So I heard you like Lovecraft.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSxm_nhqDyw

Well, clearly you're an accidental asshole. I was one, once.

Fuck HP Lovecraft.

I personally love this quote from Michael Moorecock's essay Starship Stormtroopers where he takes everyone to task: from Heinlein, to Hubbard to Lucas:

Sick burn.

It ought to make any thinking man pause when men of great thought, artistic merit, or spiritual profundity largely agree on such matters as culture, heirarchy, religion, civilization, and women.

In other words: Moorcock is a Leftist twit.

That doesn't mean he's not right on the money about Lovecraft. The dude's themes are highly disturbing (and not in a good way). You can appreciate his work for it's influence on western literature, and I can admit he knows how to craft a fairly interesting story from time to time, but there's really no reason to "Like" lovecraft unless you're a Goth, a racist, or both.

Lovecraft sometimes gets comically racist, I'll agree with you there. But it is vastly problematic to disparage his entire catalogue because of this, nor indeed is there much reason to suggest that he was vastly wrong on many of these topics. Certainly he was wrong to an extent - and indeed, sometimes that extent is very big when he gets it wrong - but his actual positions often make sense. For instance: It is fairly apparent (see Paris Riots of a few years ago) that cosmpolitanism provides no foundation for society.

The fascism or the notion of generational guilt?

I disagree with this completely. I live in New York City, one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world.The communities here are closer knit and there's more camaraderie than any other place I've lived. It spans age, race, social class, and it shows: New York is the greatest city in the world.

In fact, it's the opposite: when a society to embraces xenophobia and nationalism, it's more often than not a recipe for stagnation.

Those who fear the mixing of races, classes, and ideas at best betray themselves to be neurotic cowards, and at worst outright fascists.

I used to like HP Lovecraft when I about 12 until I realised that, as well as being a racist, he was pretty fucking boring.

I like Lovecraft. I have since I was a kid... his stories don't scare me anymore, but I still find them fascinating. He's also had a pretty significant influence on other writers, and I find my knowledge of his work makes theirs more interesting. Sometimes the impact a person has on history is more significant than their personal take on it.

This is why I generally like things derived from his work (Re-Animator is one of the funniest black comedies I have ever seen) but have always found his writing boring. He is the lowest class of a generation of pulp writers, but without much of the artistic merit or talent of the others.

I leave all concerns about racism and other ism's out of it ... there's a lot of that goes around in those circles.

I don't want to call you an asshole. But you make it too easy.

It's okay. It's not your fault. You didn't know.

You gotta give Lovecraft some credit. I don't mean for the Chthulhu mythos; that's fun but it goes beyond Lovecraft.
However, Lovecraft was unique in that the highest forms of terror he describes aren't simply an excess of the grotesque, but rather based on geometry. THAT'S pretty fucking cool.

Like him? Hate him? My opinion is best explained in saying this: In many ways, Lovecraft is a poor man's Borges.

He also found a way to imply how terrifying scale actually is.

I don't think he was a Fascist. He was more an Anglophilic oligarchist.

Generational guilt in Lovecraft was more rooted in a certain degeneracy of bloodlines. He wrote a lot about what are essentially New England hillbillies. In fact, he identifies them closely with other types of hillbillies in one story (I can't remember one).

Notably, also, they're white. Lovecraft didn't just hate blacks or Jews (and he did occasionally hate both), but also white trash.

I'm also a New Yorker, amusingly enough, and I have to say I don't see what you see here. The reason is this: We actually live in fairly separated and segregated neighbourhoods. There is little sense of a broader community in NYC, but more an identity with individual ethnic enclaves. Although many communities are in a state of shift due to white flight (and white return, too) there is still notably Irish, Jewish, Italian, Chinese, Russian, Indian, black, hispanic, et cetera, neighbourhoods that are largely demarcated along racial-ethnic lines.

There are some common connections and occasionally an identity emerges in identification to the other (such as on 9-11), but really NY is fairly. Hell, there is even a lot of tension between the different boroughs, especially with us real boroughs and those suburban whippersnappers on Staten Island.

Plus, NYC nearly was torn apart at the seams due to racial and ethnic problems in the 60's-90's. It wasn't until the late 90's, really, that NYC quietted down on those fronts.

