Lovecraftian Criticism

We've discussed S. T. Joshi here before, but there hasn't been much if any mention of Dirk W. Mosig, whom Joshi credits with breaking the hegemony of the Derlethian paradigm. Heck, we really haven't talked about August Derleth himself as an interpreter of Lovecraft.

While I know he has his detractors, I'm personally a fan of the Lovecraftian studies and commentaries of Robert M. Price. And Price has drawn my attention to Donald R. Burleson as a deconstructionist critic of the HPL oeuvre.

And then, holy crap, Michel Houellebecq.

Would anyone like to highlight particular works by these critics, or propose other important additions to the canon of Lovecraft scholars?

It also strikes me that this thread could have some synergy with our upcoming DEEP ONES investigation of Supernatural Horror in Literature.

Well, for Houellebecq, it's Against the World, Against Life. As I'm approximately the last person on this insignificant little blue planet to point out, it's as much a literary work in itself as criticisim, but it's a good read.

If there's any other Swedes here, or people who know Swedish, they might want to try Mattias Fyhr's Död men drömmande (yes, that's "dead but dreaming" in Swedish). Tho I think Fyhr is a bit optimistic about Lovecraft's optimism.

August Derleth's "Note on the Cthulhu Mythos" is published in The Trail of Cthulhu, The Cthulhu Mythos, and In Lovecraft's Shadow. It really shows how far popular appreciation for Lovecraftiana has progressed, that I think most 21st-century readers would find this essay laughable. It's most enduring influence has probably been via the systematization of the "Mythos" in the original edition of the AD&D Deities and Demigods volume -- which introduced a not-inconsiderable number of readers of my age to HPL! Derleth also uses that essay in a vain effort to clear waters that he himself had muddied in his fiction, where he was the first (I think) to characterize Lovecraft as an active occultist using fiction as a blind to present his esoteric knowledge.

>3 paradoxosalpha:

Joshi's I Am Providence provides an in-depth, level-headed overview of the Lovecraft/Derleth situation. I feel like I now have a better grasp on events and frankly, knowing the facts makes me loathe Derleth's actions even more.

Derleth's "collaborations" with Lovecraft, which more often than not amounted to Derleth taking off on a single line scribbled by Lovecraft on a napkin or a notebook page, were sometimes published as being "H.P. Lovecraft with August Derleth". Later publishers sometimes left Derleth's name off entirely. These generally awful stories did not help anyone to take HPL's genuine fiction seriously.

Derleth also my have created Arkham House, but in order to do so he may very well have deliberately sabotaged Lovecraft's getting exposure from a major publishing house (a couple had expressed definite interest). Joshi postulates that if HPL had received mass exposure (and an Arkham House edition was nothing near that), the very course of weird fiction may have been altered in a dramatic way.

I was also disgusted as to how Derleth basically anointed himself as "copyright holder" of Lovecraft's work, often bullying even the smallest of presses who might have tried to publish something Lovecraftian or directly related to Lovecraft. Even Sonia Lovecraft backed down from Derleth's legally empty but intimidating threats.

I just saw Derleth's photo on his author page in LT for the first time today, and it's the first portrait of him I'd ever seen. I don't know what I was expecting, but that wasn't it!

It looks like the volume for Burleson is Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe. Has anyone here read it?

Oddly enough, although this is a topic of great interest to me, I've read very little Lovecraftian criticism outside of the work of Joshi and Price. I think it's interesting that Joshi, Price, Derleth, and Burleson (and his wife Mollie) have all tried their hand at writing Lovecrfaftian fiction. This strikes me as rather unusual - I'm not aware of any Shakespeare scholars attempting plays written in blank verse, y'know?

