H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author of horror, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy stories, including many works in the aptly named genre. He is best known as the creator of the Cthulhu mythos, which figure prominently in many of his stories.Weinstock, J.R., in Forward to The Call of Cthulhu and Other Dark Tales (2009) Barnes and Noble, page X. ISBN 1435116437
Much of Lovecraft's writing is concerned with the post-Enlightenment horrors of cosmic irrelevance and the idea that civilization is fragile and fleeting. Many misunderstand the common theme of people going mad upon seeing the alien beings in his work; the idea is that sanity is the denial of the true nature of the world and that seeing the creatures conflicts with one's deeply held beliefs (which takes on a whole new significance when you consider that the man was an extreme racist and xenophobe even by the standards of his day), not that the monster is just that scary.
Unfortunately for Lovecraft, he failed to find any real mainstream success during his lifetime, being a virtually unknown name and relegated to ten-cent pulp fiction magazines.David J. Goodwin, Marriage, Failure, and Exile: H.P. Lovecraft in New York. The Gotham Center for New York History, 11 May 2021. According to S.T. Joshi, this was probably due to the bias many literary critics had towards the modernist style of fiction that was dominant throughout the 1920s, leading them to view anything that strayed from the realistic (such as science fiction, fantasy, and horror) as basically low-brow and trashy.S. T. Joshi, Guillermo del Toro, ed., American Supernatural Tales. Penguin Classics, 2013. . After years of living in poverty, he succumbed to intestine cancer in March of 1937, dying at the age of 46.
Despite this, his fiction would eventually develop a cult following decades after his death before creeping into most of modern pop culture, with Lovecraft now considered to be one of the most influential horror authors of the 20th century. His ideas and writing style have been instrumental in inspiring writers in all fields, not to mention many imitators.Curt Wohleber, The Man Who Can Scare Stephen King. American Heritage, December 1995. Notable creatives and artists who have owed their success and inspiration to Lovecraft include Alan Moore, H.R. Giger, Jorge Luis Borges, Junji Ito, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, N.K Jemisin, Clive Barker and Robert E. Howard (the creator of Conan the Barbarian), to name just a few.HP Lovecraft: The man who haunted horror fans. BBC, 22 March 2012. Howard and Lovecraft were actually good friends in life and collaborated on more than one story together.
==Political views==
Lovecraft had a laundry list of phobias. Besides drawing inspiration for his work from his dreams, the greater part of his work was also influenced by his feelings of discomfort around women, fear of foreigners and people of color, and a severe seafood allergy. He was a raging racist even by the standards of his time (at least for most of his life), which explicitly showed through in several of his writings. Most notably in arguably his best known work Call of Cthulhu, the main character suspects his uncle was dead because he crossed a black person. The Rats in the Walls is infamous for having a cat named Nigger-Man, after Lovecraft's own cat.
Many of his works espoused the sanctity of the Anglo-Saxon people while condemning miscegenation and decrying other races and ethnicities, especially Asians, whom he was convinced would conquer the world. Notable works where he openly displayed his racism include The Street, The Horror at Red Hook, and his surprisingly obscure poem "On the Creation of Niggers"."On the Creation of Niggers" on Wikisource
However, Lovecraft's racism, while real, may have been generally misunderstood and possibly exaggerated. It wasn't uncommon in previous years to give the name "Nigger" to including black cats. Scott's expedition to Antarctica, for instance, had a ship's cat named Nigger. Lovecraft seems to have followed the British type of racism rather than the typical American one—where education, behavior, and breeding count significantly. He married a Jew, for instance, saying she was well integrated into American society, and many of his villains are in fact white, though they tend to be poorly educated and are often inbred, or (paradoxically) interbred with some of his nameless horrors of the ocean.
Lovecraft was also very open about his views in essays and the hundreds of letters he wrote during his lifetime. Besides his usual racism and xenophobia, Lovecraft revealed he was very supportive of fascism, white supremacy, aristocracies, and elitism. He believed a society that implemented elements of all that, would create an ideal society to live in.
