Re-reading HP Lovecraft - oh, dear!

[Extollager]

Randy M. commented, "While your point looks valid, is it a point made from rereading as opposed to initial reads? I'm not so sure that on an initial reading one finds HPL's stories 'comfortable'."

Good point -- I was writing that article on the "comfortable" world of HPL as a veteran of many rereadings.

It's more than half a century since I first explored HPL's writings. In memory -- which may be false -- I didn't find his stories creepy, as a rule. I read them, rather, as kind of a boys' adventure stories, I think. They're typically first-person narratives of people who did survive their encounter with something bizarre. True, these narrators aren't Allan Quatermains who shoot their way out of difficulties, but then in many of Allan's adventures neither does he shoot his way out, I suppose, he escapes -- like a Lovecraft protagonist. For example, in the romance named after him, as I recall he gets away on a raft that goes through a cave system -- really something Lovecraft might have relished. This could be one of the reasons that, so far as I'm concerned, it's settled -- Lovecraft's place is with storytellers like Haggard or Doyle or Buchan or even, at a farther remove, P. G. Wodehouse! -- rereadable entertainers, dependable providers of escape.

The exception I've thought of, as regards Lovecraft actually being scary, is an impression of a first reading of "The Rats in the Walls," in 1969 or 1970. But "weird" stories don't usually get much under my skin. Elsewhere I listed Burrage's "One Who Saw" as a ghost story that did kind of creep me out. Machen's "White People" could be mentioned too.

 

[Extollager]

I think one of the most important things Lovecraft did was not only using a shared universe for his stories, but sharing that universe with other authors. Some authors might get touchy about their "intellectual property" but Lovecraft was happy to see other writers use his creatures.

This helped to show that the "Cthulhu mythos" was not really a serious literary enterprise -- as we know anyway from HPL's references to "Yog-Sothothery" etc. in his letters.

 

[The Big Peat]

I'm responding to Big Peat's good defense of Lovecraft from another thread, where I had quoted Chinua Achebe's criticism of Joseph Conrad and said it applied to Lovecraft. I should say I am very much a fan of Lovecraft and I do think he gets it right from time to time. But there are times where he saturates his narrative with words like "blasphemous," "hideous," "monstrous," "nameless", etc to the point that they are not only unnecessary but don't actually convey any information or evoke any particular feeling. In Lovecraft's style of horror, and that of his models like Machen and Blackwood, suggestion is supposed to be paramount- the reader's dread-filled imagination is supposed to fill in the blanks to a large extent, based on the hints and glimpses provided in the story. If this is done right there is no need to shout "blasphemous!" in the reader's face. I'll go further and argue that if a thing can be apprehended by the five senses, it can be described; if the description would somehow weaken the effect, then don't show it directly to the viewer and then call it indescribable. Have someone else see it, and describe their reaction, a la Danforth's freak-out at the end of At the Mountains of Madness.

The point isn't that he always got it right, the point is to judge his attempts by his likely objectives rather that what others think his objectives should have been.

 

[BAYLOR]

Randy M. commented, "While your point looks valid, is it a point made from rereading as opposed to initial reads? I'm not so sure that on an initial reading one finds HPL's stories 'comfortable'."

Good point -- I was writing that article on the "comfortable" world of HPL as a veteran of many rereadings.

It's more than half a century since I first explored HPL's writings. In memory -- which may be false -- I didn't find his stories creepy, as a rule. I read them, rather, as kind of a boys' adventure stories, I think. They're typically first-person narratives of people who did survive their encounter with something bizarre. True, these narrators aren't Allan Quatermains who shoot their way out of difficulties, but then in many of Allan's adventures neither does he shoot his way out, I suppose, he escapes -- like a Lovecraft protagonist. For example, in the romance named after him, as I recall he gets away on a raft that goes through a cave system -- really something Lovecraft might have relished. This could be one of the reasons that, so far as I'm concerned, it's settled -- Lovecraft's place is with storytellers like Haggard or Doyle or Buchan or even, at a farther remove, P. G. Wodehouse! -- rereadable entertainers, dependable providers of escape.

