I don't usually let the views of an author interfere too much when reading their work but when every paragraph has some derogatory diatribe about how racially inferior a character is it becomes self parody and impossible to take seriously.
I mean "Shub-Niggurath"…tell me how you really feel Lovecraft lol. There were a few stories I enjoyed but Jesus the racism and absolute contempt for minorities was spilling out of the pages in some of them.
by Boomfam67
35 Comments
You’ve never read The Turner Diaries?
I think it’s worth reading a bit of once, just to know what it is. A pirated pdf version, of course.
H.P. Lovecraft’s views were considered extreme even by the standards of his time. Too racist for the racists is how I’ve seen it put. Im always surprised when I see his works still being recommended here.
Don’t ask a Lovecraft fan what he named his cat.
I’m a fan of hp lovecraft inspired work. Especially if done by someone lovecraft would have unjustly hated lol
Lovecraft is an interesting one to discuss. Usually when someone does something shitty or has shitty views, it doesn’t usually make it into their work (at least not overtly). That makes it easier for some people to separate art from artist.
But when the gross stuff is heavily layered and featured throughout a work, its tough to stomach. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of his writing style, much less his stories.
The best thing he ever wrote, Herbert West—Reanimator, wasn’t even written because he wanted to but because his editor basically forced him to try a different style (which he then made SUPER racist).
Big piece of shit, better remembered for what he inspired rather than what he did.
>I mean “Shub-Niggurath”.
Damn dude, you’re reading too much into that.
>…when every paragraph has some derogatory diatribe…
Criticise Lovecraft all you want, but base it on verifiable facts, not exaggerated—and easily disputed—nonsense such as this.
Sorry you’re getting downvoted for this extremely correct opinion. Lovecraft was so racist that other authors tried to tell him to stop because he was making them look bad. “Product of his time” is a load of crap.
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That’s absolutely fair and his racism and eugenicist worldview can be found in practically all of his work. At the same time, it makes them so interesting, because a lot of the horror in Lovecraft is derived from fears of the racial other.
I understand how you feel! For me, it’s a shame because I feel if he wasn’t such a racist prick, his lore would be more accessible and have better quality stories!
I grew up enjoying the aesthetic and the deep lore as a child… then I grew up and started thinking about it haha.
Honestly it adds a bit to his writing for me, best analogy I can come up with is that its like a blog fish were its so twisted and disgusting that it becomes funny, were the butt of joke isn’t on characters he is describing but H.P. Lovecraft himself for going so far to demonize them.
Its also interesting to see some of the outdated thought processes and values of the time displayed earnestly as well as seeing how much they clash against modern values.
Even though Lovecraft was a raging racist, I still love some of his stories. *The Shadow Over Innsmouth* still freaks me the hell out.
There are also a lot of Lovecraftian inspired stories written by authors who aren’t racist if you still want to read more of Lovecraftian horror but don’t want to deal with the racism.
I read this Lovecraftian gay romance book called *Widdershins* which was great.
I understand it completely, but it just never bothered me to be honest. I don’t really see it as a problem. He seems like he was EXTREMELY xenophobic–just incredibly afraid of everything “unknown”, and that created some truly unique and cool stories.
I mean, his whole style is based on fear–cosmic horror, the south, africans, voodoo, the stars, the universe–anything that didn’t fit into his white privileged world. So, for me, it’s no surprise he was incredibly racist against…well everything, as well as terrified.
While I won’t say that his writing was a product of the times, because while his prose certainly was (very purple), the name of his cat in Rats in the Walls was certainly not something you saw any other respected authors do. I will, however, say that *he* was a product of his time.
But I don’t see the point of posts like OP. Either you can tolerate it, or you can’t. No point in making these posts.
The scary thing about Lovecraft is how he views the world. Even his racism is a product of his phobias. It’s not very easy to sympathize with a racist, but I do think it’s useful to empathize with one, at least to understand how they arrive at their conclusions. Lovecraft is easier than most because he strikes such a pathetic figure.
I mean Agatha was hella racist and I definitely don’t like her but I adore her books.
