Faust of the Dutch Alt Right group Erkenbrand hosts the long-awaited podcast on H P Lovecraft with myself and best-selling international novelist, raconteur and professional Catholic depressive Ann Sterzinger (below in the t-shirt mentioned in the show).
During the podcast, we discuss Lovecraft's attitudes towards other races, women, masculinity, religion and politics. We also look at wider issues brought up by these themes, including atheism versus Christianity versus Paganism, the role of masculinity in modernity, the influence of politics on art and vice-versa, and the cosmogeny of my penis.
I can't say I like Lovecraft's philosophical perspective on things, which I find somewhat defeatist and overly pessimistic about modernity, but I do like his writing on its own merits. I first heard about him many years ago via Stephen King's books (I think it was 'On Writing'). King refers to Lovecraft as a major influence on his horror writing. The link to Stephen King is somewhat interesting. King is ethnically English like Lovecraft. A recurrent theme for both writers is the idea of civilisation struggling against unseen dark forces. Something about Lovecraft also mentioned in this talk is his embrace of the supernatural and irrational in contrast to the rational and scientific and the journey of his characters from scepticism to acceptance of a preternatural premise in a story. Again, this is similar to what King does.
Lovecraft is an odd character. His philosophy in the real world is often the reverse of the narratives in his creative work - a point I tried to make. He was absolutely a scientific modernist and atheist in real life, regarding religion as mere superstition. Stephen King has not got an original idea in his body.
Yes, you're right. He was totally dismissive of superstition. Maybe his fictional worlds were an escape from what he saw as the inescapable consequences of his real-world views: "terrifying vistas of reality".
Stephen King is a self-confessed hack and, alongside authors such as George R. R. Martin, in my view represents a kind of 'post-modernisation' of American literature, that Lovecraft would have strongly railed against, in which genre writing becomes self-regarding and self-referencing and consciously aims to create a hyper-reality based on motifs of popular culture. I think this is basically down to the influence of TV and film. King's novels are, in effect, just a floury form of screenwriting. It's significant that, in stark contrast to, say, Lovecraft, King has always written entirely for commercial motives and that aspect of his persona as a writer, and how it influences his view of craft, comes across strongly in 'On Writing'. Martin is more complex, in that his ASOFAI series is well-written (at least the first two or three books are), but you detect the vacuity of it all very quickly.
There are similarities between Lovecraft and King, both pulp writers, both created fictional geographies set in New England, though Lovecraft is in an entirely different league, as you rightly imply. I see Lovecraft as a European writer actually and part of that tradition, not American. As I see it, authentic American is found in modernist writers like Steinbeck, Updike, and indeed Stephen King, and also in the vernacular literature of London and Twain, and furthermore in the Transcendentalist tradition of the American Renaissance: Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, etc. All of these are 'modernists' to some extent or another, with King self-referencing modernism under the influence of the great electronic regurgitator.
Excellent talk. I enjoyed this very much.
ReplyDeleteI can't say I like Lovecraft's philosophical perspective on things, which I find somewhat defeatist and overly pessimistic about modernity, but I do like his writing on its own merits. I first heard about him many years ago via Stephen King's books (I think it was 'On Writing'). King refers to Lovecraft as a major influence on his horror writing. The link to Stephen King is somewhat interesting. King is ethnically English like Lovecraft. A recurrent theme for both writers is the idea of civilisation struggling against unseen dark forces. Something about Lovecraft also mentioned in this talk is his embrace of the supernatural and irrational in contrast to the rational and scientific and the journey of his characters from scepticism to acceptance of a preternatural premise in a story. Again, this is similar to what King does.
Lovecraft is an odd character. His philosophy in the real world is often the reverse of the narratives in his creative work - a point I tried to make. He was absolutely a scientific modernist and atheist in real life, regarding religion as mere superstition. Stephen King has not got an original idea in his body.
DeleteYes, you're right. He was totally dismissive of superstition. Maybe his fictional worlds were an escape from what he saw as the inescapable consequences of his real-world views: "terrifying vistas of reality".
DeleteStephen King is a self-confessed hack and, alongside authors such as George R. R. Martin, in my view represents a kind of 'post-modernisation' of American literature, that Lovecraft would have strongly railed against, in which genre writing becomes self-regarding and self-referencing and consciously aims to create a hyper-reality based on motifs of popular culture. I think this is basically down to the influence of TV and film. King's novels are, in effect, just a floury form of screenwriting. It's significant that, in stark contrast to, say, Lovecraft, King has always written entirely for commercial motives and that aspect of his persona as a writer, and how it influences his view of craft, comes across strongly in 'On Writing'. Martin is more complex, in that his ASOFAI series is well-written (at least the first two or three books are), but you detect the vacuity of it all very quickly.
There are similarities between Lovecraft and King, both pulp writers, both created fictional geographies set in New England, though Lovecraft is in an entirely different league, as you rightly imply. I see Lovecraft as a European writer actually and part of that tradition, not American. As I see it, authentic American is found in modernist writers like Steinbeck, Updike, and indeed Stephen King, and also in the vernacular literature of London and Twain, and furthermore in the Transcendentalist tradition of the American Renaissance: Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, etc. All of these are 'modernists' to some extent or another, with King self-referencing modernism under the influence of the great electronic regurgitator.