Troy wrote: "Had to look it up to refresh my memory. Apparently "literary success" eluded HPL, but his grandfather was a wealthy businessman. HPL lived off and squandered his inheritance."

And still wound up moving back in with his family.

Just glanced at the wiki entry. Pathetic stuff.

"He sometimes went without food to afford the cost of mailing letters."

Oh joy. And this bit I love:

"He kept a diary of his illness until close to the moment of his death."

Never doubted it. Poor deranged soul, annotating his death throes. I'll bet those were fun letters.

Troy wrote: "Exactly. And so it is as we've said all along - he died alone, penniless, and obscure. The world quite literally moved on without him.

And the world was happier for it on the whole, I'm sure."

Van Gogh never made a dime either. It's no indication. But there is something very questionable about HPL's posthumous popularity. A blog criticizing Van Gogh might result in a lot of disagreement but I doubt it would incite an abusive mob on the Internet. That level of discourse IS an indication.

I'm not comparing their art. My point is that financial success, or a lack thereof, is no indication of artistic merit. Or a lack thereof.

I think other writers eventually became intrigued by the intensity of HPL's demented ravings (and by the consistency of his "mythos") but his posthumous popularity was originally orchestrated by the publisher August Derleth. Think about it: an unbelievably huge body of work for which no one ever needed to be paid a dime. Brilliant. It just needed to be marketed. And people are still marketing it.

Wait? So we've been agreeing?

Troy, you are so funny! And I entirely get you.

...then you are greatly under appreciated, I loved 'tentacle worshippers' in particular. Apart from the 'thing' Cthulhu.

ha-ha, sounds like an endless suburb of cracked and greying houses, all with fancy names and old rusty bikes in the front yard. Plenty ugly dogs as well.

My kind of house then!

lol!

One also can’t fail to notice that the troll community feels a special affinity for Lovecraft, as though they recognized in him a progenitor.

If that's what they need to preach to make themselves feel stronger, then they've missed the entire points of both real fear and real strength.

Preaching to the choir here, dude. But trolls are real. Never doubt it. They are real and they are numerous and they are indefatigable. They appear to do real damage, especially in the genre world. HPL with his thousands and thousands of hate-filled letters to editors would have loved the Internet.

You might at some point wish to check out one of my earlier blogs, this one devoted to the subject of trolls.

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Yes.

Troy wrote: "Lovecraft's letters did no real damage..."

There’s a very bright and apparently earnest gentleman who has explained to me (repeatedly) that racism no longer exists and that by discussing it we merely perpetuate it.

No. By not talking about it we allow it to exist unopposed.

Words have power. Hate Speech has never been harmless.

Troy wrote: "I've said all I can."

Amen.

Troy wrote: "Robert wrote: "There’s a very bright and apparently earnest gentleman who has explained to me (repeatedly) that racism no longer exists and that by discuss..."

I was talking to you, not about you.

Troy wrote: "In a weird way, yes. Your perceptions, however, just give Lovecraft too much power, and ironically that's exactly how Cthulhu works, which is why Lovecraft has this misbegotten label as a genius. ..."

Perfect words from @troy,,a great humorous read and a realistic denial of somehow brainless visions and perception of Mr.Robert about Lovecraft. Robert Dunbar is feeling the loathsome, labyrinth of Cthulhu tentacles now and he couldn't fathoms the depths of reality that encircled him. He is so gutted by the prose's of master lOVECRAFT that he couldn't vomit anymore but somehow driven by the sweet words of Modern-commercial- horror-best sellers ( which he might read in the morning!!! LOL ) he spite out this foolish words. Shame and disgust. He proved the real strength of Lovecraft really pierced him from within and Mr. Robert is exposed now.

Renowned HPL critic S.T.Joshi shared his view about Robert's criticism. Read.

February 27, 2015 — Robert Dunbar on Lovecraft

My attention has been drawn to yet another attack on Lovecraft, this time by one Robert Dunbar (https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...). I had a bit of difficulty figuring out who Robert Dunbar is, for by some regrettable accident he has not yet been made the subject of a Wikipedia entry. It turns out that Mr. Dunbar has written a few supernatural novels recently, along with a “literary” novel and (Gawdelpus) some poetry. Ordinarily I would let this item pass in merciful silence, but it presents such juicy targets for rebuttal that I cannot resist a response.

Dunbar opens with yet another criticism of Lovecraft’s prose style. He quotes the celebrated final paragraph of “The Call of Cthulhu”:

“Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. He must have been trapped by the sinking whilst within his black abyss, or else the world would by now be screaming with fright and frenzy. Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come—but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye.”

