"Hanging with Howie" (Lovecraft, that is)
One of the least appealing things about modern Progressivism is its demand for absolute purity: one must always have had absolute moral and ideological perfection,** and any deviation, no matter how minor or long ago, are almost an instant grounds of attack.*** That observation has come back to me again during my recent crash-course self-study on H. P. Lovecraft.
I'm not really talking about the recent controversy over the World Fantasy Awards, whose organization has now -- due to HPL's racism -- discontinued the award trophy featuring HLP's bust . Instead, I've come to realize how much Howie in his teens and 20s reminds me of my younger self.
Oh, there's nothing about me as drastic as HPL's priggish & intolerant racism, nor his aggravating class snobbishness, although I certainly flirted with some wince-inducing views. Still, after HPL failed to get into Brown University due to ill health (I myself dropped out of Lycoming College due to finances), he spent several years basically being a waste of space. He was quite conscious of this uselessness, too. In his failed attempt to enlist in the U.S. Army (same here), he once despondently observed that, although he'd probably die quickly, at least that death would have been more meaningful than his current existence.
Lovecraft didn't actually emerge from his deep funk until he began his association with amateur journalism, where he actually started doing something with other people. Had Lovecraft been a contemporary, I imagine he'd have been a modern reclusive fanboy who becomes extremely active on internet discussion boards. Anyway, that's the sort of despondency I can understand. Between the time I dropped out of Lycoming and, four years later, enrolled at Kent State, my life was remarkably similar to Lovecraft's.
I'm also sympathetic to the following quote from HPL reflecting on his former youthful self:
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** Strangely enough, one exception seems (& I realize that this is either selection or sample bias, I forget which) to have been formerly active white supremacists who've later renounced their views -- it just plays too well to a reformist feel-good narrative, especially if the reformed person is just an average person without any currently contentious views.
***Of course, this has always been a general truth of political life, regardless of left/right orientation . . . remember the example of Robert J. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb during the Manhatten Project, who had his later career in government destroyed because he once attended a party with Communist Party organizers. And one also remembers the conservative conspiracy theories surrounding Barack Obama because he once served on a panel that coincidentally also held a former member of the Weatherman on it -- a tangential association that Sarah Palin once crazily characterized as, "He's pal-ling around with terrorists!"
I'm not really talking about the recent controversy over the World Fantasy Awards, whose organization has now -- due to HPL's racism -- discontinued the award trophy featuring HLP's bust . Instead, I've come to realize how much Howie in his teens and 20s reminds me of my younger self.
Oh, there's nothing about me as drastic as HPL's priggish & intolerant racism, nor his aggravating class snobbishness, although I certainly flirted with some wince-inducing views. Still, after HPL failed to get into Brown University due to ill health (I myself dropped out of Lycoming College due to finances), he spent several years basically being a waste of space. He was quite conscious of this uselessness, too. In his failed attempt to enlist in the U.S. Army (same here), he once despondently observed that, although he'd probably die quickly, at least that death would have been more meaningful than his current existence.
Lovecraft didn't actually emerge from his deep funk until he began his association with amateur journalism, where he actually started doing something with other people. Had Lovecraft been a contemporary, I imagine he'd have been a modern reclusive fanboy who becomes extremely active on internet discussion boards. Anyway, that's the sort of despondency I can understand. Between the time I dropped out of Lycoming and, four years later, enrolled at Kent State, my life was remarkably similar to Lovecraft's.
I'm also sympathetic to the following quote from HPL reflecting on his former youthful self:
There was no getting out of it -- I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centered, intolerant bull, & at a maturer age than anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get about more . . . is hardly much of an excuse . . . It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33 -- but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all. (Selected Letters V, 407-08).Again, while I never held anything as extreme as Lovecraft's own racial/class views, and my funk ended much earlier than his did, that basic situation is something not unknown. As he grew older, Lovecraft really did change quite a bit, although he unfortunately never truly dismissed his racialist views. Re-reading Michael T. Saler's excellent As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality, Saler writes that Lovecraft's “readers should recognize, however, how far he developed when he left the confines of his imagination and recognize also how those confines stretched to incorporate his more vigorous interchanges with others" (154). To me, that statement seems just.
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** Strangely enough, one exception seems (& I realize that this is either selection or sample bias, I forget which) to have been formerly active white supremacists who've later renounced their views -- it just plays too well to a reformist feel-good narrative, especially if the reformed person is just an average person without any currently contentious views.
***Of course, this has always been a general truth of political life, regardless of left/right orientation . . . remember the example of Robert J. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb during the Manhatten Project, who had his later career in government destroyed because he once attended a party with Communist Party organizers. And one also remembers the conservative conspiracy theories surrounding Barack Obama because he once served on a panel that coincidentally also held a former member of the Weatherman on it -- a tangential association that Sarah Palin once crazily characterized as, "He's pal-ling around with terrorists!"
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