Xotl posted:

I would think it depends on how you frame the question. There's active misogyny, which is "upon careful consideration, I am now taking the active stance that women are worthless", and the more common sort of passive misogyny, which is "of course I don't have anything against women", followed by not really giving them any sort of consideration when it comes time to consider roles and positions in society, etc. The latter is much more common, especially in the 1930s. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the latter, but then again so were most of the people on the planet.

Nuclear Tourist posted:

Nuclear Tourist posted:

I'm not sure I see the point of posthumously shaming white, male authors from the early 1900's because they had opinions that were stupid or don't fall into today's standards of political correctness. Hemingway was a machismo chauvinist. Joyce was a major league perv. Jack London was a xenophobe. Lovecraft was a xenophobe (part of his life, at least). They were all fantastic storytellers, as well as products of the time they lived in.

Nuclear Tourist posted:

I'm not sure I see the point of posthumously shaming white, male authors from the early 1900's because they had opinions that were stupid or don't fall into today's standards of political correctness. Hemingway was a machismo chauvinist. Joyce was a major league perv. Jack London was a xenophobe. Lovecraft was a xenophobe (part of his life, at least). They were all fantastic storytellers, as well as products of the time they lived in.

In other news, gently caress yeah Lovecraft beer

Rough Lobster posted:

Yeah Lovecraft was Racist As gently caress, and definitely More Racist Than The Average Joe when he was alive, and his racism bears mentioning, but...

I feel like it gets brought up every time his name is mentioned on the forums and it always results in a multi-page derail.

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

Racism chat: hmmm... I think this is something that really depends on where and when you look. It's pretty incontrovertible that HPL held some views that were racist (even in his own time) and this coloured his outlook on society, politics and literature. But we also have to consider HPL's racism as essentially fearful conservativism of a semi-recluse who was deeply wedded to an Anglo-Saxon colonial period and concerned about the loss of that history and privilege to immigrants and non-whites. His racism was essentially hostility towards social change. HPL was also very genteel in person and wasn't abusive face-to-face (so "manners" or "cowardice", dependent on how you interpret that). His racism and anti-semitism is also a product of resentment of his poverty and lack of recognition as a writer, which forced him to live the life of a hack rather than a gentleman writer. It is a transference of frustration. Not that this makes his views more acceptable. Contemporaries such as HG Wells actually advocated eugenics as a social platform. I'm not sure HPL ever did that (though feel free to correct me on that!).

What you see depends where you look (the letters are strongly racist when he was writing to receptive correspondents, also some of the stories and poems) - in the journalism much less so. Also it depends when you look. In his middle years his racism was strongest, in his later years he wrote that he regretted his extremism and that he came to take a more moderate political position (possibly due to his travels and his marriage). I don't think HPL ever set forth a racist ideology as logical or pseudo-scientific - which shows that he perhaps didn't think he could justify his views before an educated audience. He became a bit unstuck when during the First World War when he attempted to be both anti-German and pro-Teutonic at the same time. He probably realised that (and his racism) was more of an emotional stance rather than anything he could justify with facts.

I think is possible to be sympathetic to HPL as a person and writer, to respond to his writing (which is at times racist) and yet reject his racism. It is HPL's deep-seated fear of the other (Jew, Black, woman, foreigner, alien) that drives his writing and without that deep compulsion (which also produced his racism) he would never have written anything really fascinating.

So although I don't think it is a case of "the answer is somewhere in the middle", it is more a case of "yes, there is evidence both ways". I don't think that "HPL was more/less racist than you say!" is getting us anywhere.

E: It would be best is we discuss examples of racism and racial fear/theory in the writing rather than using it as a label for the man.

quote:

In the end I drove on without telling anything. But I did hint that gossip was wronging the poor old planter who had suffered so much. I made it clear—as if from distant but authentic reports wafted among friends—that if anyone was to blame for the trouble at Riverside it was the woman, Marceline. She was not suited to Missouri ways, I said, and it was too bad that Denis had ever married her.

More I did not intimate, for I felt that the de Russys, with their proudly cherished honour and high, sensitive spirits, would not wish me to say more. They had borne enough, God knows, without the countryside guessing what a daemon of the pit—what a gorgon of the elder blasphemies—had come to flaunt their ancient and stainless name.

