Whenever I get a bit despondent with modern stories I always find myself hypnotically drawn back to the unholy trinity of Lovecraft-Howard-Smith in ever revolving rotation. Always reinvigorates my nervous system.😮
Did you read my mind?! I was just thinking about this exact topic! After going through his stories in chronological order, it seemed that he was starting to sort of 'face his fear' through his stories, not only with how relatable his creatures started to become, but with how he started out with everything being 'unnameable' or 'beyond comprehension', and yet by the end he's so descriptive that you can completely visualize every detail of these aliens. Great video, as always!
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 By the way, I was thinking about how you mentioned being at a loss as to how to make Clark Ashton Smith videos, so what about making videos about each world he wrote about? You know like Zothique, Hyperborea, Posieidonis, Averoigne...and then maybe one about his sci-works(the kinda stuff in the old Xiccarph paperback). You could, I guess, describe the world and list what stories are in each. I hope that helps you in some way!
Let me say, as a hardcore Lovecraft fan, I thoroughly enjoyed the way you approached this brilliant writer. So many people today (most of them very young, and very naive) want to cancel Lovecraft because of his racism and xenophobia, without making any attempt to understand where it came from, or the times that he lived in. And as you so rightly pointed out, in the case of Jack London and many others, these skeletons in the closet are pretty much ignored. Lovecraft was, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest writers the Human Race ever produced, and I am so furious when I see people disrespecting his genius out of ignorance and intellectual laziness. Thank you SO much for presenting a really excellent analysis of his work.
I have missed Mythos Mondays. H.P. Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors, along with Algernon Blackwood. Such great stories. I look forward to hearing more in the future and joining in on the read-along.
As always yet another learning moment for this guy...I bought my first HP Lovecraft because of your enthusiasm for this guy...and since then I've bought 3 more books...amazing stuff love it.. Great video Mike..learnt a lot..thank you
At the mountains of madness is my favorite of his works. I'm really hoping Guillermo De Toro can at some point get that adapted to film, as I believe only he can do the story the justice deserved. Also Dark Horse Manga have published Gou Tanabe and his adaptions of some of Lovecraft's best work, I know, Manga right? But check it out, its not the style of manga you normally see, its really great stuff!! Finally, at some point Michael I would like to see you talk about "A means to freedom", volumes 1 and 2 which collect the letters of correspondence between HPL and REH. Any fan of these giants of literature should have those in their collections. Thanks for all the awesome content!
It seems the fashion to hate and then love him is a permanent cycle. But I suspect he will still be spoken about and loved in another 100 years unlike most of his modern critics.
Michael, you have been getting me intrigued.I had heard of those who 'grew up on ' Lovecraft and were influenced, but generally, I have heard that they 'grew beyond him' and those who tret his works with outright disdain. Well, like in all matters,I must decide for myself, and you are the catalyst. Thanks again.
HPL is for me one of the greats of fantasy and weird fiction and these are the elements I read his works for; and CAS is close behind, so I'm really looking forward to how you deal with Smith.
I got up the courage to write Mr. Joshi to ask him about the possibility of an audio version of his edited letters of Lovecraft. Joshi, who was very kind even to respond to me, told me that it was up to publishers. I was really let down. I'm still going to read the letters, it's just going to take me a super long time. I can't help wondering if in his letters he talks about his mother, how she wouldn't touch out of fear of his contracting a life-threatening illness, as well as other things that give his work a decidedly dehumanizing treatment of all humans (the human race as a whole being little less than microbes in comparison to other lifeforms). Great video, Mr. Vaughan. Thanks for sharing.
Mythos Mondays, you say. Just let me make myself comfortable here on this rugose couch with some suitably patrician beverage, and ponder the imponderables so inevitably and even deliciously raised by the considerations of the further reaches of space, time, and beyond. You’ve nailed, I think, about Lovecraft making his feats so integral to his stories. “Grandmother was black!l” “It’s seafood!” And so on.
Thanks for your channel. Did you ever do a review of Alan Moore’s Providence? Id love to hear your take. Also, you would probably greatly enjoy the Voluminous podcast where they read and discuss Lovecraft’s letters. And what about a “crossover” review of the books that highlight the letters between Lovecraft and Howard?
