The Lurking Fear: Lovecraft and Today
“Woke up afraid of my own shadow… like, genuinely afraid.”- The Mountain Goats, “Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” Heretic Pride, 2008
“Cosmic horror” is kind of hitting close to home lately, for me at least. The feeling that we are cast adrift in a world we don’t understand, one indifferent, even hostile to, our lives and concerns, with only an uncertain future to take for granted, is one that seems omnipresent now. A virus, still inexplicable in its spread, a human response seeming to both be insufficient to the threat and horrifying in its own right, this is what we are dealing with in the here and now. I am by nature an optimistic person, but sometimes I find myself preoccupied with worry. So why do I also find myself preoccupied with stories that confront even worse things? Why do I find cosmic horror so relatable?
I have been feeling this sense of dread, the feeling that a pall of doom has been rising over the world, for some years now, before the rise of covid-19. Watching the creeping return of dark energies long thought dead, as we saw on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia a couple years ago, the continuing threat of climate change, and the spiraling intrusiveness of technology, threats which we as individuals can feel powerless to change, we fear what further changes lie ahead. But we in 2020 are not unique for feeling this. In 1920, for instance, the world was recovering from a flu pandemic of even more dire proportions, the rift between the wealthiest and poorest citizens rivaled today’s, and race relations were at their worst since Reconstruction. As arguably the first truly modern period of history, many of the tensions and fears are similar to what we experience, though let’s hope that the next two decades will be easier on us. Like us, writers and artists of the time responded to these cultural tensions, from the literary experiments of the Lost Generation to the tawdry pop horrors of the pulps.
This, of course, segues to H.P. Lovecraft, the American author who, for better or for worse, has become synonymous with cosmic horror and weird fiction in the decades since his death. Described by famed graphic novelist Alan Moore as an “almost unbearably sensitive barometer of American dread” in the introduction to Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft,** Lovecraft’s work seems to be having a moment, as well. In recent months there’s been a bit of an explosion of cinematic adaptations of his work while it has also become a pop culture standard for years. For whatever reason, the literary universe of Lovecraft, minor writer of weird fiction in cheap pulp magazines during his own period of cultural change and instability at the turn of the last century, seems oddly tuned to these fearful times.
Sitting in the nexus of the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, his influence has seeped into all three, shaping the darker elements of the modern “nerd culture” zeitgeist dominant in contemporary popular culture. That he himself was a deeply racist, xenophobic “rational atheist” with fascistic leanings and a penchant for nostalgia also seems relevant to our current situation. In any case, there are many who find Lovecraft’s life and work fascinating, and he has come to be a kind of mascot to the very geek culture which dominates Silicon Valley and, by extension, much of our media landscape. At the same time, even among those who find themselves influenced by his idiosyncratic visions, myself included, there has also been a long awaited moment to critique what this influence means. Whether changing the face of the World Fantasy Award from Lovecraft’s bony mug to one more welcoming to the diversity of viewpoints represented by the genre, or taking his work to explore new interpretations, there are definitely some interesting things happening now. I find myself wondering what this wave of “Lovecraftiana,” with all its weirdness and dark, reactionary underbelly says about the current state of popular culture.
In a few upcoming entries in Harris’ Tome Corner, I’ll be discussing some of the works that I’ve read recently, including my reactions and recommendations of the current crop of works reflecting on Lovecraft’s influence. This also begs the question of how those of us who oppose everything he stood for can still enjoy, or even find inspiration from his work. As more and more darkness from cultural elites, artists, writers, and other creatives are exposed, this is coming to be an increasingly common concern.
I’ll start off by discussing a few works of literary criticism that delve into the role of Lovecraft, analyzing and interpreting the ways Lovecraft and his work have influenced our contemporary cultural landscape. Lovecraft’s influence has leached into the most unlikely places, and this has attracted more literary interest in his opus, especially as the depths of his racism and reactionary political beliefs come into light as well.
Age of Lovecraft is a fascinating, and frustrating, collection of essays that tackle the philosophical and artistic ideologies of H.P. Lovecraft with considerable, even overwhelming, depth. A publication of the University of Minnesota, the anthology’s editors and contributors strive to answer the question of “why Lovecraft, why now?,” and discuss why the nearly forgotten, archaic pulp horror stories of an early twentieth century New Englander has captured the imaginations of not only popular culture but of several nascent schools of philosophy as well. I feel that there is a lot here that will reward a thoughtful reader with some deeply nuanced interpretations with a lot to reflect on.
