What Would H P Lovecraft Think Of Modern Horror Writers and Who Would he Like ?

[Peppa]

Oscar Wilde would have absolutely loved Tanith Lee's books and stories . he have loved Neil Gaiman books s stories and graphic novels and he have loved Clive Barker stuff as well . I also suspect he would have been fascinated by the films of Tim Burton.

He would write the scripts for these films!

 

[BAYLOR]

He would write the scripts for these films!

I can see that .

 

[beccabear67]

It sounds like Lovecraft had loosened up in some regards in his last years, about race relations in particular. I've always seen a great sense of humor, a gleefulness to the descriptions, in his work much like with Dunsany and Poe, but some seem not to see that.

 

[Toby Frost]

I get the impression that Lovecraft was less serious about his world than might be thought: the way he writes, he half-sounds as if he actually believes in Cthulhu, whereas he joked about it in his letters. It would be interesting to see where he went if he'd have lived longer. Politically, I think that WW2 would have shocked him greatly and probably pushed him in a less bigoted direction. In his writing, "The Shadow Out Of Time" suggests that he was moving more towards SF, although it's hard to say for certain. He did have a habit of writing the same story over and over with variations and different levels of success (more action in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", paranoia and aliens in "The Whisperer in Darkness" and so on), but I don't know whether he could have pulled off a novel with more 3D characters and dialogue like, say, Salem's Lot. It would have been interesting to see.

 

[BAYLOR]

I get the impression that Lovecraft was less serious about his world than might be thought: the way he writes, he half-sounds as if he actually believes in Cthulhu, whereas he joked about it in his letters. It would be interesting to see where he went if he'd have lived longer. Politically, I think that WW2 would have shocked him greatly and probably pushed him in a less bigoted direction. In his writing, "The Shadow Out Of Time" suggests that he was moving more towards SF, although it's hard to say for certain. He did have a habit of writing the same story over and over with variations and different levels of success (more action in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", paranoia and aliens in "The Whisperer in Darkness" and so on), but I don't know whether he could have pulled off a novel with more 3D characters and dialogue like, say, Salem's Lot. It would have been interesting to see.

if he had live though the 1940's and witnessed World War II and the horrors of it, his bigotry would likely gone away . But on the wring side , H P Lovecraft would had the same kind of problems that Clark Ashton Smith had namely, that could not produced the kinds real science based science fiction stories that editors like J W Campbell wanted. I think that had he lived longer , he probably would have stopped writing altogether.

If he could see how popular his works are now and much he influencewrtier who came after him and the development of cosmic horror in literature that he created , he's be very happy with that.

 

[paeng]

Her Letters To Lovecraft: Jennie K. Plaisier

Further versified contributions are those of Mrs. Jennie M. Kendall and Dr. O. M. Blood. Mrs. Kendall’s ballad is marked by attractive animation and commendable correctness, but Dr. Blood sho…

deepcuts.blog

I used to be a hide-bound Tory simply for traditional and antiquarian reasons—and because I had never done any real thinking on civics and industry and the future. The depression—and its concomitant publicisation of industrial, financial, and governmental problems—jolted me out of my lethargy and led me to reëxamine the facts of history in the light of unsentimental scientific analysis; and it was not long before I realised what an ass I had been. The liberals at whom I used to laugh were the ones who were right—for they were living in the present while I had been living in the past. They had been using science whilst I had been using romantic antiquarianism. At last I began to recognise something of the way in which capitalism works—always piling up concentrated wealth and impoverishing the bulk of the population until the strain becomes so intolerable as to force artificial reform. Sparta before Agis and Cleomenes. Rome before the Gracchi and Ceasar. Always the same story. And now accelerated a thousandfold through the unprecedented conditions of mechanised industry. Well—I was converted at last, and in the spring of 1931 took the left-wing side of social and political arguments for the first time in a long life. Nor has there been any retreat. Instead, I have gone even farther toward the left—although totally rejecting the special dogmatisms of pure Marxism, which are certainly founded on definite scientific and philosophical fallacies. I am all for continuous dvelopment and revolutions—and it seems to me that the nations with a naturally orderly and liberal tradition have a very fair chance of developing in the proper direction without any cataclysmic upheavals. Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries are far ahead of the United States, but even the latter is coming along despite its ingrained tradition of harsh acquistiveness. So today I am a New Dealer—perfectly conscious of the waste and bungling necessarily connected with experimentation, but convinced that open-minded experiment with all its faults is vastly better than efficient and economical progress toward the wrong goal.

https://codepen.io/lx2611/full/yJdgxq

[W]hat I used to respect was not really aristocracy, but a set of personal qualities which aristocracy then developed better than any other system . . . a set of qualities, however, whose merit lay only in a psychology of non-calculative, non-competitive disinterestedness, truthfulness, courage, and generosity fostered by good education, minimum economic stress, and assumed position, AND JUST AS ACHIEVABLE THROUGH SOCIALISM AS THROUGH ARISTOCRACY.