Poe, Lovecraft, King who's next? Also I think you need to put the doors back up so when the maniac who left the knife comes back he can't get back in ...unless of course YOU'RE the maniac! 😱
I very much like most of Lovecrafts stories and tend to go back to them even if i have read them before - i particularly like the one called The Hound as it is so haunting and atmospheric
I think you should do something for HPL like you will be doing for Conan in November. It's not quite the same, since you are taking only one REH character. Maybe just The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, or another of his longer works.
I wish people would stop pretending The Horror at Red Hook is a bad story. Everyone is too afraid of the "much racism" in it, but if you get passed that it's a fantastic story. A little odd, even for Lovecraft, but the imagery and overall vibe is absolutely on point.
To some theories of belief, we develop our deepest beliefs at a young age, and those are the hardest to uproot later in life. We are all a mix of light and dark. Omnis cum tenebris. The truth is often found in the shadows.
So you mentioned covering Lovecraft adjacent works with Mythos Mondays, do you plan on talking about William Hope Hodgson or Algernon Blackwood, more specifically the former's Carnacki and the latter's John Silence stories?
He sounds like a strange but interesting chap. I'll ignore that dislike of Italians thing 😉 Seems like he improved as a writer once he dropped the Fox news persona.
A lot of Lovecraft's writing is like a fear reaction to Einstein's theory of relativity, and other modern scientific theories. He uses the word "Non-Euclidean" a lot to convey wrongness. His fiction I think would be impossible to write as we have it without Darwin's theory of evolution. He aspired to become a professional astronomer, but flunked high school algebra, so that became impossible. He could have become a volunteer at the local observatory, but inexplicably didn't. An irony is that Lovecraft was born into money, and in THE WHISPERER IN THE DARK he sort of predicts the discovery of Pluto, and a poor person without formal qualifications, born without many of HPL's advantages, Clyde Tombaugh, got a menial job at an observatory and actually discovered the planet. Lovecraft had, near the end of his life, a German landlady who went on a holiday to Hitler's Germany, and came back traumatised. She set him right about Hitler. Also near the end he wrote some sort of political manifesto, REPETITIONS ON THE TIMES, which was a big endorsement of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, but it was never published.
There's one thing that most people miss when it comes to Lovecraft, which are his letters, especially his last letters before he died. If you read them carefully you see that Lovecraft was changing from the old, conservative, racist views of his youth to a more progressive and tolerant perspective. He supported the campaign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. He even considered himself a socialist. His views were evolving, and who knows what they would have been had he not died relatively young. Also what kind of a fascist/bigot marries a person of Jewish descent and associates with a homosexual. The problem is that some people merely react to the racist label and leave it at that, instead of doing some research and diving deeper into aspects of Lovecraft's life which were complicated and not totally of a "black and white" dichotomy. If you want to know the real Lovecraft you have to read his letters. Yes, there are some ugly things in them, some are very difficult to read, especially for someone with modern sensibilities, but those are mostly the letters from his early life. Gradually s progression can be detected. So, I repeat, it's not all "black white". I do believe like Michele Houellebecq pointed out, that Lovecraft's art of cosmic horror is rooted in his early racism, and the anxiety it stirred him. Sometimes the greatest art is created from the greatest fears, of the 'other' and of the unknown.
Lovecraft is also my favourite writer, his foibles I can ignore. He was such a complex character, and I find him endlessly fascinating. Modern writing is so copy and paste that I find myself going back to Lovecraft, Machen, Poe, Blackwood. But Lovecrafts work just fires up my imagination.
Thank you for pointing out how overstated HPL's "reclusiveness" was. It's a funny recluse who travelled as much as he actually did... As for the marriage, he himself said that collapsed mostly for financial reasons: moving to a new city, being unable to find regular work, Mrs HPL then having to relocate herself, etc. If only he'd taken the editorship of Weird Tales when it was offered to him... I actually kind of like "He", and "Horror at Red Hook" at least gave rise to Victor LaValle's Ballad of Black Tom, but "The Street" is indeed quite possibly the worst thing he ever wrote (tied with "Poetry and the Gods" for me). His political transformation through the 30s is an underappreciated part of his biography. He did speak near the end of his life of taking a long sabbatical from writing like he did between 1908 and 1917, which would've brought him back around 1945... and what might he and his work have been like if he'd lived through WW2 and into the atomic age and the anti-communist hysteria of that period.