The exception I've thought of, as regards Lovecraft actually being scary, is an impression of a first reading of "The Rats in the Walls," in 1969 or 1970. But "weird" stories don't usually get much under my skin. Elsewhere I listed Burrage's "One Who Saw" as a ghost story that did kind of creep me out. Machen's "White People" could be mentioned too.

The first story I ever read by him was The Tomb in an anthology of his stories . I found it to be a very unimpressive story and at that point I very nearly gave up on him . Then on a whim , I read The Festival That story and the lovely quote from Necronomicon at the end , hooked me and kept me reading him.

 

[Le Panda du Mal]

This helped to show that the "Cthulhu mythos" was not really a serious literary enterprise -- as we know anyway from HPL's references to "Yog-Sothothery" etc. in his letters.

Well, I don't know what a serious literary enterprise is, but I'll take Yog Sothothery! I think collective mythology and a spirit of play are more vital and more satisfying than mere literature.

 

[BAYLOR]

And in 100 years , people will still be reading him .

 

[Extollager]

Well, I don't know what a serious literary enterprise is, but I'll take Yog Sothothery! I think collective mythology and a spirit of play are more vital and more satisfying than mere literature.

I mean that Lovecraft himself evidently didn't take "Yog-Sothothery" seriously, as an expression of sincere artistic aspiration.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I suspect it is mostly his fans who have tried to synthesize the philosophy (in my view a failure) he did take seriously and which he expounded in his letters, and the notion of the "Cthulhu Mythos," and by doing so make a claim for literary significance.

If he understood the "Mythos" seriously, he likely wouldn't have wanted others to extend it, for example Derleth, whose beliefs, if I'm not mistaken were different from his own. What about Henry Whitehead, a pastor? Didn't he write something that was borderline "Mythos"?

Tolstoy didn't invite his friends to write new stories with characters and locations from Anna Karenina, etc.

As a writer of fiction, I think Lovecraft likely did see himself as basically an entertainer, as (say) Conrad, did not.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

I'm not saying I'll never read HPL again. But this essay

https://efanzines.com/Fadeaway/Fadeway-53.pdf

was certainly a partial summing-up for me after about a half century of reading him. I felt that I had, at last, succeeded in putting into words much of the appeal for me of reading HPL. Does this discussion resonate with other readers? That a key reason we like Lovecraft is that -- bizarre as it might seem at first -- his world is comfortable, like The Wind in the Willows? Or is it just me?

You can apply it to almost all horror. True horror is Barefoot Gen, Grave of the Fireflies, Come & See, Schindler's list. Horror of the supernatural or cosmic kind is a fairground ride, safe in the knowledge that it's not real.

Simply put, he lays it on far, far too thick.

Putting aside writing for word counts (which IIRC Lovecraft was fairly open about) there is a charm to the excess. About 11 years ago I adapted a Lovecraft short for audiobook and, like you, was struck by how over the top his use of language is. During the recording process, I went through a journey of scoffing at how bad it was to very much appreciating it.

When it's read by a good voice actor his prose does come alive and you can appreciate the rhythm of his sentences, and the mood they create. There is a fitting hysteria to the excess, too - it conjures up the mind at the brink of sanity after exposure to cosmic horrors.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Great White Space by Basil Copper
The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell
The Manitou by Graham Masterton
The 37th Mandala by Mark Laidlaw
The Trail of Cthulhu by August Derleth
The Burrowers Beneath by Brain Lumley
Wetbones by John Shirley
The Shadow At the Botton of the World by Thomas Liggotti
Mysteries of the Worm by Robert Bloch. it should noted that Bloch did also lovecratian book Strange Eons( of which ive never read nor seen an actual copy of)
Renaimators by Pete Rawlik attempt to link the various stories with thin the Lovecraft Mythos
The Weird Company by Pete Rawlik is direct sequel to At The mount of Madness and it too bringtogher certain character from the direct stories

And many other writer have written books and stories with a Lovecraftain element.. His influence cannot be understood or underestimated.
There are even book where you you have Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson facing off agains the minions of Cthulhu The Cthulhu Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes
1.Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows by James Lovegrove
2.Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatomci Mnstrosities by James Lovegrove
3. Sherlock Homes and the Sussex Seadevils by James Lovegrove

The Right Hand Story of the Mythos War by Levi Black in this story, Nyarlathotep enlist though blackmail a young woman with a special power in war that he fighting against the Cthulhu and company . This the first book in a series .






