Nerd Pride Radio

So what are people's feeling about H.P. Lovecraft? He was certainly a racist, and probably a misogynist, but he also wrote some really influential stories. Can we separate the art from the artist?

Yeah- I've had a lot of conversations with my oldest about this lately. My personal views are this- he was a horrible racist, sexist and xenophobe. But he was also a terrible writer. I've read "the complete works" and it's just so, so very boring. He writes during that time where you have to use thirty words in a sentence where you could have used four. It's just so overwrought, overwritten, and pretentious.

HOWEVER- his ideas were brilliant. He's the godfather of cosmic horror. His impact on literature and art cannot be ignored- much like Tolkien in the realm of fantasy- he created an entire genre that has grown to something bigger and better than his original works. Cthulhu movies, stories and books are everywhere and still being produced at a crazy rate.

So my personal opinion is this- I reject his works as not-good literature. But his ideas were great. If you like the mythos, read the modern stuff, particularly the modern stuff by minority writers in response to the inherent racism in his stories.

What he said.

I like a few of his stories a great deal (interestingly I like ones that are looked down on by Lovecraft aficionados) but mostly I find them interesting but kind of boring.

Yea, they are often boring. It's all "Here comes the super scary thing!" page after page and then it's something a bit odd but not particularly scary.
I think part of the problem is that the world has moved past him in the last century. Existentialism and accepting that the universe is chaotic and unknowable is much more baked into our culture now.

His words shine very occasionally but his writing is inconsistent. I'm fine with modern culture having ingested the some of the better bits and then hopefully largely forgetting Lovecraft. I much prefer Robert Howard and Clark Ashton Smith anyway.

Sidenote: Some of the biggest fans seem to not really get it. Cthulhu isn't scary because he is big and powerful. He's scary because his existence was impossible in the worldviews of the time; he wasn't part of the Christian paradigm or any other well ordered models of the world.

While reading Lovecraft, I think it helps to remember the zeitgeist of post WWI that led to aspects of the roaring 20s. We had beaten war. Elements of society had unbridled optimism. Everything was growing and good. Lovecraft was the dissonant note in the background warning against such hubris and suggesting that we might not know as much as we think.

There are certain Lovecraft works that I really like. His very short story "The Street" is completely chilling to me, but it will be overlooked because it doesnt have any of the monster-like stuff in it. I've read his complete works...most of them I could take or leave. I think everyone has hit the basic points that I would make.

I did have a theory that one of his parents was an old-timey gynecologist, and that he as a young child discovered some anatomical drawings, got really confused, and started Cthulu-ing.

DMDarcs wrote: ↑Thu Dec 19, 2024 7:54 pm I did have a theory that one of his parents was an old-timey gynecologist, and that he as a young child discovered some anatomical drawings, got really confused, and started Cthulu-ing.

Love it!

DMDarcs wrote: ↑Thu Dec 19, 2024 7:54 pm I did have a theory that one of his parents was an old-timey gynecologist, and that he as a young child discovered some anatomical drawings, got really confused, and started Cthulu-ing.

I literally laughed out loud.