In regard to which, Mr. Dunbar writes plaintively: “Does that passage truly inspire anyone to read more? Anyone who hasn’t sustained a cranial injury?”

Well, as a matter of fact, my own judgment (derived from reading a fair amount of the great literature in English, Latin, Greek, French, German, and other languages) is that this is not merely good prose; it is superb prose. I am getting to the point of thinking that anyone who doesn’t think Lovecraft a fine prose writer is simply an ignoramus—someone who simply doesn’t know anything about prose. It is as if you’ve put a dunce cap on your head and said to the world, “I don’t know the first thing about good writing.”

What is more, I would be willing to bet any amount of money that such writers as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, and dozens of other contemporary writers in the weird fiction field have also found this passage powerful and effective. These and many other writers have all been significantly influenced by Lovecraft and are happy to admit it. Straub, indeed, edited the 2005 Library of America edition of Lovecraft that (pace Mr. Dunbar) officially and permanently placed him in the ranks of canonical American writers.

What does Mr. Dunbar have to counter these authorities? He puts forth one Peter Damien, who writes that Lovecraft is “a godawful writer. He was so bad. I really cannot stress this enough.” I had even more difficulty figuring out who Peter Damien is than in ascertaining Mr. Dunbar’s identity; amusingly enough, a Google search ends up confusing him with Peter Damian, a Catholic priest in the 11th century! All I can ascertain is that Mr. Damien is some kind of bloviator who enjoys spouting off on all manner of subjects he appears to know little about. And yet, Mr. Dunbar quotes him as some eminent authority on prose style (and of course his meticulous and well-reasoned comment proves that he must be!).

As for me, I will repeat one more time the views of a real critic (and a real writer), one Joyce Carol Oates, who I trust is eminent enough even for Mr. Dunbar. What does she say about Lovecraft’s prose? “Most of Lovecraft’s tales…develop by way of incremental detail, beginning with quite plausible situations…One is drawn into Lovecraft by the very air of plausibility and characteristic understatement of the prose, the question being When will the weirdness strike? There is a melancholy, operatic grandeur in Lovecraft’s most passionate work, like ‘The Outsider’ and ‘At the Mountains of Madness’; a curious elegiac poetry of unspeakable loss, of adolescent despair and an existential loneliness so pervasive that it lingers in the reader’s memory, like a dream, long after the rudiments of Lovecraftian plot have faded.”

But let’s keep the focus on Mr. Dunbar. If he thinks Lovecraft is such a bad writer, he must think that he himself can do better. Let’s see if he can. I take a passage at random from the author’s novel Wood: “Rosaria almost felt sorry for him. After all, Miss Whatsis could be snippy and officious, even toward him, or especially toward him. (Except when they imagined themselves to be unobserved.) He just stood there, grinning, and Miss Whosis had already started yammering at him.”

This is supposed to be good prose, in contrast to Lovecraft’s? I would call attention to the clumsy slang of “snippy” and “yammering,” the ungrammatical sentence-fragment enclosed in the parenthesis, and in general an utter lack of rhythm, music, and modulation. No wonder I can barely stomach reading much contemporary prose (with rare exceptions such as Ramsey Campbell, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and a few others)!

It is breathtaking that Dunbar is prepared to dismiss the entire field of weird fiction as “anti-literary.” Surely an odd assertion about a field that has seen contributions by such writers as Daniel Defoe, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Jorge Luis Borges, and dozens—perhaps hundreds—of others who strike me as being tolerably literary. (Question: If the genre is so anti-literary, why is Mr. Dunbar dabbling in it? Maybe he is trying to uplift it into some level of “literariness”! Judged by the passage I quoted above, he isn’t doing a very good job of it.)

It should be no surprise that Dunbar fills himself with righteous indignation about Lovecraft’s racism. It now appears that any defenders of Lovecraft are giving him a “free pass” on the subject. How so? I myself (who am surely one of his chief defenders—not to mention a person of colour, which Mr. Dunbar emphatically is not) have stated in my biography that racism is “the greatest black mark on Lovecraft’s character” and gone into considerable detail about how racism affected his life, work, and thought. Just because I don’t get hyperventilated and self-righteous when talking about the subject, or because I don’t append every single utterance I make about Lovecraft with, “Oh, and by the way, Lovecraft was a racist,” it would appear that I am giving him a “free pass.” Are we giving a free pass to Jack London for not constantly harping on his “yellow peril” screeds while we read The Call of the Wild, or on T. S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism while reading The Waste Land, or on Roald Dahl’s racism and anti-Semitism while reading Someone Like You? (And let’s not even approach the adjacent genre of science fiction. There is abundant evidence that such figures as John W. Campbell, Jr., Robert A. Heinlein, and Orson Scott Card were and are racists of a much worse stripe than Lovecraft—but no one is advocating not reading them anymore.)

