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Justin Bortnick on Lovecraft Country
Shoggoths in a Segregated America
WHEN DESCRIBING H.P. Lovecraft to friends of mine, I have often jokingly referred to him as “the most famous author you’ve never heard of.” Despite his relative lack of visibility — he’s not read in classrooms, nor will you find any of his books on a bestseller shelf — Lovecraft’s works of horror and science fiction in the early decades of the 20th century have had an outsized influence on popular culture. Everything from films like Alien andPirates of the Caribbean to the music of Metallica and Black Sabbath to writers ranging from Borges to Burroughs have a bit of the existential terror that permeates Lovecraft’s fiction.
Less highly regarded are Lovecraft’s ideas regarding race; a vehement believer in the superiority of white individuals over others, many of his stories were rooted in a fear of immigrants, miscegenation, and mixed ancestry. This mixed legacy has tarnished Lovecraft’s reputation. Even as recently as November of 2015, the administrators of the World Fantasy Award announced that they would no longer be using Lovecraft’s likeness on their award trophies, a bust of whom has been granted to winners for almost 40 years. This was the culmination of a debate that had been raging for most of this decade about how to, and if it was even possible to, separate Lovecraft from his racism. If nothing else, any appreciation of the author must be qualified with a condemnation of his racism.
Noted Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi condemned the move, writing that it was “craven yielding to the worst sort of political correctness and an explicit acceptance of the crude, ignorant and tendentious slanders against Lovecraft propagated by a small but noisy band of agitators.” Indeed, it seemed to ignore the evidence that Lovecraft had begun to abandon the racist views he held as a young man, becoming more tolerant and understanding of difference in his older age. Joshi also pointed out that criticisms of racism could be extended to individuals such as Bram Stoker (Dracula) and John W. Campbell, Jr. (The Thing), and yet the awards bearing their names have not capitulated on the value of their namesake’s art. While the decision was defended by others, such as Lenika Cruz, an associate editor at The Atlantic,the battle over Lovecraft’s racism has not yet concluded.
It is perhaps odd, then, that Matt Ruff’s new novel, Lovecraft Country, is set in Jim Crow America, long after Lovecraft’s death in 1937. Despite drawing the title from a term coined by Keith Herber to describe the fictional New England landscape in which Lovecraft set many of his stories, Ruff’s novel takes place primarily in Chicago; though there are excursions afield to locales both terrestrial and celestial, very little of the story is actually set in the eponymous Lovecraft Country. Nor do Ruff’s characters resemble the typical Lovecraftian protagonist — white, male, and with antiquarian tendencies. Atticus Turner is a black man and a veteran of the Korean War. Make no mistake: this is a novel about racism, told from the point of view of African Americans, written by a white man in the generic tradition of another, problematic white writer. It would be very easy to fall into traps of appropriation, but on balance Ruff avoids these pitfalls more than he stumbles into them. ...
https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/shoggoths-in-a-segregated-america
Shoggoths in a Segregated America
WHEN DESCRIBING H.P. Lovecraft to friends of mine, I have often jokingly referred to him as “the most famous author you’ve never heard of.” Despite his relative lack of visibility — he’s not read in classrooms, nor will you find any of his books on a bestseller shelf — Lovecraft’s works of horror and science fiction in the early decades of the 20th century have had an outsized influence on popular culture. Everything from films like Alien andPirates of the Caribbean to the music of Metallica and Black Sabbath to writers ranging from Borges to Burroughs have a bit of the existential terror that permeates Lovecraft’s fiction.
Less highly regarded are Lovecraft’s ideas regarding race; a vehement believer in the superiority of white individuals over others, many of his stories were rooted in a fear of immigrants, miscegenation, and mixed ancestry. This mixed legacy has tarnished Lovecraft’s reputation. Even as recently as November of 2015, the administrators of the World Fantasy Award announced that they would no longer be using Lovecraft’s likeness on their award trophies, a bust of whom has been granted to winners for almost 40 years. This was the culmination of a debate that had been raging for most of this decade about how to, and if it was even possible to, separate Lovecraft from his racism. If nothing else, any appreciation of the author must be qualified with a condemnation of his racism.
Noted Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi condemned the move, writing that it was “craven yielding to the worst sort of political correctness and an explicit acceptance of the crude, ignorant and tendentious slanders against Lovecraft propagated by a small but noisy band of agitators.” Indeed, it seemed to ignore the evidence that Lovecraft had begun to abandon the racist views he held as a young man, becoming more tolerant and understanding of difference in his older age. Joshi also pointed out that criticisms of racism could be extended to individuals such as Bram Stoker (Dracula) and John W. Campbell, Jr. (The Thing), and yet the awards bearing their names have not capitulated on the value of their namesake’s art. While the decision was defended by others, such as Lenika Cruz, an associate editor at The Atlantic,the battle over Lovecraft’s racism has not yet concluded.
It is perhaps odd, then, that Matt Ruff’s new novel, Lovecraft Country, is set in Jim Crow America, long after Lovecraft’s death in 1937. Despite drawing the title from a term coined by Keith Herber to describe the fictional New England landscape in which Lovecraft set many of his stories, Ruff’s novel takes place primarily in Chicago; though there are excursions afield to locales both terrestrial and celestial, very little of the story is actually set in the eponymous Lovecraft Country. Nor do Ruff’s characters resemble the typical Lovecraftian protagonist — white, male, and with antiquarian tendencies. Atticus Turner is a black man and a veteran of the Korean War. Make no mistake: this is a novel about racism, told from the point of view of African Americans, written by a white man in the generic tradition of another, problematic white writer. It would be very easy to fall into traps of appropriation, but on balance Ruff avoids these pitfalls more than he stumbles into them. ...
https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/shoggoths-in-a-segregated-america