H. P. Lovecraft’s Agonizingly Lonesome, Subterranean, Gothic Fiction

“All my tales are primarily based on the elemental premise that widespread human legal guidelines and pursuits and feelings don’t have any validity or significance within the huge cosmos-at-large … To attain the essence of actual externality, whether or not of time or area or dimension, one should neglect that things like natural life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such native attributes of a negligible and momentary race known as mankind, have any existence in any respect.

   “…once we cross the road to the boundless and hideous unknown—the shadow-haunted Exterior—we should bear in mind to depart our humanity and terrestrialism on the threshold.”

THE LONESOME DEATH OF HOWARD LOVECRAFT

As he lay, sweating and cramped, tangled within the bedsheets of a hospital berth, Howard Philips Lovecraft was nearly definitely piqued – with morbid irony – on the parallels between his destiny and that of his lifelong idol, Edgar Allan Poe. Each males have been laid low of their forties by a sudden, painful sickness, hounded by monetary instability, an abbreviated, controversial marriage, and blended success of their literary work (which, even when profitable, appeared overshadowed by a disappointing cycle of failure and loneliness).

At forty-six, nevertheless, Howard was a far better flameout than his mannequin: Poe was internationally regarded, professionally esteemed, and a person of the world who had made his means in life independently[1]. He had studied at West Level, held down many prestigious jobs, stored home in 4 main American cities, cultivated a loving (if impotent) marriage, stirred up fixed, attention-grabbing rivalries and scandals, and earned the admiration of respectable, middle-class readers earlier than his mysterious loss of life at forty. All in all, he was misunderstood, controversial, and tragic – however his effectiveness as a poet, journalist, and critic was the least debated aspect of his dynamic life, and his loss of life left a notable gap within the nascent group of American literati[2]. 

By comparability, Howard was a highschool dropout, had by no means been conventionally employed, lived in the identical metropolis for nearly his complete life (save for a depressing, two-year stint as an unemployed house-husband), was divorced after two years of awkward cohabitation, and was too obscure to make any vital creative waves throughout his lifetime.[3] Lastly – whereas he succeeded in attracting a loyal cadre of younger admirers – they have been principally outsiders identical to him: underemployed, bored, single, struggling daydreamers working clerical jobs, dwelling with their households, and discovering their solely enjoyment of pulp fiction rags peddling sword-and-sorcery escapism. His life’s work was admired solely by this fringe subset of subscribers to magazines like Bizarre Tales, Argosy, Residence Brew, and Superb Tales, however was by no means observed by literary lecturers, skilled writers, or institution critics throughout his lifetime.

His agonizing demise was constant along with his famously nihilistic philosophy, one which rejected humanism as a silly vainness, spirituality as wishful pondering, and even science as ill-advised meddling. That is sharply expressed within the iconic opening strains of “The Name of Cthulhu”:

Discussing this explicit passage John Grey[4] asserts that it serves as a thesis assertion for the writer’s hallmark cosmicism, which he summarizes as holding that:

In brief, we would say that Lovecraft’s message is that life has no heroes, no hope, and no Hollywood endings. This was definitely the way in which issues have been searching for him as he chronicled his day by day actions and growing ache in what would come to be known as his “Loss of life Diary” as intestinal most cancers consumed his physique[5].

Maybe, regardless of all his rigorously marshaled pessimism, he had allowed himself to hope for a contented ending – for recognition and esteem in his group – however because the paragraphs in his diary shortened into medical sentences, then into staccato phrases (“ache” being the foremost chorus), it was clear that there might need been one thing to his Stoic nihilism in any case.

The writings of his philosophical hero, Friedrich Nietzsche, could have come to thoughts – mad, lonely Nietzsche, who had develop into a celeb amongst disaffected younger males on the flip of the century by declaring the loss of life of God, the irrelevance of fine and evil, and the correct of may; Nietzsche, who bitterly decried the slave morality of the weak plenty which he noticed to be foisted upon the backs of their superiors (the Übermenschen) – an odious worldview of female subservience which, he held, stifled their pseudo-divine Will to Energy[6]. If that’s the case, the Grasp’s well-known quip, “the meaninglessness of struggling, not struggling itself, was the curse that lay over mankind thus far” would have been an apt meditation throughout Lovecraft’s distress.

His diary ceased 4 days earlier than his loss of life, the ache being too immense for focus. Earlier than shedding his senses to the agony, he could have contemplated these unfavorable parallels with Poe, however there was no query as to which man had been extra profitable at his craft: Poe’s loss of life shocked his readers and the American literary order; Lovecraft’s would sadden his plucky community of teenage fanboys, beginner horror writers, and penny-pinching pulp editors, however his legacy appeared doomed to die with him, fading into oblivion as soon as his few dozen followers had moved onto different pursuits and forgotten him[7].

In simply two or three years he would seemingly be simply one other footnote in style fiction – one other forgotten beginner like Paul Annixter, George W. Crane, Mrs. Harry Pugh Smith, or Ferdinand Berthoud[8]. As Grey notes (with medical simplicity equal to his topic) he died in a state of resolved hopelessness “satisfied that his work—which had acquired solely slight recognition in his lifetime—would quickly be forgotten totally.”

HIS WORK, HIS INFLUENCE, AND HIS LEGACY

This was not, nevertheless, the top for H. P. Lovecraft: in some sense, he did find yourself with a Hollywood ending – as a heroic underdog whose legacy is resurrected and preserved by the younger admirers whom he had selflessly served in life. Certainly: at odds with the cruel, Social Darwinist worldview that he espoused, Lovecraft had written many a whole lot of encouraging letters to his younger followers (aspiring writers and editors themselves) who esteemed him as a venerable father determine, and – as they grew up and got here into prominence as skilled authors – they loyally took up his trigger, guaranteeing that his work would stay in print[9]. Frank Belknap Lengthy, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, and August Derleth have been among the many most well-known Lovecraftian disciples who devoted themselves to preserving and increasing upon his Cthulhu Mythos.

Sarcastically, it was the affected person compassion he confirmed these alienated youngsters – answering their questions, forwarding them books, critiquing their writing, and inspiring their goals – that secured his fame as a author whose horror careworn the insignificance of all life and the purposelessness of dwelling[10]. Two years after his loss of life, August Derleth based Arkham Home as a platform to maintain Lovecraft on bookshelves, releasing two huge omnibuses – The Outsider and Past the Wall of Sleep – in the course of the World Struggle II years, earlier than publishing anthologies of traditional supernatural fiction by the likes of J. Sheridan Le Fanu, William Hope Hodgson, H. Russell Wakefield, and unique novels and anthologies in the identical milieu by Smith, Lengthy, Bloch, Derleth, and their personal new wave of younger, literary disciples (e.g., Ray Bradburry, Charles L. Grant, Ramsey Campbell, and Brian Lumley)[11]. By the late Sixties, Lovecraft’s distinctively proto-postmodern, deconstructionist cynicism was warmly welcomed by anti-establishment youth, who included him in a spot of honor alongside Joseph Heller, Hermann Hesse, and J. D. Salinger on their mantels[12].

