I guess I'm not an H. P. Lovecraft fan...

[Le Noir Faineant]

Nearly all horror is.

The 70s witches movies, an answer to emancipaction.
The 80s slashers, part of the Reaganesque machismo movement.

It wasn't before the 90s that main stream horror became at least somewhat sophisticated; I personally think it was through computer games that the bar was raised.

Lovecraft is pretty readable, compared to others of his time. Actually, and that is thanks to you guys here and at DF, I like his work more and more, the older I get.

[Nerelas]

It's tough to read Lovecraft anymore since I now understand so much of his "horror" was an expression of the "horror" of having to see blacks and Jews in his beloved New England.

That's incredibly simplistic (which is no surprise coming from you), and probably inaccurate. I doubt HPL saw more than a half dozen "blacks" in New England in his entire life (probably some during his year or so in NYC), and he married a Jew and was friends with several. No doubt "The Horror at Red Hook" had much to do with immigrant-inspired xenophobia, but to reduce all of his work to racism is just willfully ignorant.

[thedungeondelver]

It's tough to read Lovecraft anymore since I now understand so much of his "horror" was an expression of the "horror" of having to see blacks and Jews in his beloved New England.

That's incredibly simplistic (which is no surprise coming from you), and probably inaccurate. I doubt HPL saw more than a half dozen "blacks" in New England in his entire life (probably some during his year or so in NYC), and he married a Jew and was friends with several. No doubt "The Horror at Red Hook" had much to do with immigrant-inspired xenophobia, but to reduce all of his work to racism is just willfully ignorant.

"That the maintenance of civilisation today rests with that magnificent Teutonic stock which is represented alike by the two hotly contending rivals, England and Germany... is as undeniably true as it is vigorously disputed. The Teuton is the summit of evolution. That we may consider intelligently his place in history we must cast aside the popular nomenclature which would confuse the names "Teuton" and "German", and view him not nationally but racially. Tracing the career of the Teuton through medieval and modern history, we can find no possible excuse for denying his actual biological supremacy. In widely separated localities and under widely diverse conditions, his innate racial qualities have raised him to preeminence. There is no branch of modern civilisation that is not his making."

When, long ago, the gods created Earth,
In Jove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind,
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th'Olympian host conceived a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a NIGGER.

"Science," he wrote, "shows us the infinite superiority of the Teutonic Aryan over all others, and it therefore comes to us to see his ascendancy shall remain undisputed. Any racial mixture can but lower the result. The Teutonic race, whether in Scandinavia, other parts of the continent, England, or America, is the cream of humanity."

So far as Lovecraft was concerned "race prejudice is a gift of nature, intended to preserve in purity the various divisions of mankind which the ages have evolved". Nor was he concerned solely because the coloured races were necessarily inferior. "Now the trickiest catch in the Negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The Black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists... But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the Negro were the White man's equal."

Contemporary America made Lovecraft despair. "In general, America has made a fine mess of its population," he noted, adding prophetically, "and will pay for it in tears amidst a premature rottenness unless something is done extremely soon... In excluding the swarms of Mediterranean and Asiatic virmin (sic) that now ooze and creep over all the landscape we could have avoided most of that very sense of intolerable repulsion which a foreign name now creates in us... In nations, as in society, congeniality is the all-important principle."

Lovecraft, though, was not always even so tactful as this. "Of course," he once wrote bitterly, "they can't let Niggers use the beach at a Southern resort – can you imagine sensitive persons bathing near a pack of greasy chimpanzees? The only thing that makes life endurable where Blacks abound is the Jim Crow principle, and I wish they'd apply it in New York both to Niggers and to the more Asiatic types of puffy, rat-faced Jews"!

Yes, those are certainly nuanced viewpoints expressed by HPL on matters of Race; how disingenuous of me to think otherwise.

[Le Noir Faineant]

DD is completely right with his observation: Lovecraft was, even though his political allegiance varied over his life, a classic pathological racist. The thing to take into consideration, though, is that 80, 90 years ago, this was perfectly acceptable social behavior.

Lovecraft grew during a time when "Birth of a Nation" was hailed as "history in writing" by none other than Woodrow Wilson. Not much Rosa Parks in there, really.

[Falconer]

This thread has gotten toxic as hell.