I do continue to read and appreciate Lovecraft, I just don’t think it’s possible to separate his work from his racism.
It’s not always a comfortable relationship, but then again who reads Lovecraft for “comfort?”
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“I’d make the case that Lovecraft’s fiction–and Lovecraftian horror–depends on the xenophobia that was endemic to Lovecraft’s work to the point that without it, many his stories lose their unique and uniquely profound effect. “The Horror in Red Hook” is a direct channelling of Lovecraft’s loathing of newcomers to New York City; the real horror of “The Call of Cthulhu” is not the octopus-headed demigod that emerges out of his underwater city to kill all the people, but the people themselves–all either eugenically unfit denizens of the bayou or “primitive” island cultures whose religious practises amount to a kind of proactive nihilism. The manifestation of Nyarlathotep in the eponymous story is that of a black man bearing trinkets, who seduces the good white folk of America into authoring their own demise.”
The problem is that this attempt to make the case that Lovecraft’s fictions “depend on the xenophobia” for their “unique and uniquely profound effect” is not very convincing. “The Horror in Red Hook” is not considered an important Lovecraft story by anybody - its barely read or anthologized today. Next, he makes the claim that the “true horror” of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ is the bayou natives rather than Cthulhu - while it might be true that Lovecraft evinces more personal disgust in his descriptions of the bayou denizens than Cthulhu (there’s plenty of disgust and horror in both instances), this would nevertheless in no way advance his specific claim that The Call of Cthulhu DEPENDS on the racist depictions for it’s unique effect. This is a subjective and highly questionable claim - it amounts to the claim that if Lovecraft had written COC exactly the way he did, only minus the racist undertones in the descriptions, the story would have none of its present impact. Does anybody actually believe this? It would be EXACTLY the same story with exactly the same impact, only minus the unfortunate incidental racism which for generations of readers has actually been detrimental to effect of the story. The effect of Cthulhu, like most of Lovecraft’s fiction, derives from the rich pseudo-historical mythology, the cosmic philosophy, the intriguing idea in that story of an interconnected global Jungian Unconsciousness - the racism was always just an eye-rolling embarrassment that readers had to endure because they dug the other stuff. He finishes his “case” with Nyarlathotep, again a short prose poem which, like Red Hook, isn’t particularly important in Lovecraft’s corpus. And that’s the sum of his argument that all Lovecraft’s fiction derives its effect from racism - only making reference to three stories, two of which are barely anthologized today, and the case for Call of Cthulhu not convincingly argued at all.
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Forgive me if I am wrong but wasn’t racism and eugenics considered the modern scientific way of thought and even the equivalent to PC in that time period even for people of the non-religious persuasion? Other than in cultural and literary analysis what is the urgency exposing the racism in an artifact written by what is currently a very old pine box full of worm poop?
Are we better for confronting racism at what ever level we do individually and as a society, hell yes. Are we also better for knowing about antibiotics, microprocessors, and space travel? Sure that too because we aren’t all old-timey any more.
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It’s a fair cop!
(That said, I think it’s fair to say that Octavia Butler was a less influential writer than Lovecraft. I’d be happier with the suggestion that he be replaced by Poe or Robert W. Chambers. Of course they may have been terrible racists too, I don’t really know)
Because it is actually an interesting question to ask if say, the Southrons or Woses in Tolkien are racist stereotypes of non-European people, but there isn’t much to say about what Lovecraft felt about non-Europeans (and even Southern and Eastern Europeans) because he tells us directly that he doesn’t like them.
A misanthrope may hate men and women, the young and the old, the black and the white. But a misanthrope does not hate them for being male or female, young or old, or black or white; that’s what a bigot does. A misanthrope, rather, hates people for their universally human qualities and failings.
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Yeah…
“You have put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!”
–Anna Howard Shaw, leader of the American Suffrage movement
…
Now I am going to describe that class of voters. In the southern part of that State there are Mexicans, who speak the Spanish language. They put their wheat in circles on the ground with the heads out, and drive a mule around to thrash it. The vast population of Colorado is made up of that class of people. I was sent out to speak in a voting precinct having 200 voters; 150 of those voters were Mexican greasers, 40 of them foreign-born citizens, and just 10 of them were born in this country; and I was supposed to be competent to convert those men to let me have as much right in this Government as they had, when, unfortunately, the great majority of them could not understand a word that I said. Fifty or sixty Mexican greasers stood against the wall with their hats down over their faces. The Germans put seats in a lager-beer saloon, and would not attend unless I made a speech there; so I had a small audience.
–Susan B. Anthony
…it gets better…
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.
–Abraham Lincoln
The thing is, all these people are remembered for the good things they did.
I agree that Lovecraft is, at times, horribly racist. I look at that part as a shocking reminder that it was apparently just fine and dandy to be like that, in the public eye, during his time. I can condemn the man’s racism, but still recommend that people read it.
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Perhaps… but give her (readers) time.
Also, I suppose I’d just like to see a progressive African-American feminist in the spot. I think representation like that would be very meaningful.
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Quite. Eugenic thought was certainly mainstream, until it fell out of fashion with the fall of the Third Reich.
Though anti-miscegenation laws were quite related to eugenics thought and those died even later.
By the way, religious people were often against eugenics. It’s a absolute no-go area for the catholic church, for example.
Edit: I’m wondering if some of these “X’s abhorable practice of Y was not just a product of his time” -interpretations aren’t attempts at whitewashing these times.
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I think he meant the being Nyarlathotep, not the story that bears his name. He appears in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Dreams in the Witch House (and I think others). He is the soul and messenger of Azathoth, and not a minor thing.
