I think the longest thing HPL ever wrote was The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and that's still shorter than a lot of Stephen King's popular works. To get to those lengths you'd have to consider the entire Dream Cycle combined as a single work.
Great piece. Though I suspect if you’d met Lovecraft, you actually would have liked him a lot. Despite his reputation (and genuinely terrible views on a range of topics), he seems to have been a garrulous and charming guy. In his correspondence, he definitely seems to be sensitive to whether the person he’s writing to would be offended by one or the other of his crackpottier views and is correspondingly discreet. Also, despite his habit of pulling solemn, po-faced, old-fashioned expressions for the camera, he apparently laughed easily and was quite funny.
Thanks Bill! You might be right, it would certainly make for a fascinating conversation. I think my first question would actually be ‘how the hell do you come up with names and does it involve throwing a scrabble set in the air?’
Ha! There’s a letter somewhere where he explains that “Cthulhu” is an attempt to spell a human imitation of something that can’t be said properly with human vocal equipment. He said he imagined it was something like “kluh-luh” with your tongue pressed to the top of your mouth and exhaling, if I remember right.
One has to separate the art from the artist, right? Much as we would wish otherwise, artists and writers and musicians can be awful humans and/or hold reprehensible beliefs, especially for modern sensibilities.
I’ve read a LOT of Lovecraft, but not for years, and didn’t know that poetry existed! Thank you for sharing it, Rebekah! Another stellar article.💕
This is a phenomenal analysis of an oft overlooked side of Lovecraft's writing. I've often thought he was a better poet than prose writer but had ironically never read this collection. I must remedy this at once! I particularly admired your insight into the Italian Volta pared with the English couplet or punchline! That is real close reading and demonstrates vast knowledge of the form. Thank you for this.
I'm sad to see you ain't doing more readings for a bit. I was looking forward to the next ones.
That's a singular piece of work, indeed. I like it. I've not got into Lovecraft's work so deep yet. I've read a few of his short works. But I do like some of his imagery and descriptions of madness.
I keep seeing and hearing he was horrible and racist, but I've never seen any examples of it. And when I ask, no one seems to point to anything he said or did. What is it he's done that is so bad as to have this reputation?
Lovecraft is one of those master stylists - Mark Twain and Raymond Chandler are other examples - who can easily creep into your own writing if you're not careful, and you won't mind. His friend Clarke Ashton Smith worked up a less clunky version of his lapidary style and applied it to some wonderful sci fi and fantasy stories.
I don’t know if I’ve read any Clarke Ashton Smith, I’ll have to check him out. I did a big sci-fi short story marathon a while ago but even then I barely touched the sides!
Interesting! Yes, Lovecraft is an ... well, not an enigma, because as you say, there are plenty of great artists who thought or did abhorrent things, and I don't think that's a great mystery. And I don't think HPL was a great artist - he's pretty clunky in many respects, and his characteristation is a bit wooden, but there are some great ideas which are sometimes executed well. I've read pretty much all of his work, which I did while listening to the HPL Literary Podcast as they worked their way through his stories in a similarly fascinated/appreciative/appalled way, and it was very funny! Not heard of the sonnet sequence though, and as you say, he can certainly turn a phrase!
Thanks so much, Gareth, I'll have to check the podcast out! I've only managed to finish a few of his stories. I listened to The Shadow over Innsmouth as an audio book and quite enjoyed it, and The Call of Cthulhu felt like a bit of a 'once you've read this you've read them all' deal... as someone who has read more of him than me, are there any others you'd recommend as highlights?
Yes, I know what mean about TCoC. Innsmouth is a bit different, and I think there are other similar stories. The Color out of Space I remember being different and good, and then the occsaional story that stood out (one which I can't remember the name of, but it was similar in concept to the sonnet you mention involving invisible watchers, but it was more Darwinian: we are prey for invisible beings who look down on us as we look into a rock pool - wonderfully horrible!).