I think the truth is his marriage wouldn’t have worked out anyway. I’m selfishly glad he didn’t take the Weird Tales job. He might have written less fiction if he had.
I think he would have ended up getting fired from the job. He would have rejected most of the tails that magazine usually published. He was no kind of businessman, and could never get to grips with the realities of commercial pulp magazine publishing.
According to Wikipedia, his politics were all over the map. He swung from far right to far left and from elitist to socialist. At one point he even labeled himself as a fascist. He started as a Nazi sympathizer and moved to Nazi opponent shortly before he passed away. I would say he really did not know what he believed.
As far as the racism is concerned it should be stressed that the racist parts of eugenics were widely accepted and even viewed as scientifically acceptable by many people, so his views were understandable in the context of his society and don’t make him the monster some people paint him as. BTW you might find Jim Moons analysis of The Shadow Over Innsmouth interesting - it’s on the Hypnogoria podcast three or four years ago.
I keep trying to get into Lovecraft but I just can’t get through the purple prose. The ideas sound awesome, but I prefer crisper style of Howard. Even Ligotti liked to gothic-it-up with ornate language but not as dense.
What I find most interesting is that all the racists I've known today grew up not racist and they all claim it was exposure to other races that made them racist. Odd to see such an inversion.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 I thought this once too, but ironically the most racists areas are also the most diverse. At least from the statistical maps I've seen. Strange.
I'm glad Lovecrafts work survived because he's an excellent author, but at the same time he was a terrible person and I'm also glad he died mostly alone and in poverty because of it. Even towards the end of his life he was still talking about how Hitler had the right idea he just wasn't targeting the right people. A proponent of eugenics among other things, the man was still racist when he died and no amount of mellowing out of his more extreme views can make up for what he already put out into the world.
Lovecraft was ahead of his time in some matters, but in all others he was a man of his times. His attitudes and racism were very common among white men of the time, particularly privileged males of Anglo-Saxon background. He was brought up in an extremely sheltered way of life. He had a monster of a mother who poisoned his mind with certain snobbish beliefs. If he died lonely and in poverty, it was because of economics, not because of his racism. A lot of racists were and are very rich men. HPL lived in the Great Depression, and a lot of non-racists died in poverty. Winston Churchill, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Bertrand Russell supported eugenics. I believe at one time HG Wells suggested that one day all the non-white peoples of the world would have to be euthanised because they would never be able catch with white civilization. He was not a terrible person. By all accounts, if he was your friend, he was the best you could ever have. He was a prolific letter writer who led a very active social life through his correspondence. His refusal to bend to all social demands has made him a hero in the eyes of some. His early death was a great misfortune to genre literature, and he did not live to gain the rewards he deserved.
@@rondemkiw4492 Being good friends to people doesn't exclude you being a terrible person, I'm sure all the worst people in history had good friends. I also think anyone who supported eugenics is an awful person Lovecraft included. More over Lovecraft was ideologically racist to a level that exceeded most peoples beliefs at the time. Not being a racist isn't just some daft social quirk or shibboleth, it's a basic tenet of being a good person. I've already said I really enjoy his work I think it's excellent writing for the most part but the man himself held awful beliefs, I don't care where he got them or how many letters he wrote it's irrelevant. Great work can come from awful people. And apologist whataboutery won't change who he was.
