Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown

[nigourath]

I will try finding this letter content ,since one cannot ignore ,how the man ,himself, presented his thoughts and problematism and as i said in my first post, my leading source of information was his literature and i admit..i had no idea,that he had expressed ,publicly, any political views.(although, i knew of his so called "conservatism" and new-english adherence at a private life level,and for which ,i don"t blame him at all -as i said).

I am alot surprised, about this public display of his views-something, i didn"t know or expect.I can"t argue, that ,this shows a definite degree of "active" involvement ,at least, with what little resources were available to him.Still,i have got an "itching" feeling -which i also ..can"t ignore-that ,in front of us we have a man ,who often ,"contradicted" himself-at least, that way it seemed to people ,who weren"t well acquainted with him or his ways.That said ,i really don"t know how much, he was an "easy to understand-comprehend " personality ,even from people standing closely enough ,as an environment.All information ,of-course, are well respected and for a good reason ,well sought-out.

There are some "contradictory facts",that lead me to the speculation ,that he was a constantly "ever-shaping" personality ,much like "the shoggoth" ,he wrought about.He was very fond of approaching those "things that should not be" ,irrelevently of what they were made of(historical facts,scientific data,ideological upheavals,or even various ways to augment or modulate his own so-called "conservatism"...or even cancel it at times...).He was a very "hard to get" indivindual and -personally-i will be very hesitant, as to be trully convinced about his so-called "racist inclinations" ,while i believe he was "prejudiced" enough towards things ,that were very estranged themselves -in their turn...- to him!! He was the ...exact unique person-to my understanding-that could provoke eternal debates ,about his true intentions ,as a writer or not and yet still to those, that can feel his presence and personal "touch" to seem quite clear.....

[j. d. worthington]

Well, HPL himself used the phrase "biologically inferior scum of southern Europe and Western Asia", while the following comes from his essay "Bolshevism" (The Conservative, July 1919):

The most alarming tendency observable in this age is a growing disregard for the established forces of law and order. Whether or not stimulated by the noxious example of the almost sub-human Russian rabble, the less intelligent element throughout the world seems animated by a singular viciousness, and exhibits symptoms like those of a herd on the verge of stampeding.

-- Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography & Miscellany, p. 37

However, you also raise an interesting point about his being an "'ever-shaping' personality" (nice phrase, that)... this is something which appears to be one of the themes of a book I've just started reading: Robert H. Waugh's The Monster in the Mirror: Looking for H. P. Lovecraft. It's a book I've been meaning to get around to for some time, but only now have managed to dip into. At any rate, among the man other things which this rather large book (302 pp. of small print, including bibliography and index) of Lovecraftian criticism deals with, this idea of Lovecraft's contradicting himself and his not necessarily being consistent is one -- though at the same time, Waugh notes his anti-Semitism:

When I began these essays I did not foresee the extent to which Lovecraft's anti-Semitism informs his fiction, although his anti-Semitism is patent in his letters; in the light of these essays we cn no say with full conviction that although very few of his stories are anti-Semitic almost all of them are constructed from anti-Semitic materials.

-- The Monster in the Mirror, p. 9

So far, it is a fascinating and quite challenging work -- something I've come to expect from Waugh's essays that I've read -- and I would recommend it to anyone interested in a deeper look into Lovecraft's fiction.

At any rate, these things are worth investigating, as they give fascinating insights into a very fascinating, complex man. And (to return to the topic of the thread) while such a short documentary cannot possibly do such a subject justice, given the constraints the filmmakers were working under, they did a remarkable job. For those who are interested in Lovecraft the man (including the origins and background behind some of his works), but who lack the inclination or resources to seek out all these other source materials, I definitely recommend this effort. It doesn't flinch from the negative aspects of Lovecraft's personality, but neither does it overstress them, and the result is a balanced and enoyable look at a man who, as I have noted elsewhere, Colin Wilson once called "one of the most interesting minds of his generation".

(And, should anyone be interested, here is a review from Amazon on the book mentioned above):

http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Mirror...owViewpoints=1

[w h pugmire, esq.]