With the ascent of the fantasy and horror-influenced Heavy Metallic and Prog Rock subcultures, Lovecraft’s story titles started to point out up as tracks on albums by Black Sabbath, Caravan, The Fall, Blue Öyster Cult, and (in fact) the psychedelic band H. P. Lovecraft[13]. In 1981 the roleplaying sport Name of Cthulhu was launched by Chaosium, and from that time on – whereas Lovecraft would require one other twenty years earlier than he might be really thought of mainstream – his legacy can be devoutly guarded and handed on by successive generations of younger outsiders, one to the opposite[14].

“Right this moment,” as Michael Dirda observes in his article “Cthulhu for President,” “Lovecraft is rightly thought to be second solely to Edgar Allan Poe within the annals of American supernatural literature… The truth is, Lovecraft has moved from cult author to cultural icon.”

Google’s Ngram function demonstrates how every technology discovers Lovecraft, nearly anew, surging him to a brand new peak in recognition earlier than he would inevitably decline of their curiosity (presumably as they cross out of moody adolescence, start to expertise success and belonging on the planet, and develop into invested within the human undertaking that Lovecraft disdained)[15].

And but – nearly like clockwork – simply because the reigning technology appears handy their Lovecraft collections into the thrift retailer, the rising technology restores his identify with drive. The Silent Era peaks with Lovecraft in 1949 earlier than apparently outgrowing him in 1958. The Child Boomer Era nearly instantly appears to recuperate his legacy, inflicting him to surge in recognition all through the ‘60s and ‘70s (with noticeable spikes in ’62, ’68, ’73, ’78, ’80, and – a precipitous spur in 1983 – within the wake of Name of Cthulhu).

Gen X was – surprisingly – much less enthusiastic, with Lovecraft’s recognition cratering in 1991, earlier than experiencing an anemic restoration to 1983 ranges (it isn’t precisely a “peak,” although) in 2003. Right here, nevertheless – as s0-called “nerd tradition” got here of age and located mainstream acceptance within the custody of the Millennial Era, Lovecraft’s recognition skyrocketed – nearly exponentially – doubling curiosity in ten years[16].

In 2015, nevertheless, within the aftermath of the Michael Brown killing, the Charleston mass capturing, and Donald Trump’s golden escalator speech, Lovecraft’s compounding recognition notably shudders to a halt. By the opposite facet of Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, he started to slide sharply in recognition, and – as of the writing of this in April 2024 – he has misplaced twelve years of good points with Millennials and Gen-Zers, slipping slightly below his 2012 numbers.

The message has been clear: Lovecraft spoke deeply to younger individuals – notably Child Boomers and Millennials – however there was a vocal rejection of his legacy previously decade, one which can be momentary or – as with many controversial, public figures within the 2010s – decidedly everlasting[17].

One of many questions that I hope to pose on this introduction and the next commentary is why – except for his inexcusable racism – Lovecraft’s trademark, misanthropic, cosmic philosophy has exceeded its shelf-life, and whether or not there’s any worth left of his artwork which may be salvaged. This criticism is especially salient throughout our publish-postmodern age when humanism’s social justice ethos and environmentalism’s Anthropocene pathos[18] have concurrently been sanctified as common, mainstream orthodoxies.

In such a socio-political local weather – one equally secular and self-righteous – the Cthulhu Mythos’ non secular purposelessness shouldn’t be remotely as scary because the existential doom of local weather change[19] or as intellectually compelling as fixing company corruption. In brief, the twenty first century has confirmed far too ethical to forgive Lovecraft’s insensitivity to human dignity, and much too materials to be both awed or scandalized by his suggestion that people are animals with out souls or intrinsic that means. So, what’s left? I might argue there’s nonetheless a lot, and an excessive amount of it may be mined from his earlier, Subterranean Cycle.     

THE SUBTERRANEAN H. P. LOVECRAFT:

DEFINING THE BOUNDARIES OF HIS GOTHIC ERA

Lovecraft’s work – by his personal estimation[20] and by that of his students – fell into three distinct classes: there have been his Poe tales (which emphasised psychology, degeneracy, and the Gothic), his Dunsany tales (which emphasised fantasy, decadence, and the poetic), and his Lovecraft tales (which – influenced by Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers, and Algernon Blackwood – emphasised misanthropy, nihilism, and the cosmic). After all, as any reader of Lovecraft will observe, these developments, although observable, have been nebulous and complimentary all through his life, often constructing upon and calling again to at least one one other (cf. 1917’s “Dagon,” 1928’s “The Name of Cthulhu,” and 1936’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”). As Jose Luis Arroyo-Barrigüete notes[21]:

However, Lovecraft’s legacy has primarily hinged on the later of the three phases, which generated his most unique and memorable items: “The Name of Cthulhu,” “The Dunwich Horror,” “The Color Out of Area,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” “The Whisperer within the Darkness,” “On the Mountains of Insanity,” “The Haunter within the Darkish,” and “The Shadow Out of Time,” amongst others. These later tales – written after the deaths of most of his family members, the failure of his marriage, his humiliating retreat from New York Metropolis, and the lack of the adventuring spirit which electrified his creativeness as a toddler – are heavy with curmudgeonly nihilism.

Heartfelt emotion, shut friendships, and hope for humanity (components which, although uncommon, made occasional appearances in his early work) are purged from his writing, leaving the clinically unsentimental voice that resonates so deeply along with his fanbase (particularly younger, offended, disenfranchised males) who really feel so alien to society that they glory in his Nietzschean apathy.

Actually, the later “Lovecraft Period” tales are masterworks, brimming with creativeness and motion; they’ll by no means stop to occupy a spot of honor among the many canons of science fiction, horror, and fantasy (or the style, so inextricably related to him, which blurs all three equally: bizarre fiction). “The Name of Cthulhu” won’t ever cease being an thrilling learn. “On the Mountains of Insanity” won’t ever fail to awe. “The Whisperer within the Darkness” won’t ever misfire its sheer creepiness. These tales – so reverently favored by Lovecraftian students – won’t ever be overshadowed by his much less visionary, extra spinoff early works in relation to creativeness, cosmicism, or cinematic scope.

For the needs of this anthology, nevertheless, we can be specializing in what we name Lovecraft’s Gothic Period: the interval main up to the landmark years of 1926 and 1927, which noticed him pen his first nice extraterrestrial masterpieces  (“The Name of Cthulhu” and “The Color Out of Area”) together with the respective apotheoses of his Poe and Dunsany eras (the Poe-esque “Case of Charles Dexter Ward” and Dunsanian “Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”).

