While you make a good argument, especially for the continued reading of Lovecraft that I whole-heartedly agree with, part of you what you say begs the question: should be still derive aesthetic pleasure from Nazi approved and funded art of the 1930s, as one example? Most of it was neoclassical work produced by skilled artists. There are other examples throughout history, but this one just happens to be the easiest. As a philosopher of art, it’s one of those questions I wrestle with.
Kindred is indeed great, no argument there. I personally prefer the Patternist series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patternist_series).
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That’s the series I haven’t tried yet. Next on my list.
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For me, Lovecraft’s racism actually does really interesting things to the work. In the stories where it’s present, it’s so egregious that it warps the entire story by making the narrator extremely unreliable. So now the series of events described comes into question, like any racist narrative. The possibility arises - in fact the certainty arises - that the monsters/“evil” cults are the victims of blood libel. Once one makes that leap, the entire narrative becomes inverted. The “monsters” become the protagonists, embraced by and embracing the disenfranchised, persecuted by xenophobic humans. If you assume blood libel, the various cults in the stories actually begin to take on qualities of early Christianity. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” is a particularly good story for this, for what is it about? A race of alien “monsters” who do nothing but live peaceably and intermarry with human beings, trying merely to keep themselves safe from a hostile outside world that will (and does) attempt to exterminate them.
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Very nice reading against the grain. Lovecraft would be appalled, I’m sure.
I started with the last book of the Xenogenesis series. … which was confusing … I haven’t read that much of her work though.
This is why I don’t look at works by Michelangelo.
I guess I don’t understand this question. Is deriving aesthetic pleasure from art something you choose to do or not? Are you asking whether you should turn away from this art? Or meditate on how your anger at the subject matter should obliterate - rather than coexist with - any other feelings you have about it? That’s kind of the central problem with the whole discussion. Lovecraft was racist, there is lots of racism in his work, I don’t like that his work is racist, but I like his work. All of that is true.
I actually think that in some stories this was kind of the point. I mean, Lovecraft definition thought those “degenerates” were in fact degenerate and he didn’t think we were supposed to like them, but even if the point is not to identify with the “evil” beings, in the end there is no evil in many of the stories, only evil from the perspective of a narrator who is confronted with things he can’t understand. Sure, Cthulhu seems “evil” to people, but if he were to awake and destroy humanity, it would be about as evil as a human incidentally stepping on an ant that crawled across the sidewalk. The truth is that we are meaningless and causing us to go extinct wouldn’t even be an evil except by our own judgement - that’s the real horror.
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I was just about to post the exact same sentiment. Perhaps its my academic background, but I never pay any attention to the writer, only the work. The artist simply doesn’t matter one they puke out our their art for public consumption. When I encounter racism or any other ism in text, I generally take it as a bit of the theme of the work, and take it as that, without passing judgment.
My two favorite thinkers are Nietzsche and Heidegger, both of a home were horribly wretched men, who held or supported terrible thoughts. But both of them were also brilliant men, who produced brilliant works.
Though, I am guilty of a bit of this as well. I can’t read Heinlein, his politics and misogyny hurt my brain.
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I second the idea about Octavia Butler’s likeness.
Lovecraft’s stories have only ever entertained me but Kindred actually informed me, made me stop and consider something in a way I had never considered it before. I am a different, and I hope, better person for having read it. I don’t know about her influence on the genre, but she certainly influenced me.
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Finally. Someone gets it. Fantasy is merely a subgenre of Science Fiction, and the best way to reinforce this essential truth is to honor a proper SF writer in the name of of Fantasy.
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It was probably in Stephen King’s Danse Macabre that I first saw it flatly stated that horror fiction is inherently reactionary. Don’t know if King still feels that way. Between then and now I don’t recall seeing a decent argument in the other direction.
Also, why should a science fiction award bear the likeness of a specific person? Seems like that’s a heavy mantle for any one person to bear.
There’s no question that Lovecraft was racist. It’s a little up in the air how much of that was conventional racism and how much was xenophobia, which he also obviously suffered from, quite likely pathologically. But no doubt there was some of both.
Moreover, you can’t excuse it by saying “back then everyone was racist.” Perhaps they were for some exaggerated sense of “everyone”, but ethics is not relative.