August Dereth also took a fragment of an unfinished Lovecraft piece and created the novel The Lurker At The Threshold. which in its own right is a very good book .

 

[Mon0Zer0]

Second, he might have been the first person to really go to town on the "cosmic horror" element. In contrast to Hodgson's story, there is no God or Heaven in Lovecraft's work.

Lovecraft deals with man's insignificance within the cosmos, the vastness of space and the pandora's box of seeking disastrous knowledge.

It's no accident, I don't think, that he was writing at the same time Bohr, Einstein and Planck were overturning our notions of physical reality. Lovecraft may be the one of the first truly modernist / existentialist writers dealing with the implications of their discoveries.

 

[BAYLOR]

Lovecraft deals with man's insignificance within the cosmos, the vastness of space and the pandora's box of seeking disastrous knowledge.

It's no accident, I don't think, that he was writing at the same time Bohr, Einstein and Planck were overturning our notions of physical reality. Lovecraft may be the one of the first truly modernist / existentialist writers dealing with the implications of their discoveries.

Lovecraft was well read , I wonder if he got part of his pessimistic universal outlook from reading Arthur Schopenhauer? This is just a bit of speculation on my part.

 

[Le Panda du Mal]

He’s kind of like Omar Khayyam but without the solace of drinking and sex

 

[Randy M.]

I mean that Lovecraft himself evidently didn't take "Yog-Sothothery" seriously, as an expression of sincere artistic aspiration.

An artist can take his work seriously while working on it but not credit the result. My impression is that HPL was at times severely self-critical. At the same time, he was surprisingly convivial -- in letters. He looked on Weird Tales as a (perhaps failed) playground for a certain kind of fiction he wanted more of and by encouraging his correspondents to write with his materials was prodding them toward his goal of fiction attempting to capture and describe cosmic awe. He was trying to create a team effort.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I suspect it is mostly his fans who have tried to synthesize the philosophy (in my view a failure) he did take seriously and which he expounded in his letters, and the notion of the "Cthulhu Mythos," and by doing so make a claim for literary significance.

This seems closer to the mark. His fans may see in his work a greater significance than he did and maybe than is there, but at the same time he synthesized something that no one else had which makes for at least a limited literary significance as shown in his work being more widely read over 80 years after his death than while he was alive, and in the number of later writers who have tapped into his work. You mention Derleth and Whitehead, but it has been later writers who have expanded from the days when "Ia! Ia!" was the sign of a Lovecraft story. Note Thomas Ligotti and Caitlin R. Kiernan, among others have taken what they learned and expanded on it.

If he understood the "Mythos" seriously, he likely wouldn't have wanted others to extend it, for example Derleth, whose beliefs, if I'm not mistaken were different from his own. What about Henry Whitehead, a pastor? Didn't he write something that was borderline "Mythos"?

Tolstoy didn't invite his friends to write new stories with characters and locations from Anna Karenina, etc.

As a writer of fiction, I think Lovecraft likely did see himself as basically an entertainer, as (say) Conrad, did not.

So, Lovecraft saw himself in much the same mode as Doyle saw himself when writing Holmes stories? I don't think I'd disagree with that, though it may be reductive of his (possibly ambivalent) opinion of his own work. But notice which of Doyle's work has maintained a hold on the broad reading public and still seems to resonate with them. You could say the same about M. R. James. He enjoyed writing his ghost stories, which were originally meant as entertainment for his students. And a lot of the rest of us find them entertaining, too, and some readers then try to capture some of what he did in their own writing.

My sense is that critical evaluation sometimes skips over the substrata of literature from which the critic's favored work grows. Much of the loam that nourishes the critical darlings is supplied by non-canonical writers who did not write the classics and are seen as non-literary. Hemingway's mother read him Dunsany; Hemingway read Simenon and Marie Belloc Lowndes. Faulkner was a reader of mystery stories. Michael Chabon has acknowledged Fritz Leiber. Gabriel Garcia Marquez mentioned Ray Bradbury. I think it reasonable to see Lovecraft in this role, which is another form of literary significance, and one that seems likely to continue for some time, though it may be the Rodney Dangerfield of literary significance, "I don't get no respect!"

