Several articles I have written in the past have made it quite clear that I am a big fan of pulp fiction—not only is it often brilliantly written, not only is it virile and masculine in a way that “proper” literature almost never is, I feel that pulp represents a distinct American literary style. And within that style, the famous—or in some cases infamous—Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s mythos represents not only the exemplar of that style and the idioms of American culture on the whole, but also an authentically American mythos.
Lovecraft has certainly been discussed a lot in academic circles—almost always in the context of “WOW THIS GUY WAS LIKE SO RACIST OMG I CAN’T EVEN”. And admittedly, yes, he was rather racist—albeit much more towards some races than other races. Remember that I am a “person of color” and yet I can find it in myself to admire his prose-making abilities.
Perhaps because of this “point and sputter” reaction to Lovecraft, nobody seems to discuss just how much he exemplifies the United States of his time—or at the very least the stuffy, Puritan New Englander segment of the United States of the time.
As I have repeatedly discussed, contrary to the stereotype of “smiling naive douchebaggery” often associated with America, American culture is in fact profoundly cynical and often seemingly ashamed of itself—and HP Lovecraft exemplifies that intellectual trend better than basically anybody:
Obviously there’s the fact that his whole mythos is defined by a cosmology of blind fear and animalistic savagery:
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. (The Call of Cthulhu)
But also that he seems to reject the urban glitz and glamor of the Roaring Twenties, instead choosing to dedicate himself to half-remembered dreams and ambitions (this is more clearly expressed in several of his protagonists that are clear author avatars, rather than his real life correspondence; but then again what else would you call a life dedicated to writing for the pulp magazines?).
And truly, what would be more quintessentially American then a lone weirdo dedicating himself to some half-baked dream that could go horrendously wrong due to the uncaring and brutal nature of the universe?
And sadly, yes, Lovecraft’s racial fears are distinctly linked to the 1920s—even racists today probably aren’t worried about resurgent Chinese empires ruling the Earth in the year 4000:
I talked with the mind of Yiang-Li, a philosopher from the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan, which is to come in 5,000 A.D.
In marked contrast, Lovecraft seems to have a fair amount of respect for the cultures of the Levant—recall who it was that wrote the Necronomicon, after all (this was also characteristic of American culture back then, as this article details).
Beyond all those, some of Lovecraft’s less horrific works seem to have a sense of Longfellow-esque nostalgia for an America that had already gone by in his time, as well as a great admiration for historical figures of his nation:
There is in certain ancient things a trace
Of some dim essence – more than form or weight;
A tenuous aether, indeterminate,
Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.
A faint, veiled sign of continuities
That outward eyes can never quite descry;
Of locked dimensions harbouring years gone by,
And out of reach except for hidden keys.
It moves me most when slanting sunbeams glow
On old farm buildings set against a hill,
And paint with life the shapes which linger still
From centuries less a dream than this we know.
In that strange light I feel I am not far
From the fixt mass whose sides the ages are. (Continuity)
Many of his stories also referenced New England intellects of the past, his clear knowledge of them showing respect while simultaneously showing the contempt of history that is so typical of American intelligentsia:
Don’t you know there was a mill on Copp’s Hill in 1632, and that half the present streets were laid out by 1650? I can show you houses that have stood two centuries and a half and more; houses that have witnessed what would make a modern house crumble into powder. What do moderns know of life and the forces behind it? You call the Salem witchcraft a delusion, but I’ll wager my four-times-great-grandmother could have told you things. They hanged her on Gallows Hill, with Cotton Mather looking sanctimoniously on. Mather, damn him, was afraid somebody might succeed in kicking free of this accursed cage of monotony.. ‘I can show you a house he lived in, and I can show you another one he was afraid to enter in spite of all his fine bold talk. He knew things he didn’t dare put into that stupid Magnalia or that puerile Wonders of the Invisible World. Look here, do you know the whole North End once had a set of tunnels that kept certain people in touch with each other’s houses, and the burying ground, and the sea? Let them prosecute and persecute above ground—things went on every day that they couldn’t reach, and voices laughed at night that they couldn’t place! (Pickman’s Model)
Beyond that, he makes the very countryside of New England seem vividly alive, and he is very in tune with the folkways of his region:
The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation.
Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strewn meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned…The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic’s upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises…
As well as acknowledging the cultural debt America owes to its European forebears:
…Awake, Columbia! scorn the vulgar age
That bids thee slight thy lordly heritage.
Let not the wide Atlantic’s wildest wave
Burst the blest bonds that fav’ring Nature gave:
Connecting surges ‘twixt the nations run,
Our Saxon souls dissolving into one!
And then there’s the dreamland saga, which has its own highly relevant message to give to all men, but for various reasons I feel it is most relevant to American men of above average intelligence…and hey, if you’re here, then you’re probably one of those.
And that will come next week.