j d worthington
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 9, 2006
- Messages
- 13,889
Tinsel, I must admit that I'm not sure I can make sense out of that post. Some parts of it seem to parse just fine... others frankly make my head spin. So I'm going to try to take it bit by bit, giving my impression of what you're getting at (and my response), and see if I'm anywhere near the target. If not, please try to clarify, as it really does seem to me that you are trying to say something of interest here, and I'd like to respond properly...
A great deal of difference, really. He did not intentionally neglect his health to cause himself harm; he simply did not follow modern rules of health care (nor did most people at the time), and could seldom afford any sort of medical treatment, either. What you say above seems to imply that his lack of attention to such things was, in effect, another, slower, form of suicide rather than a difference in focus, which is quite another thing. One is connected to a loss of interest in life, the other to one's interest in life being different from the norm. HPL was most definitely of the latter sort, and his interest in exploring the world, making new acquaintances, traveling and antiquarian sightseeing, nature, etc., etc., etc., was (if anything) burgeoning as his health failed. In essence, he was at the top of his form and growing as a human being and artist when the cancer got him, and showed no desire to exit the scene anytime soon.
In a sense, it is a complicated tale. Simple on the surface, but with a tremendous lot going on beneath. It is also richly interpretable, and stock-full of numerous connections and trains of thought, from the anthropology of Frazer's The Golden Bough, to references to Sabine Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (specifically the chapter on Bishop Hatto and the passage on St. Patrick's Purgatory), to the Roman decadence (cf. the references to Atys and Cybele, etc.), to dreams of HPL's own, to Fiona McLeod's "The Sin-Eater" (to which I provide a link below):
Short Story Collection by Fiona Macleod
and many more. As for "reading it as if for the first time"... a difficult feat, but if one can manage it, in some ways very helpful. (I think of it more as a matter of "seeing it through new eyes"... keeping in mind what one has picked up before, but also being completely open to new levels and ideas from the same source; seeing it with a freshness of vision as it were.)
I'm not at all sure what you mean by this. What is it that you think he felt which would have been different had he succeeded?
But Lovecraft most definitely did need others -- the way he blossomed and grew through his contact with other people, the way his art matured and refined itself, the way he began to engage with the world and become the admirable human being so well remembered... all of that depended on his contact with others. E. Hoffmann Price noted that Lovecraft had what Price called "mental greed" -- that is, an intense "need to KNOW", in HPL's own words... to be constantly learning and refining one's ideas and impressions, to grow and mature as a human being sensitive to the experience of the universe. His was an insatiable curiosity, and the more contact he had with others of different types, the more he did grow, and the better his work became. Without such, it is very likely that HPL would have ended up in the same asylum where both his parents died, as until the point he began his correspondence with fellow amateurs, the environment he was in became increasingly mentally unhealthy and even crippling.
So it was a long way from his needing only "next story and the next", because it is quite unlikely any of these would have emerged were it not for the impact of others on him. He had, after all, given up fictional composition following his juvenile tale, "The Alchemist", in 1908. It was at the urging of friends like W. Paul Cook that he once more took up the fictional pen, with the result we know.
Speaking of Cook, this bit
reminds me of something he once said on the subject of those who became a bit too adoring of HPL:
In other words, that sort of position is benighted at best, positively harmful at worst. You really do need to get a broader perspective on literature if you are going to have a reasonable assessment of Lovecraft's worth as a writer. However much one admires and enjoys his work (and let's face it: he remains my favorite writer and the one to whom I am constantly returning again and again, so I am hardly likely to be overly negative), to focus so intently on that one writer to the virtual exclusion of others is not a way to gain any understanding of literary (or any other) values, leaving one frankly unable to honestly assess whether those works succeed or fail.
The first here seems an attempt at a paradox, but needs a good deal to support it to remain viable. The latter is an overstatement, to say the least: four volumes of stories (totaling somewhere in the neighborhood of 1600-1700 pages); five volumes of essays; numerous volumes of letters; a bulky volume of verse (varying from the sublime to the ridiculous and painfully inept)... but the bulk of this does fit the latter part of your sentence, as the more one investigates his work -- both fiction and non -- the richer it becomes. In that, at least, I am in agreement with you. I've been studying Lovecraft for nearly 40 years now, and feel I have only really begun to appreciate the scope of the man's abilities, talent, intelligence, and personality.
