Gavin Callaghan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Indeed, not only being there, but seeing Lovecraft
> on a daily (and nightly) basis throughout his
> lengthy (and troubled) New York City-period. Who
> is more likely to be right?

In "Of Gold and Sawdust", Loveman speaks of Lovecraft's "smouldering hatred" of him. Is that supported by other sources, e.g. Lovecraft's letters? Does Lovecraft ever say how much he hates Loveman? I'd say that his admiration of Loveman is clearly shown by many things, including the fact that he set down in writing poems by Loveman that otherwise would have been lost. What you are ignoring is Loveman's bitterness at discovering Lovecraft's anti-Semitic tendencies, which he blows up completely out of proportion. So no, everything Loveman says should be viewed in the light of this.

Gavin Callaghan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Martinus Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > That's confirmation?!
>
>
> Confirmation, surely, that it wasn't
> "preposterous", as Joshi said?

What Kyberean said. I repeat: Joshi gives clear and plausible reason for why he thinks the statement is preposterous, and you can bet that he is aware of the quoted passage (which I cannot locate among Lovecraft's letters at the moment because of De Camp's moronic way of handling his references, but I would love to know the context). If Lovecraft had spoken of using a spoon, you would have taken that as confirmation of the cyanide anecdote too?

>
>
> Martinus Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > And
> > why emphasise "cyanide" -- Loveman's anecdote
> > doesn't mention cyanide, does it?
>
>
> My thinking: "cyanide" = synonym for poison, with
> the marked use of "vial" or "phial" in the phrase
> being the lynchpin of identification.

But that lynchpin is very uncertain, as I just pointed out, since Clough is uncertain of this particular word.

garymorris Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> (Though,
> inconsistently, I rather dislike attacks on Smith,
> whose stories transport me in a way that
> Lovecraft's don't.

I don’t understand the various criticisms of Smith myself, either. Of course, each to his own, but the weird condescension of writers like Brian Aldiss, or various scholars in Lovecraft Studies, etc., all presented without any explanation or reason, simply baffles me.

garymorris Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>“Re. HPL’s suicidal bent. I wonder if
>that’s not overblown? It’s always been
>hard for me to reconcile Lovecraft’s
>obvious engagement with life (via the
>incomparable letters) with his apparent
>(or stated) ennui/depression…”

Don’t forget, even HPL’s letters, though entertaining, witty, etc., are also full of his almost Buddhistic/Schoepenhauerian philosophy of humility, self-denial, abnegation, etc. HPL’s ultimate goal, he once told Loveman, was to be regarded as a “non-entity”, and indeed he often referred to himself as such.

This reveals itself in various ways in his stories- most prominently, perhaps, in the controversial coda of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, in which the deep-sea glories that Lovecraft’s narrator discovers on the ocean floor mirror (or at least so I believe) that same oblivion which Lovecraft had sought, so many years before, in his 1904 fantasy of drowning in the Barrington River.

garymorris Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>“I read the de Camp bio so long ago
>that I can’t recall mention of him [Loveman]
>having a wife…”

I found it on page 117; I have the paperback version of de Camp’s bio, though, so the pagination might be off- but it’s in the “Wasted Warrior”, chapter:

“Originally trained as an accountant, he [Loveman] served in the U.S. Army during the First World War, in the course of which his wife died in childbirth.”

I don’t recall seeing any mention of Loveman’s family in either Joshi’s HPL: A Life, or in Hippocampus Press’s Out of the Immortal Night, so I was wondering:
1) is this a case of a “fictional” family, made up in the seventies to cover the fact that Loveman was gay, or
2) did Loveman really have a family, but the gay “party-line” came to obscure everything else, so that Loveman’s family was simply shuffled aside/forgotten?

The English Assassin wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>“The constant sniping about adjectives …”

Those critics who complain about Lovecraft’s supposed “adjectivitis” are missing the forest for the trees. They snidely comment on Lovecraft’s repetitive and heavy-handed use of such words, and then promptly move on -and thus fail to read the deeper meanings behind them. (Such as the source of many of Lovecraft’s adjectives in the fiery invectives and sermons of archaic Puritan divines, or in Christian theology, or in Classical writers, etc.)

Kyberean wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>“...the alleged overwhelmingly positive
>response to Lovecraft and his writings
>exists solely in certain individuals’ imaginations…”

For my part, when I refer to HPL-hero worship, I could just as easily be using the word “fanboy” or “fandom.” E Hoffmann Price referred to this phenomenon in his essay “The Lovecraft Controversy- Why?”, where he observed:

“There is, however, ...one problem which derives from the Lovecraft worshippers whose fanaticism HPL’s good friend, the late W. Paul Cook, discussed as long ago as 1945, in the fan magazine The Ghost. His apprehensions have proved all too well justified. If, instead of wrangling at conventions and assailing each other in fan-magazine columns, they could set aside juvenile emotionality and permit themselves enrichment from the two books in question, they would profit…

“(…) An HPL worshiper who was not even born until after the Old Master’s death reproached me for not having condemned de Camp’s book. He could scarcely believe me when I declared that I’d written well of it. Since he had long known me as one who has a deep regard for HPL, he found it inconceivable that I had not petitioned to have de Camp hanged by the toes and flogged to death, at least in effigy, until devotees could seize and settle the culprit.”

One sees similar distortions of reality/hero-worship in various youthful/genre groups of the present day, most familiarly in the comic book-world. Steve Ditko has published some brilliant material recently, criticizing the “mass mind” and “mob rule” often associated with this phenomenon. Perhaps the worst aspect of this, though, is the current mystical-craze which is associated with Lovecraft and the Necronomicon. I hear HPL fans even meet at Lovecraft’s grave on his birthday to recite magic spells! Utter madness.

Of course, it is often painful when a fanboy has his illusions shattered. Kyberean’s odd “Oedipus”-centered rhetoric is very revealing in this regard -----for while it has no meaning for me, it obviously has some meaning for Kyberean -perhaps because he himself somehow regards Lovecraft as a father-figure in some way. But, obviously, I am only guessing here.

Kyberean further reveals this tendency to hero worship, when he erroneously refers to things like "scurrilous innuendo", "absurd attacks", and "smearing Lovecraft".