I like to think, being an incurable optimist, that had I known Lovecraft I would have been able to convince him that his ideas about race were wrong. He had switched in the last years of his life from ultra-conservative to New Deal Democrat, even shading towards socialism (whatever Americans mean by that) and there were some Jewish and Black thinkers whom he had begun expressing approval of. We'll never know, but the sense I get from his friends' accounts was of a fundamentally kind man with some preposterously affected notions acquired from his grandfather and, even more, from his grandfather's library. So given a few more years we might have turned him into a true progressive. Whether anything could have fixed his prose style is another question, though!
The thing about Lovecraft is that the people who belonged to the groups that he expressed such vitriolic views about -- refused to believe he had actually written the views. He never treated anyone in those groups as if he believed that.
Yes, and he would have been absolutely devastated to discover that when Samuel Loveman decades later (in the 1970s) heard about a comment that he allegedly made to his wife Sonia ("Loveman is a great fellow. It's a pity he's a Jew.") it so upset him that he burnt all of Lovecraft's letters. A tragedy, as Loveman was one of Lovecraft's dearest friends.
I contrast Lovecraft's attitudes with John W Campbell, a very outspoken racist, homophobe and misogynist who didn't keep his beliefs for private correspondence but made them the basis of his personal and professional relationships. He really was "the worst person" in SF/fantasy.
I don’t know anything about him but I will read up on him, thanks Dave! I wonder who we think is the nicest person in sci/fi horror. Junji Ito, Stephen King?
I wonder this about so many of my favourite authors - would they have held these views if they were born today? Increasingly I'm happy to live with the messy complexity of people I admire, it feels a bit like growing up and realising all the adults in your life were flawed people too!
Yep... Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. Though Quentin Crisp did have his own take on that: "To my disappointment I now realize that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.”
I think the longest thing HPL ever wrote was The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and that's still shorter than a lot of Stephen King's popular works. To get to those lengths you'd have to consider the entire Dream Cycle combined as a single work.
Great piece. Though I suspect if you’d met Lovecraft, you actually would have liked him a lot. Despite his reputation (and genuinely terrible views on a range of topics), he seems to have been a garrulous and charming guy. In his correspondence, he definitely seems to be sensitive to whether the person he’s writing to would be offended by one or the other of his crackpottier views and is correspondingly discreet. Also, despite his habit of pulling solemn, po-faced, old-fashioned expressions for the camera, he apparently laughed easily and was quite funny.
Thanks Bill! You might be right, it would certainly make for a fascinating conversation. I think my first question would actually be ‘how the hell do you come up with names and does it involve throwing a scrabble set in the air?’
Ha! There’s a letter somewhere where he explains that “Cthulhu” is an attempt to spell a human imitation of something that can’t be said properly with human vocal equipment. He said he imagined it was something like “kluh-luh” with your tongue pressed to the top of your mouth and exhaling, if I remember right.
I would certainly insist upon him demonstrating that to me!
One has to separate the art from the artist, right? Much as we would wish otherwise, artists and writers and musicians can be awful humans and/or hold reprehensible beliefs, especially for modern sensibilities.
I’ve read a LOT of Lovecraft, but not for years, and didn’t know that poetry existed! Thank you for sharing it, Rebekah! Another stellar article.💕
This is a phenomenal analysis of an oft overlooked side of Lovecraft's writing. I've often thought he was a better poet than prose writer but had ironically never read this collection. I must remedy this at once! I particularly admired your insight into the Italian Volta pared with the English couplet or punchline! That is real close reading and demonstrates vast knowledge of the form. Thank you for this.
Thank you so much Joseph, that’s really kind! It was so fun to write, I felt like I had to share this weird piece of literature once I’d read it.
I'm sad to see you ain't doing more readings for a bit. I was looking forward to the next ones.
That's a singular piece of work, indeed. I like it. I've not got into Lovecraft's work so deep yet. I've read a few of his short works. But I do like some of his imagery and descriptions of madness.
I keep seeing and hearing he was horrible and racist, but I've never seen any examples of it. And when I ask, no one seems to point to anything he said or did. What is it he's done that is so bad as to have this reputation?
Lovecraft’s works are actually relatively anodyne compared to a lot of his opinions (which as is pointed out in here and elsewhere in the comments seemed to have changed for the better over time). But for some low-lights: https://web.archive.org/web/20091212023915/http://www.gormogons.com/2009/09/hp-lovecraft-fascist.html
Good question, someone asked that question here and got lots of examples. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/226541/what-are-some-examples-of-lovecrafts-racism-in-his-published-short-stories
Thanks, Rebekah.