Nor was it right that the neighbours should know that other horror which my strange host of the night could not bring himself to tell me—that horror which he must have learned, as I learned it, from details in the lost masterpiece of poor Frank Marsh.

It would be too hideous if they knew that the one-time heiress of Riverside—the accursed gorgon or lamia whose hateful crinkly coil of serpent-hair must even now be brooding and twining vampirically around an artist’s skeleton in a lime-packed grave beneath a charred foundation—was faintly, subtly, yet to the eyes of genius unmistakably the scion of Zimbabwe’s most primal grovellers. No wonder she owned a link with that old witch-woman Sophonisba—for, though in deceitfully slight proportion, Marceline was a negress.

Croisquessein posted:

Was Lovecraft misogynistic?

The Vosgian Beast posted:

The portrayal of women in his stories IS probably proof that he hated his ex-wife and mother, though.

Croisquessein posted:

I forgot about his crazy mother. Though I seem to remember he had a good relationship with his aunts.

Stravinsky posted:

What the heck, why does this forum have such a hard on for finding scifi/fantasy writers problematic?

quote:

In the end I drove on without telling anything. But I did hint that gossip was wronging the poor old planter who had suffered so much. I made it clear—as if from distant but authentic reports wafted among friends—that if anyone was to blame for the trouble at Riverside it was the woman, Marceline. She was not suited to Missouri ways, I said, and it was too bad that Denis had ever married her.

More I did not intimate, for I felt that the de Russys, with their proudly cherished honour and high, sensitive spirits, would not wish me to say more. They had borne enough, God knows, without the countryside guessing what a daemon of the pit—what a gorgon of the elder blasphemies—had come to flaunt their ancient and stainless name.

Nor was it right that the neighbours should know that other horror which my strange host of the night could not bring himself to tell me—that horror which he must have learned, as I learned it, from details in the lost masterpiece of poor Frank Marsh.

It would be too hideous if they knew that the one-time heiress of Riverside—the accursed gorgon or lamia whose hateful crinkly coil of serpent-hair must even now be brooding and twining vampirically around an artist’s skeleton in a lime-packed grave beneath a charred foundation—was faintly, subtly, yet to the eyes of genius unmistakably the scion of Zimbabwe’s most primal grovellers. No wonder she owned a link with that old witch-woman Sophonisba—for, though in deceitfully slight proportion, Marceline was a negress.

Stravinsky posted:

What the heck, why does this forum have such a hard on for finding scifi/fantasy writers problematic?

anilEhilated posted:

As long as you're aware of it, it shouldn't interfere in your enjoyment of his work.

Darth Walrus posted:

You are aware that there are people who find racism in their sci-fi horror unpleasant and distracting, right? Not everyone can go 'oh, that silly Lovecraft, look at him call black people subhuman like it ain't no thing'. It's legit to criticise an author for their literary flaws or say your enjoyment was diminished because of those literary flaws, and Lovecraft's racism, along with his sometimes torturously florid prose, is one of his biggest and most criticised flaws as a writer. It's like doing a Dan Brown thread where you're not allowed to bring up his constant, hilarious research errors.

Pioneer42 posted:

This entire thread will only ever contain racism posts, so might as well just rename it and get it over with.

Darth Walrus posted:

It is certainly interesting, at least, to look at how you handle Lovecraft's unique and enthralling cosmic-horror 'we are alone and insignificant in a universe filled with ghastly, hungry monsters' atmosphere without bringing along the racial baggage of those ghastly, hungry monsters mostly being stand-ins for black people (and occasionally the Chinese). Certainly, the 'sinister alien heritage stuff' gets really uncomfortable when you remember what it was originally a metaphor for. I thought The Colour Out of Space actually did a half-decent job of that, mind you - it helped that the alien was just so alien that it wasn't an obvious stand-in for Creepy Howie's particular phobias, and was treated with a certain solemn respect rather than just gut-churning terror.