And why stop there? Why not ban other writers for their erroneous opinions on other subjects? Lord Dunsany was politically conservative and a member of the idle hereditary aristocracy—so of course we must not read A Dreamer’s Tales. Ambrose Bierce was a vicious misogynist—so of course we must not read “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Edgar Allan Poe was a drunkard and a pedophile (he married his 13-year-old cousin, for Gawd’s sake)—so of course his poetry and short stories are off-limits.

The details of Mr. Dunbar’s analysis (I use the word loosely) of Lovecraft’s racism leave much to be desired. He quotes the luminous Charles Baxter as saying (in reference to Leslie S. Klinger’s New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft): “Klinger notes that Lovecraft’s support of Hitler’s eugenic programs, including the ‘racial cleansing’ advocated by Ernest Rüdin and others, is well known.” This is wrong on two counts; first, Klinger made no such assertion, and Lovecraft in fact did not endorse the Nazi eugenic scheme. A letter to Robert Bloch (22 November 1934) goes on at some length on the subject, but this passage is representative: “The complexity of the laws governing organic growth is enormous—so enormous that the number of unknown factors must always remain hopelessly great. We can discover & apply a few biological principles—but the limit of effectiveness is soon reached. For example—despite all the advances in endocrinology & all the experiments in glandular rejuvenation, there is no such thing as a permanent or well-balanced staving-off of senescence & dissolution. … What is more—there really is no one idea of racial excellence. Even if the principle of eugenic control were accepted by a nation, there would remain a constant struggle among various factions advocating different goals of development. One group would advocate the cultivation of this or that group of emotions, or the establishment of this or that blood mixture, while another would campaign ceaselessly for a directly opposite result. Thus the Nazis in Germany want to get rid of every trace of Jewish blood, while other groups believe that the highest intellectual qualities in all races come through prehistoric & forgotten infusions of Semitic blood! Amidst such a confusion of objects, what single policy could ever gain an effective ascendancy?”

How odd that rational passages like this are never quoted by Lovecraft’s detractors!

The other strange thing about Dunbar’s screed is his odd assumption that everyone who “defends” Lovecraft on the racism issue must be politically conservative, while those who exhibit noble sanctimoniousness on the subject must be politically liberal. I hardly imagine that my liberal bona fides are in much doubt, given how liberally (pardon the pun) and enthusiastically I lambaste conservatives in the pages of the American Rationalist, or in such of my books as The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong (2006). But I am not blind to liberalism’s flaws, and one of its worst is, I fear, exactly the kind of political correctness that gets all hot and bothered about the views of an author nearly a century dead while not doing much to combat real evils we face today. If Mr. Dunbar is so outraged at Lovecraft’s racism, I wonder what he would say if, fifty years from now, our own society is crucified for its oversexed, violence-ridden, thoroughly misogynistic culture—as, indeed, it should be. And if Mr. Dunbar thinks that we collectively have dealt with racism a great deal better than Lovecraft’s generation did, he simply isn’t paying attention to what is going on in this country or around the world. (Dunbar ought to consider himself lucky that no one will bother to probe the skeletons in his closet when he is dead. Doe

Troy wrote: "In a weird way, yes. Your perceptions, however, just give Lovecraft too much power, and ironically that's exactly how Cthulhu works, which is why Lovecraft has this misbegotten label as a genius. ..."

Renowned HPL critic S.T.Joshi shared his view about this criticism. Completed here. Read.

Does he deny that he has any skeletons?)

What is more, Dunbar reveals not the faintest awareness that Lovecraft himself became (except on the issue of race) not merely a liberal but a socialist—one who enjoyed lambasting the Republicans of his era as hidebound reactionaries. One such passage, written late in life, should suffice:

“As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license, or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’ …) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.”

Those words are truer now than when they were first written.

Dunbar also seems inclined to the seriously erroneous view that weird fiction as a whole is somehow a “conservative” or even a “reactionary” genre. I have no idea why or how he could have come to such a view. His own understanding of politics seems about as crude and undeveloped as his understanding of literature. My own acquaintance with the leading writers of this field confirms that a substantial majority of them are politically liberal. But why that should have any bearing on our evaluation of their purely literary merits is a query that I happily admit I fail to understand.