"Smearing Lovecraft" -how? By a statement of fact? Kyberean takes it for granted that positing Lovecraft contemplated suicide during his "darkest days" constitutes a "smear" -a fact which reveals a great deal regarding Kyberean's own (unconscious?) psychology.

For instance, if one one were a Romantic or a Decadent or a fan of Rimbaud, etc., one could easily regard HPL's tragic despair and poison-carrying as morbidly Romantic, cool, spooky -a Wertherian protest against "modern society". But Kyberean regards it as an attack. And, perhaps for Kyberean -it is.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 14 Nov 09 | 04:48PM by Gavin Callaghan.

Kyberean wrote:
-----------------------------------
>“…Lovecraft merely held and parroted
>the conventional views of his era and
>social class. Unfortunately, Lovecraft
>happened to be more articulate and voluble
>on the subject than others, and he also
>become famous….he merely held the
>prejudices of his time---…”

So, from Kyberean’s point of view, Lovecraft wasn’t a creator. He was articulate, but not a great artist, and not even a writer. He was merely a “parrot”, i.e. an automaton, recording, copying, and repeating the views of an “era” and “class”- an era and a class which Lovecraft himself, as his own writings plainly reveal, was often alienated from or completely at odds with. And despite the fact that even among Lovecraft’s own family and acquaintances, HPL’s political, social, and racial views were far different, and far more atavistic, than the norm.

For Kyberean, Lovecraft isn’t an artist, creating and encoding a complex, brilliant, subversive, satirical racial and social polemic. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu “Mythos” is the creation of Lovecraft’s maiden aunts, mother, and uncles. Lovecraft wrote it down for them, so that they wouldn’t have to. Plus, Lovecraft had a little bit more of a facility with language, so it all worked out fine.

Of course, this view is absurd. There is a reason why, even during the 1930’s, Lovecraft’s fiction was different from that of all others- others of his era, and of his class, and even of his own genre. A reason why there were horror writers who were not racists, yet who managed to churn out terrifying and fascinating stories of the occult, alienation, or otherness. There is a reason, too, why Lovecraft -unlike Russell Kirk- has never become a darling, or a leading light, of the Conservative movement.

Lovecraft was a modern day Cato or Cicero- and he was so consciously, using all of his verbal brilliance, wit, and art- and neuroses. He wrote against his time, not for it- against the grain, not with it. Like Hogarth, whom he admired, Lovecraft was a master of caricature- and Lovecraft captured- and caricatured- the most hated polemical antagonisms of his time -the drunken rabble, the democratic herds, the foreign crowds, the mindless masses, the “yellow hordes ”. These hatreds were intrinsic to Lovecraft, they were intellectual -and they were also psychological. They were the fuel of his nightmares, and his desires- and perhaps they were nightmares because they were desires.

For Kyberean to say,

“Lovecraft happened to be more articulate and voluble on the subject than others, and he also become famous”

is to somehow suggest a separation between Lovecraft’s public fiction and his private views- as if a few non-PC jokes had posthumously been found among HPL’s correspondence, and then magnified by detractors beyond all proportion. When in fact Lovecraft’s views are not only there in his fiction (and there in plain sight), but are part of an elaborate polemical tapestry , inextricable from the meaning of his fiction, and of Lovecraft’s thought, as a whole. They were placed there intentionally by Lovecraft -playfully, perhaps, but also meaningfully, in the hopes that his readers would find them, and notice them, and think. To note this fact, and to admit that it is a fact, is to engage in simple literary analysis, nothing more, and nothing less.

And for Kyberean to misrepresent this process of deciphering Lovecraft’s meaning as mere “self-righteous finger wagging over Lovecraft’s political views” is to do a great disservice not only to the process of literary inquiry, but also to Lovecraft’s work/intentions as a whole.

Kyberean wrote:
-----------------------------------
“Where I differ with the PC Gestapo, led by types such as Gavin, …”

Kyberean’s acquaintance, Boyd Rice, is closer to being a member of the Gestapo than I’ll ever be. But if Kyberean would give a pass to thugs like Rice and Schreck, it’s no wonder he’d give a pass to the admittedly more civilized, mild-mannered and cultured Lovecraft.

Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------


> With regard to Lovecraft's alleged complete fear
> of "otherness", this is a point about which I'd
> quibble. The matter is much more complex than
> that. Lovecraft held such a fear, to be sure, but
> otherness also held an attraction for Lovecraft.
> Where I differ with the PC Gestapo, led by types
> such as Gavin, is the weight I would accord
> Lovecraft's xenophobia in the construction of both
> his character and his fiction. There are many who
> feel the defining and motivating feature of the
> work is Lovecraft's horror of the alien in any
> form. I don't think, however, that Lovecraft's
> work can be reduced to that dimension.
>
> One aspect, in particular, that such a reductive
> view overlooks is perhaps an even stronger
> motivational force in Lovecraft: His sense of
> wonder at the extra-terrestrial and the
> extra-human, which is the root of the cosmic
> dimension of his horror (As you know, Lovecraft
> also wrote a fair number of non-horror
> fantasies--though some have horrific elements--in
> the Dunsanian vein). I would even call it a
> compensating xenophilia. Forgive the length of the
> following quotation from a letter by Lovecraft,
> but it gives, I think, a far more nuanced idea of
> Lovecraft's emotional motivations and his
> attraction to horror, wonder, and fantasy as a
> means of expressing himself:


I think this is true, there are many facets to Lovecraft's fiction, none of which should be ignored for full appreciation, and certainly his 'sense of wonder' is a strong element. Part of Lovecraft's appeal seems to come from his crossing over of horror, fantasy and science fictional elements (genres or sub-genres that were only in their infancy at best) into a cohesive whole. I believe his conceptual strength largely comes from his scientific and secular rational to his Mythos married with its cosmic scope and love of the fantastical, especially found in his 'dreamland' stories and his later 'cosmic' stories. However he was obviously writing from or in the horror tradition. I wouldn't try to strictly define horror, but for me it is predominately about 'otherness.' Horror is innately xenophobic and racists. That doesn't mean that you have to be a racists to read/write horror nor does it mean you have to believe what you are reading (a commonly held mistake when people are taking about supernatural fiction) nor do I mean it literally in any way, but it does mean that in horror the 'other' must remain a threat and an invading force, in my (not so expert) opinion. There must be exceptions (and by naling my colours to the mast I'm obviously leaving myself open to being told them), but to my mind attempts to humanise or understand the other in horror are misguided. Dracula (for all its faults as a novel) remains pure horror, because the Count remains a monster throughout: corrupting and insidious: his motivations are malignant to humans, while Anne Rice's nonsense turns into dark fantasy or whatever because it demystifies it's otherness. Anne Rice might of course be right, vampires might also have hopes and fears and be just another bunch of humans who need to be understood and integrated (and so may Cthulhu, serial killers, etc...), but that isn't horror because it transforms the monster into something that can be psycho-analysed and understood. Fantasy and SF can also have a strong other-factor, but in my opinion their otherness works very differently, being either something to be immersed in (Middle-Earth, Narnia...) or a mystery to be explained (the black monolith in 2001, cyberspace...). While, I agree, Lovecraft uses both these devises to greater or lesser degrees in his fiction, he never looses sight of keeping his Mythos largely beyond human, therefore his perspective remains xenophobic - and justly so! Cthulhu remains a monster, an uber-monster throughout.

I do take your point that Lovecraft has strong sense of cosmic awe but it seems to me that this was primarily focused upon the inorganic world, i.e. his scientific interest seemed to focus on chemistry, physics, astronomy and geology, as far as I have read, and let's face it he was grossly out of touch on the issue of eugenics. Of course he had a strong love of archaeology and history, so things weren't obviously as clear cut as that, but to my mind his love of the past is strongly related to his love of the fantastic, i.e. an imaginary world he used to enhance his life. However, I think it is the juxtaposition of Lovecraft's awe of the universe and his fear of life (or at least different life), which makes him so interesting.

I don't think it is insulting to Lovecraft to say he used his racism in his writing. He was blatantly a racist, even by his own era's standards, and he was probably the 20th century's greatest cosmic writer. There is, of course, a contradiction here. To be cosmic, yet to consider skin colour important is at odds with one another; racism is as "Earth-bound" as Derlerth's Christianity is, but then Lovecraft has as much right to be inconsistent as the rest of us.

Gavin Callaghan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> For Kyberean, Lovecraft isn’t an artist,
> creating and encoding a complex, brilliant,
> subversive, satirical racial and social polemic.
> Lovecraft’s Cthulhu “Mythos” is the creation
> of Lovecraft’s maiden aunts, mother, and uncles.
> Lovecraft wrote it down for them, so that they
> wouldn’t have to. Plus, Lovecraft had a little
> bit more of a facility with language, so it all
> worked out fine.

I must admit I don't understand this view either. Lovecraft was a great (and underrated) rhetorical writer and clearly knew and believed what he was writing. He was not just some mouthy oik in the pub slagging of immigrants. Saying that, I don't suppose he expected to have all his letters published either, but enough of his public writings echo his private correspondence (worse in the case of his poetry) that it is impossible to make excuses for him other to say that he wasn't alone in his views. Does his racism matter. Yes and no. Yes because it was a fairly big part of his writing and opinions and can allows the armchair critic a wider perspective on his writings, but no it should be judged negative because of it. We bend over backwards to accommodate the racist, misogynistic and homophobic views of other cultures, but we judge the past harshly.

Gavin Callaghan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> "Smearing Lovecraft" -how? By a statement of
> fact? Kyberean takes it for granted that positing
> Lovecraft contemplated suicide during his "darkest
> days" constitutes a "smear" -a fact which reveals
> a great deal regarding Kyberean's own
> (unconscious?) psychology.
>
> For instance, if one one were a Romantic or a
> Decadent or a fan of Rimbaud, etc., one could
> easily regard HPL's tragic despair and
> poison-carrying as morbidly Romantic, cool, spooky
> -a Wertherian protest against "modern society".
> But Kyberean regards it as an attack. And,
> perhaps for Kyberean -it is.

I quite agree. Why should suicidal thoughts be seen as a sign of weakness. While I have no idea if Smith had them, his letters to Sterling reveal that he shared Ambrose Bierce's open (even idealistic) view on suicide, a view I generally agree with.

Gavin Callaghan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Those critics who complain about Lovecraft’s
> supposed “adjectivitis” are missing the forest
> for the trees. They snidely comment on
> Lovecraft’s repetitive and heavy-handed use of
> such words, and then promptly move on -and thus
> fail to read the deeper meanings behind them.
> (Such as the source of many of Lovecraft’s
> adjectives in the fiery invectives and sermons of
> archaic Puritan divines, or in Christian theology,
> or in Classical writers, etc.)

Yes, yes and YES! Lovecraft's so-called adjectivitis is massive misunderstood. He is much more selective about when and how he uses them than he's given credit for. His descriptions of alien architecture in Mountains of Madness are hypnotic. Indeed he uses so much description that it becomes harder and harder to imagine what he is describe, which is of course the point! He layers the detail upon details into the most evocative and impressionistic prose: a hallucinogenic 'stream of adjectives.' If Joyce or Conrad did this, everyone would be heralding the technique as a stroke of genius.


On a separate note: why all the hate in this thread? Lovecraft and Co. managed to disgusts far more weighty matters with each other without resorting to sniping and name-calling.

That's a great last point, Assassin, about the "hate in this thread" and invoking Lovecraft & Co as a model for discussions like this. HPL and his circle could indeed be passionate, focused on the subject, strong in defending their opinions without resorting to condescension and juvenile name-calling -- except, of course, when it came to short-sighted editors! (But even that was often done with humor.)

English Assassin:

I think that you are splitting hairs with respect to Lovecraft's interest in the cosmic. I agree, however, that "otherness" can take different forms, and that, to Lovecraft, some of these forms are more palatable than others. Even if I allow your distinction, though, it still reinforces my point: That Lovecraft shows as much fascination with otherness, in general, as he shows a horror of it, and that it is a gross over-simplification to over-emphasize the latter.