You should be deeply ashamed of yourself for saying you are happy he died alone and in poverty. He was a genius and a good man, which is why leftists want to "cancel" him -- they have a desire to exterminate all that is good and intelligent in the world. Why would you wish a terrible death on someone just for their views? I can understand wishing it for their actions, but Lovecraft never beat anyone up; he merely _thought_ things. I think you are a disgrace to the Lovecraft fandom if you say you are happy he died alone and in poverty. He has my deepest sympathies. Why should we as fans apologise for his views? I greatly respect Arkham Reporter (the biggest Lovecraftian RUclips channel) for countering the leftist attempts to destroy the Old Gentleman from Providence, and moreover for actually praising Lovecraft rather than insulting him. Look at any article written about Lovecraft in the past few years. If you can find a single one that does not spend twenty paragraphs on "racism" and "xenophobia" (as opposed to two paragraphs on everything else), I will pay you. What next? Reparations to the Deep Ones for striking their city with submarine missiles?
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Whenever I get a bit despondent with modern stories I always find myself hypnotically drawn back to the unholy trinity of Lovecraft-Howard-Smith in ever revolving rotation. Always reinvigorates my nervous system.😮
I feel the same! Something about these guys… maybe add Machen and Hodgson!
Did you read my mind?! I was just thinking about this exact topic! After going through his stories in chronological order, it seemed that he was starting to sort of 'face his fear' through his stories, not only with how relatable his creatures started to become, but with how he started out with everything being 'unnameable' or 'beyond comprehension', and yet by the end he's so descriptive that you can completely visualize every detail of these aliens. Great video, as always!
Thanks! Yes, it is interesting how his monsters went from indescribable to vividly described.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 By the way, I was thinking about how you mentioned being at a loss as to how to make Clark Ashton Smith videos, so what about making videos about each world he wrote about? You know like Zothique, Hyperborea, Posieidonis, Averoigne...and then maybe one about his sci-works(the kinda stuff in the old Xiccarph paperback). You could, I guess, describe the world and list what stories are in each. I hope that helps you in some way!
Interesting take regarding his incorporation of his prejudices into the monsters. I’m really enjoying my exploration of Lovecraft so far.
Let me say, as a hardcore Lovecraft fan, I thoroughly enjoyed the way you approached this brilliant writer. So many people today (most of them very young, and very naive) want to cancel Lovecraft because of his racism and xenophobia, without making any attempt to understand where it came from, or the times that he lived in. And as you so rightly pointed out, in the case of Jack London and many others, these skeletons in the closet are pretty much ignored. Lovecraft was, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest writers the Human Race ever produced, and I am so furious when I see people disrespecting his genius out of ignorance and intellectual laziness. Thank you SO much for presenting a really excellent analysis of his work.
I have missed Mythos Mondays. H.P. Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors, along with Algernon Blackwood. Such great stories. I look forward to hearing more in the future and joining in on the read-along.
Wonderful presentation, Mr. Vaughan. Very insightful and intelligent. Fascinating. Thank you.
As always yet another learning moment for this guy...I bought my first HP Lovecraft because of your enthusiasm for this guy...and since then I've bought 3 more books...amazing stuff love it.. Great video Mike..learnt a lot..thank you
Perfect setting for a Lovecraftian video. The only thing missing is Roger peeking out from behind the door.
Roger stayed at The Manor, causing his usual trouble.
At the mountains of madness is my favorite of his works. I'm really hoping Guillermo De Toro can at some point get that adapted to film, as I believe only he can do the story the justice deserved.
Also Dark Horse Manga have published Gou Tanabe and his adaptions of some of Lovecraft's best work, I know, Manga right? But check it out, its not the style of manga you normally see, its really great stuff!!
Finally, at some point Michael I would like to see you talk about "A means to freedom", volumes 1 and 2 which collect the letters of correspondence between HPL and REH. Any fan of these giants of literature should have those in their collections.
Thanks for all the awesome content!
Yes, I need to get to those letters.
It seems the fashion to hate and then love him is a permanent cycle.
But I suspect he will still be spoken about and loved in another 100 years unlike most of his modern critics.
Michael, you have been getting me intrigued.I had heard of those who 'grew up on ' Lovecraft and were influenced, but generally, I have heard that they 'grew beyond him' and those who tret his works with outright disdain. Well, like in all matters,I must decide for myself, and you are the catalyst. Thanks again.
Michael, Terrific presentation and very thoughtful. Good job! I like this behind the scenes look at HP.
Ive only been reading Lovecraft for few years, but I find him fascinating. Id like to join you, later this year.