I've yet to get the DVD. I saw the film on the huge screen at ye HPLFF, and it was great. I love these kinds of documentaries, because Lovecraft was such a fascinating human being. S. T. Joshi is playing with the idea of writing a biographical novel on Lovecraft, which would be fascinating and "factual."

I enjoy'd The Eldritch Influence -- but it shocked me in revealing how utterly pretentious Neil Gaiman comes across when yakking about Lovecraft. He is such a fine writer, but his explanation that Lovecraft is so popular because he is "...rock and roll..." or his glib dismissal of "The Call of Cthulhu" as a "crap story" really shocked me.

I love hearing writers and scholars talk about Lovecraft. One of the finest features of the first few DVD sets in the H. P. Lovecraft Collection from Lurker Films were the interviews with Joshi that were an added bonus. And I could listen to the delightful and intelligent Ramsey Campbell speak about Lovecraft forever, he is utterly captivating! One of my fondest memories is listening to Ramsey reading "The Outsider" at The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

I wish someone would film a lengthy documentary called something like Lovecraft's Providence, which fully explores those houses where he lived, the burying grounds he haunted, &c &c &c. There have been some few attempts, but nothing really satisfying.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by w h pugmire, esq.

I've yet to get the DVD. I saw the film on the huge screen at ye HPLFF, and it was great. I love these kinds of documentaries, because Lovecraft was such a fascinating human being. S. T. Joshi is playing with the idea of writing a biographical novel on Lovecraft, which would be fascinating and "factual."

This is almost certainly a foolish question, but... I take it you have read Peter Cannon's Pulptime, Screams for Jeeves, and The Lovecraft Chronicles? And if so, what did you think of those?

I enjoy'd The Eldritch Influence -- but it shocked me in revealing how utterly pretentious Neil Gaiman comes across when yakking about Lovecraft. He is such a fine writer, but his explanation that Lovecraft is so popular because he is "...rock and roll..." or his glib dismissal of "The Call of Cthulhu" as a "crap story" really shocked me.

I do think, however, that Gaiman qualified that with his comment about it being "a really good something", though not being quite able to pin down what he thought that something was. I've run into others who felt (as HPL himself apparently did) that it is a cumbrous tale in structure -- an opinion with which I cannot at all agree. I have read that particular tale so many times over the years that I honestly have no idea what the number is... well over 50, I am sure, and the tale still keeps growing....

I love hearing writers and scholars talk about Lovecraft. One of the finest features of the first few DVD sets in the H. P. Lovecraft Collection from Lurker Films were the interviews with Joshi that were an added bonus. And I could listen to the delightful and intelligent Ramsey Campbell speak about Lovecraft forever, he is utterly captivating! One of my fondest memories is listening to Ramsey reading "The Outsider" at The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

Yes, Campbell is someone I would really like to sit down and have a talk with at some point... or, rather, sit and listen to him expound on such matters. He is a very intelligent and insightful man, very subtle; withal very kind (it seems to me), even generous. I have heard part of a recording of him reading "The Outsider", but the sound quality was so poor that parts of it were almost impossible to decipher... a pity, as the reading itself seemed to be very good indeed.

I wish someone would film a lengthy documentary called something like Lovecraft's Providence, which fully explores those houses where he lived, the burying grounds he haunted, &c &c &c. There have been some few attempts, but nothing really satisfying.

Yes, that could be an absolutely fascinating piece, if done properly. I have never had an opportunity to make it to Providence, or New England for the matter of that; something I very much hope to rectify within the next few years... only I would like to spend a considerable amount of time exploring these sites, soaking up the atmosphere, and just enjoying the beauty and feeling of history of these places....

[w h pugmire, esq.]

The Lovecraft Chronicles was wonderful, but its portrayal of F. B. Long really depressed me. Peter was one of those New York Lovecraftians who befriended Long in his last years, and some aspects of the portrait painted of him saddens me. Today's post brought the edition of the Arkham House book, Hounds of Tindalos, that I recently ordered. I am happy to see that Centipede will soon publish (if they haven't already) their deluxe edition of Long's weird fiction. I haven't read Pulptime since its initial publication. I loved Screams for Jeeves because it succeeds so well as humor. People trying to write humorous Lovecraftian tales usually come off as merely "cute" or boring. (I've been disturbed to see William Browning Spencer's tendency to write more and more Lovecraftian "humor" pieces.) When I finally met Peter in Manhattan, I tried to encourage him to return to writing, as I did with a wee segment in "The Saprophytic Fungi" addressed to him. He is a remarkable and excellent writer.