As for your statement regarding the essence of horror, we shall never agree on that subject, so there is little point in continuing to discuss it. That horror entails so much more than mere loathing and racism is self-evident, to me. You need to educate yourself more about the roots of literary horror in the 18th-Century aesthetics of the Gothic and the Sublime, for instance, as well as in the didactic, so-called "Graveyard School" of poetry.

Quote:

There is, of course, a contradiction here. To be cosmic, yet to consider skin colour important is at odds with one another; racism is as "Earth-bound" as Derlerth's Christianity

While I still question the over-emphasis on Lovecraft's racism, I otherwise agree completely with this very perceptive observation. The dichotomy you describe limns the great tension, if not outright contradiction, in Lovecraft's thought. Lovecraft would have been a far better and happier man, I think, if he had realized the extent of this contradiction, and if he had, like CAS, kept mere Earth-bound and social concerns in proper perspective. CAS's refreshing lack of emotional investment in matters social, socio-political, and economic is one of the hallmarks of his wisdom, from my perspective, and Lovecraft would have done well to emulate CAS in this respect. "Caring about the civilization" , on the one hand, and the cosmic perspective, on the other, are indeed difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile. This is true a fortiori when such "caring" takes the form of a parochial, culturally inculcated racism.

As for the flaming:

Gavin, as you see, loves to psychoanalyze. Ah, psychoanalysis! So often fueled by personal insecurity and resentment, which then aims to cut others down to size, it is the quintessential expression of the weak man's "will to power". This mode of "criticism" was outdated and discredited soon after Freud was in his grave, but that fact doesn't seem to deter some people. Clear-sighted, as always, CAS loathed psychoanalysis. I can only imagine CAS's reaction if he knew that a forum dedicated to him hosted psychoanalytical attacks upon one of his closest epistolary comrades.

Anyway, Gavin's quite good at dishing out psychoanalytical criticism, but, like most such types, he can't take it very well. So, when I satirize his methods of analyzing Lovecraft, by suggesting that Gavin's unhealthy obsession with Lovecraft speaks volumes about his own emotional problems and murky motives, he either misses the point completely, reacts with hysterics, or deliberately misconstrues my point.

For instance, here is one example of the latter. It should be apparent even to a complete idiot that what I mean by "smear" refers, first, to the totality of Gavin's anti-Lovecraft posts, and, second, to the suggestion that Lovecraft actively threatened suicide and made histrionic gestures, such as ostentatiously carrying poison on his person--which is not the same thing as merely having private suicidal thoughts. Indeed, I made quite clear that I believe nearly everyone has such thoughts, at times, and therefore I would not consider that fact alone to be stigmatizing.

At any rate, whatever his other shortcomings, Gavin is no idiot, so I can only assume that desperation led him to seek to score points by creating a crude misrepresentation of my (obvious) meaning, and then demolishing it. I tend to lose patience very quickly with this quintessentially "Internet" debating tactic. This impatience, in turn, causes me lose my temper on occasion--a fact of which I am not proud, but that honesty makes me acknowledge.

For the rest, if you are curious as to the history of Gavin's and my charming exchanges, then simply do a little research in the archives, and that will answer your question.

Finally, if all you and garymorris see in Gavin's and my exchanges is "hate", then you are simply choosing to focus upon and exaggerate that particular facet. The ratio of substance to insult in these discussions, while not ideal, is still far greater than either of you seem to allow. Also, unless either of you has spent your entire life without ever having had such an exchange as this with anyone, in any way, please don't pretend to be "above it all". That makes you seem condescending.

I should add that I actually don't dislike Gavin, at all--although I obviously loathe his Lovecraft criticism. Gavin is very intelligent and articulate in those rare moments when he is not frothing over his pet obsession. He could contribute much more of substance here than mere copied-and-pasted excerpts from his latest anti-Lovecraft screeds, if he so chose. I simply think that he goes completely off the rails when he is on the the subject of his little mania--and, unfortunately, he seldom posts here on any other subject.

And as for the topic at hand, I've said all I have to say. Read Joshi's observations and decide for yourself who is more credible on the subject of Lovecraft's alleged suicide threats.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 15 Nov 09 | 11:34AM by Kyberean.

Well, I seem to have started a real thread. That aside, on the matter of the monstrosity of alien things, a review in the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT years ago of a volume containing "At the Mountains of Madness" noted a sympathy for the monsters and how even the monsters had monsters. That line to the effect that these alien creatures "were men" shows HPL considered spirit above form, perhaps why he had Jewish friends in spite of a sort of generic anti-Semitism. I have known people who speak ill of "others" generically, but who actually symbolically did give the shirt offd their back to individuals of the despised "otherness." People are not consistent - thank Azathoth.

JBP

Kyberean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As for your statement regarding the essence of
> horror, we shall never agree on that subject, so
> there is little point in continuing to discuss it.
> That horror entails so much more than mere
> loathing and racism is self-evident, to me. You
> need to educate yourself more about the roots of
> literary horror in the 18th-Century aesthetics of
> the Gothic and the Sublime, for instance, as well
> as in the didactic, so-called "Graveyard School"
> of poetry.

Aye, I dare say you might have a point there, my knowledge of horror literature is far from encyclopaedic: me being a mere dabbler in the dark arts. Maybe my point is more pertinent to 20th C horror or the horror found in Lovecraft's writing or maybe it's just what I personally look for in horror. I dare say in the pre-pulp/literature divide of the 20th C that such distinctions were more nebulous. I should point out that I'm pretty much confiding myself to supernatural genre horror here. Maybe this is an artificial distinction, I don't know...


> Finally, if all you and garymorris see in Gavin's
> and my exchanges is "hate", then you are simply
> choosing to focus upon and exaggerate that
> particular facet. The ratio of substance to insult
> in these discussions, while not ideal, is still
> far greater than either of you seem to allow.
> Also, unless either of you has spent your entire
> life without ever having had such an exchange as
> this with anyone, in any way, please don't pretend
> to be "above it all". That makes you seem
> condescending.