 

[BAYLOR]

He’s kind of like Omar Khayyam but without the solace of drinking and sex

He would have liked Borges, I think.

 

[BAYLOR]

You can apply it to almost all horror. True horror is Barefoot Gen, Grave of the Fireflies, Come & See, Schindler's list. Horror of the supernatural or cosmic kind is a fairground ride, safe in the knowledge that it's not real.



Putting aside writing for word counts (which IIRC Lovecraft was fairly open about) there is a charm to the excess. About 11 years ago I adapted a Lovecraft short for audiobook and, like you, was struck by how over the top his use of language is. During the recording process, I went through a journey of scoffing at how bad it was to very much appreciating it.

When it's read by a good voice actor his prose does come alive and you can appreciate the rhythm of his sentences, and the mood they create. There is a fitting hysteria to the excess, too - it conjures up the mind at the brink of sanity after exposure to cosmic horrors.

At The Mountains of Madness . Ive alway been stuck at what a remarkable job Lovecraft did of conveying the utter alienness of the South Polar city and it's geometry, odd architecture and of Elder race that built it and, the growing unease of the expeditions they start making ever more bizarre discoveries whose implications that and the world find horrifying . When you read this story , you're first thought is ," This is a place I don't be dead or alive "

I would love to see this as a movie.

 

[BAYLOR]

Nevermind.

 

[Extollager]

Lovecraft deals with man's insignificance within the cosmos, the vastness of space and the pandora's box of seeking disastrous knowledge.

It's no accident, I don't think, that he was writing at the same time Bohr, Einstein and Planck were overturning our notions of physical reality. Lovecraft may be the one of the first truly modernist / existentialist writers dealing with the implications of their discoveries.

Meaning no offense, but I think that notion (of man being insignificant because the universe is vast) is a hoot. I critiqued this at length on one of the "Failure of Lovecraft's Philosophical Project" threads, but basically it's a fallacy because it confuses quality and quantity. The universe is very, very big (quantity), therefore man is insignificant; this only works if what makes man "significant" is his physical dimensions. But of course nobody thinks that if he or she stops and thinks for a moment. If that were the case, then a tall human being would be more significant, in a teensy degree, than a human being who was short. Rather, it is various qualities that make man significant. And the size of the universe has nothing to say about that one way or the other, except that it's rather impressive that we figured out as much about that as we have down through many centuries.

That is, that notion's also a fallacy because it assumes that the discovery of the smallness of the earth is a modern discovery. Of course, in a sense anyone will concede, that's true (the accumulating numbers of distant galaxies that are not, after all, clouds within our galaxy), but it was already known as far back as Ptolemy (whose book was the basic work for medieval people) that the earth is a mere "point" as compared to the bigness of the cosmos. As far as the emotional and the spiritual differences between the vast universe and the tiny earth are concerned, there's perhaps not an enormous difference between the modern understanding and the classical Greek understanding. Give 'em some credit! But it serves the purposes of some popular writers to imagine the "shattering" effect of modern discoveries. I'm not so sure about that really having happened (when? where? who says?) and would be interested in documentation. Otherwise it sometimes sounds like people believing their own propaganda, like people who say that medieval theologians debated how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or who think Columbus discovered the world was round.

Einstein & co certainly did advance knowledge, but what one makes, for one's philosophy, of their discoveries is probably a matter of interpretation. And what about the thought of more recent scientists?

Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?

Eminent physicist John Wheeler says he has only enough time left to work on one idea: that human consciousness shapes not only the present but the past as well.

www.discovermagazine.com

The Biocentric Universe Theory: Life Creates Time, Space, and the Cosmos Itself

Stem-cell guru Robert Lanza presents a radical new view of the universe and everything in it.

www.discovermagazine.com

There were more things in heaven and earth than you dreamt of in your philosophy, HPL!

But we have a set of threads on the Failure of Lovecraft's Philosophical Project if anyone wants to look it up and reactivate it. The present thread was about rereading Lovecraft, i.e. a more personal account of one's experiences of a noted imaginative author. The thinking that went into the "Failure" postings and then, more recently, the "Comfortable World" article, was (much of) my personal summing-up.