The next 12 months, 1928, would display a agency shift in tone and scope, with the Machen-influenced “Dunwich Horror,” succeeded by a slew of science-fiction novelettes haunted by Chambers-inspired extraterrestrials: “The Whisperer within the Darkness,” “On the Mountains of Insanity,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” “The Shadow Out of Time,” and “The Haunter of the Darkish.” Interspersed between these have been a handful of Gothic-tinted throwbacks to the outdated days: “The Goals within the Witch Home” (a Hawthorne/Machen homage), “The Factor on the Doorstep” (a Chambers pastiche), and “The Evil Clergyman” (a nod to Bram Stoker).

1926 was the 12 months when Lovecraft fled New York for Windfall, permitting his marriage (together with any hopes for an unbiased, “regular” life away from the affect of his household) to fizzle, surrendering himself to what he should have considered because the inevitable destiny of little Howie Lovecraft: to stagnate, shrivel, and die within the slender confines of his restricted, lonesome childhood[22].

In brief, 1926 was the 12 months that Lovecraft accepted the pathetic destiny that awaited so a lot of his protagonists (sheltered, submissive loners determined for friendship and journey): a lifetime of insecurity, obscurity, and dejection. This failure led to an enormous transition in Lovecraft’s themes, imaginative and prescient, and voice, which prompted him to desert his introspective, Poe-inspired writing in favor of the extra medical, misanthropic science-fiction which shifted the locus of hazard from the bowels of the earth and the caverns of particular person human hearts to the darkling stars gazing hatefully overhead on the complete human race.

Not was his consideration on the degeneracy or inherited vices lurking inside human souls – he had relocated it to a hypothetical, existential risk from the universe with out. Inside battle was traded for cosmic drama – and to good impact: I’ll by no means deny the ability and scope of the good, later tales starting with “The Name of the Cthulhu’s” non-Euclidean metropolis and terminating with “The Haunter within the Darkish’s” three-lobbed eye. These expansive, imaginative nightmare-scapes gas thought and provoke awe. However one thing highly effective was misplaced in 1926 when Lovecraft stepped off the practice to Windfall.

In his closing deeply Gothic story, “Pickman’s Mannequin” (written alongside “The Name of Cthulhu” late that summer season), there’s a unusual sense of transition and passing-on: the eponymous artist disappears into the key world of ghouls, however not like Harley Warren (“Assertion of Randolph Carter”) or St. John (“The Hound”), he’s allowed to easily fade away into that good evening with out struggling a savage demise (a destiny confirmed in “The Dream-Quest” the place he reappears as a joyfully acclimated, absolutely transitioned ghoul).

It’s nearly as if Lovecraft was allowing himself – and his now-dated Gothic sensibility – to cross on peacefully into obscurity (not not like the ghoul-befriended protagonist of the similarly-themed “Outsider”), descending one final time into the subterranean areas into which he had so feared being absorbed, earlier than shifting his focus from the uncooked and intimate channels of the human coronary heart to the chilly and distant, cosmic vistas of “The Whisperer within the Darkness” and “On the Mountains of Insanity.”

THE SUBTERRANEAN H. P. LOVECRAFT:

DECAY, REPRESSION, AND ISOLATION

When referring to “the Gothic” most readers could have a basic sense of what’s meant: it’s evocative of spooky-castle aesthetics, supernatural perils, eccentric decadence, stormy nights, and stunning secrets and techniques. It suggests sinister, lonely locations whose fabulous spoil symbolizes some equally degenerate coronary heart: one imagines the works of Poe or Hoffmann, Common Studios monster motion pictures, the Brontë sisters’ novels, The Rocky Horror Image Present, Tim Burton, Vincent Worth, and Alfred Hitchcock. However what the Gothic really means – beneath the plain aesthetic trappings – is much less broadly understood.

By definition, Gothic fiction issues itself with the looming risk of bodily, non secular, and social decay. In American Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Cristoph Grunenberg associates the Gothic with a “fascination with loss of life, horror and the macabre,” drawing on Shamim Momin’s definition of Gothic sensibility as one which “revels in a voluptuous, sensual materiality. Decay and fragmentation, spoil and dissolution describe each the precise types in addition to their allegory of ethical, corporeal, emotional, or socio-political [concerns].” Critic Paul Margau notes that (as with so a lot of Lovecraft’s early tales):

Renata R. M. Wasserman describes it as

Her use of the phrase “subterranean” is, in fact, notably apt when contemplating the focus of the Gothic ethos within the first half of Lovecraft’s profession – a interval which considerably focuses on sepulchral settings, burrowing monsters, and underground perils. It is because of this that the current anthology correlates “The Subterranean H. P. Lovecraft” with “His Gothic Period.” 

So what was Lovecraft’s Gothic Period? Borrowing Arroyo-Barrigüete’s timeline for reference, we’d argue that this stage in Lovecraft’s writing subsumes his “Macabre Tales” and “Dream Cycle” phases, lasting from youth till the publication of “The Name of Cthulhu,” following his disappointing return from New York Metropolis in 1926. For the primary decade of his skilled profession,[25] Lovecraft’s writing closely emphasised inside angst, closely borrowed Gothic tropes from Darkish Romantics, Decadents, and Edwardian supernaturalists[26], and was principally involved with the specter of ethical, psychological, and non secular degeneration (both individually as a protagonist or collectively as a civilization).

They concerned tales of forbidden data, hereditary curses, vengeful spirits, decadent villains, haunted homes, psychopathic hermits, evil forces, encounters with otherworldly dimensions, the dormant lifeless, and horrible outdated males brooding like hungry spiders in dangerously lonely locations.

Above all, they sometimes contain some exploration of an underground or cloistered setting, or an incursion from the denizens of such a hidden area – areas that are, in fact, symbolic of the human character: secretive, non-public areas the place monsters are capable of breed with out risk or detection.

A full third of those tales actually contain cemeteries, tombs, or burial locations of some stripe, starting from the graverobbers in “The Assertion of Randolph Carter,” “Herbert West – Reanimator,” “The Anonymous Metropolis,” and “The Hound” to the macabre mishaps in “The Tomb,” “The Outsider,” “Underneath the Pyramids,” and “Within the Vault.” One other subset of tales issues that beloved Gothic image of inside degeneration, the haunted home, which options in tales as apparent as “The Shunned Home,” “The Lurking Concern,” “The Alchemist,” and “The Rats within the Partitions,” to subtler makes use of of the trope which deal with haunted males hiding away in nasty hermitages removed from human eyes, morality, and motive (“Erich Zann,” “The Cats of Ulthar,” “The Horrible Outdated Man,” “The Image within the Home,” and “Pickman’s Mannequin”).

