Re: Grandpa on Coast to Coast
Posted by:
jdworth (IP Logged)
Date: 17 October, 2012 10:00PM
The reasons for correcting false information, however, are numerous, whether it is one's favorite author, or the soundness of the concept of evolution, or that the earth is an oblate spheroid rather than a (relatively) flat circle.
Frankly, I don't give a hoot in hell what a bunch of half-literate nits think about HPL or any other author, as such. And as for Curran spreading such bilge... well, we still hear regurgitations of the nonsense Griswold spread about Poe even today, despite it having been exploded long since.
Yes, a writer's work should be judged on its own merits, I agree; but there are perfectly valid reasons for being interested in the life and thought of the person behind the work, including how it informs that work (and vice versa). Sometimes the person is of interest in themselves, as a complex human being. HPL apparently had this quality for no few who disliked the work itself, such as Edmund Wilson, or who found it seriously lacking, as Colin Wilson, or even some of HPL's amateur colleagues, who found themselves greatly taken with the man while finding the work not at all to their taste. And, of course, the more eloquent the person is in expressing themselves (especially on paper) when they have that sort of complexity, the more likely they are to be of interest when it comes to a number of readers. In Lovecraft's case, this is all the more so because his entire life was, in a sense, a work of art, and his letters are themselves fascinating literary documents, not only for the biographical information they hold but quite often for their qualities as literary documents, with all the rhetorical flourishes, complex structures, and brilliant turns of phrase of such. They are as consciously "written" as are many of the letters by Robert E. Howard, or those of Lord Chesterfield (where those of Hawthone, for instance, often are not).
For myself, chiefly I find such a book a pity, as an honest personal view of such a writer (positive or negative), based on fact and genuine thought, can be very insightful and informative, again beyond simple biographical data, and can add new layers of experience to the reading of that person's work. But when something is full of either deliberate falsehoods or just the result of lazy or half-assed research, then it becomes a lost opportunity to add to a body of work often interesting in itself; and yes, I find a fair amount of Lovecraftian criticism to be both thought-provoking, insightful, and at times quite well-written as well. Nothing strange in that, as much of the criticism that Poe wrote, for instance, is fascinating reading which goes far beyond the mere "review" level, and often adds insight into some of his work. Having gone through a huge amount of Poe material a little over a year ago, including as much of his criticism and letters as I could find, the way this added to my enjoyment of his work, even bringing pleasure to works which I had previously found lacking interest. It also sharply brought out the flaws in Poe's character, as well as presenting many strengths I had not known of before. In any event, it made me appreciate him as both a person and a literary artist even more than I had previously. But when someone simply lazily buys into the long-exploded myths, they cheapen the experience by making it cartoonish, hackneyed, and hypocritical, and I've little patience with that sort of thing in any field, just as (to return to an earlier analogy) I have little patience for the teaching of "intelligent design" and the like in science classes. Honest mistakes are one thing, but promulgating lies in the name of truth is something I don't tolerate well, wherever I come across it.