I think it says something interesting about modern HPL fans that the subject of the fandom are his monsters and antagonists, and not protagonists (Do you remember what was the name of protagonist in Call of Cthulhu, eh?)
True, but I find Ayn Rand scary even though Iām scared of pretty much the opposite things she was scared of.
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Well, unlike Lovecraft, Rand has managed to organize a real cult that worships an actual non-human entity 
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Youāre scared of people who arenāt cartoon villains with improbably Dickensian names?
OMG he was Archie Bunker. Now I want to watch a sitcom about H. P. Lovecraft and his Jewish in-laws.
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Yes! Can we get this please, internet?
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I adressed this here:
For example:
But save for his face, Romero was not in any way suggestive of nobility. Ignorant and dirty, he was at home amongst the other brown-skinned Mexicans
Iām a westerner, sure, but Iām also Mexican and of course Iām going to find this racist.
Lets clear up one possible misconception first. Calling Lovecraft racist is not the same as singling him out as the only or the most racist person of his time. This is probably why weāre talking about his stories.
The thing is, if you want to discuss Lovecraftās stories, there is no way to avoid talking about racism since he went to the trouble of writing some pretty racist things as the text of those stories. This is not about finding racist subtext in his stories, its about some pretty racist shit he actually wrote as part of the story.
You personally may not be bothered by the racist things he wrote, but can you go so far as to deny he wrote some pretty racist things? Because thatās what 's actually being discussed.
If you wanāt to say that Lovecraftās IRL racism isnāt a problem, then thatās an argument for you to make.
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Itās troubling to read if you imagine it being said by a modern person, in this day and age. However, these are a dead manās opinions, from a hundred years ago.
What annoys me about the racism leaking into the stories is that itās ridiculous, and by being ridiculous diminishes the horror he wishes to impart. Using the fear of the other as hook into peopleās brains is shoddy writing. But then thereās a reason Lovecraft isnāt considered great literature even now, when heās gained in popularity. People are well aware itās pulp. Those, however, are writing flaws.
Iām perfectly fine with people ripping into Lovecraft for being racist. Iām equally fine with people ripping into his works for having writing flaws. Both are absolutely valid opinions, from my point of view.
But the fact that he expresses his opinions in his writing flaws is not, in and of itself, something that makes it somehow troubling to enjoy the remainder of his writing. Authors do that all the time, whichever their views are, and we rarely consider it troubling.
That little fact aside, itās also what makes older writing historically interesting.
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How are you to overcome inherent indescribability save through sheer brute force?
Lovecraftās protagonists, usually, are clearly described in terms of their origin and world-view; theyāre generally recognizably human, in contrast to the inhuman and incomprehensible entities they encounter. Theyāre not heroic, and are imperfect, and frankly, ordinary and boring. So much as I dislike the casual bigotry, it seems to fit as a facet of the characters; itās quite easy to believe that a 1930s college professor from New England would believe in a hierarchy of races. Itās a bit harder to bracket it this way when the racism comes through in the omniscient third person, though.
But, Iām not quite at ease with leaving it at this. Lovecraft is at something of an extreme, of expressing racist ideas directly. But, heās connected to broader trends in writing, and Iām not that confident that I can really neatly bracket his bigotry from his writing in general.
Take Tolkien, for instance. In the Lord of the Rings, there are the uncomfortable references to the swarthy people from the south. But even setting that aside, thereās a more subtle problem: he keeps using the word āraceā. He uses that to refer to the differences between Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, Men, etc., rather than to to different human ethnic groups. But, Tolkien was writing in an era in which it was still at least somewhat respectable to talk about āraceā, to treat differences between human ethnic groups and cultures as if there were essential, ahistorical, perhaps biological differences between them. And heās writing stories about imaginary āracesā in which itās assumed that there are really essential differences between them. (And, thereās an implicit hierarchy, and a division between āgoodā and āevilā races.)
And Tolkien remains very influential, and countless fantasy novels and role-playing games use the term āraceā in just the same way. And once in a while, youāll hear someone say something like, well of course racism is terrible and the idea of āraceā is a fiction, but wouldnāt it be cool if there really were elves and dwarves and so on?
There are fantasy and science fiction settings in which these essentially different āracesā are present, and racism is explicitly a story element ā sometimes with conflicts between different species as an allegory for racism, sometimes with familiar conflict between human ethnic groups. Star Trek, in its various incarnations, is the most obvious example.