The articles included in Age of Lovecraft are distinctly academic, definitely not just casual analysis of his stories, and on occasion I felt a little out of depth, but fascinated. I particularly enjoyed the discussions of how Lovecraft’s purple prose actually served his purpose, but some of the discussion of the rather bleak schools of philosophy that have latched onto Lovecraft’s ideas of cosmic horror were a little tedious at times. Mostly, I was looking for more analysis of Lovecraft’s deep, pathological racism and how in spite of (or because of?) this is reflected in the current popularity of his creations, and while the contributors don’t shy away from these disturbing implications, few discuss it in depth.
The author of one of my favorite pieces in Age of Lovecraft, W. Scott Poole, wrote his own biographical examination of Lovecraft and his place in contemporary culture with In the Mountains of Madness: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of H.P. Lovecraft. An engaging introductory work, much more accessible than Age of Lovecraft for people less well versed in Lovecraft’s work, Poole provides a solid account of the author himself as well as his work in general, providing a lot of valuable context. Refreshingly, he does not hesitate to excoriate Lovecraft for his racist views, extreme even for his time, but also devotes some informative discussion of the role of women in his life, particularly his mother Sarah Susan Lovecraft and his wife Sonia Greene, both of whom have been given short shrift in other biographies.
The discussion of the cadre of authors who spent the rest of the century after Lovecraft’s death trying, and succeeding, in preserving and popularizing his works was also interesting, particularly how the point and focus of his work was shifted by their attitudes. In the later chapters, though, Poole’s focus on Lovecraft’s growing influence on popular culture is a little shallow and amounts, mostly, to lists of various media inspired by or featuring Lovecraftian themes or influence, from H.P. Lovecraft the psychedelic folk rock band to the humorous Spanish comic series Young Lovecraft. This seemed a little superfluous to me.
Still, In the Mountains of Madness is a nice and informative place to begin delving into Lovecraft’s oeuvre, illustrating how Lovecraft, with his wide correspondence and racism, presaged so much of our contemporary digital world. So many nerdy white male types still truly sympathize with Lovecraft, sharing the same fears and prejudices of a man who, while in so many ways ahead of his time, was still mired in the same old rage and xenophobia. It is curious how Lovecraftian tropes turn up in some weird places in the contemporary world, which is what the next work I’ll discuss tackles.
In The Cult of Alien Gods: H.P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture, skeptic Jason Colavito examines the influence of Lovecraft’s fiction on the evolution of the “ancient astronauts” idea that has led to such a glut of fringe and conspiracy thinking over the years, especially through TV and the internet. An intriguing premise, Colavito is an expert at tracking down and challenging the origins of these worrisome and growing misconceptions, detailing a lot of information on the growing wave of pseudoscience in popular accounts of historical and anthropological topics. With these blurring boundaries between fact and fiction, Colavito tracks the parallels between the fictional universes of Lovecraft and the secret histories hinted at by people like Von Daniken of Chariots of the Gods fame.
While very informative about the state of the ancient aliens meme at the beginning of the twenty first century, I don’t think Colavito was completely persuasive in his argument in demonstrating a direct linkage of Lovecraft’s fiction with the development of these ideas. It seems evident that Lovecraft and later ancient alien theorists were drawing from the same nineteenth century Theosophist and Antediluvian literature and both took them to similar conclusions, one as “verisimilitude” for weird tales and one as secret hidden knowledge. It is true that these two threads often bleed into each other, and I don’t think it is a coincidence that those same ideas are also influential in much mystical far right thought as well, an aspect that Colavito doesn’t really touch on here. Written fifteen years ago, I wonder what the last decade would add to Colavito’s conclusions.
While nonfiction works provide strong research and analysis of Lovecraft’s infiltration of popular culture, I feel that fiction definitely has a place, too. Imagination provides its own barometers to the dread of contemporary life as authors wrestle with how to best reckon with the influence of H.P. Lovecraft in their own writing. Among the most interesting was Nick Mamatas’ novel I Am Providence, named after the epitaph of Lovecraft’s gravestone in Providence’s Swan Point Cemetery.