NovemberMike posted:

Right, but one of the unique things about Lovecraft is that his fears and insecurities allowed him to tap into some common, very human insecurities. Take The Shadow Over Innsmouth. If you follow Lovecraft at all it's very obvious that the story can be summarized as "miscegenation is bad mmk" but it's possible to reject the racist aspects and still enjoy the story as a great piece of atmospheric horror that flirts with the idea of hidden monsters living among us. Modern audiences won't tend to make the leap between fish people and black people, which removes a lot of the aspects of the stories that have a possibility of creating real problems.

Bendigeidfran posted:

I always liked Lovecraft's less horrific writings better. Stuff like The Strange High House in the Mist or The Silver Key. There's a pervasive sense of wonder and admiration in them that a lot of people overlook in favor of his better-known stories. I don't think the idea that "humanity is scum in an uncaring reality" is universal to his works at all: it's a melodramatic statement made by characters who are overwhelmed by something beyond their control. Curiosity about mysterious things is a beautiful thing in his lighter writings, and it's made more beautiful by the dangers that could lurk in the shadows. Plus his authorial voice is a lot less abrasive and hateful when he's writing about things he actually likes.

A lot his horror stories start with really dry musings about poo poo like New England architecture and I just don't like slogging through that. Half of Call of Cthulhu is just investigating a statue, half of The Shunned House is a family tree, etc. And frankly it's permeated nerd culture so far that the horror that is there has become cliche.

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

HPL was a polymath autodidact - which can go for and against a person. Means they are very knowledgable about a subject but can overlook basic aspects and concepts that get taught to people who study conventionally. It also means they can hold weird, cranky views on topics without encountering opposition. They can also be super touchy about having their expertise questioned. It's something like a prototype of the nerd culture - someone who can sperg like a champion but misses some essential aspects of appreciation, can't see the bigger picture and can't view a subject with distance.

I don't think HPL was exactly like that, though you do see traces of it. HPL actually had a deep understanding of many subjects. You can learn a fair bit about certain subjects from him but unfortunately - as anyone who has worked on a dissertation on an academic subject will tell you - about 1/2 to 3/4 of science and history established as fact in 1920 has now been proved wrong. That's no reason for any of us to feel superior - people will be shaking their heads over our conventional wisdom 100 years from now.

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

Another thing to remember is that by the time he began to relax in terms of personal and social (and political) attitudes he had almost stopped writing fiction. So those changed attitudes don't make it into the stories. Also, to be honest, there isn't much impetus to put in inclusive, progressive and positive views into a horror story. (At least, these are not views that really adapt well to horror story tropes, especially the ones that HPL adhered to or invented.) So the slowing of his production then dealing with cancer meant that there wasn't much chance to see HPL's intellectual development in his fiction over his last years. I don't know his letters well enough to speak on that aspect.

Darth Walrus posted:

I'd disagree. Progressive horror writers have stuff they're scared of and want the audience to be scared of too (see China Mieville's work, for example), and personal (as opposed to social) fears like psychological/body horror are rich and mostly apolitical fields.

Bendigeidfran posted:

I'd even say that the root of horror is vulnerability, which you don't normally associate with wealthy stoic Aryan scientists. You can mine a tremendous amount of fear from, say, a monster that acts like an abusive partner or the constant threat of starvation and social ostracization. Folk-tale monsters themselves probably emerged from the abject terror and poverty of pre-modern life. And something like Carrie or pregnancy-related horror can easily open itself to a progressive themes.

Science-Fiction horror was, I think, largely an attempt to bring the fear of nature to a well-lit rationalist universe. The kind of fear that would affect an armchair-bound, Cambridge-educated gentleman who has nothing to fear from anything else. But I don't think we can say that represents all horror.

NovemberMike posted:

The problem is that nobody's asking interesting questions. It's all "is Lovecraft racist?" and it's a bit like asking "it seems like these southern landowners in the 1850's were practicing slavery?" There are a lot of interesting things to talk about with Lovecraft's racism like how you teach it, how you adapt his works for a modern audience, that sort of thing. "Does this go in the racism/misogyny/whatever bucket?" is rarely interesting, it honestly seems like the question tends to be used as a shibboleth rather than being a real point of discussion.

Bendigeidfran posted:

So what do y'all think of A Shoggoth on the Roof? It's one of the more...interesting things the modern Lovecraft fandom has made. I have a soft spot for how goofy and surprisingly well-sung the H.P.L Historical Society version is, but I can see how it could be annoying.