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Maybe Lovecraft wasn't as talented as people think?
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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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Can we cut him some slack about what he named his cat?
No, we can excuse lack of refinement in talent, but not racism.
I love Lovecraft's work, but fuck is he incredibly racist.
Lovecraft's racism is very much a product of fear, not racial superiority. Dude was extraordinarily terrified of everything remotely foreign. It's why "strange creatures that are vaguely human but completely incomprehensible" is the generic terror in his stories.
In that sense, I find the motivations for his racism far less terrible than the motivations a racial supremacist has.
Its a bit of both. He definitely believed in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race. There is no excuse for it, but there is a pitiable aspect to the part of Lovecrafts racism that is rooted in fear. Like Fucking chill Howard, its just a Welshman.
I agree. I just like telling people what he named his cat so they'll know what a racist he was.
That said, Cool Air is a very good short story.
I mean if they have read some of his stories, it should be pretty obvious he was pretty fucking racist. The cat thing is a fun meme but if anyone has read at least call of Cthulhu the work most people know about its pretty on the nose. Every human antagonist is either black or a foreigner and he is pretty blatant about it. Hell don't get me started on Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (or The White Ape), that one is just so funny with how bloody racist it is because the conclusion is so absurd, you can't take it serious.
and xenophobic... and a mamma's boy
Mama's boy should not be undersold here. His mother was vile and was directly the reason he was afraid of pretty much everything.
He might have actually been the greatest coward of all time. Yeah, that cowardice meant he held a lot of shitty opinions about the world, but it was the exact kinda experience with endless fear that could create a new horror genre.
His racism is honestly the most horrifying part of his work.
Like there's some good stuff there, but it's the extreme racism that really gives me the heebie jeebies that make me put the books down and take a breather.
Oh my goodness, yes! One of the parts in Herbert West - Reanimator made me nauseous.
Yeah it does make it a bit hard to listen to those audiobooks in the car...
Unrelated but you just said "but fuck".
Lovecraft's racism is what I call "hilarious racism", if you'll pardon the term. I've only ever thought that in connection with HP. He was very much a product of his times, as we all are. Eugenics was all the rage, and you can pick that out in his works.
Lovecraft wasn't merely racist against non-whites, he was racist against anyone who wasn't of the "right stock". He might snob you if you were a white man, living in Rhode Island, of English or German descent, but came from the wrong family tree. LOL, this guy rated humans like dog breeders rate bloodlines. OG Playa Hater's Ball.
And speaking of his times, look at when he wrote. We were just discovering how incomprehensibly monstrous the solar system was, how big the Milky Way was, just then understanding that we lived in a galaxy. And we didn't know there were others. FFS, Pluto wasn't discovered until 1930.
Anyway, well worth reading his complete works. Good shit. Grab a copy off me.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KLBK1QQPc5ZuKm6nlveswoWKGBI-Hjeo&usp=drive_fs
There is a torrent for the audiobooks, narrated by Wayne June (the narrator from Darkest Dungeon).
Wayne Junes reading Lovecraft is a match made in heaven. I strongly recommend giving it a try
Your description makes me think of Pierce Hawthorne's father in Community.
Reminds me of that big racist guy in Disco Elysium.
When I got that side quest to internalize the racist shit he's spouting I lost it. What a game.
Edit: fuck, you just reminded me of the horribly racist 7'2" Dutch exchange student. The way he goes on to justify his racism is very similar to the guy at Disco Elysium.
That part was hilarious. It's so good that you can play as someone who can make all that racist shit make sense in your head lol.
I'm curious about the 7'2" Dutch exchange student. I must have missed that story.
Nope. But that's for moral reasons unrelated to criticisms of his on-the-nose sorcerer's name.
Nah, his racism is well documented. Though if we want to talk about the cat in particular, it's not known if he named it himself, when it went missing he was only 14.
But he was fine re-using the name in The Rats in the Walls, so if he didn't name it, he was very fond of it.
Yeah, safe to say he didn't have an issue with the racist name.
Not that it matters at this point, but I saw somewhere that he had remorse for his racism later in life. Is this true? I have never seen anything to show it but I haven't saught it out either.
It's kinda funny how some of my favorite board games are based upon the setting. I love that they are heavy with diversity. It makes me think of Stephen King's writing book, he says a story is no longer yours once it's out there.
I'm glad Lovecraft made what he did, and that it's so free tooled today. I think one day the Wizarding World will be the same (I refuse to keep calling the whole thing Harry Potter).
He became less racist later in life, but didn't, to my knowledge, express remorse for his previous racism.
Keep in mind he died at 46, and at best went from "extremely racist" to "very racist." His political views change, and I have always had a bit of a chuckle on his original assumptions:
Wow I was going to post a spoiler of the cat's name but nvm