A 3rd subtype of tales ponders sunken or buried ruins which were misplaced to time and historical past (e.g., “The Temple,” “Polaris,” “The Moon-Bathroom,” “The Doom that Got here to Sarnath,” “Dagon,” “The Pageant,” and “The Anonymous Metropolis” [again]). Even the extra ethereal amongst these (which might additionally be included within the fantasy-heavy, Dunsanian Dream Cycle) – “Polaris,” “Nyarlathotep,” “The White Ship,” “What the Moon Brings,” and “The Horror at Martin’s Seashore” – every concern a stunning confrontation with a buried actuality, one which aggressively resurrects (difficult the protagonist’s understanding of actuality) earlier than leaving them alone in utter alienation.

These first 4 tales additionally contain forgotten ruins of lifeless civilizations and psychedelic goals of loss of life (are they goals, although?) which torment their remoted protagonists with the specter of Oblivion, whereas “Martin’s Seashore” follows the components of “Sarnath” by having an sudden revenge executed towards mankind by means of the sudden surfacing of a secreted, underwater terror (cf., “The Temple,” “The Cats of Ulthar,” and “Dagon”).

Every of those tales entails a horrible, hidden factor that’s regrettably found in some lonesome place – both in a cave, cemetery, crumbling citadel, hermit’s hovel, or narcotic nightmare – bringing disgrace and despair on the protagonist, who’s shaken in his religion in humanity. It’s no surprise that – steeped as they’re in Gothic archetypes – subterranean themes would permeate them. As Alex Bevan remarks in Gothic Literary Journey and Tourism:

     He goes on to notice, fairly helpfully:

Just like the masters who got here earlier than him – Poe specifically – Lovecraft utilized cloistered and underground areas for instance the violent forces of human repression and the way in which through which they channel their compressed power into ethical degeneration. Contemplate the anxious outbursts of Madeline Usher bursting from her crypt, Montresor burying Fortunato alive in his personal catacombs, or the “Inform-Story Coronary heart” narrator’s battle along with his conscience as he straddles the floorboards below which his sufferer is entombed.

Moreover, take a look at the repressed rage of attic-bound Bertha Rochester (Jane Eyre), the moldering Mrs. Havisham (Nice Expectations), or the delirious convalescent writing from her confinement in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” 

Now, to make sure, his writing comes nowhere close to the advanced interiority of Poe, Brontë, Dickens, or Perkins-Gilman (to not point out the three S’s (Shelley, Stoker, and Stevenson), who additionally wrote capably about psychological torment, ethical dissonance, and repression within the context of hidden settings and secret misdeeds), however his work, whereas much less overtly profound, continues to be powerfully involved with the interior workings of his remoted, longing protagonists.

Though Gothic themes would permeate each single horror story that he ever wrote, the Gothic sensibility was strongest in these early tales from his first decade {of professional} writing, tales which have been (usually infamously although steadily successfully) indulgent imitations of the Nineteenth-century Gothic masters.

From its very inception in the course of the 1760s, Gothic literature has occupied itself with exploring alienation and otherness. At occasions this has been executed towards otherness (cf. the seductive, overseas aristocrat, Depend Dracula; the sociopathic, Decadent dandy, Dorian Grey), whereas in lots of situations it was expressed from the perspective of otherness (cf. Frankenstein’s Creature; the Phantom of the Opera; Magnificence and the Beast), sometimes exploring the advanced spirituality and psychology of the Outsider. Whereas the Gothic works of Poe, like these of Lovecraft, sometimes lack this (usually female) knack for humanizing monsters, they however centered themselves squarely on the attitude of disconnected loners eager for acceptance and peace.

Such was the case in most of Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, which regularly comply with the pissed off longings of an remoted mental, who’s steadily consumed by his disordered passions. That is notably true of “Metzengerstein,” “The Fall of the Home of Usher,” “Ligeia,” “Morella,” “William Wilson,” and “Berenice,” amongst others.

“The Home of Usher,” specifically (it might function the mannequin for a lot of of Lovecraft’s greatest Gothic tales[27]) tells the story of a neurotic eccentric whose pathological sensitivity is so acute that he has develop into a hermit holed up in his crumbling, ancestral manor along with his dying twin sister. When the sister – whose well being is compromised by centuries of inbreeding – lastly seems to die, her brother has her buried within the household crypt, full-well understanding (by means of his eager listening to) that she is definitely alive.

Making an attempt to outlive aside from her (she may be mentioned to signify materials life and he may be mentioned to signify mental life, that are housed collectively within the Home, which represents the human physique), he grows steadily extra insane till his sister breaks out of her crypt (symbolizing the futility of denying mortality), confronting her brother together with her actuality by throwing her bleeding physique on prime of his: an act which kills them each, ensuing within the spontaneous demolition of the bodily Home of Usher which – bereft of mental and materials life – crumbles round them in utter Loss of life.

ALIENATION BEFORE THE ALIENS:

LOVECRAFT AND THE MISBIRTHED HORROR OF HUMAN LONELINESS

It shouldn’t be shocking {that a} story like this (and the numerous by Poe which resemble it) would show inspiring to Lovecraft. His childhood had already been severely blighted by trauma, starting along with his father’s institutionalization, and the loss of life of his grandmother, which shuttled his household into what he termed a profound “gloom from which it by no means absolutely recovered[28].”

This was adopted by the lack of his grandfather’s fortune (which led to the dismissal of the household servants – sure, Lovecraft really did develop up with servants), the general public disgrace of his household’s fall from prominence, his grandfather’s loss of life from a stroke (introduced on by disgrace and anxiousness from his enterprise catastrophes), and the following lack of the household property. It was at this level that younger Howard ceased writing, overwhelmed – on the age of eighteen – with suicidal ideas, and shoved to the brink of a psychological collapse by the stress and uncertainty of his household’s scenario.

As the one surviving male, he ought to have been in a position, so he thought, to offer for his mom and aunts – the “man of the home” – however his ambitions and hopes have been swallowed up in insecurity and instability. Earlier than he might even graduate highschool, he was overwhelmed by a “kind of a breakdown” which he describes as a “basic nervous weak point which stop[ed] my steady utility to any factor[29].”

His plans to use to Brown College have been dashed, and the well-read, patrician-tongued Lovecraft would die with out ever attending one other day of lessons – an unemployed highschool dropout dwelling along with his impoverished household, too overwhelmed along with his personal insecurities and satisfaction to seek out work to help his equally unindustrious kinswomen.