Barton Levi St. Armand of Brown University is another Lovecraft expert/critic. Joshi acknowledges his work in I Am Providence and Centipede used a long piece by him as the introduction to their massive HP Lovecraft: Masters of the Weird Tale volume.

http://www.librarything.com/author/armandbartonlevist

Here is a little thing he did on Poe:

http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1972101.htm

Check out the Curriculum Vitae PDF at the bottom of this page. Impressive!

http://brown.edu/Departments/AmCiv/people/facultypage.php?id=10147

I believe I read in the apparatus to American Fantastic Tales that T. E. D. Klein had written a dissertation on Lovecraft. Does anyone know if he has published a version of it or related scholarship?

I can find mentions of an intro that Klein did for Necronomicon Press in the 1970's and also for one or two mass-market HPL volumes, but nothing on a dissertation. There are some pay-for dissertation services, but nothing came up with my search terms. I'd be interested in reading such a thing, if it exists!

I can only find two HPL-related volumes written by Barton Levi St. Armand. One is The Roots of Horror in the Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, of which affordable used copies can be found. The other, H.P. Lovecraft, New England Decadent, from Silver Scarab Press, is a collector's edition, going at around the $400 to $500 range.

I started this thread inspired by having read the first few paragraphs of "The Criticism of Azathoth" by Robert M. Price in Crypt of Cthulhu #80 (Eastertide 1992). I've since gone on to read the whole of that article, and I must say, it is white hot shit to someone with my reading appetites. Don't read it unless you want your mind melted.

>11 paradoxosalpha:

Whew! I'm going to have to read that one twice! You're right- it is an exciting, even charming, take on the deconstructionist viewpoint. I appreciated the bits on sequelitis near the end, and even the reason why Derleth's interpretation might be allowed, if viewed in a certain light.

The following reminded me of why I find our DEEP ONES conversions to be so enjoyable:

Deconstruction maintains that such "undecidability" is characteristic of every text, though often only a very close reading will reveal it. Jeffery said that he only began noticing the different possibilities after he and a friend had reread the tale many times over the years and only later thought to compare notes. Each had hitherto assumed his was "the" clear meaning and that intended by the author. Maybe we ought to compare notes more often.

> 12

As I was reading it, I remarked to my Other Reader: "This essay just reads Derrida facing Mahayana Buddhism facing the Derlethian interpretation of Lovecraft -- in one paragraph!"

The side note toward the end about Lumley's reintegration of the Burroughsian genealogy of the Dreamlands was a pleasantly surprising eye-opener, considering that I had read and enjoyed all of the Lumley Dreamlands books, and had never seen that strand which is so retrospectively apparent.

I was also intrigued by the evident reference to Mosig and Tierney as collaborative peers. I'm a fan of Tierney's Mythos-riffing, which does seem to belong in a larger category with much of the Lumley material.

>13 paradoxosalpha:

I've never read Lumley's "Dreamlands"-set tales, although I can see how they might be more Burroughsian in nature. I think that being ex-military, Lumley naturally leans towards action-filled stylings (witness also the Necroscope series). He's kind of a hard writer to peg, though. His "Titus Crow" tales tend toward pastiche (annoyingly so, I think), while a number of his straight-out Lovecraftian horror stories are top notch.

One of my favorite lines from the Price essay, regarding HPL on two conflictingly-stated pronunciations of "Cthulhu":

Both items cast authorial intent into a cocked hat, which was, as it happens, Lovecraft's preferred headgear.

That how-to-pronounce-Cthulhu issue seems connected, somehow, to the fact that the most popular versions of the notorious symbols of the Mythos are "wrong": the three-lobed-question-mark Yellow Sign as contrasted with the inverted torch version, and the pentagram Elder Sign as contrasted with the branch rune. I noticed this weekend, by the way, that the HPLHS had brilliantly re-valorized the branch-rune version by synthesizing it with Dee & Kelley magic tablet grids. Now that's interpretation!

I also found this passage to be quite intriguing:

David Schultz has argued with cogency that there is no "Cthulhu Mythos" anywhere to be found in Lovecraft's works. Where there are indeed various names repeated for the sake of atmosphere, Lovecraft never would and in fact never did abstract from these datum, as Francis Laney, August Derleth, and Lin Carter did, some sort of system of myths or religion. The stories are not only not about the Mythos, but there is no Mythos, no such abstraction, in the stories.