I immediately bust out laughing at the knife prop 😂
Yup. I first noticed it when he did his video on REH a day or two ago. It wasn't as visible then.
HPL is for me one of the greats of fantasy and weird fiction and these are the elements I read his works for; and CAS is close behind, so I'm really looking forward to how you deal with Smith.
I got up the courage to write Mr. Joshi to ask him about the possibility of an audio version of his edited letters of Lovecraft. Joshi, who was very kind even to respond to me, told me that it was up to publishers. I was really let down. I'm still going to read the letters, it's just going to take me a super long time. I can't help wondering if in his letters he talks about his mother, how she wouldn't touch out of fear of his contracting a life-threatening illness, as well as other things that give his work a decidedly dehumanizing treatment of all humans (the human race as a whole being little less than microbes in comparison to other lifeforms). Great video, Mr. Vaughan. Thanks for sharing.
Mythos Mondays, you say. Just let me make myself comfortable here on this rugose couch with some suitably patrician beverage, and ponder the imponderables so inevitably and even deliciously raised by the considerations of the further reaches of space, time, and beyond.
You’ve nailed, I think, about Lovecraft making his feats so integral to his stories. “Grandmother was black!l” “It’s seafood!” And so on.
Thanks for your channel. Did you ever do a review of Alan Moore’s Providence? Id love to hear your take. Also, you would probably greatly enjoy the Voluminous podcast where they read and discuss Lovecraft’s letters. And what about a “crossover” review of the books that highlight the letters between Lovecraft and Howard?
I haven’t read Providence yet. I will definitely be doing that crossover eventually.
Poe, Lovecraft, King who's next? Also I think you need to put the doors back up so when the maniac who left the knife comes back he can't get back in ...unless of course YOU'RE the maniac! 😱
Could be…
Great video Michael! I wasn’t aware that he loosened up as he aged. Makes sense, but no one really ever talks much about that. Thanks for this.
I very much like most of Lovecrafts stories and tend to go back to them even if i have read them before - i particularly like the one called The Hound as it is so haunting and atmospheric
Yeah, I like The Hound.
I can see some great videos coming ... 😊
I think you should do something for HPL like you will be doing for Conan in November. It's not quite the same, since you are taking only one REH character. Maybe just The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, or another of his longer works.
Well, Robert E. Howard wrote a lot more than Lovecraft did. I like to read all Lovecraft’s work when I get back to him.
I’m always surprised on how popular his works are in foreign countries like France 🇫🇷 given his stories
I wish people would stop pretending The Horror at Red Hook is a bad story. Everyone is too afraid of the "much racism" in it, but if you get passed that it's a fantastic story. A little odd, even for Lovecraft, but the imagery and overall vibe is absolutely on point.
I’m not pretending. Red Hook is, overall, pretty bad.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 yeah, well, that's just like, your opinion, man
Very insightful! An author I still need to try.
To some theories of belief, we develop our deepest beliefs at a young age, and those are the hardest to uproot later in life. We are all a mix of light and dark. Omnis cum tenebris. The truth is often found in the shadows.
❤ HPL
So you mentioned covering Lovecraft adjacent works with Mythos Mondays, do you plan on talking about William Hope Hodgson or Algernon Blackwood, more specifically the former's Carnacki and the latter's John Silence stories?
This would be great MKV!!!
Yes, definitely.
I have another companion volume as well as that one called Eldritch Tales. Both good .
That is a good volume! I have that one too.
Lovecraft videos >>>
He sounds like a strange but interesting chap. I'll ignore that dislike of Italians thing 😉 Seems like he improved as a writer once he dropped the Fox news persona.
Ha! True!
Excellent meditation on some of the problematic aspects of H P Lovecraft.
Very interesting discussion Michael. I really enjoyed it!
A lot of Lovecraft's writing is like a fear reaction to Einstein's theory of relativity, and other modern scientific theories. He uses the word "Non-Euclidean" a lot to convey wrongness. His fiction I think would be impossible to write as we have it without Darwin's theory of evolution. He aspired to become a professional astronomer, but flunked high school algebra, so that became impossible. He could have become a volunteer at the local observatory, but inexplicably didn't.
