The wizard was called “Le Sorcier”. Lovecraft wrote that story when he was 17, so I think we can cut him some slack that it wasn’t a masterpiece.
Can we cut him some slack about what he named his cat?
No, we can excuse lack of refinement in talent, but not racism.
I love Lovecraft’s work, but fuck is he incredibly racist.
I agree. I just like telling people what he named his cat so they’ll know what a racist he was.
That said, Cool Air is a very good short story.
I mean if they have read some of his stories, it should be pretty obvious he was pretty fucking racist. The cat thing is a fun meme but if anyone has read at least call of Cthulhu the work most people know about its pretty on the nose. Every human antagonist is either black or a foreigner and he is pretty blatant about it. Hell don’t get me started on Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (or The White Ape), that one is just so funny with how bloody racist it is because the conclusion is so absurd, you can’t take it serious.
and xenophobic… and a mamma’s boy
His racism is honestly the most horrifying part of his work.
Like there’s some good stuff there, but it’s the extreme racism that really gives me the heebie jeebies that make me put the books down and take a breather.
Oh my goodness, yes! One of the parts in Herbert West - Reanimator made me nauseous.
Yeah it does make it a bit hard to listen to those audiobooks in the car…
Lovecraft’s racism is very much a product of fear, not racial superiority. Dude was extraordinarily terrified of everything remotely foreign. It’s why “strange creatures that are vaguely human but completely incomprehensible” is the generic terror in his stories.
In that sense, I find the motivations for his racism far less terrible than the motivations a racial supremacist has.
Its a bit of both. He definitely believed in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race. There is no excuse for it, but there is a pitiable aspect to the part of Lovecrafts racism that is rooted in fear. Like Fucking chill Howard, its just a Welshman.
Unrelated but you just said “but fuck”.
He might have actually been the greatest coward of all time. Yeah, that cowardice meant he held a lot of shitty opinions about the world, but it was the exact kinda experience with endless fear that could create a new horror genre.
Nah, his racism is well documented. Though if we want to talk about the cat in particular, it’s not known if he named it himself, when it went missing he was only 14.
But he was fine re-using the name in The Rats in the Walls, so if he didn’t name it, he was very fond of it.
Yeah, safe to say he didn’t have an issue with the racist name.
Lovecraft’s racism is what I call “hilarious racism”, if you’ll pardon the term. I’ve only ever thought that in connection with HP. He was very much a product of his times, as we all are. Eugenics was all the rage, and you can pick that out in his works.
Lovecraft wasn’t merely racist against non-whites, he was racist against anyone who wasn’t of the “right stock”. He might snob you if you were a white man, living in Rhode Island, of English or German descent, but came from the wrong family tree. LOL, this guy rated humans like dog breeders rate bloodlines. OG Playa Hater’s Ball.
And speaking of his times, look at when he wrote. We were just discovering how incomprehensibly monstrous the solar system was, how big the Milky Way was, just then understanding that we lived in a galaxy. And we didn’t know there were others. FFS, Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930.
Anyway, well worth reading his complete works. Good shit. Grab a copy off me.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KLBK1QQPc5ZuKm6nlveswoWKGBI-Hjeo&usp=drive_fs
Not that it matters at this point, but I saw somewhere that he had remorse for his racism later in life. Is this true? I have never seen anything to show it but I haven’t saught it out either.
It’s kinda funny how some of my favorite board games are based upon the setting. I love that they are heavy with diversity. It makes me think of Stephen King’s writing book, he says a story is no longer yours once it’s out there.
I’m glad Lovecraft made what he did, and that it’s so free tooled today. I think one day the Wizarding World will be the same (I refuse to keep calling the whole thing Harry Potter).
He became less racist later in life, but didn’t, to my knowledge, express remorse for his previous racism.
Wow I was going to post a spoiler of the cat’s name but nvm
Simple is not bad, also a pretty good twist for the time he was writing.
Yes, I know he was a very racist dude.
Okay but At The Mountains of Madness, The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath, The King In Yellow, Color Out of Space, that one with the witch and the human-faced rat, all quite good.
I agree with most of that however The King in Yellow was made when he was around 5 years old. People sort of put it into the Lovecraft universe because of the themes but nope has 0 connection at least in its inception. The whole Lovecraft universe is sort of a hog podge of other’s authors work as well who sort of expanded and formalized parts of it. Its honestly very cool what a group of authors can do when IPs and such aren’t hoarded in a huge vault being left untouched until its economically advantageous to use.
The whole Lovecraft universe is sort of a hog podge of other’s authors work as well who sort of expanded and formalized parts of it.
It is a shame that the other authors are overlooked because it was an awesome collaboration.
I didnt want to mention August Derleth, and all those crazy chains of letters involved in the origin of the Lovecraftian Mythos. The King In Yellow is in the Dreamquest of Unknown Kaddath, if only briefly.
The witch and the rat is “Dreams in the witch house”, iirc. It was adapted into an episode of Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, worth checking out
Thank you, I have his collection. I think its been like 10 years since I have read any of those. I should go back.
The Dunwich Horror is my favorite one.
No one said that blood-curdling cosmic horror had to be good to destroy the vestiges of your sanity.
What, that’s not how manifestation works?
The wizard went out there and became a self made Lovecraftian curse. He manifested the changes he wanted in the world.
Starting with the man in the mirror!
I forgot about Gus Johnson, what ever happened with that guy?
The gist is that his pregnant girlfriend was having severe abdominal pains and Gus brushed it off and wouldn’t take her to an ER. She miscarried and he got canceled. This happened back in like 2021.
Photo at the bottom reminds me of this.
That’s what the wizard is called but it isn’t his name, in the same way that “President” isn’t President Biden’s name.
You mean his driver’s license didn’t change to “Joe Biden President,” and that’s not why he’s Mr. President ?!