I can’t blame you. The stories are generally fun, but he lays the racism on *thick* and that’s what I find more disturbing than anything else he’s talked about. Kind of hard to shoulder past it when the slurs and sentiments keeps recurring every so often.
Lovecraft sort of made an art out of racism. Lol.
Honestly the racism makes it more interesting to me, just because it’s so rare to actually see white supremacists or the far right pull off anything artistic. Whenever they try the message outshines everything else and it just becomes stale propaganda (think Terry Goodkind or Ayn Rand. Or literally any right wing YouTube account). Only Lovecraft really took his racism and turned it into something fantastical and interesting.
There are many left wing and progressive artists who make amazing things. He’s the only person of his kind as far as I can tell.
Edit: I tried to engage with the commenter below but they’re just looking to shadowbox against some made up position, so that ended with just a block.
That’s the only reason why I decided to read HP Lovecraft.
You have every right to dislike authors you don’t like.
But do you expect people from decades ago, even centuries to have the same cultural perspective you have now?
No idea what he said I really never read his books.
If you wrote a book including your own personal cultural perspective, do you think they will still be popular cultural perspective decades or centuries from now?
Time changes everything.
It’s your loss, your missing some of the best horror stories ever written.
Trying to cancel a person dead for almost 100 years who can’t defend themselves is ridiculous. People are complex and often change their views when exposed to the world.
The fact that he had dozens of people he communicated with writing an estimated 50,000 letters in his life and none of those people or society viewed him as overtly racist shows just how different society was.
Yeah his cat’s name is racist but he loved it and when it ran away when he was 14 in 1904 he was so heartbroken he vowed to never own another one. Plus he was 9 when he named it.
There’s plenty of evidence that supports that Lovecraft was secretly a homosexual. His sex drive was nonexistent, he abandoned his wife and went back to Providence and twice spent months long visits with a 16 year old boy named Barlow in Florida who was gay and Lovecraft was 43. He also left Barlow as the literary executor of all his work when he died.
You go ahead and avoid him and most of histories authors who would be canceled today.
I will keep doing the same with todays writers who do the same thing when they go out of their way to trash every white cis male and create worlds where they don’t exist.
S.T. Joshi who is Indian is the leading scholar of Lovecraft’s works vigorously defends him and gave back his two World Fantasy Awards after they changed the trophy of Lovecraft’s head to a tree with a moon.
Guillermo del Toro is Mexican and is a big fan. I’m Italian who Lovecraft also hated and I love the guy.
The deity’s name is derived from the Latin word for ‘black’. As is the formerly polite term ‘Negro’, and the obvious racial slur.
While there ARE Lovecraft stories where his personal racism comes to the surface – “Medusa’s Coil” is the most obvious example – it simply isn’t present in the example you offer. As for his “contempt for minorities”, he started as an extreme Anglophile – not of Britain generally, but England specifically – and ended his life feeling that all people were of approximately equal worth, except African and Australian blacks.
You should have read more carefully, and more extensively, before you stopped.
News flash, person born in the 1800s is racist
Hubert Pubert Lovecraft was a smegma male
Try reading Ian Fleming…
I enjoyed H.B.O.’s “Lovecraft Country” using Lovecraft’s racist dialogues & turning them inside out! It’s too bad there wasn’t more to it, but maybe again that could be his legacy sabotaging the series!
I think part of why I’m intrigued by his work is precisely because of his racism. It is morbidly fascinating to see the inner workings of such a deeply bigoted mind. There’s something very earnest about his stories, in the worst way possible. You can learn a lot about how white supremacists rationalize their delusional and obsessive hatred for others through the art they make. I personally find it interesting and engaging through that lens, but it’s understandable to not want to engage with something so uncomfortable.
Hey… IMO, his love of cats evens it all out.
Just sayin’…
When I started reading Lovecraft I didn’t know anything about his political and social views, so reading his work without this informing my opinion, these views only served to make his narrators less likeable and more worthy the grisly demise that often befell them. They come off as people of a learned upper class that are largely out of touch with others not of their social standing and it’s often this view that gets them in trouble. It serves to give his work this underlying context of just desserts that I guess he didn’t plan for.
lovecraft is the first author that was so racist thati started reading
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different times different writing style