Macho drunkard, killer of unarmed animals, and bullfighting afficianado Ernest Hemingway:
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Yes, yes, yes!
Itās why the number one way to convert someone from their -ism is for them to get to know a black person, or a Muslim, or someone on the QUILTBAG spectrum on a personal level in real life.
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Increasingly Iāve grown thankful for the review THREADS because many posters weigh in to give their own reviews, and after reading the entire thread I feel Iāve got a much better sense of whether or not I would want the product.
Over the years, I have bought a number of things because I saw them recommended here, but only after hearing from everyone, not just someone on the masthead.
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Matt Ruff is one of the best fiction authors out there. Donāt forget Sewer, Gas and Electric.
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Yes, I do like it when it appears to be āof the timeā rather than the Tuskegee Experiment of the week (which is fine sunshine if the water filtering comes proper (also 30 or so other things.)) I also had the distinct impression he lived 1890-1937 and that the occasional protagonist who -needed- his or her mind blown (and other things that donāt immediately come off as prevailing) was grist to the mill. So Iām at the point reading the review where āracing to the graveā [c.f. comments] and ādebate underway todayā are a bit close. Do the protagonists get to enjoy shining, I hope? I want to know Iāll enjoy this more than turning mismatched USB cables into dreadlocks (lionizing the power structure thereā¦as opposed to tapping warm running nonsense.)
Thatās a strawman argument.
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Yeah, I need to burn my Wishlist on Amazon. Burn it to the ground. Nothing worse than impulse wishlisting.
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Personally, I think taking a complex human being who suffered through hardships I wouldnāt wish on my worst and boiling him down to a āscumbag racist pig,ā is a pretty scummy thing to do.
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And who exactly is doing that? Pointing out that Lovecraft had racist elements in his work is not exactly calling him a āscumbag racist pigāā¦ itās pointing out a reality of early 20th century America, which was, indeed an incredibly racist place. That is not exactly an opinion, thatās pretty well established historical fact. I still enjoy his work, but that doesnāt mean we canāt talk about the work and what itās saying about the life and times of the man.
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Cory did, in the article (personally, I think itās fair enough).
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Fair enough.
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Would ālong-suffering scumbag racist pigā be more appropriate?
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Or we could just accept the fact that Lovecraft was racist, as much or more so than others during a very racist time, without also declaring that that makes him a scumbag and a pig.
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I think we can also accept that people are complicated. I think we can acknowledge things like racism, which as @nungesser correctly points out was pervasive (this was the era of the KKK being a major force in US politics, the height of Eugenics, the nadir of race relations, the era of the Great Migration, the era of fascism, etc) and still like Lovecraft.
But, @nungesser, Iāll also point out that while racism was rampant, that doesnāt mean there werenāt other voices. This period saw a strong wave of anti-racism and anti-colonial movements, not just here, but around the world. This was the era when the NAACP was getting itās feet under them, when WEB DuBois was writing his master works, when African Americans were traveling to the Soviet Union, when Japan was becoming a global, colonial power, despite not being a āwhite manās countryā, when there were numerous anti-racist conferences happening. So, the era was not without dissenting voices on the issue of race.
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Itself a result of fear.
āWe are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.ā
ā Ralph Waldo Emerson
āLovecraft Country,ā by the way, is excellent.
If we accept that he was racist, the rest follows - irrespective of any positive qualities or mitigating circumstances. Funny how that kind of leniency is expected in the case of people who suppress minorities or women, but somehow isnāt regularly extended for people who try to work in favour of the exploited. Can we not accept that Stalin was a product of the social circumstances of the time?
āIrrespectiveā and āmitigatingā are words at odds.
That may well be, but āirrespective of any circumstances that would-be defenders of racism might present as mitigationā is exactly the kind of unwieldy pedantry that loses hearts and minds, whether or not the underlying argument is sound.
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