Re: HPL book by myself
Posted by:
wilum pugmire (IP Logged)
Date: 15 June, 2013 03:51PM
I am one-third through the book, and I find it excellent--nay, I find it enthralling. I disagree with much, and at times you take a scolding tone (or so it seems) toward HPL that reminds me of de Camp. But, unlike Donald Tyson's THE DREAM WORLD OF H. P. LOVECRAFT, which has some very weird misunderstandings of Lovecraft's tales, and emphasizes Lovecraft's freakishness, his being a complete Outsider from the rest of humanity, you have carefully, intimately studied Lovecraft and know your facts; and your intelligent critiques of Lovecraft have no false note, as we find in Tyson or in the completely absurd and ignorant book by Bob Curran, A HAUNTED MIND (wherein the author made up lies and myths so as to paint Lovecraft as a grotesque freak).
Your tone toward Lovecraft as a person turns me off exceedingly, but it is also a fascinating display of one man's reaction to Lovecraft, as artist and human. What I mostly disagree with is that you seem to want to paint Lovecraft as a man who did not like women, or who had "issues" with women; and this is nonsense because Lovecraft was genuinely fond of women, admired women and had many female friends with whom he met or corresponded.
Then there are things like the Shoggoths as representation of HPL's racism or as emblems of excrement; and this reminds me of a book I read on THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE wherein the brown fog mentioned in the story, coupled with the fact that Hyde enters and exists the laboratory through a back door, is emblematic of the book's "sodomitic" obsession. To which I sneer and say "Nay."
Okay, back to reading.
"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.