Oh, and baseball. That is one unifiying feature. Yankees fans are Yankees fans regardless of race, colour, or creed. Same with the Mets, but Mets fans are awful.

I don't think we can call much of the Orient stagnant. Nor the Nordic countries.

Ideas aren't the issue here. All societies and civilizations require ideas to be fairly diverse by nature of discourse - although some ideas are, in fact, harmful. However, no society can exist when it has no identity rooted in some sort of common experience and culture.

Commonality and hegemony are two entirely different concepts. The former has been historically an ideal to strive for by the left, while the latter has been historically a tool to subordinate by the right.

Of course he's a racist! And a creep. He takes after Poe (a little too much).
But he wasn't a raging drunk like Poe which only makes things eerier on how his strange, depraved mind could brew such fantasies WITHOUT the influence of any drug. I mean, you gotta admire that he's one gloom and doom writer who didn't fit under the stereotypical Byron profile...more of a Crispin Glover type.

I like the imagery he put in my 12/13 year old mind and some of his renditions of mysticism. He hyped up Necronomican like no other fucker and Herbert West-Reanimator is a classic the whole family can laugh along to! It was when I stopped taking him seriously that I could really enjoy his stories. He goes over the top on purpose most of the time to, as stated, emphasize his misanthropy.
But so what?

I got an anthology of Lovecraft's stories and letters a few years back as a birthday present. I remain to this day a huge fan of his writings. True, the racist themes are hard to miss at times, but even though I don't agree with them I still think he wrote terrific stories. I've always loved psychology, though. Seems like that's a pattern among my friends regarding their taste for Lovecraft. Dunno why.

I've always loved the worlds he created, and those created based off of his works. The drollness or boredoms most people speak of I always saw as a sort of extended long foreplay, the racist themes a certain unwithheld vulgarity, and the suspense and strangeness erotic.
He's always been one of my favorite writers.

Lovecraft was the man. Of course, any writer or artist is open to interpretation, and you guys have the right to your opinions, but let's face it - Lovecraft was a quirky, strange and fascinating dude and author.

Perhaps because Lovecraft vehemently disliked New York (see the Horror at Red Hook), it is fair of you to dislike him as well. Ironically, I'm a New England boy who found Lovecraft by accident one day long after I had relocated to Maryland - and I hold his stuff fairly dear to heart. He writes about nebulous things in his best work, of dreams, nostalgia, and the strange things in or behind familiar things. This is -weird fiction- at its best.

Also, the comments about his racism and other flaws are rather off-sighted. While yes, they are distasteful, also remember that he was really no different from most people in his day. You are looking at a man from the turn of the century with 21st century logic. He was also a home-body, an Anglophile and his love of simple and out-dated New England ways defines him. You do not have to agree with him, but it certainly gives a lens to the world, and a strange, fascinating lens at that.

I also agree that Michael Moorcock is a silly dude who likes to hear himself talk. I love Lovecraft for what he is, and it has nothing to do with Cthulhu trends or writing critiques.

you know... im fairly passive about lovecraft, i have read most of his stories over the years im sure. and i must have at least one anthology of his sitting on a shelf somewhere... i liked the worlds he created and love him at least a little bit for all his tentacly goodness...

now to the point, so he was a bad bad man... and apparently if i like something created by a bad person im an asshole? seriously?

so you holier than tho high and mighty judges of purity are going to stand there and tell me that EVERY possession you own, every bite of food you eat, and every convenience you use is created by a good person who has ideals that are noble and selfless? not a single aspect of your life has been made by a bad person? really?

either every single one of us is an asshole or there are some hypocrites of titanic proportion among us... (i vote for both myself)

jeesus get a grip

you have got to be kidding me with this childish male bovine excrement...

im to disgusted for a phant comment today so just bite me

Haha, I thought Despanan was really on a roll in this thread.

So true. I go even further and say it's always a recipe for stagnation. And there's nothing more devastating to life than stagnation.

Stagnation in all things = Anti-life.

Unfortunately, we seem to have a raging hard-on for all things stagnating.

You had no idea what you were talking about, New Yorker.


But most importantly, I love Lovecraft's meeping things, too.

Meep.