The following 5 years have treasured little documentation: we solely know that his household fell extra deeply into poverty, that additional enterprise failures hounded his uncle, that he averted leaving the home, besides at evening, as a result of he was “so hideous that he hid from everybody and didn’t wish to stroll upon the streets the place individuals might gaze on him,” and that he and his mom would recite passages of Shakespeare tragedies so violently that the next-door neighbors mistook them for home screaming matches (or a minimum of that’s what Lovecraft claimed the neighbors have been overhearing: his mom was definitely not a form or light girl, and their relationship was notoriously disturbing)[30].

Throughout this era, he tried to check chemistry and astronomy however was overwhelmed with the mandatory arithmetic, and in his frustration, turned to writing aggressively racist poems with such uplifting titles as “New-England Fallen” and “On the Creation of Niggers,” together with a bit of white supremacist sci-fi known as “Windfall in 2000 AD” which depicts a brand new millennium the place Anglo-Saxon Protestants have been overtaken by hordes of nasty Jews and Catholics.

He turned to studying beginner pulp magazines and was elevated to cult standing on this area of interest realm due to his vicious letters to the editor, which roasted the fashion of one of many main contributors, whose work he thought of “effeminate,” “coarse,” and “correct to negroes and anthropoid apes[31].” Burning with pent-up aggression, searing misanthropy, and an aimless mind thirsty to spar, Lovecraft started writing reams of letters to the editor, goaded by his rabid fanbase (early twentieth century “shitposting”).

It was on this mind set, teetering between the darkest years of his life – hounded by household spoil, private disgrace, and the shadow of suicide – and his meteoric rise within the commentariat of pulp periodicals that he penned his first grownup story, “The Tomb,” which follows a lonely boy who’s drawn to a crypt within the woods close to his home the place he begins spending his time among the many bones of 18th-century decadents, who as soon as lived in a manor which was destroyed by lightning whereas the household was inside partying.

These forays improve in depth and creativeness, and as he grows up, they tackle a necrophiliac nature, mounting as much as a hallucinogenic trance that reveals him to be the reincarnated spirit of the most wicked member of the household. After reexperiencing the manor’s Usher-like destruction, he’s discovered wallowing amongst the bones and is summarily institutionalized.

This story adopted what would ultimately develop into a confirmed components for his Gothic tales: A wandering loner lastly finds a reference to an uncommon or forbidden supply –> He goes too far in his exploration of this sense of belonging –> Because of his hubris, he’s ejected from this communion in a dramatic climax –> …which leaves him eternally alone.

That is far completely different from the formulae of his later, “Lovecraft Period” tales, that are a lot much less within the psychology of loneliness and belonging (themes which had develop into, maybe, too painful to ponder by his forties), transitioning to macrocosmic themes which contain a collective doom for the entire of humanity somewhat than the social struggles of a solitary character. Whereas nothing can steal the celestial energy from these mature works, these earlier Gothic tales probe delicate areas of the human expertise that are not often, although unfairly, related to their writer.

REANIMATING LOVECRAFT FOR A HUMANIST FUTURE:

DECONSTRUCTING HIS DEFANGED

However there is a critical and rising drawback for Lovecraft’s legacy – one which is changing into more and more obvious because the years march on and Lovecraft’s Ngram rating continues to slide on the similar exponential charge at which it started to rise within the early aughts – although it isn’t maybe the obvious concern that we would first suspect.

Lovecraft’s repellent racism is so indissolubly snarled in his character, writing, and biography that – though it was the ignition supply behind his explosive decline in the course of the creation of the millennial-driven, intersectional Black Lives Matter motion[32] – if it have been going to trigger his exclusion from the literary canon, it might have occurred lengthy earlier than. Certainly, Lovecraft’s notably expressive model of racism – one emboldened by his spiritual adherence to excessive Nietzscheanism and the terrifying science of eugenicists[33] – was thus far exterior the bounds of well mannered society in his personal day, that it shocked his family and friends.

In essentially the most well-known instance, his shut good friend, Samuel Loveman (the mannequin for Harley in “The Assertion of Randolph Carter,” and a proud, homosexual Jew) disowned his one-time good friend, burned their correspondence, and lambasted him as a provincial vulgarian[34]. No, Lovecraft’s racism – revolting as it’s – shouldn’t be the major risk to his legacy. That honor goes to the almost common success of his materialist, misanthropic worldview among the many literary public and the academy.

Certainly, nihilism is extra in vogue than ever earlier than, with alarming outcomes for psychological well being (globally, and for younger individuals specifically)[35]. It’s in all probability simply as ubiquitous right now as a de facto worldview as cultural Christianity was in New England throughout Lovecraft’s lifetime. A disproportionate share of great literary students, readers, or critics agree – tacitly or explicitly – with the core message of Lovecraftian horror: humanity is a scientific mishap, our international doom is imminent, our existential goal – if we should have one – is a comfortable fiction relative to every particular person, and we’re in the end scheduled for a abstract extinction which is able to make a mockery of millennia of human self-mythologizing[36]. In brief, life is meaningless and humanity is a cosmic joke at greatest and a planetary virus as worst.

Now, many clever individuals occur to take difficulty with most of those nihilistic claims[37], however – if I’ll converse anecdotally – almost all of my very own professors in grad faculty and most of my colleagues in quite a lot of English departments would test every one off with Stoic confidence. I might wager that many of the students who’ve devoted their lives to literary criticism are in the identical membership: to them, human beings are odious, harmful animals with out a non secular id, future, or goal. The factor is, nevertheless, most folk who hold this worldview aren’t in any respect horrified by this: wistful, maybe, however they put on their misanthropic materialism like a badge of honor, and lots of students have turned the thought on its head, claiming {that a} meaningless existence is morally liberating – not scary or dispiriting in any respect[38].      

Initially, Lovecraft was morally stunning: the suggestion that we have been with out that means or mission was dreadful. The implication that Earth – removed from the gleaming, blue jewel invested with divine favor – was a swampy cesspit overcrowded by mutants and hybrids, destined to develop into a lifeless cinder, was uncomfortable at greatest and inconceivable at worst. The concept that human beings might devolve again into abhuman swine or cannibalistic apes, was repulsive to well mannered readership[39] (though Darwin’s theories – and their social and ethical implications – had been largely accepted as truth by the educated and higher lessons – and particularly capitalists captains of business – many years earlier than Lovecraft’s start[40]). And the readers who agreed with Lovecraft certainly felt elated to belong to such a choose band of in-the-know Stoic magi.

Nobody else of their ratty little cities would have be able to retaining their sanity in the event that they realized the Reality™, however they might share this darkish secret with pricey Mr. Lovecraft, chuckling with pity on the delusional plenty who wasted their time attempting to repress their animal impulses, contribute to the general public welfare, and supply for his or her households when nothing in any respect mattered (in fact, the Lovecraftians nonetheless largely held down jobs, paid taxes, and didn’t make homicide and ravishing a past-time, however not as a result of they believed in fairy tales, human dignity, or common ethical fact).