"The Call of Cthulhu" is superbly structured! I can't recall HPL calling it cumbrous. He often seems to downgrade his finest work. When we visited Providence in October of 2007, some friends who worked at the Providence Art Club let us inside the Fleur-de-Lys Building, and as I stood in one of the main studios I read portions of "The Call of Cthulhu" aloud, from the Penguin Classics edition.

The Monster in the Mirror is my all-time favorite book of Lovecraftian criticism. I was transfixed when I read some of those essays in Lovecraft Studies, and I nearly fainted with delirious joy when I knew they would be published in book form. They are a real challenge to one as non-intellectual and uneducated as myself -- yet they hypnotize me with their ideas, and the way in which those ideas are expressed.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I wonder if Gaiman is still labouring under a certain anxiety of influence w.r.t. Lovecraft?

At the China Mieville reading that I attended, the very first name out of Mieville's mouth when he was asked about influences was H.P. Lovecraft.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by w h pugmire, esq.

The Lovecraft Chronicles was wonderful, but its portrayal of F. B. Long really depressed me. Peter was one of those New York Lovecraftians who befriended Long in his last years, and some aspects of the portrait painted of him saddens me. Today's post brought the edition of the Arkham House book, Hounds of Tindalos, that I recently ordered. I am happy to see that Centipede will soon publish (if they haven't already) their deluxe edition of Long's weird fiction.

I can easily see that being the case, as it is a portrayal I wouldn't have expected. It seems to have left something of a sour taste in several people's mouths (so to speak)... yet its accuracy is something I am not in a position to question. Long is an interesting figure, though, and while some of his fiction is... shaky, to say the least, there are always brilliant passages. And, when he was at his best, he soared very high indeed. I am very glad that the Hippocampus Press Tindalos Cycle will be reprinting "The Horror from the Hills", for instance... a very uneven tale, but a very intriguing one, and some parts of which I don't think even HPL could have surpassed... even if he did provide the central portion with his Roman dream....

The Hounds of Tindalos (the Arkham House edition) is a wondrous thing, really. I used to have a copy of this, though it is one of those things I had to let go during a particular nasty period in my life. I hope to pick up another copy at some point, preferably with the Hannes Bok cover, which is really quite perfect for that tale. Congratulations on receiving a copy of it -- I look forward to your thoughts on that one.

I haven't read Pulptime since its initial publication. I loved Screams for Jeeves because it succeeds so well as humor. People trying to write humorous Lovecraftian tales usually come off as merely "cute" or boring. (I've been disturbed to see William Browning Spencer's tendency to write more and more Lovecraftian "humor" pieces.) When I finally met Peter in Manhattan, I tried to encourage him to return to writing, as I did with a wee segment in "The Saprophytic Fungi" addressed to him. He is a remarkable and excellent writer.

Yes, I'd wondered about whether he was doing any writing these days, as I hadn't seen anything from him in quite a while. Let's hope you (and others) can coax him back to it, as he really is quite talented. As you say, he is one of the very few who can manage to write humorous Lovecraftian material and have it work....

"The Call of Cthulhu" is superbly structured! I can't recall HPL calling it cumbrous. He often seems to downgrade his finest work. When we visited Providence in October of 2007, some friends who worked at the Providence Art Club let us inside the Fleur-de-Lys Building, and as I stood in one of the main studios I read portions of "The Call of Cthulhu" aloud, from the Penguin Classics edition.

I envy you that experience. As I mentioned earlier, I hope to make it to Providence some day, and to spend a fair amount of time there just soaking up the impressions of the town and of the places HPL himself knew. As for his opinion on "The Call of Cthulhu"... I'll have to see if I can't find the particular quote on that. Yes, he seemed to almost never see the worth of his work, with the possible exceptions of "The Colour Out of Space", "The Music of Erich Zann" and, just possibly, At the Mountains of Madness. Campbell's comments in the film are right on the nose, I think: that any writer who is hard on his own work should hear what HPL had to say about his work. It is painful to see him so denigrate tales which are so very well-crafted, and so powerful decades after they were written.