Now... does any of that seem to respond intelligibly to what you posted...?
A great deal of difference, really. He did not intentionally neglect his health to cause himself harm; he simply did not follow modern rules of health care (nor did most people at the time), and could seldom afford any sort of medical treatment, either. What you say above seems to imply that his lack of attention to such things was, in effect, another, slower, form of suicide rather than a difference in focus, which is quite another thing. One is connected to a loss of interest in life, the other to one's interest in life being different from the norm. HPL was most definitely of the latter sort, and his interest in exploring the world, making new acquaintances, traveling and antiquarian sightseeing, nature, etc., etc., etc., was (if anything) burgeoning as his health failed. In essence, he was at the top of his form and growing as a human being and artist when the cancer got him, and showed no desire to exit the scene anytime soon.
In a sense, it is a complicated tale. Simple on the surface, but with a tremendous lot going on beneath. It is also richly interpretable, and stock-full of numerous connections and trains of thought, from the anthropology of Frazer's The Golden Bough, to references to Sabine Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (specifically the chapter on Bishop Hatto and the passage on St. Patrick's Purgatory), to the Roman decadence (cf. the references to Atys and Cybele, etc.), to dreams of HPL's own, to Fiona McLeod's "The Sin-Eater" (to which I provide a link below):
Short Story Collection by Fiona Macleod
and many more. As for "reading it as if for the first time"... a difficult feat, but if one can manage it, in some ways very helpful. (I think of it more as a matter of "seeing it through new eyes"... keeping in mind what one has picked up before, but also being completely open to new levels and ideas from the same source; seeing it with a freshness of vision as it were.)
I'm not at all sure what you mean by this. What is it that you think he felt which would have been different had he succeeded?
But Lovecraft most definitely did need others -- the way he blossomed and grew through his contact with other people, the way his art matured and refined itself, the way he began to engage with the world and become the admirable human being so well remembered... all of that depended on his contact with others. E. Hoffmann Price noted that Lovecraft had what Price called "mental greed" -- that is, an intense "need to KNOW", in HPL's own words... to be constantly learning and refining one's ideas and impressions, to grow and mature as a human being sensitive to the experience of the universe. His was an insatiable curiosity, and the more contact he had with others of different types, the more he did grow, and the better his work became. Without such, it is very likely that HPL would have ended up in the same asylum where both his parents died, as until the point he began his correspondence with fellow amateurs, the environment he was in became increasingly mentally unhealthy and even crippling.
So it was a long way from his needing only "next story and the next", because it is quite unlikely any of these would have emerged were it not for the impact of others on him. He had, after all, given up fictional composition following his juvenile tale, "The Alchemist", in 1908. It was at the urging of friends like W. Paul Cook that he once more took up the fictional pen, with the result we know.
Speaking of Cook, this bit
reminds me of something he once said on the subject of those who became a bit too adoring of HPL:
-- "A Plea for Lovecraft", in The Wandering Life of a Yankee Printer, p. 164
In other words, that sort of position is benighted at best, positively harmful at worst. You really do need to get a broader perspective on literature if you are going to have a reasonable assessment of Lovecraft's worth as a writer. However much one admires and enjoys his work (and let's face it: he remains my favorite writer and the one to whom I am constantly returning again and again, so I am hardly likely to be overly negative), to focus so intently on that one writer to the virtual exclusion of others is not a way to gain any understanding of literary (or any other) values, leaving one frankly unable to honestly assess whether those works succeed or fail.
The first here seems an attempt at a paradox, but needs a good deal to support it to remain viable. The latter is an overstatement, to say the least: four volumes of stories (totaling somewhere in the neighborhood of 1600-1700 pages); five volumes of essays; numerous volumes of letters; a bulky volume of verse (varying from the sublime to the ridiculous and painfully inept)... but the bulk of this does fit the latter part of your sentence, as the more one investigates his work -- both fiction and non -- the richer it becomes. In that, at least, I am in agreement with you. I've been studying Lovecraft for nearly 40 years now, and feel I have only really begun to appreciate the scope of the man's abilities, talent, intelligence, and personality.
Now... does any of that seem to respond intelligibly to what you posted...?