However, Lovecraft was a fine writer when he kept the purple ink under some degree of control (not always, obviously), and from time to time you can even see an attempt on his part to confront his own racism and xenophobia. Not necessarily entirely successful, but I think he became aware to some extent of his own failings.
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I can’t give a blanket statement for everything, but on the whole I would say “yes” at least to some of it. I love a lot of the iconic socialist art from the USSR and other Bloc countries. While I don’t agree with their politics nor am I delusional about the lies being sold via propaganda, a lot of the design and imagery is solid and inspiring.
I don’t know what you are referring to specifically. While I wouldn’t see much redeeming value in say an anti-Semitic poster with a caricature of a Jew on it, I probably would still find value in some idealized Aryan sculpture.
This is depressing. I’m going to go burn all my Lovecraft books…
pulp fiction burns itself, unless deacidified.
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Which is what the Cthulu Mythos is all about. We are simply parasites on an Elder God’s bed.
Even the author insert characters were described that way.
If we’re going to judge texts based on the fears of the present, Roald Dahl’s factory contained a lot of illegal immigrant dwarfs, Agatha Christie talked about 10 little [usual can’t be said word], Nietzsche’s work was judged to be anti-Semitic and Aristotle said women have less teeth than men, so they can’t be as intelligent.
What we really need to do is acknowledge these points, rather than simply pretend we never committed these acts.
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Seems to me, that Lovecraft’s racism is too egregious, too obvious and upon re reading his work, too squick inducing to take seriously, I mean, if you want to discuss racism, you go to Lovecraft’s overt and unapologetic examples?
Seems to me that its a sort of cop out from he real discussion about actual, current racism, which is so hard for many people to recognize. so hard that they can actually view discrimination taking place and cannot see it as such, yet I’m sure these people would read Lovecraft and be stunned at some of the things he wrote.
Debating the relevance of Lovecraft’s racism in his work is still much more productive than any attempt to imply that racism is at the core of the horror in Lovecraft’s work, it would necessarily relegate the “weird” to second place. And that is clearly not what the stories themselves are about, so its a hard argument to make and I don’t think it was well made here.
I cited a few obvious examples–the proto-Tea-Party anti-immigration text (one can hardly call it subtext) of "The Horror at Red Hook,
Ah, so that’s where the Tea party gets their ideas, from reading “The rats in the walls”
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I ought to read some more Lovecraft keeping an eye out for this specifically. I did, of course, notice it.
Personally I find the biases, bigotries, and belief systems of authors interesting. Its sort of a secret social-history inside the other book (be it fiction or not). I’m not such a careful reader that I always notice them without knowing in advance, but it is interesting.
Reading Orson Scott Card with a little knowledge of Mormon mythology so you can see how it fits in the mold of “Mormon fiction”. And with the knowledge that he at least would be a crazy right winger twenty years later (not sure if he was always so crazy, or became a lot crazier). But I have little interest in reading his recent novels that are all about his crazy-right revolution fantasies.
Edward Gibbon’s “Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” is as good for his “British Empire” worldview as for the history he intends to write.
There is an, IMO probably intentional, version of the same thing in “Roughing It” by Mark Twain. A mostly biographical account of his traveling and living in the west from 26-32 years old. Published when he was 37 it contains some vicious descriptions of natives early on, but much kinder ones later after he had lived with some for a time. I think this is actually one of the points of the book, which makes it sad that it is fairly often censored as racist. It is a book about a racist: the author. But the author is soon to be a famous civil rights supporter, by 60 he is criticizing others for racist writing on native people. What is the author of “Roughing It”? Entirely reformed? Still partially a “man of his times”? We know where he ended up. Other, more famous, works illustrate his attitudes as a child. This book is from the transition.
I have appreciated the facist era sculpture on the one end of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Supermen on Superhorses. It is a bad sign when your official art style is so brutal and intimidating. Compelling, however.
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Wow. Never occurred to me before, that that’s a perfect analogy for Native Americans. And like the Great Old Ones, they were pretty much absent from New England by the time Lovecraft came along, leaving nothing behind but place names and a history that cannot be discussed. Things That Cannot Be Spoken, indeed.