Lovecraft is one of those master stylists - Mark Twain and Raymond Chandler are other examples - who can easily creep into your own writing if you're not careful, and you won't mind. His friend Clarke Ashton Smith worked up a less clunky version of his lapidary style and applied it to some wonderful sci fi and fantasy stories.
I don’t know if I’ve read any Clarke Ashton Smith, I’ll have to check him out. I did a big sci-fi short story marathon a while ago but even then I barely touched the sides!
Fascinating history
Thank you, John!
Wooaahh great find
Definitely an obscure gem!
Was not familiar with this at all, and my first thought was of how well this would work as a (VERY) extended Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode.
Now THERE'S an idea...
Interesting! Yes, Lovecraft is an ... well, not an enigma, because as you say, there are plenty of great artists who thought or did abhorrent things, and I don't think that's a great mystery. And I don't think HPL was a great artist - he's pretty clunky in many respects, and his characteristation is a bit wooden, but there are some great ideas which are sometimes executed well. I've read pretty much all of his work, which I did while listening to the HPL Literary Podcast as they worked their way through his stories in a similarly fascinated/appreciative/appalled way, and it was very funny! Not heard of the sonnet sequence though, and as you say, he can certainly turn a phrase!
Thanks so much, Gareth, I'll have to check the podcast out! I've only managed to finish a few of his stories. I listened to The Shadow over Innsmouth as an audio book and quite enjoyed it, and The Call of Cthulhu felt like a bit of a 'once you've read this you've read them all' deal... as someone who has read more of him than me, are there any others you'd recommend as highlights?
Yes, I know what mean about TCoC. Innsmouth is a bit different, and I think there are other similar stories. The Color out of Space I remember being different and good, and then the occsaional story that stood out (one which I can't remember the name of, but it was similar in concept to the sonnet you mention involving invisible watchers, but it was more Darwinian: we are prey for invisible beings who look down on us as we look into a rock pool - wonderfully horrible!).
Yes. I think this is part of my problem with cancel-culture.
You can hate the person and still enjoy their art.
I agree 100%, David, it's part of being human.
I like to think, being an incurable optimist, that had I known Lovecraft I would have been able to convince him that his ideas about race were wrong. He had switched in the last years of his life from ultra-conservative to New Deal Democrat, even shading towards socialism (whatever Americans mean by that) and there were some Jewish and Black thinkers whom he had begun expressing approval of. We'll never know, but the sense I get from his friends' accounts was of a fundamentally kind man with some preposterously affected notions acquired from his grandfather and, even more, from his grandfather's library. So given a few more years we might have turned him into a true progressive. Whether anything could have fixed his prose style is another question, though!
The thing about Lovecraft is that the people who belonged to the groups that he expressed such vitriolic views about -- refused to believe he had actually written the views. He never treated anyone in those groups as if he believed that.
Yes, and he would have been absolutely devastated to discover that when Samuel Loveman decades later (in the 1970s) heard about a comment that he allegedly made to his wife Sonia ("Loveman is a great fellow. It's a pity he's a Jew.") it so upset him that he burnt all of Lovecraft's letters. A tragedy, as Loveman was one of Lovecraft's dearest friends.
I contrast Lovecraft's attitudes with John W Campbell, a very outspoken racist, homophobe and misogynist who didn't keep his beliefs for private correspondence but made them the basis of his personal and professional relationships. He really was "the worst person" in SF/fantasy.
I don’t know anything about him but I will read up on him, thanks Dave! I wonder who we think is the nicest person in sci/fi horror. Junji Ito, Stephen King?
I wonder this about so many of my favourite authors - would they have held these views if they were born today? Increasingly I'm happy to live with the messy complexity of people I admire, it feels a bit like growing up and realising all the adults in your life were flawed people too!
Yep... Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. Though Quentin Crisp did have his own take on that: "To my disappointment I now realize that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.”
Haha, words of wisdom from Crisp, as always!