The nice blow, nevertheless, got here in the course of the 2010s when a curious factor occurred to the postmodern materialists: their ranks have been inundated by plenty of latest allies who – above all issues – devoutly believed in common ethical truths[41]. Millennials with graduate-level educations started bringing their ardour for social justice to societies that – whereas urgently devoted to the libertarian ethos of “dwell and let dwell” – had little philosophical curiosity in defending causes from positions of ethical certainty. College departments, company boards, and fandom conventions have been out of the blue pressured to take decisive stances on divisive social points – one thing which hadn’t occurred because the idealistic days of the Sixties, simply earlier than ethical relativism turned the trendy philosophy of the Chilly Struggle West[42].

Inside a single decade, two changes had been made in essentially the most influential literary facilities (from English departments and fan conventions to ebook chatrooms and literary conferences): firstly, the typical literati accepted Lovecraft’s misanthropic thesis (people are harmful animals destined for self-inflicted extinction and supreme ignominy), however secondly – and most significantly – they rejected his Social Darwinist morality (may makes proper) in favor of warm-hearted humanism vigorously devoted to propagating social justice and resisting oppression from a place of ethical certainty[43]. What is an eco-centric, humanist skeptic imagined to do with H. P. Lovecraft? His existential terrors maintain no horror for them (they’re apparent and unsurprising) and his Nietzschean options are revolting and regressive.

However as most mature Lovecraft Legionaries will argue, there’s extra to his work than the depressing caricature of the bitter loner spewing racism from his aunt’s basement between meals of chilly beans. There’s something deeply emotional about his imaginative and prescient of the world – the uncooked ache of upset idealism. His heartbreaking Dream Cycle is commonly (actually) tear-inducing. His Gothic tales, which so usually contain a lonely man discovering (after which traumatically shedding) his first and solely good friend on the planet, are genuinely susceptible. His descriptions of remoted boys coming to the humiliating realization that they’re too repellant to rub elbows with the normies (cf. “The Tomb,” “The Alchemist,” “The Outsider,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”) are crushing to learn.

Whereas many will proceed to adore Lovecraft for the awe-inspiring sublimity of his cosmic misanthropy, the aim of this assortment is – a minimum of partly – to discover a a lot much less studied aspect of his early writing: his uncooked humanity.       

REGARDING THIS COLLECTION:

A WORD ON OUR SELECTIONS,

CRITICAL LENS, AND EDITORIAL VOICE

I’ll personal that the editorial imaginative and prescient of this anthology – of its commentary and analyses – is intentionally reactionary. My intention is to border it, a minimum of partly, as a response towards the final half-century of Lovecraft criticism, which has all the time been snug with Lovecraft’s misanthropy and ethical cynicism. Whereas I gained’t waste any time becoming a member of the united refrain of critics heralding Lovecraft’s political chastisements, I do want to deconstruct his nihilistic imaginative and prescient for humanity.

Numerous renditions of this contrarian philosophy have been as soon as delightfully embraced by libertarians, New Atheists, and counterculture sects in the course of the second half of the twentieth century, however they’re all considerably much less related in an age when mankind’s existential purposelessness is broadly accepted and the social issues of the twenty first century make ethical nihilism – as soon as the antagonistic, avant-garde creed of edgy uncles, The Dude, and Tyler Durden – painfully old school and impotent. Because of this, a few of my commentary will pattern confrontational as I dissemble among the long-cherished fundamentals of Lovecraft scholarship.

Chief amongst these gate-keepers, in fact, is Sunand Tryambak Joshi, the godfather of Lovecraft research and the assumptive skilled (a minimum of in accordance with Penguin Classics and Hippocampus Press) on any author of traditional horror and bizarre fiction[44], from Robert W. Chambers to M. R. James (regardless of solely nursing a fawning experience in Lovecraft – the only real author within the style whom he seems to get pleasure from). Whereas Joshi’s criticism is really indispensable, and his insights are sometimes profound, his monopoly within the subject and his delusions of objectivity have allowed vital blind spots and dogmatic orthodoxies to develop in Lovecraftiana – sloppy missteps that do their biggest disservice to Lovecraft himself.

Different critics from the identical technology (viz., Kenneth Hite, Peter Cannon, Robert M. Worth – Child Boomers all) share Joshi’s nearly spiritual zeal for Lovecraft’s ethical imaginative and prescient and anthropology (which greatest manifested in his later, post-1927 science fiction) with out ever pausing to unpack the latent humanism and spirituality of Lovecraft’s writing (current all through, however greatest manifested in his earlier, pre-1927 Gothic fiction).

By taking Lovecraft at his phrase and celebrating what ought to be thought of an unwholesome and unhelpful ethical prescription for a humanity that’s nonetheless struggling to rise from the mire of in-humanity, these septuagenarian iconoclasts have missed the uncooked emotion of a upset idealist. Their lionization of Lovecraft as a consummate, contrarian bad-ass (whose Nietzschean Stoicism was simply “too actual” to let him be fall for the weak worldviews of bleeding hearts and bourgeois morality) has prompted them to overlook what stands out to much less cynical minds who learn between the strains of his tales and letters: the screaming ache of wounded idealism and upset hope. They miss the deep, humanity of Lovecraft’s damaged coronary heart.

SOUNDING THE BURIED HEART:

FROM SPITEFUL MISANTHROPY

Lovecraft longed for belonging and goal, however because it was denied him nearly from start, he calcified his coronary heart towards all hopes, culminating within the dissolution of his marriage and his return to Windfall (his dwelling grave) the place he accepted his destiny. From this level, he transitioned from tales of internal battle – tales which debated, skeptically, whether or not transcendence was even attainable – to tales which promoted a now-forgone conclusion: the human undertaking is a doomed failure, and our aspirations are a waste of time. So, he speculated, who or what “on the market” would have the company and goal that people so clearly lack? In these later tales, Cthulhu, the Mi-Go, and the Yog-Sothoths should not simply threatening monsters: they’re satisfying wish-fulfillments.

Ugly and odious although they might be, amoral and heartless although they’re, they’ve a divine mission from the Nice Outdated Ones, and their lives are wealthy with journey, that means, and victories over their lesser underlings. Lovecraft doesn’t want us to worry them – not likely – he needs us to envy them. Medical, rational, and inhuman (maybe not totally not like a sure beginner author), they’re able to pursue colonization of much less advanced species, unhindered by the Slave Morality of lesser minds.

