's been way too long since I read Lovecraft! I suspect Joel (or Ramsey, of course) can answer this better than I... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.238.19 |
Whole articles have been written about this, most notably perhaps by French academic Maurice Lévy, who in his "Fascism and the Fantastic: the Case Lovecraft" states that the dreams of man are essentially right-wing in nature and that Lovecraft made literary use of his likes and many dislikes in exemplary fashion. "Incapable of putting into practice the redoubtable principles set forth in his correspondence, he uses them in good stead in his stories. [. . .] To openly put one's phantasms on display is tantamount to freeing oneself of their pernicious influence. [. . . ] It is as if the fantastic cured the author of his fantastic tendencies." | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.101.203 |
You see if Lovecraft lived among poverty-stricken blacks (which i think I read he did) for a while he might have considered their behaviour the way we do chavs now; and how many times have we said nasty things about chavs here, quite shockingly nasty things? Maybe it's the same thing. Poor, ghetto-ised folk do not on their best behaviour, um, behave. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.238.19 |
er, that last sentence should read "It is as if the fantastic cured the author of his own FASCISTIC tendencies."  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Tony, I feel a lot safer among chavs in the district where I live than among overpaid, coke-fuelled, Tory-voting yuppie scum in the Broad Street pubs where they won't let you in you're wearing jeans (even new black jeans). Or among the old-money fox-hunting toffs of the Tory Party Conference, still in mourning for their holiday villas in apartheid South Africa. The ruling class is more inbred, more stupid and more vicious than the underclass, and they have shedloads of money and thousands of employees. George W. Bush didn't grow up in a slum or a trailer park – what's his excuse? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.65.204 |
Chris, regarding your two questions... The impact of Lovecraft's racism on his fiction is a very complex subject. Miche Houllebecq gives a dramatic (if not overly well-researched) answer in his book, where he says that racial hatred was the emotional fuel of Lovecraft's best-known work. S.T. Joshi presents a more nuanced and complex picture, but notes that 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' – one of Lovecraft's last and most ambitious stories – has definite racist undertones. There is blatant, really offensive racism in two early Lovecraft stories, 'Herbert West - Reanimator' and 'The Horror at Red Hook' – as well as in the ghost-written 'Medusa's Coil'. These are lousy stories on all criteria, frankly. But as 'Herbert West' is Lovecraft's most widely-reprinted stories, many racists must have grooved behind its portrait of a Negro as a subhuman throwback. Beyond that story, however, it would seem unlikely that many serious racists have examined the implications of Lovecraft's writings. The far Right are not known for their reading. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.101.203 |
You've been - Oh, I give up. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.101.203 |
Joel, you're - Oh, I give up. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.101.203 |
UH? Why didn't that first one show up? | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
Thanks, Huw and Joel. Joel, I've meant to look up that Houllebecq book; thanks for reminding me of it. >>The far Right are not known for their reading. Funny, that. Although, of course, GW Bush said when he was running against Gore that his favorite book was "The complete works of Shakespeare." (Gore's favorite book? LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry.) And in 2006 Tony Snow said Bush had read Camus's THE STRANGER over one short vacation at his ranch, and "found it an interesting book and a quick read." The number of non-neocons who believe either of those statements has to approach zero. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.44.101.203 |
Have calmed down. Sorry Joel - you have a point. I just hope you realise I had, too. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.236.211 |
Raci(ali)sm simply was in the air a lot in Lovecraft's day, as was talk about the Nietzschean superman etc. We live in a different day and age. I for one can forgive him there 'sins'. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.236.211 |
theSe | ||
| Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin) Username: Richard_gavin Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 65.110.174.71 |
Some very interesting points have been raised here. I think Michel Houellebecq's assesment of HPL in H.P. LOVECRAFT: AGAINST THE WORLD, AGAINST LIFE might be the most sensible: All of Lovecraft's art was born out of his absolute hatred for the world. Period. If you survey his letters, his fiction, his essays, it seems clear that he was seeking the artistic stimulation of the fabulous in a way that was similar to the French Decadence authors of the nineteenth century; artificial and dream-like indulgences to liven his existence upon what he felt was a hopelessly dull, uncivilized planet. I don't really seek the author behind the fiction. I know that these authors, however brilliant, were flesh and blood beigns who just happened to have been gifted and dilligent enough to produce great art. I don't expect them to be saints, but certainly won't fully excuse them for being scumbags either. For some reason many "artistes" seem to think their creative impulses give them licence to use and abuse everyone around them. That type of prima donna posturing doesn't sit well with me. I see nothing wrong with an artist being polite and respectful, particularly to members of his or her audience. This dicussion reminds me of a saying: "Everybody wants a Van Gogh hanging in their living room, but nobody would ever want Van Gogh in their living room." Best, Richard | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.23.225.121 |
Poor Van Gogh. He sounded sweet. M J Harrison mayhap not. |