The most puzzling example I can think of is the roleplaying game setting, Shadowrun. This is set in a future in which humans have spontaneously split up into humans and āmetahumansā: elves, orcs, trolls, etc. So, thereās the memory of historic racism, and thereās present bigotry against certain groups of metahumans ā including, for instance, street battles with human supremacists inspired by the Nazis. And, in the course of generating a character, itās pointed out that trolls are the subject of unfair prejudices and treated as if theyāre less intelligent than humans, when theyāre not any less intelligent ā but the character generation rules have trolls take a big penalty to their intelligence score.
My point, insofar as I have one, is that thereās quite a muddle of conflicting ideas about race in speculative fiction, in which we both reject racism and express something like a yearning for it to be validated. The concept of race as an essential category still holds strongly to a place in our imagination.
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Itās only in recent years that Iāve really come to grips with how problematic āraceā is in fantasy fiction. Watching Frozen with my daughter I was stuck thinking about the idea of the ānoble savageā that would probably get a lot of talk these days if it were put into a human character but that gets to go unchecked in the trollies. But at the same time, these other species are really just humans with pointy ears. Tolkien even had half-elves to prove the point.
Star Wars: the Phantom Menace was brutal for this. Imagine that the people of the planet had been black humans instead of long eared aliens and the trade federation had been asian humans. It would have been a despicably racist film.
But, of course, they are literally different species, unlike different races of humans, so giving them different traits isnāt exactly racism. In the end we rarely know. BF Skinner (maybe apocryphally) got a monkey to raise along side his baby - theorizing that the monkey would basically act like a human if it was raised as one. The result was that the baby started acting like a monkey. You canāt make a monkey into a human by exposing it to human culture (abilities of monkeys to adapt to human culture will presumably vary). Can a trolley adapt to human culture? Can an elf? Would an Ewok raised by humans successfully adapt to human society or would it, like the monkey, not be able to overcome some kind of Ewok instinct?
All the science fiction worlds I can think of (popular ones, Iām not actually much of a science fiction geek) essentially have a sort of religious/magical view of consciousness, personhood and dignity. All sentient species have that atomic ego/intelligence allowing them to make decisions that overcome their instincts and their circumstances. If that is the case, then different species are really different āracesā of the same universal sentient species (Star Trek: TNG revealed that humans, vulcans, klingons, etc., essentially are the same species via ancient aliens). If there are essential differences between them, then maybe that should be making our antenna go up.
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Just go to your local thrift store and get an encyclopedia from the eraā¦ I recall one where the entry on Italy started off with āThe Italians are a lazy raceā.
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The āexhaustiveā method of creative writing.
I think you may have misunderstood me here. āby a modern person, in this day and ageā refers to 2015, not to the era of Lovecraft. In that era, racism was more widespread, yes.
I knowā¦ Wasnāt meant as a directive to you. Was intended as agreement ā just adding a data point for the racism of the age.
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I donāt imagine it is being said by a modern person and I find it troubling.
To your point, I can stomach it because I know heās dead and its an old story, but some of these sentiments persist to this day which is why it bothers me.
If you read racist writing and you donāt cringe some, then youāve likely not been exposed to some of the experiences or opinions about you that would make you cringe to even read about. Having had some of these experiences and constantly being exposed to these depictions makes me sensitive to them perhaps, I can only surmise your insensitivity thus.
His racism doesnāt so much leak into his stories as it is woven into them.
I actually donāt think heās a bad writer, I remember reading them when I was younger and more impressionable, and I found them very effective horror stories, if the writing gets the story and the feeling across, then how is it bad?
If he were forgettable he would be bad.
Calling him a bad writer is an excuse, heās a great writer of weird stories and he knew what he was doing.
The most troubling thing is that when I first read the stories I lacked the context to actually understand the racist bits. Apart from āThe transition of Juan Romeroā which I attributed to your basic American anti-Mexican sentiment, I hardly noticed he was talking about Jews, Native Americans and basically anyone not āwhiteā as kindling for his cosmic horror. When I finally noticed I was blown away.
To summarize:
I believe you when you say you donāt find the racist bits in Lovecraftās writing troubling; I do, because those sentiments are still with us they still hurt.
That Lovecraft was racists is not up for debate, he clearly was, Iām sure Poe was too, we donāt discuss it along with his work because he didnāt make it explicit in his writing, (Except maybe that there may not be any minorities for him to diss in his writing). Discussing Lovecraftās work will necessarily mean to cover the racist bits as well.
For you.
Ah, then forgive me. My bad for misunderstanding 
Itās really easy, though. Just replace any racist descriptions with āgamergate trolleyā, and you get the creepy reaction that Lovecraft wanted you to get, without the racist overtones.
Seriously, though, thatās all it takes to enjoy Lovecraft. Thereās nothing sinister or troubling about it.
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#Eternal September
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