In his tales, these pathetic creatures are human beings writ giant, however in his personal life – maybe, simply maybe – Lovecraft could have been imagining how superb it might be to stand up out of his subterranean obscurity, alone and forgotten, to punish his personal undeserving curs: progressive liberals, honest spiritual individuals, hopeful minorities, enterprising immigrants, social reformers, close-knit households, and another sort of one that is moved by their beliefs to sacrifice consolation for an aspirational “better good.”

Within the previously-alluded-to article by John Grey – “H.P. Lovecraft Invented a Horrific World to Escape a Nihilistic Universe” – the writer makes the compelling case that Lovecraft’s pessimism stemmed from pissed off idealism, not smug superiority, and that his universe of terrors was a respite from the frustration of his adopted worldview. Removed from the black-pilled unhealthy boy lauded by Gen-Z incels and Boomer New Atheists as a defiant paragon of unsentimental materialism, Grey paints an image of a fancy, lonely man misplaced between two vying programs of thought, neither of which he might declare: spirituality on one pole and scientism on the opposite.

Whereas skeptics and rationalists declare Lovecraft as one in all their very own, the reality is that he was simply as disgusted by their optimistic religion in science and human evolution as an reverse and equal excessive to the beliefs of Buddhists, astrologers, and Catholics. As Grey remarks:

This “imaginative and prescient,” then – of Dread Cthulhu, the Black Pharaoh Nyarlathotep, and the incursions of savage Mi-Go – is the worshipful wish-fulfillment of a person preaching nihilism, however nonetheless desperately craving for… one thing. Even a Nice Outdated One who might take pity on him and enlist him (like Castro in “Name of Cthulhu”) as a cog in its pathetic cult of wicked, human traitors.

Lovecraft’s Gothic Period often adopted weaker, youthful, submissive males giving themselves over to stronger, older, dominant males (viz. Nietzschean Übermenschen) in pursuit of the stronger mate’s mental initiatives. Its Jungian symbolism urged an inside battle between the unconscious Will to Energy and aware insecurities – a course of of non-public growth that Jung known as individuation.

After his withdrawal to Windfall, his creative pursuits shifted from such inside dynamics right into a Dionysian, spiritual mythology. Materialist although he was, Lovecraft’s later tales have been wish-fulfillments whereby his characters are observed and dominated by the divine, cosmic actors. These tales could sound like science fiction written by a savvy materialist, however their seminal message is as outdated as The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Iliad: a fantasy (regardless of how fearsome) of a actuality the place we glance as much as the celebrities and one thing (regardless of how terrifying) sees us and appears again.  

The rhetoric of Lovecraftian gods succeeds in arguing the pointlessness of the human undertaking as a result of they supply a “daemonical” counterpoint to the normal worldviews of the key ethical philosophies. The Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism can’t be price pursuing if there’s a Cthulhu. Feminist, Confucian, and Jewish social ethics can’t be precious if Nyarlathotep reigns. Christian charity, forgiveness, and sacrificial love aren’t price pursuing if the Nice Outdated Ones are coming again. However what if (as Lovecraft assures us), his fantastical monstrosities are not actual? That certainty fades away: the spiritual zeal with which he promoted his nihilistic worldview turns into simply one other forgettable tract within the mailbox, alongside the Jehovah’s Witnesses’, Hari Krishnas’, and White Supremacists.

The paradox of Lovecraft’s chosen style (viz. supernatural fantasy), I imagine, is that for him and his followers, the existence of eldritch monstrosities can be a dream come true: it might nullify what they believed to be the wasteful efforts that human beings have spent on metaphysics, social packages, and any variety of self-denying ethical disciplines (from the Peace Corps to Greenpeace and from Brahmins to Franciscans) can be categorically confirmed pointless. Certainly, the Nice Outdated Ones nearly seem to have been designed with fable-like care and craft – pedagogical archetypes meant to current classes from a particular system of perception. It’s, sarcastically, only one extra collection of myths designed to advertise a worldview constructed on religion – religion in nothingness.

As Grey observes, “The paradox of Lovecraft’s writing is that though he believed fable existed in an effort to defend the human thoughts from actuality, his personal mythos appears to do the alternative: the ‘Exterior’ is extra scary than the world through which human beings dwell.” With no gods or guiding ideas of their unguided, godless world to evangelise their nihilistic gospel of relativism, Lovecraftians’ philosophy carries simply as a lot weight – by their very own ethical requirements – because the philosophies of Zoroastrians, social democrats, fascists, Mormons, feminists, or the Historic Egyptians. With out Cthulhu – or another deus ex machina – Lovecraft’s faith isn’t any extra seemingly than another and his life, sarcastically, is propelled by a religion simply as blind as another.

It’s a faith based on a hope: in peaceable oblivion, that failures can be allowed to be forgotten, and shortcomings excused – a need born from a wholly completely different collection of hopes – hopes of transcendence, belonging, and goal – which have been systematically dashed all through Lovecraft’s youth.

Poignantly, Grey concludes his essay:

Right this moment Lovecraft is lauded for his dedication to actuality, for his giga-Chad disdain for sentiment and conformity, and for his aversion to mankind’s delusions of grandeur. However it could be that he, like us, was simply one other disillusioned Pretender, searching for comfort from fairy tales (of his personal making) and hoping that the peace he present in them would keep by his facet till the bitter finish.

In his early, Gothic fiction, we definitely see these sorts of characters: younger males who’re determined to belong, who open their hearts to domineering father figures in hopes of being protected, who gobble up the supernatural with devoted relish, and who earnestly, hopelessly yearn for social restoration and non secular transcendence.

These Gothic tales repeat the story of lonely seekers pursuing metaphysical freedom, and being dashed down, like Icarus, to wallow in shameful disappointment. They expressed the desires of his personal telltale coronary heart, which he would lastly symbolically bury, as soon as and for all, in “Pickman’s Mannequin.” His need to belong and thrive may be heard, weakly throbbing, of their protagonists’ longings, failures, and despairs, and so they converse much more to the human expertise than a lot of his extra well-known tales of cephalopodic invaders. And it’s becoming, as a result of – as a lot as he resented his species and as dearly as he needed to divorce himself from all sentiment and emotion – Lovecraft was simply as human and damaged as any of us, and his early writing, particularly, testifies to this.

Right this moment he’s an icon of assured non-conformity, however throughout his lifetime he was insecure, unsure, and pissed off. He as soon as had excessive hopes for restoring his household’s standing and for gaining acceptance into the fickle halls of energy, however time and actuality chipped away at these wishes till solely a devoted circle of fanboys remained to tether him to life.  

In the meantime, in Windfall within the winter of 1937, Lovecraft is shedding every little thing. Sure, he has admiring correspondents, and, sure, he has made a reputation for himself within the area of interest world of beginner bizarre fiction, however he’s now inescapably confronted with the truth that his lifelong pretense at being a “superior man” – a fallen aristocrat whose breeding alone calls for respect – has been one lengthy false hope: a delusion simply as subjective and intellectually dishonest because the devoted idealism he so despises in political activists, religious believers, and dreamers of all stripes.