Still, Nyarlathotep is a great example of your main point. He is a being that can take any form, so the fact that he appears as a black man or a man from the middle east is actually incidental. In fact, without the context of Lovecraft’s obvious racism, I don’t even think that depiction of Nyarlathotep is racist. He appears as something that triggers the xenophobia of the characters in the story. Had he been visiting Egypt from North American instead of the other way around, perhaps he would appear as a white man.
Also, unimportant or not, wow is Nyarlathotep a great read. One of my favourites.
While that response isn’t surprising(it’s sort of the stock for letting any historically favored character off the hook, after all); I’d be inclined to argue that it actually shows a very poor understanding of Lovecraft, aside from being arguably wrong and irrelevant even if right.
Lovecraft’s work practically revolves around the concept that everything we think of as rational and good and civilized and so on(intellectual, moral, even mathematical and urban-planning) is a tiny bubble out of which we could stumble at any time. Sometimes this theme involves dialing the racism to 11 (degenerate half-breed cultists in the Louisiana swamps, inbred mole-men, hideous goat-children produced by abnormal copulation between humans and others, etc, etc, etc.). Other times it involves a similar fascination with blood and heredity(How many stories involve a peculiarly sensitive and slightly neurotic scion of an old New England family now in somewhat reduced circumstances; but atypically attuned to the call of the old gods?) Sometimes it occurs by other means(as when the poor Miskatonic mathematics student stumbles upon the geometry man was not meant to know, or when one of those New England Scions starts painting still lifes of a hidden and sinister city within the town we know).
It is undeniable that he is just plain racist, even when he has no obvious reason to be (the fact that negroid half-breeds are always the atavistic degenerates is, of course, problematic), and I see no reason to excuse him for that; but he’s a horror writer whose ‘horror’ is all about the looming possibility of contact with the other so profound that it probably won’t even bother to be malicious, which usually shatters the sanity of his ‘civilized’, ‘logical’ ‘man of science’ characters, while it leads those of ‘sensitive’ and ‘creative’ type to disturbing visions and hideous works of art, and the lesser sort to an emotional and biological taint, a breakdown between their humanity and the looming abhuman otherness that constantly threatens.
Could similar themes be handled without being crazy racist? Sure. Is just politely eliding Lovecraft’s use of racism sort of missing one of the core horror strategies of his writing? Yes, yes it would.
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That said, I think it’s fair to say that Octavia Butler was a less influential writer than Lovecraft. I’d be happier with the suggestion that he be replaced by Poe or Robert W. Chambers.
I’m not sure anyone should be the symbol for the World Fantasy Award. Can anyone really be said to represent the whole genre? I’d be much happier with a symbolic representation, rather than a literary figure, for the award. Sure, the Hugos are named after Gernsback, but the rocket motif for all of the statues is much more appropriate than a likeness of him could ever be. Same thing should be done with the World Fantasy Award.
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I understand that if you take Lovecraft off for being a racist then it makes sense to replace whim with an African-American feminist to double-down on the point (and, like I said, it’s not like it would surprise me if Poe was racist too). At any rate, one thing I’ve gotten out of this discussion is that I should go read some Octavia Butler. So if my criticism of criticism of Lovecraft’s racism is that it doesn’t seem to serve a purpose, I suppose I’m wrong here.
I think this is a perfectly good point. If it were an award for weird fiction I’d probably stick with Lovecraft, but even then only because he’s so creepy-looking.
Forgive me if I am wrong but wasn’t racism and eugenics considered the
modern scientific way of thought and even the equivalent to PC in that
time period even for people of the non-religious persuasion?
You are wrong. As others have pointed out, people of the past were not a large undifferentiated mass. Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been a bestseller for several consecutive decades prior to the publication of Lovecraft.
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By far the most amusing way to confront Lovecraft’s racism is Zoe Quinn’s remarkable web game “Hitler or Lovecraft”, trying to earn a high score by guessing correctly which awful quotes were the dictator or the author are responsible for. It’s a fairly hard challenge. (Similarly, if much less remarkably, I threw together a “Downfall” video where Hitler complains about having to play Call of Cthulhu instead of Dungeons and Dragons)
Nickle’s examination of how xenophobia and racism informs Lovecraft’s development of the horror genre is interesting. Given that philosophical and neurological inquires have shown the way that racism draws power from the survival mechanism of “disgust”, this looks to be a fruitful area to explore.
His essay might have been better served by focusing on what he claims to want to talk about, rather than spending the first six paragraphs posturing as a lonely crusader. I suppose, given the often overwhelming “plush Cthulhu” tendency within fandoms, there is a temptation to see a conversation about racism in Lovecraft as daring. But not having two whole seminar panels address the topic he wanted to talk about doesn’t mean that Nickle is Anita freak’n Sarkeesian. Getting to the point would have made the essay stronger.
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Why do anything at all?
Since when has presentism ever gotten in the way of political correctness?
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This thread was worth it, just to learn Susan B. Anthony uttered the phrase, “Mexican greasers”.
So, if I’ve never heard of Octavia Butler, where should I start reading?
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I started with “Kindred”, although my favorite of her books is “Fledgling”. It’s sort of a vampire story for people who aren’t really into vampires. That’s how I took it, anyway. I find vampires boring and I found “Fledgling” absolutely riveting.
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I’d class him more as Xenophobic myself. He was rather uncomfortable with anyone or anything he didn’t know quite well. Few things made him as uneasy as The Other.