To wrap up. I unhesitatingly declare H. P. Lovecraft not merely a good writer but a great writer—great in his management of prose, great in his imaginative scope, great in the philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings of his fiction, and great in the effective construction of a tale that allows it to become so compellingly readable. His influence is now perhaps greater than that of Edgar Allan Poe, and on its purely intrinsic merits his work is superior to that of every writer in the history of weird fiction with the possible exception of Ramsey Campbell.

And as for Lovecraft’s politics, I think it would be vastly better if a certain amount of rationality and understanding could be brought to bear upon the subject. Self-righteous indignation may make one feel momentarily virtuous, but it accomplishes little else. As an atheist I am not much inclined to quote the Bible as an authority, but one pungent utterance does strike me as appropriate in this context: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

I wonder why Lovecraft’s detractors don’t just give up. Their foolish screeds are so easily refuted that there is really no sport in it anymore. And yet, they seem unable to resist the temptation to reveal their ignorance and prejudice for all the world to see.

Rocky wrote: "Troy wrote: "In a weird way, yes. Your perceptions, however, just give Lovecraft too much power, and ironically that's exactly how Cthulhu works, which is why Lovecraft has this misbegotten label ..."

Haven't we already read this drivel back on comment #78?

Troy wrote: "Well, I wasn't trying to put anyone down or make them feel bad, and I've apologized in those moments where I crossed a line. If anything, I was trying to put better horror writers' minds at ease b..."

You have presented a well-reasoned and courteous discourse and have nothing to apologize for.

Why do you want to attack Robert, what is wrong with you? Or do you not know... I'm writing to the person whose name I don't recall now, sorry.. Miscreant or something?

Nefarious, I mean.

Nefarious wrote: "Dunbar ought to consider himself lucky that no one will bother to probe the skeletons in his closet when he is dead. Does he deny that he has any skeletons?"

Is anyone still not clear about what these people are?

Troy, I don't know how many more times I can explain that HPL continues to be an important icon in the genre world. His fans are legion, whether you accept this or not -- maybe you could try googling? -- and his beliefs have influence, if only with like-minded individuals who feel enabled by them. These people are often extremely outspoken in their racism, their sexism, their homophobia. I have encountered it many times.

At best such things poison the well of public discourse by desensitizing us to hate speech.

If you're seriously interested in this subject (and are not just being a contrarian) you might consider reading Daniel José Older's piece in The Guardian.

"...the fantasy community cannot embrace its growing fanbase of color with one hand while deifying a writer who happily advocated for our extermination with the other."

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014...

It's quite passionate.

The only person saying that I "fear" this is you. And you've now said it -- what? -- twenty times? thirty?

Enough.

What I feel is disgust.

Troy wrote: "What I've been getting at is that his importance as an icon is because the myth has become bigger than the man due primarily to the influence of other writers in the genre who have carried his work further, without the baggage attached. His reputation is smoke and mirrors. Why do you fear this? Why is this WORTH fearing? That's the part you haven't answered at all. "

This is basically my attitude. Scum-bucket that he is, Lovecraft did imagine a unique fantasy universe that other, better authors have used as the setting for their works. That and the fact that his writing style is equal to Sominex as a sleep aid are the only things that he should be credited with. His views, on the other hand, make me hope that the day will come, when the man himself is forgotten by all.

Troy wrote: "One can hope, Tom. One can hope. But it won't happen so long as he's being pinned up as a straw man. To do so only assumes that he's the crux of the hate. I guess that's the part I'm wrestling ..."

Such people don't deserve to be remembered. Jewish beliefs hold that the dead live on as long as they are remembered. Whether one chooses to venerate or excoriate such people, the result is the same, to keep them alive.

Troy wrote: "That's cold and unnecessary..."

oh for fucks sake

I meant that I feel disgust for this whole HPL-is-a-God school of idiocy.

Tom, I'm not at all sure that demented people get credit for having great imaginations. HPL was delusional, not creative.

Anyone else see a connection?

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/sci_f...

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...

"One would think, reading S.T. Joshi’s response to my book review, that I had attacked the object of a cult."
~ Charles Baxter

Funny how that word keeps coming up.

“Either stow ’em out of sight or kill ’em off – anything so that a white man may walk along the streets without shuddering nausea.”
~ such a lovely man old HPL

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/s-t...

Jason Colavito's piece above should not be missed.

Robert wrote: "http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...

"One would think, reading S.T. Joshi’s response to my book review, that I had attacked the object of a cult."
~ Charles Ba..."

I particularly enjoyed this line:

"What readers should certainly note, however, is that Joshi is territorial: while I grant him his right to his opinions, he does not grant me a right to mine."

I smiled a little over that one too.