I would now like to apply Schultz's insight to the whole question of meaning in Lovecraft's texts (any by extension, to any texts): the systems of meaning posited by Derleth (Good versus Evil deities), Tierney ("cosmic thunder heard afar off"), Mosig (Jungian archetypes), the early Burleson (mythic hero archetype), Joshi (cosmicism) are all like the "Mythos" -- abstractions that are simply not given in the text but which may be selectively composed on the basis of data chosen from the text.

I think that this is most likely closest to the truth, such as it may be, or is at the very least about as baldly-stated as possible.

I agree that any "meaning" of the Mythos is more a product of reading than writing. But I think that the vivid precedent of Dunsany's Pegana and the overt fun with exchanges of names and references among the Lovecraft Circle are arguments in favor of the deliberate creation of a "system of myths."

ETA: On the other hand, the idea of the Mythos as representing a consolidated culture distinct from other systems of human knowledge is certainly not in the original stories. "Mythos" creatures, tomes, and devices might be found anywhere in occultism, scientific exploration, or history, and would not be confined to a peculiar religion or cult setting. The thing that makes them part of the Mythos is their presence in the stories; they aren't there because they are supposed to "belong" to such a system.

>17 paradoxosalpha:

Good point on Dunsany, plus, true to HPL's "cocked hat" I think that he would contribute to the confusion by condoning the usage of the names of his creations by other writers while at the same time expressing puzzlement over suggestions by correspondents/fans (sometimes in the letters pages of WT) that there was some kind of cohesive myth-building being done by the author.

>11 paradoxosalpha: et al.

Interesting essay, but in my view, frankly, rather elementary. I've never really gave a crap about authorial intent, seeing it as posibly the most reductive view of a work of art. Lovecraft seems to agree with this sentiment - you will recall what he says in Supernatural Horror in Literature when writing on Edgar Allan Poe (my emphasis): "Poe, on the other hand, perceived the essential impersonality of the real artist; and knew that the function of creative fiction is merely to express and interpret events and sensations as they are, regardless of how they tend or what they prove—good or evil, attractive or repulsive, stimulating or depressing—with the author always acting as a vivid and detached chronicler rather than as a teacher, sympathiser, or vendor of opinion."

> 19

The rejection of authorial intent is obviously not at all groundbreaking, although so much HPL criticism has been developed with reference to his biography and letters, that it should still give people pause.

Far more interesting to me are the ideas of a) interpretive undecidability, and b) the trace that reveals suppressed/excluded elements as complementary to those foregrounded in a text. I have read plenty of deconstruction in my time; what I liked about this essay was the ways that Price presented the ideas clearly and applied them to Lovecraft's stories.

>20 paradoxosalpha:

I have read plenty of deconstruction in my time; what I liked about this essay was the ways that Price presented the ideas clearly and applied them to Lovecraft's stories.

Yeah, you have something there. I have not read Burleson's Lovecraftian criticism but I understand from sources I consider reliable that, while brilliant, it can be obscure in the extreme.

I also feel the need to add that I came to Lovecraft in what I suspect is a very different way than most HPL fans. First of all, I don't believe I started reading him until I was in my mid-twenties, so I think I already had a somewhat more mature initial perspective on his work than most fans, who tend to start reading his work when they are in their early- or mid-teens. Secondly, reading Lovecraftian criticism has always somewhat gone hand-in-hand with reading Lovecraft's fiction for me - for example, I recall reading Joyce Carol Oates' introductory essay on Lovecraft in Tales of H.P. Lovecraft before I had read a lot of HPL's fiction itself.

But, yeah, Price's essay certainly has its fascinating passages, not the least of which is looking at whether or not there is a "Cthulhu Mythos", per se, in HPL's fiction from a deconstructionist point of view.