His closing years had been haunted by this gradual realization, a humiliation that pushed him additional in the direction of the dispassionate cynicism of “The Haunter within the Darkish,” “The Factor on the Doorstep,” and different bleak portraits of hopelessness and forfeited company. On March 15, incapable of writing any additional phrases in his Loss of life Diary, ravaged by ache and hounded by the humiliating ironies of his life, Howard Philips Lovecraft adopted his grasp, Poe, into the mysterious oblivion he had so longed for.

This demise, nevertheless, shouldn’t be checked out with schadenfreude: it’s an totally human expertise to fail, to lose religion in your self, and to observe your goals fade into disappointment. Regardless of all his plain unsavoriness, at coronary heart Lovecraft died believing himself to be the final word Outsider – unacceptable, unlovable, unforgivable – and that tragedy ought to transfer us. It’s for his damaged humanity somewhat than his bitter misanthropy that I hope Lovecraft is remembered.     

[1] Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy, Jeffrey Meyers

[2] His obituary within the New York Tribune – written anonymously by his bitter rival, Rufus Griswold – admitted that, along with his loss of life, “literary artwork misplaced one in all its most sensible, however erratic stars”

[3] I Am Windfall: The Life and Instances of H. P. Lovecraft, by S. T. Joshi; Lovecraft: A Biography, by L. Sprague de Charles; H. P. Lovecraft, by Peter Canon

[4] In his convincing essay, “H. P. Lovecraft Invented a Horrific World to Escape from a Nihilistic Universe” – extra on that later

[5] Loss of life Of A Gentleman: The Final Days Of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, by R. Alain Everts

[6] Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, by Rüdiger Safranski

[7] A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time, by S. T. Joshi; H. P. Lovecraft, by Peter Canon

[8] These long-forgotten, unstudied authors have been all printed alongside Lovecraft within the January 1924 version of Bizarre Tales

[9] “Sixty Years of Arkham Home,” by Kris Larson (Rain Taxi)

[10] “Letters to Robert Bloch and Others by H.P. Lovecraft,” a assessment by Darrell Schweitzer (The New York Evaluate of Science Fiction)

[11] “Sixty Years of Arkham Home,” by Kris Larson (Rain Taxi)

[12] The Unusual Sound of Cthulhu: Music Impressed by the Writings of H. P. Lovecraft, by Gary Hill

[13] H.P. Lovecraft in Well-liked Tradition: The Works and Their Variations in Movie, Tv, Comics, Music and Video games, by Don G. Smith

[14] “Terror Everlasting: The enduring recognition of H.P. Lovecraft,” by Stefan Dziemianowicz (Publishers Weekly)

[16] H.P. Lovecraft in Well-liked Tradition: The Works and Their Variations in Movie, Tv, Comics, Music and Video games, by Don G. Smith

[17] “Professional and Con: Cancel Tradition,” (Encyclopedia Britannica)

[18] Put merely: humanity is indelibly ruining the world and ushering in an unavoidable holocaust of all recognized life because of air pollution, local weather change, and materials extra

[19] “Impending Doom: Youth Face Anxiousness as The Planet Warms,” by Abby Wilt (Pepperdine College Graphic)

[20] “There are my ‘Poe’ items and my ‘Dunsany items’ —however alas— the place are any Lovecraft items?” (from a 1929 letter)

[21] “Sentiment evaluation of Lovecraft’s fiction writings,” (Heliyon)

[22] “Marriage, Failure, And Exile: H.P. Lovecraft In New York,” by David J. Godwin (Gotham Heart)

[23] “Adjustments of Notion in Gothic Literature,” (British and American Research)

[24] “Gothic Roots: Brockden Brown’s Wieland, American Identification, and American Literature.” Ilha do Desterro

[25] Which began in 1916 with the publication of “The Alchemist,” written in 1908 whereas he was in highschool

[26] Viz., Shelley, Hoffmann, Poe, Hawthorne, Stoker, Stevenson, Machen, Wilde, Henry James, Hodgson, Chambers, Blackwood, the Benson Brothers, and M. R. James

[27] Ex. “The Shunned Home,” “The Tomb,” “The Outsider,” “The Alchemist,” “The Image within the Home,” “The Lurking Concern,” “The Rats within the Partitions,” “The Music of Erich Zann,” “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” and many others., and many others.

[28] I Am Windfall: The Life and Instances of H. P. Lovecraft, by S. T. Joshi; Lovecraft: A Biography, by L. Sprague de Charles; H. P. Lovecraft, by Peter Canon

[32] “We Can’t Ignore H. P. Lovecraft’s White Supremacy,” a 2017 article for Literary Hub by Wes Home

[33] “Lovecraft and Nietzsche on the Mountains of Insanity,” by Noam Tiran and Adam Etzion (Academia.org)

[34] “Of Gold and Sawdust” by Samuel Loveman

[35] “An Enhance in Nihilism Performs Havoc With Psychological Well being,” by Charles Harper Webb, PhD (Psychology Right this moment), “Rising Nihilism Amongst Younger Individuals,” by Istvan Orban (New Acropolis Library), “Era Doomer: How Nihilism on Social Media is Making a New Era of Extremists,” by Daniel Siegel (International Community on Extremism and Know-how), and “‘New nihilism’: How Gen Z is embracing a lifetime of futility and meaninglessness,” by Wendy Syfret (Sydney Herald)

[36] Sociology of Faith, by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons; A Philosophical Protection of Misanthropy, by Toby Svoboda

[37] “Misguided Misanthropy: Why the “People are the Virus” Mindset is Damaging to the Environmental Motion,” by Connor Farnham (Bard Heart for Environmental Research); Man’s Seek for Which means, by Viktor Frankl

[38] “Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Actuality,” by James Tartaglia

[39] “The Dynamics of Xenogenetics and Sectarianism in Lovecraftian Horror: A Examine of Nihilism and Sceintific Upheaval,” by Brandon L. Matsalia (CSUSB ScholarWorks)

[40] “Social Darwinism within the Gilded Age” (Khan Academy)

[41] “The Misplaced Promise of Reconciliation: New Left vs. Outdated Left,” by Armand L. Mauss (Journal of Social Points)

[42] “Gen Z: How younger persons are altering activism,” by Megan Carnegie (BBC)

[43] “It’s Too Late to Redeem HP Lovecraft, Who Was An Unapologetic Racist and Anti-Semite,” by Crystal Contreras (Willamette Week)

[44] The Evolution of the Bizarre Story by S. T. Joshi, a assessment by Neal Monks (SFCrowsnest)