The Monster in the Mirror is my all-time favorite book of Lovecraftian criticism. I was transfixed when I read some of those essays in Lovecraft Studies, and I nearly fainted with delirious joy when I knew they would be published in book form. They are a real challenge to one as non-intellectual and uneducated as myself -- yet they hypnotize me with their ideas, and the way in which those ideas are expressed.

I can't quite say whether or not it will be my very favorite, but I can already tell it is going to be high on the list. I, too, read several of these pieces in their original form, and the revisions here often make them almost new pieces, really. Waugh is one of the most intelligent and fascinating among a bunch which is amazingly talented to begin with. The work of so many of the Lovecraftian scholars is, to my thinking, itself literature of a high order. It is as if they imbibed something of Grandpa Theobald's ability with the language, so that their own writings when dealing with his work reflects that care and love of good, even beautiful prose.

I will admit to an especial fondness for the work of Barton L. St. Armand and Donald Burleson in this regard (yes, even the deconstructionist essays of the latter, which took some getting used to, but which I now reread with the greatest of pleasure). I still experience a genuine frisson with the closing line of Burleson's "On Lovecraft's Themes: Touching the Glass" (in An Epicure in the Terrible, for those who aren't familiar with these things): "Lovecraft's career-long text itself is a sprawling hall of mirrors, mirrors mirroring mirrors, a labyrinth of iterated thematic reflections through which wanders the Outsider who forever reaches forth, in hope against hope, to touch the glass"; while St. Armand's The Roots of Horror in the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft remains as challenging and enriching today as when I first read it nearly twenty years ago, as does his "Facts in the Case of H. P. Lovecraft" in Joshi's Four Decades of Criticism.

In fact, I owe Joshi an enormous debt for introducing me to Lovecraftian criticism back in the early 1980s; a field which has give me a great deal of pleasure and expanded my horizons intellectually to a tremendous degree.

Originally Posted by knivesout

I wonder if Gaiman is still labouring under a certain anxiety of influence w.r.t. Lovecraft?

Could be... though, to be honest, most of Neil's comments about Lovecraft both in this film and in The Eldritch Influence are generally positive. He certainly sees Lovecraft as the major influence on modern horror, and has more than once noted that one of the reasons Lovecraft receives so much parody is because he is so important; we don't parody (at least not to any great degree) that which is negligible, but only that which is truly unique and groundbreaking. We may make fun of it, but we don't go to the effort to write genuine parodies unless there is something substantial there....

[Ningauble]

Originally Posted by knivesout

At the China Mieville reading that I attended, the very first name out of Mieville's mouth when he was asked about influences was H.P. Lovecraft.

Miéville is a very nice guy. I gave him a copy of my personal, proofread-three-times e-library of the complete extant stories of Lovecraft at Eastercon two years ago, and he was very pleased. He's also the best writer of autographs I've ever met -- he really made an effort to personalise every autograph. When I mentioned how awful his puns in Un Lun Dun were (and I meant that as a compliment -- a pun is supposed to be awful), he signed the book "To Martin, who appreciates the awfulness of puns".

I'm looking forward to his next novel, Kraken, a lot -- it seems to have lots of tentacled horror.

[Tinsel]

Quick note: This movie is now available on iTunes. I rented it just now. It gives some perspective on the author and people who are involved in the industry.

[Tinsel]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

I finally received my copy of this documentary on DVD late last week. While it could have been a good deal longer (and thus had more time to explore things properly), nonetheless it is a fine documentary, and brings out what a complex individual HPL really was. It doesn't shy away from his "racism" (or, more properly, ethnophobia), but it doesn't explore it in as much depth as it perhaps deserves, from the standpoint of its effect on his writing. Nor does it avoid his major failing as a husband. Nonetheless, it does show him as a fascinating, often quirky, very intelligent and often charming individual as well as a writer fully deserving of his growing reputation.