A breezy novel, I Am Providence was by far the most humorous and biting satire on things Lovecraftian that I have read yet. Other parodies and attempts to milk humor from the Cthulhu mythos focus on the ludicrous gods and aliens that populate Lovecraft’s work, but Mamatas takes it right to the Lovecraft aficionados themselves. It’s obvious that he knows this world, one nearly as terrifying and inexplicable to outsiders as, say, Innsmouth or the Plateau of Leng. More than merely name dropping some Cthulhu Mythos elements, Mamatas focuses in, with razor precision, on the insular, problematic world of Lovecraft fandom and scholarship.
Focusing on the murder of his own self insert at a Lovecraft convention in Providence, Mamatas writes a witty detective story as sci-fi author Colleen Danzig hopes to solve the murder while dealing some of the most obnoxious suspects in fandom, while at the same time confronting some of the revolting truths of “Lovecraftiana” itself. I found myself laughing pretty much the whole time, even as I recognized thinly disguised versions of some of the prominent personalities in Lovecraft studies. I can imagine that I Am Providence did not go over well in some circles, but perhaps one needs to confront one’s own issues before evolving.
In the anthology Children of Lovecraft, a variety of prominent sci-fi and fantasy authors write original short stories reflecting on Lovecraft’s influence in their own genres, to mixed results.
In her introduction the collection, editor Ellen Datlow writes that these stories are inspired by the themes and philosophies of Lovecraft’s fiction, though not his style or mythology, offering tales with a cosmic scope in the weird horror tradition, rather than pastiches of the Cthulhu Mythos that has become his most well known addition to pulp culture. The jaunty and slightly cheeky cover by comic artist Mike Mignola matches the mood of this collection of contemporary takes on Lovecraft’s vision of horror literature.
For the most part, the stories are engrossing and take on their influences in unique and contemporary ways. However, Datlow’s description is only somewhat accurate and, like other anthologies of Lovecraftian fiction, a good number of these stories are explicit pastiches of Lovecraft stories and drop in references to his mythology while others seem to have just an ephemeral connection to the theme at best. It is interesting how the stories included compare and contrast to another similar anthology from more than a decade before, Children of Cthulhu, which is explicitly a contemporary “Cthulhu Mythos” collection.
It is also interesting to compare these stories with those in A Commonplace Book of the Weird: The Untold Stories of H.P. Lovecraft, another anthology of short stories, this time taking inspiration from Lovecraft’s “commonplace book,” a diary of sorts in which Lovecraft sketched out various story ideas, snippets of source material, and random thoughts. An early communal writing project by Welcome to Night Vale creators Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, this was a much more diverse collection of stories than Children of Lovecraft, I felt.
The contributors to the collection were each assigned a “writing prompt,” gleaned from Lovecraft’s unfinished ideas and based their stories from there. The collection concludes by reproducing the Commonplace book in its entirety so that you might attempt the experiment yourself. For the most part, I feel they approached the material in ways that I don’t think would have occured to many more traditional horror writers, including memoir pieces, poetry, and even surreal experimental text art. At the same time, not each piece completely works. I enjoyed seeing Lovecraft’s idiosyncratic ideas being harvested to such disparate interpretations. Based on Joseph Fink’s later thoughts on Lovecraft, it was interesting that he would choose this source to challenge his writers, and that they went to such unique places with it. Fink and Cranor’s work on Welcome to Night Vale** channels much of the cosmic horror tropes Lovecraft brought into the popular culture, while subtly challenging it as well in a way that makes it the most influential weird fiction today in its own right.
Next, I’ll be exploring some of the exciting new works, like Welcome to Night Vale, that subvert and comment on Lovecraft’s fantastic worlds and their more disturbing connotations, when the author is just as monstrous as his creations. These authors tackle how one can take inspiration from and adapt them to one’s own purposes, turning Lovecraft’s reactionary social concepts on their heads and crafting some inspiring and innovative reactions.
*This entry recycles some material from an abandoned earlier 2017 iteration of this series
** I wrote more about this in a 2016 post in an earlier book blog, Does Existence Make Sense Even?