He greatly despised the American Republican Party. In a 1936 letter to fellow science fiction writer C. L. Moore, Lovecraft said that their ideas and beliefs deserved "the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead."Quotations from H. P. Lovecraft's letters on Wikiquote Of course, the Republican Party's policies were very different at the time (the Democrats were known for their advocacy of segregation, not that the Republicans were particularly progressive towards ethnic minorities either). He apparently wasn't a fan of the Democratic Party either, as a lesser known 1929 letter to Woodburn Harris shows.While We are On the Subject of HP Lovecraft Quotes… 40yrs.blogspot.com, 3 November 2010.
Despite his unease among women, general xenophobia, and occasional anti-Semitism, he married a foreign-born Jewish woman, The two collaborated on a story The Horror at Martin's Beach and for a time lived together in New York City, something Lovecraft came to hate due to the city's tolerance of numerous foreign ethnicities and immigrants. The marriage unsurprisingly didn't last, collapsing after a mere two years. However, this seems to have been more because of financial reasons than anything else, as the two weren’t exactly able to live together for most of the marriage.
Whatever else he was, Lovecraft wrote great horror stories and lavished affection upon his black pet cat whom his grandfather named Nigger-Man and who makes a guest appearance in his short story "The Rats in the Walls"."The Rats in the Walls" on Wikisource
===The worm turns===
Nearer to the end of his life, he moved towards supporting socialism and denouncing fascism as well as capitalism (he himself cites 1931 as the turning point). By the mid-1930s, he showed support for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.The Political Transition of Howard Philips Lovecraft. grimreviews.blogspot.com, 18 October 2008. In one 1936 letter, he wrote (emphasis apparently his):
In one 1937 letter, he also denounced laissez-faire capitalism as "dead" and, amidst lines that begin to make Lovecraft sound almost like Karl Marx himself, insinuated that attempting to fuel the continuation of capitalism would lead to concentration camps:
Given the Holocaust, that aside about concentration camps may seem very prescient to a contemporary reader, depending on whether you agree with some of his premises (e.g. fascism as an attempt to preserve capitalism). However, Germany was already running camps by this time — such as the Dachau concentration camp (opened 1933) — and these were mainly focused on imprisoning political opponents by that point in time (" The camps for political prisoners were also known about by the public: local German newspapers openly reported on the Dachau camp."Himmler sets up Dachau". Birkbeck, University of London.
Nonetheless, Lovecraft still expressed some criticisms towards Marxism and Marxists around this point. In particular we find them in his 1936 letters to Kenneth Sterling. In one sent in September he wrote:
Further, in a letter the next month:
Regarding the ostensible ignorance of Marxists to cultural tendencies presented here by Lovecraft: about this time, the Marxian Frankfurt School had just been emerging. Were Lovecraft to have survived another couple decades, we might have seen some interesting correspondence on these subjects between him and Adorno (whose opinions on music and popular culture might have been just elitist enough for Lovecraft's liking).
==See also==
*Absurdism
*Alien invasion
*Ancient astronauts
*Arthur C. Clarke
*Astrobiology
*Astrology
*Atlantis
*Cryptozoology
*Cthulhu
*Cult
*David Icke
*Demonic possession
*Dream interpretation
*Dysgenics
*European witch-hunts
*Existentialism
*Exotheology
*Extinction event
*Extraterrestrial
*Fungus
*Grimoire
*Human sacrifice
*Insanity
*Lemuria
*List of prominent alien species
*List of predictions of the end of the world 
*Magic
*Maltheism
*Margaret Murray
*Miscegenation
*Mollusc
*Mu
*Mysticism
*Necronomicon
*Neoreactionary movement as a number of its members have taken a great liking to Lovecraft's ideal elite run society.
*New England
*Nibiru
*Nihilism
*Occult
*Pagan survivals
*Planet X
*Polytheism
*Puritans
*Reptilians
*Richard Shaver
*Rods
*Slenderman
*Supernatural
*The Golden Bough
*Theosophy
*Western esotericism
*Witchcraft
*Zecharia Sitchin
==External links==
* The H.P. Lovecraft Archive
* The eBook Lovecraft Collection
* "H.P. Lovecraft" by S. T. Joshi
* The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon
* The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society
* A Virtual Walking Tour of Lovecraft's Providence
* The Genetics of Horror: Sex and Racism in H.P. Lovecraft's Fiction by Bruce Lord
==References==
Category:Antisemites
Category:Atheists
Category:Authors
Category:Racists
Category:Rightists who turned left with age
Category:Sexism
Category:Science fiction
Category:Horror
Category:Socialists