Overall, I was quite favorably impressed. Not often you get such a documentary on a writer that is of this high a quality, unless it is one of the major canonical figures.

Has anyone else here seen this documentary and, if so, what are your thoughts....?

Quick Review (might as well, after having just watched the documentary).

First of all, it is a documentary film. Does the title "Fear of the Unknown" have to do with what is written on his personal grave stone? It is I guess what had inspired his being able to write or was it what he wanted to conquer with writing horror.

Alright, I believe that there was quite a bit of substance to the documentary. I had to pause it a few times and walk around before I could take in more information. I watched it twice over before stopping. I was interested to know more about the author. As the biography moved along chronologically, it paused in places to focus on some aspect of the author. It was a serious look with a bit of humor (including the joke about the sea food being unfavorable, but obviously there really is a Dagon myth answer).

It covered a large scope of information (just not for JD). Provided were a few representative examples of his short stories. The interviewers gave personal explanations and reaction. The documentary really organized all of the parts of the whole Lovecraft experience.

So did I gain an advantage from watching it? I would say that I feel like it serves as an overview with the sense that there is very much content. It does not venture to far outside of giving a sturdy or sober look.

[Radix]

Watched it the other day on YouTube (of all places)

I'm one month new to H.P. Lovecraft & really enjoyed the documentary-

On a side note, I really dug the art by Tom Sullivan that (I guess)
is from some kind of role playing game~

[Extollager]

I've just begun Richard Overy's The Morbid Age: Britain and the Crisis of Civilization, 1919-1939 (Penguin 2009 -- interesting that this British publisher uses the American spelling of "civilisation"). I'm in an early chapter called "A Sickness in the Racial Body." Lovecraft wasn't British and, so far as I know, had no contact with current British journalism and books published only in Britain. But I think much that the book deals with would relate not only to the British Isles, but to countries where English was the majority language and institutions were largely British-derived ("Anglosphere") -- and indeed other European countries and European colonies.

I'm not heading towards "excusing" anything in Lovecraft. But it is worthwhile to consider that, in some important respects, such as his ethnophobia, Lovecraft may have been pretty ordinary, for all his well-known eccentricities and exceptional imagination. And so "pretty ordinary" ideas work themselves out in horrible apocalypses. The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

[Tinsel]

I didn't know that Lord Dunsany was a Bible reader. In "Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown" it says something about how the King James was not far from his own writings, it had an apparent influence.

The documentary showed how Lovecraft worked on his writing by editing it repeatedly. That was quite interesting because I like to do that myself sometimes. Too bad I have yet to write anything. Some other people around here do apparently, with authority, with authority.

[Extollager]

Tinsel, I suspect an important influence on Dunsany was Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan," especially if you take into account the prose introduction. As I recall, Coleridge says he'd taken a medication and fallen asleep, and in his dream wrote the poem in full. Having awakened, he was writing out the poem when he was interrupted by someone wanting to talk with him about a business matter, and when he returned to the poem he was writing down, had lost the ability to recall everything. The intro almost certainly oversimplifies or falsifies what happened (since we have more than one draft of the poem), but for the Dunsany connection you have here the dreamer. The poem itself is the main thing. It has an exotic "Oriental" setting, an atmosphere of the supernatural, of prophecy, of the past, of warriors, of ravishingly splendid buildings and natural settings ("that deep romantic chasm," etc.). In short it reeks of elements that Dunsany would use. Probably the likely Coleridge connection has been pointed out multiple times before, but I don't read a lot of crit of fantasy.

But fans of weird fantasy really owe it to themselves to read "Kubla Khan," and Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and perhaps especially "Christabel," an unfinished poem that, if written in pulp prose, would seem exactly like something out of the Clark Ashton Smith-HPL-Robert E. Howard milieu. Looking for the founding father of weird fiction? Here he is. (Of course he didn't pop onto the scene without precursors of his own, but I don't think they offer the concentrated weirdness that he does in pieces that were widely available to influence the American pulpsters.)

[Tinsel]

The documentary shows how Lovecraft came across Dunsany's book. I have read "Kubla Kahn" and if it influenced Dunsany like you said, you can also see it in Lovecraft's "The Doom that Came to Sarnath".