No condescending tone intended. My 'hate' comment was said entirely flippantly and not made as a personal attack on any one or two persons. I think this was clear, but maybe not: it's infamously hard to gauge tone of voice online or in txts. When I said: 'why all the hate?' I didn't mean 'all' as in all of this thread is exclusively full of hate, I meant all, as in why is there all of this hate here, therefore my intention was to include all the haters in this thread (both active and inactive) and not just target one or two individuals. This is of course somewhat artificial and disingenuous of me, but then so is small things like 'good manners' and 'politeness,' which, I guess, is part of the point I was making... Or maybe, all haters are equal, but some haters are more equal than others...

I totally agree that the content is highly informative in this thread and others, hence I've chipped in with my own crappy two pennies worth here and there in appreciation of all the good points made and in wanting to join the debate for whatever reason we feel the need to participate on a forum (I'm not sure why that is?). I'll go further and say that this forum is without a doubt the most well-informed forum that I've ever visited, which is in no small way down to posters like yourself, Gavin and Gary - among many others. However, I'll temper that by saying that it is, at times, the most aggressive forum I've visited as well. I've seen individual threads on other forums get more out of hand and personal, but I really don't think I've read the consistent level of aggressive posting as I have here. Albeit aggression with good content. Anyway, I'm here and in general I like the place, which indicates that I don't really care about the agro, because... well, as you say, the content's good stuff. Anyway, if it was just a flame war then I'd have taken no part (it not involving me in the build up), either ignoring the thread or maybe I'd have just stood back and laughed as Rome burned around me... but I haven't ignored it thus you may certainly assume that yes I'm enjoying the thread.

And yes, of course, we've all been suckered into taking the odd post personally here and there. It's very easy to end up tackling the man and not the ball when one's blood is up. We are all effectively fundamentalists to some extent on here or on other effectively niche forums like this one (no offence, I like a good niche), so it's not surprising that we can all let rip at times. I realise that I maybe as guilty as anyone here of losing it on a forum at times, but it's a rare day (at least I think/hope it is) that I directly insult someone personally, although I'll hold my had up say say yes, I do like to throw in the odd flippant remark at times (like 'why all the hate?' or a 'what's all this guff?' or whatever), which is probably highly immature of me (what can I say?), but then this is only a forum and we're not under oath in the Crown Court and surely the odd conversational tone or bit of banter is okay here and there? And of course the nonsensical opinions of others is fair game... ;) However I'd also say that there is a definite undertone (at the very least!) of outright hostility on this forum at times and to deny it or to say that it doesn't matter, just so long as they back up their constant name-calling with some (or even a lot) of great content, makes it all hunky-dory then is, frankly, talk of the finest arse-water, I believe. All I can say is that I doubt many of us go out drinking in many pubs with that attitude. Not unless we wanted our teeth kicking in at the same time...

Anyway, yes I stand by my 'why all the hate?' comment as, I think, it's worth pointing out now and again when things are getting unnecessarily agro (and this thread is pretty mild compared to some really), because, let's face it, the debate is only about our opinions on a subject, Lovecraft, who none of us has actually met (I presume?), who we only know from his writings and the opinions of other who knew him and by those who, much like us, base their opinions entirely on these sources coupled with their own deductions. It is, after all, only brain-candy to occupy our futile existences before we die...

Martinus wrote:
---------------------------------
>In “Of Gold and Sawdust”, Loveman speaks
>of Lovecraft’s “smouldering hatred” of him.
>Is that supported by other sources, e.g. Lovecraft’s
>letters? Does Lovecraft ever say how much he
>hates Loveman?

By “smouldering hatred”, Loveman could easily be referring to Lovecraft’s hatred for Jews in general -and thereby, by extension, hatred for Loveman himself. This, in addition to Lovecraft’s clear ambivalence toward Samuel Loveman in the correspondence, as well as Lovecraft’s obvious hypocrisy in his dealings with Loveman, would perhaps be enough to explain Loveman’s reference.

True, Loveman was obviously a hypersensitive -but this does not necessarily make him a liar. One could just as easily argue that Loveman, because he was angry at Lovecraft, was more inclined to be truthful, because now he would be more inclined to reveal hidden facts which he, as a good friend, probably otherwise would have whitewashed.

It would help, of course, if I knew the context of Loveman’s comment, above- where was Samuel Loveman’s anti-Lovecraft essay published? I’d love to read it.

Martinus wrote:
---------------------------------
>“If Lovecraft had spoken of using a spoon,
>you would have taken that as confirmation
>of the cyanide anecdote too?”

Spoon? I don't understand. I'm not trying to be a "smart aleck", here, I really don't get this!

garymorris wrote:
---------------------------------
>That's a great last point, Assassin, about the "hate
>in this thread" and invoking Lovecraft & Co as a
>model for discussions like this. HPL and his circle
>could indeed be passionate, focused on the subject,
>strong in defending their opinions without resorting
>to condescension and juvenile name-calling --

Oh no -on the contrary, Lovecraft’s debates within the amateur press were nothing if not acrimonious- witness Lovecraft’s lengthy and involved debates with William J. Dowdell and others; Lovecraft‘s “In Defense of Dagon”, etc.

Lovecraft’s venomous attack on Ida C. Haughton, the president of the United Amateur press association, was particularly blood-thirsty: in a poem entitled “Medusa: A Portrait” Lovecraft describes Haughton as:

“Soak’d in her noxious venom, puff’d with gall,/ Like some fat toad see dull MEDUSA sprawl,” (JOSHI 259-60)

Joshi calls it “the most vicious and unrestrained of his [HPL’s] poetic satires, and in it he mercilessly flays Haughton for her large bulk and her supposed foulness of temper.” As fellow-amateur Rheinhart Kleiner observed, “Lovecraft pulled an amount of heavy artillery into action against his rabbits which might have been adequate for larger game.”

Lovecraft’s entry into the amateur press itself, too, was precipitated by yet another, earlier, and equally acrimonious debate between Lovecraft and the readers of the various Munsey magazines, in which Lovecraft complained about the number of sentimental and romantic stories appearing in the magazines. (Lovecraft preferred to read weird/fantastic fiction.) Later, Lovecraft and his circle would come under a similar attack from Forrest J. Ackerman, who objected to the fantastic elements in their fiction- what goes around, comes around, I guess.