H.P. Lovecraft’s Radical Political Evolution

The politics of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) have always been considered a liability by those who appreciate his body of work. So, upon reading a few of his letters from the final seven years of his …

emersongreenblog.wordpress.com

And when bourgeois capitalism found it profitable to reach down to the still-submerged elements & cater to their crippled, repressed, & grotesquely unformed tastes … this huge market merely aggravated the trend away from real excellence towards showmanship & charlatanry. The suave bosses of a business ‘civilisation’ have no wish to improve the masses—rather the reverse.

Lovecraft-Letters/19370207-Catherine-L-Moore.md at master · punchmonster/Lovecraft-Letters

transcripts of Lovecraft's letters. Contribute to punchmonster/Lovecraft-Letters development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

As you may see, I disagree totally & violently with your belief in making concessions in writing. One concession leads to another—& he who takes the easiest way never comes back. They all say they mean to come back some day—but they never do. Belknap is gone. If Sultan Malik ever pulls out of charlatanry it will be purely the individual & non-representative triumph of a singularly keen objective intellect. Abe Merritt—who could have been a Machen or Blackwood or Dunsany or de la Mare or M. R. James (they never gave in & truckled to the Golden Calf! .... why should one if he can get food & decent clothing & warmth & shelter in any less ignominious way?) if he had but chosen—is so badly sunk that he's lost the critical faculty to realise it. And so on—& so on. The road does not lie through any magazines .... that is, the road for a fantastic writer. The "slicks" are just as tawdry & insincere as the "pulps"—with merely a different kind of tawdriness & insincerity—& the reputable magazines (Harper's, Scribner's, Story, &c.) virtually never handle fantasy. The road to print for the serious fantaisiste is through book-publication alone—save for those incidental magazine placements which lie along the way. And if one can't make the book grade in the end, he is better off with his work largely unpublished—able to look himself in the face & know that he has never cringed nor truckled nor sold his intellectual & aesthetic integrity.

H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West

The Lovecraft series continues with a long look at a title S. T. Joshi still considers one of his most important works on Lovecraft. For those who want something else of mine touching on some of th…

marzaat.com

Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemonical hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species — if separate species we be — for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.

and

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents.

 

[KGeo777]

He would not be surprised about the state of Hollywood because he predicted culture would end up rootless and chaotic.

He would be fond of cat memes and videos.

 

[Randy M.]

I'm a bit more skeptical. I think WW2 would have moved him away from extreme antisemitism -- the pictures coming back from the concentration camps would have shocked him deeply -- but I'm less sure he'd have abandoned his bigotry toward those with different skin colors.

I expect Baylor is right that he'd have stopped writing altogether. His focus was rather narrow, so that characterization and rounded stories for his characters didn't appeal to him since he viewed them as disposable means to the real meat of his work, cosmic dread. I do wonder what he would have thought of something like Clarke's Childhood's End, because it reflects a less terrified view of what the cosmos might be capable of.

 

[BAYLOR]

I'm a bit more skeptical. I think WW2 would have moved him away from extreme antisemitism -- the pictures coming back from the concentration camps would have shocked him deeply -- but I'm less sure he'd have abandoned his bigotry toward those with different skin colors.

I expect Baylor is right that he'd have stopped writing altogether. His focus was rather narrow, so that characterization and rounded stories for his characters didn't appeal to him since he viewed them as disposable means to the real meat of his work, cosmic dread. I do wonder what he would have thought of something like Clarke's Childhood's End, because it reflects a less terrified view of what the cosmos might be capable of.

He's have fascinated by story concept of Childhoods End.

I wonder what he would have made of a book like A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge ?

 

[Peppa]

I'm a bit more skeptical. I think WW2 would have moved him away from extreme antisemitism -- the pictures coming back from the concentration camps would have shocked him deeply -- but I'm less sure he'd have abandoned his bigotry toward those with different skin colors.

I've always thought that Nazism and racism are like brothers. If a person is able to reject one "brother", then the possibility of rejecting the other increases.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think that had he lived longer , he probably would have stopped writing altogether.

Quite possibly. That said, films like Alien and The Thing feel very Lovecraftian: had he lived longer, could he have produced something like that? I agree that the answer is probably "no": partly because he couldn't master character and partly because working as a professional author wouldn't have been to his tastes.

I actually think that, while the murder of WW2 would have shocked him, he would be really appalled by the lack of culture of the Nazis and fascists. A man like Lovecraft - unhealthy, antiquarian, prone to thinking and married to a Jew - would simply be a waste of space to a Nazi, and I suspect he would have been disgusted to find that he had no value to such a society and might well be killed outright by it.