Loving Lovecraft

Is it wrong?

I mentioned the other day that I much admire Charles Stross’ science fiction, even though I have no sympathy for his personal views on religion and politics (or much else, for that matter).

Another ink-stained wretch who falls into that same category, albeit one of far greater renown, is the great master of horror H.P. Lovecraft. As John Miller observed, in a review that’s over 20 years old but still well worth reading in full, Lovecraft’s take on the world was a profoundly sick one:

He was a thoroughgoing materialist—a socialist in his politics and an atheist in his beliefs. “Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large,” he wrote upon successfully resubmitting the original Cthulhu story. “One must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.”

That's nihilism, of course, and we're free to reject it. But there's nothing creepier or more terrifying than the possibility that our lives are exercises in meaninglessness. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,” says Gloucester in King Lear. “They kill us for their sport.” From Lovecraft's perspective, this gives us far too much credit. In his grim milieu, we don't even rate as insect pests, but we still manage to get ourselves squished.

Hardly the sort of world view likely to appeal to a good Catholic conservative lad like myself, of course. Although Lovecraft never made it onto the old Index Librorum Prohibitorum, so it’s not an illicit love.

But I dote on horror stories and, perhaps because his personal world view was so yucky (to use a technical term of literary criticism), nobody did it better than Lovecraft. To return to Miller’s take:

“The Call of Cthulhu” is also strangely engrossing, and contains many elements that will be familiar to fans of “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown: The main character is an Ivy League professor determined to investigate ancient mysteries and their lingering effects on the present day. Readers who become accustomed to Lovecraft’s writing style may find that it possesses a florid eloquence.

They will also appreciate his skill at producing a sense of mounting dread. Lovecraft knew what to place onstage as well as what to leave inside the haunted imaginations of his readers. “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear,” he once wrote, “and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” If Lovecraft had been a film director, he might have come up with a movie much like “The Blair Witch Project,” only scarier.

Indeed.

Knowing what to leave off-stage was a secret shared by another favorite of mine, J.R.R. Tolkien. One of the many things that distinguishes The Lord of the Rings from run-of-the-mill hack fantasy is Tolkien’s awareness that the really bad stuff (Sauron, in particular) is scarier if kept off stage. Each individual reader will tailor his/her mental image of Sauron to maximize its effectiveness, something no writer could match.

Likewise, Gandalf seems so powerful precisely because we almost never see him do any real magic. His powers just sort of loom in the background.

Too many modern writers have completely lost touch with this basic skill, which is one of many reasons so much modern horror or fantasy sucks.

Anyway, Lovecraft’s best work is available in a lovely Library of America edition. (AMAZON LINK) Try it. You might like it.