True, HPL developed an (outwardly) calm demeanor later on, but this was slow in coming, and only occurred after many sustained battles over many years.

The English Assassin wrote:
---------------------------------
>While I think there is little doubt that Lovecraft
>was an anti-Semite, I've always felt (perhaps naively)
>that his racism was more theoretical than applied as such.
>After all he married a Jewish woman, which slightly
>puts his white-supremacist credentials in doubt.

Lovecraft’s unlikely marriage to the “Junoesque” Sonia is paralleled by numerous other such marriages in his fiction, in which the wife/women acts as an agent of chaotic infiltration and/or racial corruption:

-the Eastern/ Oriental seclusion of Captain Marsh’s wife in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”; the similar seclusion of Jermyn’s wife in “Arthur Jermyn”; the interracial marriage of Denis and Marceline de Rusy in “Medusa’s Coil”; Suydham’s sacrifice to Lilith in “Red Hook”; the marriage of the Duke de Blois to the creepy Dame de Blois in “Psychopompos”; and, perhaps most importantly, the marriage of poor Derby to the predatory Asenath Waite in “The Thing on the Doorstep.”

Not to mention HPL’s weird/humorous 1919 playlet “Sweet Ermengarde”, in which the melodrama’s “hero”, “Jack Manly” -completely forgetting his “true love”, Ermengarde- returns home from the city, “worn and seedy, but radiant of face”, and says, “Squire ---lend me a ten-spot, will you? I have just come back from the city with my beauteous bride, the fair Bridget Goldstein, and need something to start things on the old farm.” (MW 44)

Lovecraft’s marriage does not negate his anti-Semitism- it merely underscores the contradiction, a contradiction which, I would submit, probably tormented Lovecraft, given its constant appearance in his fiction (as shown above).

Interestingly, the nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg -whose “sub-human” ideology had several parallels in the works of Lovecraft, and whose life parallels Lovecraft‘s in various odd ways- was not averse to having sexual relationships with Jewish women, either, including one woman who was later arrested by the Gestapo -and this at a time when such relationships could have cost him his life. Such hypocrisy at the very center of nazism does not negate Rosenberg’s anti-Semitism, any more than HPL’s marriage negates the philosophy which he promulgated throughout his works.

J. B. Post wrote:
---------------------------------
>a review in the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT years
>ago of a volume containing "At the Mountains of Madness"
>noted a sympathy for the monsters and how even the
>monsters had monsters. That line to the effect that
>these alien creatures "were men" shows HPL considered
>spirit above form, perhaps why he had Jewish friends
>in spite of a sort of generic anti-Semitism.

Lovecraft’s identification of the Old Ones as “men” in “At the Mountains of Madness” is frequently cited as an example of Lovecraft’s “humanizing” of his monsters and, therefore, as a lessening of HPL’s racism, but this, I would assert, is a misinterpretation. As David A. Oakes suggests in his essay “A Warning to the World: The Deliberative Argument of At the Mountains of Madness” (LS: 39), Lovecraft’s story functions as a parable for the human race- and this apocalyptic parable can function only if Western Civilization and the civilization of the Old Ones are identified with each other.

But the true monsters of this story, the Shoggoths, not only still exist, despite HPL’s supposed “humanizing” tendency- but they are also among the most loathsome of all of Lovecraft’s monsters: excremental, shapeless, and eye-filled caricatures, which manage to encapsulate within them nearly all of Lovecraft’s polemical antagonisms, whether black, female, Semitic, or capitalistic/ industrial. And the Shoggoths themselves are only a small part of a larger, and implicitly anti-Semitic, socio-political tapestry within the story itself. True, this didactic function of HPL’s later “black” fiction is often obscured by HPL’s admittedly effective atmospherics, but it is still there.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 30 Nov 09 | 05:19PM by Gavin Callaghan.

Gavin Callaghan Wrote:
>
> By “smouldering hatred”, Loveman could easily
> be referring to Lovecraft’s hatred for Jews in
> general -and thereby, by extension, hatred for
> Loveman himself.

No, he is quite clear on that: "smouldering hatred of me".

> This, in addition to
> Lovecraft’s clear ambivalence toward Samuel
> Loveman in the correspondence, as well as
> Lovecraft’s obvious hypocrisy in his dealings
> with Loveman, would perhaps be enough to explain
> Loveman’s reference.

That is not clear at all. Lovecraft praised Loveman (apart from that silly ambiguous "Jew or not" and comments like that). There is no "obvious hypocrisy" here. When Lovecraft is writing about Loveman to others, he says good things about him.

>
> True, Loveman was obviously a hypersensitive -but
> this does not necessarily make him a liar. One
> could just as easily argue that Loveman, because
> he was angry at Lovecraft, was more inclined to be
> truthful, because now he would be more inclined to
> reveal hidden facts which he, as a good friend,
> probably otherwise would have whitewashed.

Which is probably your explanation why the other Kalems didn't say anything in their memoirs. And since it is negative, that makes it more interesting. However, if Lovecraft "hated" Loveman, then why did he let him know that he was carrying poison on him? Wouldn't that be a revelation reserved for people he trusted and liked? It is equally obvious that Loveman could have had an agenda, to get back at Lovecraft for his "smouldering hatred".

No, that does not make him a liar, but he was careless with the truth at other times. He had a reputation for forging author's autographs in books he was selling and for pasting Hart Crane's left-over bookplates into otherwise worthless books. That, in addition to the fact that no other person who knew Lovecraft at the time refers to the alleged posion, makes the entire episode questionable.

> It would help, of course, if I knew the context of
> Loveman’s comment, above- where was Samuel
> Loveman’s anti-Lovecraft essay published? I’d
> love to read it.

I already supplied that information.

>
> Martinus wrote:
> ---------------------------------
> >“If Lovecraft had spoken of using a spoon,
> >you would have taken that as confirmation
> >of the cyanide anecdote too?”
>
> Spoon? I don't understand. I'm not trying to be
> a "smart aleck", here, I really don't get this!