An irony is that Lovecraft was born into money, and in THE WHISPERER IN THE DARK he sort of predicts the discovery of Pluto, and a poor person without formal qualifications, born without many of HPL's advantages, Clyde Tombaugh, got a menial job at an observatory and actually discovered the planet.
Lovecraft had, near the end of his life, a German landlady who went on a holiday to Hitler's Germany, and came back traumatised. She set him right about Hitler. Also near the end he wrote some sort of political manifesto, REPETITIONS ON THE TIMES, which was a big endorsement of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, but it was never published.
Great video! Thank you for the fresh insights into Lovecraft, the man!
There's one thing that most people miss when it comes to Lovecraft, which are his letters, especially his last letters before he died. If you read them carefully you see that Lovecraft was changing from the old, conservative, racist views of his youth to a more progressive and tolerant perspective. He supported the campaign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. He even considered himself a socialist. His views were evolving, and who knows what they would have been had he not died relatively young. Also what kind of a fascist/bigot marries a person of Jewish descent and associates with a homosexual. The problem is that some people merely react to the racist label and leave it at that, instead of doing some research and diving deeper into aspects of Lovecraft's life which were complicated and not totally of a "black and white" dichotomy. If you want to know the real Lovecraft you have to read his letters. Yes, there are some ugly things in them, some are very difficult to read, especially for someone with modern sensibilities, but those are mostly the letters from his early life. Gradually s progression can be detected. So, I repeat, it's not all "black white". I do believe like Michele Houellebecq pointed out, that Lovecraft's art of cosmic horror is rooted in his early racism, and the anxiety it stirred him. Sometimes the greatest art is created from the greatest fears, of the 'other' and of the unknown.
Interesting video, Michael. I've not read Lovecraft. Is there one work you would recommend for the unitiated?
The Call of Cthulhu would give you a good idea about his writing.
Great video Michael
Lovecraft is also my favourite writer, his foibles I can ignore. He was such a complex character, and I find him endlessly fascinating.
Modern writing is so copy and paste that I find myself going back
to Lovecraft, Machen, Poe, Blackwood. But Lovecrafts work just fires up my imagination.
Do not look up HP Lovecraft's cat's name
The cat belonged to his grandfather, who named it.
@@telstar9367 that part I did not know.
Or 'the dam busters' dogs name...
Thank you for pointing out how overstated HPL's "reclusiveness" was. It's a funny recluse who travelled as much as he actually did...
As for the marriage, he himself said that collapsed mostly for financial reasons: moving to a new city, being unable to find regular work, Mrs HPL then having to relocate herself, etc. If only he'd taken the editorship of Weird Tales when it was offered to him...
I actually kind of like "He", and "Horror at Red Hook" at least gave rise to Victor LaValle's Ballad of Black Tom, but "The Street" is indeed quite possibly the worst thing he ever wrote (tied with "Poetry and the Gods" for me). His political transformation through the 30s is an underappreciated part of his biography. He did speak near the end of his life of taking a long sabbatical from writing like he did between 1908 and 1917, which would've brought him back around 1945... and what might he and his work have been like if he'd lived through WW2 and into the atomic age and the anti-communist hysteria of that period.
I think the truth is his marriage wouldn’t have worked out anyway. I’m selfishly glad he didn’t take the Weird Tales job. He might have written less fiction if he had.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 but how fascinating weird tales would have been with HPL at the helm! We would probably get a lot more CAS!
I think he would have ended up getting fired from the job. He would have rejected most of the tails that magazine usually published.
He was no kind of businessman, and could never get to grips with the realities of commercial pulp magazine publishing.
According to Wikipedia, his politics were all over the map. He swung from far right to far left and from elitist to socialist. At one point he even labeled himself as a fascist. He started as a Nazi sympathizer and moved to Nazi opponent shortly before he passed away. I would say he really did not know what he believed.
I think he did. He just readjusted when he realized he was wrong. I wish he was like that about more things, actually.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 Whatever the case, if he were alive today, nobody would be interviewing him on TV for his opinions on Donald Trump's tweets.