 

[Extollager]

Randy asked, "So, Lovecraft saw himself in much the same mode as Doyle saw himself when writing Holmes stories?"

Er, what I meant is that that's how I see Lovecraft, as a writer on a par with Doyle and Haggard. How HPL evaluated his work seems to have varied from time to time.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

Meaning no offense, but I think that notion (of man being insignificant because the universe is vast) is a hoot. I critiqued this at length on one of the "Failure of Lovecraft's Philosophical Project" threads, but basically it's a fallacy because it confuses quality and quantity. The universe is very, very big (quantity), therefore man is insignificant; this only works if what makes man "significant" is his physical dimensions.

As I see it, the argument of significance is not predicated on physical size but can be summarised by Freud's devastating insults:

"Sigmund Freud once said that there were three devastating insults that have happened to humanity. The first was when Copernicus realized that the Earth revolved around the sun, and we were forced to confront the truth that humanity was not the center of the universe. The second insult was when Darwin presented his theory of evolution, forcing us to admit that we were not even the center of creation, but simply a part of it. The final insult was a psychological blow, delivered (not so humbly) by Freud himself, that, even in our own persons, we are fundamentally not in control of ourselves, that our awareness and control is but a teardrop in the ocean of unconscious activity."

Professor Hans-Georg Moeller adds a fourth, that even our unconscious activity is the result of physical processes and systems happening outside the bounds of our bodies (i.e. No Free Will).

Lovecraft confronts us with alien entities that are so unconcerned with our existence that we simply don't matter in the grand scheme of things, and realities which our own faculties cannot make sense of - non-euclidean space, impossible geometries etc. etc. The idea that our senses might be fallible and that things might exist that we can't picture is somewhat born out by the existence of dark matter, infra-red, ultra-violet - even the idea that colours see are not any reflection of how things are, but a mental construct that represents light within certain wavelengths - colour doesn't exist - it's purely representational. These are still pressing issues within the philosophy of science (see Lee Smolin for example on realism and many worlds).

Einstein & co certainly did advance knowledge, but what one makes, for one's philosophy, of their discoveries is probably a matter of interpretation. And what about the thought of more recent scientists?

Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?

Eminent physicist John Wheeler says he has only enough time left to work on one idea: that human consciousness shapes not only the present but the past as well.

www.discovermagazine.com

The Biocentric Universe Theory: Life Creates Time, Space, and the Cosmos Itself

Stem-cell guru Robert Lanza presents a radical new view of the universe and everything in it.

www.discovermagazine.com

As I understand it, the issue with these articles is they seem to be predicated on the Quantum Woo misinterpretation of the observer effect.

"[The Copenhagen] interpretation basically says that the wave function is not a real thing. It only describes mathematical probabilities. The only thing that matters is measurement – that is when the position, energy, or other property of the particle can be known.

So when the measurement takes place, that’s when we say that its wave function has collapsed, because only at that point can we ascertain where where electron is or what its properties are.

So for example, if the wave function for a particular system looks like this. The probability of finding the electron at this location and this location would be highest, and here and here would be lowest.

But you won’t really know where it is until you measure it, and you are unlikely to find the electron in the same spot if you repeat the test.
And this so-called collapse of the wave function is where the main confusion occurs when it comes to quantum mechanics. There is no equation that outlines exactly how this collapse occurs after measurement. This has been called the measurement problem of quantum mechanics.

I’ve been careful to use the word measurement instead of “observation” – which many textbooks and physicists use interchangeably. The problem with the word observation is that it implies looking with your eyes, which requires an observer, and a consciousness.

But observation in quantum mechanics does not require eyes. It is simply a measurement. So what is a measurement? Doesn’t it require a measurer? No, a measurement is an interaction of two physical systems.

What does this mean? When an electron bounces off an atom, that’s a measurement. An observation in physics does not mean a conscious observer. Just about anything can be an observation. If an atom in superposition interacts bumps into another atom, that’s an observation, and the wave function will collapse.

When any two systems interact, that can collapse probability waves. There is no eyes, humans, or consciousness necessary."

Quantum Physics Simplified: The Woo Explained! Consciousness, Free will, and Observation – Arvin Ash Website

arvinash.com

 

[BAYLOR]

This thread make me wish I had a better grasp of Quantum physics