You are referring to H. P. Lovecraft: A Life in connection with the poison anecdote. Therefore you know, or should know, that the word "phial" in connection with the episode is in doubt (Scott heard it from Clough who heard it from Loveman, yet Clough wasn't sure of "phial"), yet you use that word as your "lynchpin [sic] of identification" to connect it to that Lovecraft quotation. I already pointed that out. If you are ignoring this fact, then I can only conclude that the mention of a spoon would have supplied equal confirmation.

>
> Interestingly, the nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg
> -whose “sub-human” ideology had several
> parallels in the works of Lovecraft, and whose
> life parallels Lovecraft‘s in various odd ways-
> was not averse to having sexual relationships with
> Jewish women, either, including one woman who was
> later arrested by the Gestapo -and this at a time
> when such relationships could have cost him his
> life. Such hypocrisy at the very center of nazism
> does not negate Rosenberg’s anti-Semitism, any
> more than HPL’s marriage negates the philosophy
> which he promulgated throughout his works.

Which you see him as promulgating throughout his works

> Lovecraft’s identification of the Old Ones as
> “men” in “At the Mountains of Madness” is
> frequently cited as an example of Lovecraft’s
> “humanizing” of his monsters and, therefore,
> as a lessening of HPL’s racism, but this, I
> would assert, is a misinterpretation.

Has it ever struck you that you might be the one doing the misinterpretation?

> As David A.
> Oakes suggests in his essay “A Warning to the
> World: The Deliberative Argument of At the
> Mountains of Madness” (LS: 39), Lovecraft’s
> story functions as a parable for the human race-
> and this apocalyptic parable can function only if
> Western Civilization and the civilization of the
> Old Ones are identified with each other.
>
> But the true monsters of this story, the
> Shoggoths, not only still exist, despite HPL’s
> supposed “humanizing” tendency- but they are
> also among the most loathsome of all of
> Lovecraft’s monsters: excremental, shapeless,
> and eye-filled caricatures, which manage to
> encapsulate within them nearly all of
> Lovecraft’s polemical antagonisms, whether
> black, female, Semitic, or capitalistic/
> industrial. And the Shoggoths themselves are only
> a small part of a larger, and implicitly
> anti-Semitic, socio-political tapestry within the
> story itself. True, this didactic function of
> HPL’s later “black” fiction is often
> obscured by HPL’s admittedly effective
> atmospherics, but it is still there.

That is, you think it is still there.

*sigh* I still think the eyes = misogyny argument is the flimsiest I've ever seen.

Martinus wrote:
------------------------------------------
>Which is probably your explanation why
>the other Kalems didn’t say anything in their memoirs.

Martinus assumes this. I simply thought (if I actually thought about it) that they weren’t privy, for whatever reason.

Martinus wrote:
------------------------------------------
>And since it is negative, that makes it more interesting

Again, this assumes it IS intended as negative -when in fact the only real effect of the anecdote is to confirm what we already knew- that Lovecraft hated New York City.

Martinus wrote:
------------------------------------------
>However, if Lovecraft ‘hated’ Loveman, then
>why did he let him know that he was carrying
>poison on him? Wouldn’t that be a revelation
>reserved for people he trusted and liked?

As Robert Waugh and others have argued, Lovecraft’s relationship with Loveman was complex. I would characterize it as ambivalent. As ambivalence argues a simultaneous attraction and repulsion, it may be the attraction which prompted Lovecraft’s revelation. (But for all we know, Loveman simply saw the poison, etc.)

Martinus wrote:
------------------------------------------
>It is equally obvious that Loveman could have
>had an agenda, to get back at Lovecraft

How? “I’ll get back at Lovecraft, by reinforcing the suicidal impulses already documented by his letters”? Was that Loveman’s “plan”? Admittedly Loveman wasn’t wholly rational, but the only effect of such a “plan” was to draw derision from S. T. Joshi.

Martinus wrote:
------------------------------------------
>Therefore you know, or should know, that the
>word ‘phial’ in connection is in doubt…

My point precisely. The term is doubtful- that is, until we see Lovecraft using the same term in his correspondence, thereby serving to bolster its credibility.

Obviously, both Martinus and I are merely restating our positions at this point. The poison anecdote cannot as yet be “proven” one way or the other. But that’s my main point- that Joshi is wrong when he calls it “preposterous.”

For that matter, L. Sprague de Camp presumably examined the same source materials that Joshi did- but came to very different conclusions. Nor am I inclined to throw the baby out with the bathwater in the case of de Camp's biography.

Martinus wrote:
------------------------------------------
>Which you see him as promulgating
>throughout his works

Read Lovecraft’s essays, letters, poems, and stories. Or is the phrase “a foetid flood of swart, cringing Semitism” a misprint?

Martinus wrote:
------------------------------------------
>That is, you think it is still there.

I am hardly the first one to note the sociological subtext of “At the Mountains of Madness”; Waugh, Oakes, are others. Even Lovecraft’s original pulp readers were put off by the more complex aspects of Lovecraft’s late fiction. Or are they all “just imagining things” too?

Martinus wrote:
------------------------------------------
>Has it ever struck you that you might be
>the one doing the misinterpretation?

Not with regard to Lovecraft’s statement “they were men!”, no. It’s main use here is to cement the identification of men with the Old Ones for the purpose of Lovecraft’s warning “parable.” And “men”, for Lovecraft, meant Western European men. One often finds that those who cite Lovecraft’s “they were men!“ phrase as evidence of Lovecraft’s increasing “liberalism” very often ignore the story’s larger tapestry involving the subjugation and enslavement of the Shoggoths, and Lovecraft’s paralleling of the Old One’s decline with the Semitic (and supposedly “decadent”) artwork of Palmyra.

By the same token -and using the same standard by which “they were men!” is usually misinterpreted- Lovecraft’s earlier use of a similar phrase (it “had at one time been a MAN!!!”) in the juvenile “Beast in the Cave”, is far more “humane” -since Lovecraft is at least implicitly admitting the humanity of a loping, degenerative ghoul- a ghoul which has its spiritual descendent in the Shoggoths, which are, on the contrary, described as the ultimate embodiment of the “thing that should not be.”