Good
As far as the racism is concerned it should be stressed that the racist parts of eugenics were widely accepted and even viewed as scientifically acceptable by many people, so his views were understandable in the context of his society and don’t make him the monster some people paint him as.
BTW you might find Jim Moons analysis of The Shadow Over Innsmouth interesting - it’s on the Hypnogoria podcast three or four years ago.
I keep trying to get into Lovecraft but I just can’t get through the purple prose. The ideas sound awesome, but I prefer crisper style of Howard. Even Ligotti liked to gothic-it-up with ornate language but not as dense.
What I find most interesting is that all the racists I've known today grew up not racist and they all claim it was exposure to other races that made them racist. Odd to see such an inversion.
Your experience is unusual. Exposure to different races more often weakens racism. But then these racists you know might just be particularly stupid.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 I thought this once too, but ironically the most racists areas are also the most diverse. At least from the statistical maps I've seen. Strange.
Eccentric ! That's a understatement. A Card carrying "Tory" with a attitude of "God Save the King". Racist? His wife was Jewish !
I'm glad Lovecrafts work survived because he's an excellent author, but at the same time he was a terrible person and I'm also glad he died mostly alone and in poverty because of it. Even towards the end of his life he was still talking about how Hitler had the right idea he just wasn't targeting the right people. A proponent of eugenics among other things, the man was still racist when he died and no amount of mellowing out of his more extreme views can make up for what he already put out into the world.
Lovecraft was ahead of his time in some matters, but in all others he was a man of his times. His attitudes and racism were very common among white men of the time, particularly privileged males of Anglo-Saxon background. He was brought up in an extremely sheltered way of life. He had a monster of a mother who poisoned his mind with certain snobbish beliefs.
If he died lonely and in poverty, it was because of economics, not because of his racism. A lot of racists were and are very rich men. HPL lived in the Great Depression, and a lot of non-racists died in poverty. Winston Churchill, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Bertrand Russell supported eugenics. I believe at one time HG Wells suggested that one day all the non-white peoples of the world would have to be euthanised because they would never be able catch with white civilization.
He was not a terrible person. By all accounts, if he was your friend, he was the best you could ever have. He was a prolific letter writer who led a very active social life through his correspondence. His refusal to bend to all social demands has made him a hero in the eyes of some. His early death was a great misfortune to genre literature, and he did not live to gain the rewards he deserved.
@@rondemkiw4492 Being good friends to people doesn't exclude you being a terrible person, I'm sure all the worst people in history had good friends.
I also think anyone who supported eugenics is an awful person Lovecraft included. More over Lovecraft was ideologically racist to a level that exceeded most peoples beliefs at the time.
Not being a racist isn't just some daft social quirk or shibboleth, it's a basic tenet of being a good person.
I've already said I really enjoy his work I think it's excellent writing for the most part but the man himself held awful beliefs, I don't care where he got them or how many letters he wrote it's irrelevant. Great work can come from awful people. And apologist whataboutery won't change who he was.
@@rondemkiw4492Excellent overall view of Lovecraft the man. I totally agree.
You should be deeply ashamed of yourself for saying you are happy he died alone and in poverty. He was a genius and a good man, which is why leftists want to "cancel" him -- they have a desire to exterminate all that is good and intelligent in the world. Why would you wish a terrible death on someone just for their views? I can understand wishing it for their actions, but Lovecraft never beat anyone up; he merely _thought_ things. I think you are a disgrace to the Lovecraft fandom if you say you are happy he died alone and in poverty. He has my deepest sympathies. Why should we as fans apologise for his views? I greatly respect Arkham Reporter (the biggest Lovecraftian RUclips channel) for countering the leftist attempts to destroy the Old Gentleman from Providence, and moreover for actually praising Lovecraft rather than insulting him. Look at any article written about Lovecraft in the past few years. If you can find a single one that does not spend twenty paragraphs on "racism" and "xenophobia" (as opposed to two paragraphs on everything else), I will pay you. What next? Reparations to the Deep Ones for striking their city with submarine missiles?
@@TheNineteenthCentury lol k