Members of the forum may be interested in a piece on HPL in today's Guardian:

Quote:

The myth maker
HP Lovecraft was a kindly misanthrope and a visionary materialist who disdained writing but created an astonishing body of work that transcends its cult status, writes Michel Houellebecq [books.guardian.co.uk]

It's translated from French into rather odd English.

Pretty good, to my mind. I'd take issue with "Those who love life do not read", but overall this a welcome contrast to the patronising crap we are used to from the purveyors of 'serious' opinion.

Gavin Smith stocks the book from which this essay came and it is worth a read. It will be nice if the presence of Stephen Kng's name on the cover will introduce more readers to Lovecraft, otherwise his piece seems just about worthless to me: everyone here will love his listing of William Hope Hodgson among those influenced by Lovecraft's work.

Mikey_C:

Quote:

Pretty good, to my mind. I'd take issue with "Those who love life do not read", but overall this a welcome contrast to the patronising crap we are used to from the purveyors of 'serious' opinion.

Yes, that quotation gave me pause, too, but it's just a glib gallicism, I think, and his meaning becomes clearer as one makes one's way through the essay. On the whole, though, I think that it is an excellent essay, and it demonstrates, as you mention, a far more profound grasp of Lovecraft's work than, say, "Lemony Snicket", Stephen King, or Peter Straub will ever possess.

I, too, have had a bellyful of the "patronising crap" that passes for critical remarks on Lovecraft. In this regard, I recall some famous author/idiot--was it Brian Aldiss?--who went on and on about how "funny" he found the tale "The Music of Erich Zann", how he and his mother would laugh together over the notion of the "deaf-mute" musician, ad nauseam. If they had stopped laughing long enough actually to read the story, however, then perhaps they'd have noticed that there is no reference whatsoever to Zann's being deaf, merely mute. Nonetheless, this anecdote gives a further indication of the typical quality of well-known authors' commentary on Lovecraft.


JimRockhill2001:

Quote:

everyone here will love his listing of William Hope Hodgson among those influenced by Lovecraft's work.

Are you serious?!?!? Thanks for starting my day with a good laugh!

Kyberean Wrote:

> that quotation gave me pause, too, but it's
> just a glib gallicism, I think, and his meaning
> becomes clearer as one makes one's way through the
> essay.
The original sentence is "Quand on aime la vie, on ne lit pas". Literally translated, it might sound like "One who loves life, doesn't read", or "Those who enjoy life, don't read".


> On the whole, though, I think that it is an
> excellent essay, and it demonstrates, as you
> mention, a far more profound grasp of Lovecraft's
> work than, say, "Lemony Snicket", Stephen King, or
> Peter Straub will ever possess.

Too bad it took so much time to be translated into English (it was first published in 1991, at a time when no one in France knew who that Houellebecq guy might be).
At first that book was famous only among fellow lovecraftians over here. It had been published in a series called Les Infrequentables. In French being infrequentable means being shunned because of one's ill reputation, because one is bad-tempered, or not exactly PC (the term is now old fashioned). Of course it is a little exaggerated because this series deals mainly with _well known_ authors (Norman Mailer, Arthur Rimbaud, Cyrano de Bergerac).
Then Houellebecq started writing novels dealing mainly with depressed or nihilistic characters trying to stay alive in contemporary urban society despite their acute feeling of purposelessness (that is certainly why he became interested in Lovecraft). A movie was made a few years ago from one of his books: the story of a sexually frustrated bachelor who spends his nights in bars and night clubs, watching people (mainly women) without ever successfully meeting anyone. This kind of approach lead him to deal with all sorts of controversial and/or taboo subjects like pedophilia or religion (he seems strongly atheistic which might be another reason for his interest in Lovecraft). whether or not these controversies were planified for commercial reasons, as they sometimes are, is another matter entirely. He also writes poetry and songs. He smokes a lot. Now he is quite famous over here and his Lovecraft essay has been regularly reprinted.
The book itself is definitely interesting.
It has a few negative points though IMO:
- Houellebecq seems to rely on partial or unverified sources for what he calls his "anti-biography" of Lovecraft. Ex.: the same old clichés about HPL being totally uninterested in money or financial matters (yet remember his famous HIC HABEMUS BANANAS!) or the legend (?) of the cyanide little glass bottle he is said to have carried with him everywhere.
- Some statements puzzle me as contradictory (but I might have misunderstood his point). For example, in his opinion the reason why Lovecraft's characters are so devoid of psychological complexity is because all HPL needs is a set of characters who can feel, see, smell, taste the universe, and render the disgustingness of it. Yet, after having said: "Lovecraft does not intend to describe psychosis, but disgusting realities", in another chapter he says: "the rejection of any form of realism is a preliminary condition to have access to his own universe".
But on the whole it is definitely interesting and worth reading. It includes is a very convincing and innovating study of the importance of sounds in the work of Lovecraft.

Philippe Gindre

Quote:

The original sentence is "Quand on aime la vie, on ne lit pas". Literally translated, it might sound like "One who loves life, doesn't read", or "Those who enjoy life, don't read".

I interpreted this statement, rightly or wrongly, not as meaning that those who read do not enjoy life, but, rather, that those who have a naive and simplistic enjoyment of the status quo (I am not merely referring to the social meaning of this term) tend not to be the sort who often resort to books, whereas those of a more questioning and critical temperament also tend to be more avid readers.

Anyway, thanks for the additional information about Houellebecq. Whatever the flaws of his study, this essay/excerpt demonstrates an exemplary understanding of Lovecraft's work as a whole, especially in contrast to the remarks by the likes of the other authors whom I mentioned.

Is this the whole book, does anyone know, or just a large chunk? :

[blog.urbanomic.com]