I just finished reading Michele Houellebecq's Against the World, Against Life. This is an interesting and provactive essay of about 30-40 pages, written early in Houellebecq's career. As an admitted misanthropic pessimist, Houellebecq is attracted to HPL's work, and he sees his themes, as they emerged after his NYC period, as being rooted in a deep atavsitic racism, which drove much of the core of the "threat from the outside" in his later stories.

Houellebecq also sees HPL as an individual who has cut himself off from the rest of humanity, with his brief marriage and his vast correspondence filling the social need for contact.

1) Has anyone else here read this essay? I think it's worth reading, but always bear in mind that Houellebecq is a provocateur by nature: not everything rings true.

2) Does anyone here know of a forum similar to ED that is dedicated to the discussion of HPL and his body of work?

I would appreciate any recommendations.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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1) No, but I'll have to give it a thorough reading. It sounds like this essay exaggerated HPL's character, but you did say it was meant to be provocative. It's well-known that HPL enjoyed traveling across the country and visiting a variety of friends and acquaintances. And I remember several letters by HPL which gave the impression of a fairly positive outlook, emphasizing the good qualities of every man or woman he met even if they were rude, foolish, or unpleasant; helping his friends through their depressions and suicidal feelings by emphasizing the joys and wonders in life; and explaining the importance of morals and ethics in a meaningless world. While he was certainly neurotic and socially awkward to an unusual extent, he was hardly the human-hating imp most people imagine.

2) There do exist several forums dedicated to HPL, though the only ones I'm aware of are filled with young millennials who aren't very keen on academic or aesthetic discussions. They're more likely to discuss Azathoth and Shub-Niggurath as isolated concepts completely divorced from their original stories and contexts. This is partially because young fans tend to skip HPL's stories in favor of reading Wikipedia entries about his monsters, which are riddled with errors (for instance, the well-established fact that Azathoth is sleeping and dreaming of the universe, even though HPL never described such a thing).

Perhaps you might enjoy the website librarything, which has a section devoted to reading and discussing weird fiction, kind of like a weird reading club. Most of the members are clearly well-read adults.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 19 May 22 | 12:04PM by Hespire.

Here is that sub-section of librarything.

[www.librarything.com]

They don't seem to revisit any stories they've already discussed, but there's still no end to CAS, HPL, and others.

twHespire,

Thanks very much for the pointers.

We've both posted here ad read each other's comments for a long time, so you'll know where I'm coming from when I say that I read non-fiction for ***ideas*** rather than for encapsulated information. I seldom take any proposition as authorative, but I often see some very interesting ideas (provocative) that *might* be of merit, to one degree or another, but they require thorough testing, by me, to my own satisfaction, which is subject to revision if new material comes in.

Truthfully, evaluation never ends.

So it is with Houellebecq's essay. I think he's significantly coloring his view of HPL from his own personal outlook, and yet some of his points go along waystoward explaining *why* HPL is more popular today than he was in his lifetime, and indeed HPL may be more popular now than at any previous time. Houellebecq speculates intelligently why this may be, and on the surface, at least, it holds together.

One of the verifiable points that Houellebecq makes, and if true is mid-boggling, is that HPL was completely unable to find work in NYC, and this was prior to the 1929 crash. No takers, at all, if Houellebecq is to be believed.

Now, if true, and if indeed HPL tried hard to find something even vaguely appropriate but was unsuccessful, Houellebecq posits that this rejection, coupled with for the first time in his life having to mingle with the non-Anglo Saxon masses of the poor, stamped his outlook profoundly.

And this will be possible for me to check out independently.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Hespire Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here is that sub-section of librarything.
>
> [www.librarything.com]
> d-Tradition
>
> They don't seem to revisit any stories they've
> already discussed, but there's still no end to
> CAS, HPL, and others.

Thanks!

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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