Martinus wrote:
------------------------------------------
>I still think the eyes=misogyny argument is
>the flimsiest I’ve ever seen.

Again- read Lovecraft’s works. Did Lovecraft accentuate the “eyes” of the Dame de Blois and Asenath Waite, or is this another “misprint” -along with the “vial of cyanide”? And did Lovecraft equate “blacks” with “women” as twin “troubles” in his 1929 travelogue, or did he not? (Cf. “In 1619, wives were sent out for the colonials, and in the same year the first cargo of African blacks arrived-- proving that troubles never come singly” [MW 336])

It’s not only “eyes = misogyny”, however, but eyes + shapelessness + imitativeness + hypnotism = women, Lovecraft’s imagery here reflecting that of other contemporary misogynous and anti-Semitic accounts of his time, like those of Otto Weininger.

(Cf. here Weininger’s ideas in Sex and Character regarding Shapelessness-
“Male thought is fundamentally different from female thought in its craving for definite form, and all art that consists of moods is essentially a formless art.”

Imitativeness-
“The undesirability of [female] emancipation lies in the excitement and agitation involved. It induces women who have no real original capacity but undoubted imitative powers to attempt to study or write …”

Hypnotism-
“Woman is the best medium, the male her best hypnotizer. For this reason alone it is inconceivable why women can be considered good as doctors; for many doctors admit that their principal work up to the present- and it will always be the same- lies in the suggestive influence on their patients. The female is uniformly more easily hypnotized than the male throughout the animal world…”

---and then compare this with Lovecraft’s similar rhetoric in “At the Mountains of Madness”, with regard to the Shoggoths: “Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms…--slaves of suggestion,” etc.)

Of course, Martinus may attempt to salvage a pro-feminist meaning from Lovecraft’s works, if he so wishes. But that would involve a greater feat of deduction than my own modest attempts at interpretation.

My own interpretations, on the other hand, are made possible only because the facts oblige me- and that, ultimately, raises the basic question- which is, do the facts matter? Or don’t they?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 5 Dec 09 | 04:56PM by Gavin Callaghan.

Yes, but the problem with words like "misogynist" or "racist," is that they imply a misleading, mutually exclusive dichotomy. As though it isn't possible to be something other than "pro feminist" or a "hater of women"! (The same is true of "racism.") To say that Lovecraft was a "misogynist" ("crypto" of otherwise) because of an isolated flip (and almost certainly playful) remark about "twin troubles coming with blacks and women," is absurd on its face. Are we supposed to assume from that single statement (even taken in combination with Gavin's astute, though I fear specious analysis of "At the Mountains of Madness.") that Lovecraft literally "hated" women? What then is one to make of his lifelong devotion to his mother, aunts, women friends, etc.?-- Not to mention his never failing courtesy and solicitude with regard to a whole array of female correspondents?

Besides, which of us is all of a piece in that respect? Good grief, if you sifted through a lifetime's worth of my e-mails, you could probably find an instance or two where I referred to the Fair Ones as "irrational." Does that mean I'm a misogynist and that I hate half of the human race? Must that even be defended?

The problem I have with Gavin's approach is ultimately twofold. Number one (as I have pointed out), it assumes that people are much less complex than they actually are, and that it is a simple matter to put them into one category or another ("misogynists to the left, pro-females to the right!"). Don't we all konw people who have a different view of such things every two days? Indeed, most people--certainly the interesting ones--are shot through with that variety of contradiction.(What is more, it is often the most "developed" individuals who are the most extreme examples of this.) And with a personality as complex and unique as Lovecraft's, it is a perilous--and I would say unenlightening--business to attempt this kind of facile reductionism.

The other difficulty with this variety of criticism (and the trend is all but ubiquitous at present), is that in many cases it represents an attempt to "pathologize" anything that rises above the average level. Thus, History is no longer the history of Great Men, but of the manner in which their "complexes" made them SEEM great. Literature is no longer about reading (or God forbid, enjoying!) the Great Books, but about trying to decide when precisely when someone like Thomas Mann became a "pedophile". But do we really understand the essence of the rose by studying the manure out of which it grew?

(Incidentally, has anyone noticed that the psychiatric community (probably not coincidentally in light of Freud, etc.) seems to have adopted this same kind of pessimistic weltanshauung? Now young boys with too much energy and life force are deemed "mentally ill"--by school guidance counselors and the DSM 4. If they don't have "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" then you can almost certainly nab them with "Depressive Personality Disorder"--and God help the millions of creative, artistic, and introspective young people with that one! Neverthless, isn't our current mania for "deconstructism" and "cutting down to size," working a similar kind of mischief on the lives of our great men?)

At any rate, not to suggest that SOME of this type of criticism isn't valid--I believe it is. But it's a question of overall orientation and intention. Are we embracing this approach to better understand a great work of literature, or a great man (perhaps I should have just said "great person"--one can never be too careful!), or is it about simply hacking down until everything looks equally base, sordid and mediocre?

I have to agree with Dexterward, while psychoanalysing people from the past (Great Men or not) can be fun and can illuminate some insight into their artistic endeavours (assuming they are artists), ultimately I feel this approach isn't helpful because we are incapable of not superimposing modern values upon those who blundered before us (as we blunder forth behind them). I think it is impossible to refute that Lovecraft was a racist, even by the values of the time he was living in, and I'm sure his views on women were far from progressive by modern Western standards. I do think he used his fear of other races to evangelise his fear of the Other in his fiction, but, of course, it's quite possible that he was doing what most artists do, i.e. use their imagination, and I wouldn't want to make too much of this as I think Kyberean said there is more to Lovecraft than this. I'm also a little loathed to psychoanalyse an author too much by their fiction alone, although I will concede that in Lovecraft's case it's hard not to do because he uses rhetoric so well. In my opinion he obviously believes what he is writing. But as a general rule I tend to lean towards a 'Death of the Author' approach to literature and consider the author largely irrelevant to by relationship with a book, art, whatever...

It also seems to me that, at the end of the day, it is simply an act of cowardice to make allegations and attacks against dead persons who have no opportunity to defend themselves, and an act of stupidity to judge past individuals by present-day values.