>19 artturnerjr:, 20

Price alludes to the historical infighting of various camps of Lovecraftian criticism, each of whom claims a kind of ownership of HPL's intent. Indeed, his writings do seem ready made to contribute to an especially active and varied literary petri dish for interpretation. What Price does so admirably in this essay, I think, is to tackle so many of these aspects at once. It reminded me not to be so dismissive of some interpretations.

But what about those who say that HPL was some kind of unwitting conduit for actual occult forces?

> 22 HPL was some kind of unwitting conduit for actual occult forces?

Aren't we all? ;-D

>23 paradoxosalpha:

Well, there is that Weird Tradition Group Mind....

>22 semdetenebre:

But what about those who say that HPL was some kind of unwitting conduit for actual occult forces?

That reminds me of one of my favorite bits of writing about Lovecraft - an anecdote from Neil Gaiman regarding a convention he attended where there was a panel on HPL. It may shed some light on this conversation we've been having, after a fashion.

The panelists were, if memory serves, authors Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, the late Karl Edward Wagner, and Irish illustrator Dave Carson.

They talked about the influence of Lovecraft on each of them: Campbell's hallucinatory tales of urban menace, Lumley's muscular horror, Wagner's dark sword and sorcery and modern, slick tales; they talked about the psychology of Lovecraft, the nightmarish visions, how each of them had found something in Lovecraft to which he responded, something that had inspired him: three very different authors, with three very different approaches.

A thin, elderly gentleman in the audience stood up and asked the panel whether they had given much thought to his own theory: thet the Great Old Ones, the many-consonanted Lovecraftian beasties, had simply used poor Howard Phillips Lovecraft to talk to the world, to foster belief in themselves, prior to their ultimate return.

I don't remember what the panel's response was to that. I don't recall them agreeing with it, though.

Then they were asked why they liked Lovecraft. They talked of the huge vistas of his imagination, of the way his fiction was a metaphor for everything we didn't know and feared, from sex to foreigners. They talked about all that deep stuff.

Then Dave carso, the artist, was handed the mike. "F--- all that," he said happily, having drunk a great deal of alcohol, dismissing all the erudite psychological theories about Lovecraft and cutting to the chase. "I love H.P. Lovecraft because I just like drawing monsters."

Which got a laugh from the audience, and a bigger laugh when Dave's head gently touched down on the table a few seconds later, and then Karl Edward Wagner took the microphone from Dave's fingers, and asked for the next question.

Performing a bit of thread necromancy here, to point out that I've finally gotten around to reading and reviewing Houellebecq's H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life.

>26 paradoxosalpha: Read the review and enjoyed it. I've been wondering about that book, and Houellebecq's Submission. We'll keep an eye out for the former.

>27 RandyStafford:

Thanks. One thing I didn't mention in the review is that although I'd been meaning to get around to this book for a long time, I also read it as something of a palate cleanser after The Gospel in George MacDonald.

As this thread has been reopened, I'll mention the Kickstarter for Tour de Lovecraft: The Destinations - Cthulhu Mythos Places. I own the first Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales, and it's a somewhat basic discussion, specifically covering every tale. The new edition should cover the collaborations, poetry and maybe even essays. It may be a little simple for some of this audience, but I found the original interesting enough, and am looking forward to the second edition and The Destinations.

I've finally gotten around to ordering a copy of Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe--a cache of hardcovers came up on amazon for $20 apiece.

And now I've read Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe and duly posted my review.

LT's work listing for Burleson suggests he writes at least some fiction as well as criticism, wonder if anything is suitable for a DEEP ONES selection?!

ETA

Already pointed out in >7 artturnerjr:, but I'd long forgotten in my asynchronous thread-reading.

In my library I have "The Eye of Hlu-Hlu" in The Cthulhu Cycle and "Dimply Dolly Doofy" in Black Wings of Cthulhu 3, both by Burleson.

I've also found "The Daemon-Sultan" in my copy of The Azathoth Cycle. And I just found out about Burleson's 1994 novel Flute Song--it's been cataloged only twice in LT, and has no cover image.

Edited to add: But here it is from isfdb.org.