"Of course they can’t let niggers use the beach at a Southern resort – can you imagine sensitive persons bathing near a pack of greasy chimpanzees?" ~ HPL (a gift that keeps on giving)


I am becoming a huge fan of Jason Colavito:

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/s-t...

I'm relatively new both to HPL himself, his dismal writing, and the other character Joshi. So on doing some research into the whole area, what I recognised immediately, having an interest in the subject, was 'cult mentality.' And of course, not all cults are public, some may be very secret.

Some aren't secret enough.

And it could be that people don't always realise when they're exhibiting cult mentality and cult thinking. In real operating cults the idea is that the members are in a state of deep obedience to whatever the worshipful thing is. When you think about the idea of Jim Jones being able to persuade close to 1,000 people to commit suicide... it shows the power of the thing.

"Fuck Robert Dunbar and his minions of lickspittles.......just fuck 'em... so busy with submissive urination to the PC Police... How does anyone benefit from this type of fascism?"
~ Posted at Trolls of Horror (or whatever they call themselves)

Because my expressing anti-fascist attitudes is a form of fascism...? Umm. Okay then. Guess I should just keep those to myself.

Tom wrote: "I particularly enjoyed this line:
"What readers should certainly note, however, is that Joshi is territorial: while I grant him his right to his opinions, he does not grant me a right to mine."

If only that sort of thing were unusual within the genre. Keep in mind that STJ wrote a biography of HPL in which (I'm told) there is no mention of racism or bigotry. And if anyone does mention it?

I wonder how many years he's invested in trying to silence people.

Good luck with that.

Robert wrote: "I wonder how many years he's invested in trying to silence people.

Good luck with that. "

And it would have worked too if it wasn't for those meddling Dunbar lickspittles!

We so need to come up with a less disgusting name.

Lol.

These theological power struggles can get bloody.

http://www.donherron.com/?p=5700

We should probably repeat Charles Baxter's words, because they are so pertinent.

"One would think... that I had attacked the object of a cult."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...

Interesting articles, thank you Robert. Glad I'm not the only one who senses 'cultism.' Life is dead strange is it not, once while working on a gardening project in the East End of London, I came across an elderly Jewish gent who showed me his collection of precious Nazi memorabilia, and wanted to tell me about the notorious Kray Brothers who lived in the area. They were the biggest and most dangerous criminals in the East End at a certain time sort of early 1960 onwards. They were very famous. The Jewish gent explained to me that he was their tailor, and how much he adored them, venerated really. What I think I see here is a kind of madness that strikes men sometimes in which they become spell-bound devotees of some 'object of a cult'... some cult figure in fact. That he was Jewish and loved the Nazis? That's the sickness that's not too far away from us in this conversation, I think.


'I am not surprised that Joshi, who has spent much of his life studying Lovecraft, was affronted by my review, but he doesn’t seem to understand the distinction between matters of fact and matters of judgment. Readers can judge for themselves whether Lovecraft’s prose contains infelicities of style, along with misogyny and racism.

Joshi’s argument against the stories’ misogyny is of the some-of-his-best-friends-were-women variety, a confusion of the work and the life. As for Lovecraft’s racism, Joshi’s defense of Lovecraft’s views in his letter is astonishing in this day and age; he quotes, with apparent approval, Lovecraft’s suggestion of apartheid as a benevolent remedy. Joshi seems unable to grasp my argument that the racism is at the core of the stories’ horror of aliens. I never denied that the stories have a disturbing power. What readers should certainly note, however, is that Joshi is territorial: while I grant him his right to his opinions, he does not grant me a right to mine.'

But surely in Lovecraft's world Mr. Joshi would be a goner. As probably would I be for being a woman standing on the earth alone. In defiance.

There you go again, bringing reality into the conversation...

what, you mean just like that?

Okay, this is just creepy.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/48...

Not only am I familiar with some of the occult shops mentioned here (my brother lived upstairs from one of them) but I used to hang out with one of the guys interviewed. Interesting dude, sort of crazy, eventually became a -- what's the phrase? -- "card-carrying" member of the American Nazi Party.

That always made me sad. The things people succumb to...

We don't hang anymore. Or talk. Or know each other. I hear he eventually became a race-baiting DJ at a Kansas radio station. I mention all of this because, well... CULT!

Like we keep saying.

I found this familiar somehow:- 'Slater was a large, gay witch, and something of a living legend in occult circles. On this particular day, as Simon would later write in his book Dead Names: The Dark History of the Necronomicon, the air was thick with the smell of incense and Slater was dressed in a ceremonial robe with the hood pulled over his head, "like a character actor from the old film Horror Hotel.

http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2011/12/lov...

I know some of us get this.