The mad Arab Abdul Alhazred (a.k.a. H. P. Lovecraft) has had a volume published by the Library of America, a prestigious non-profit publisher devoted to preserving the works of America’s greatest writers.
In the judgment of author Michael Dirda, that means he’s entered the American canon.
(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who pointed it out!)
Excerpts:
NO FULL UNDERSTANDING OF MODERN literature is possible without taking into account an exceedingly peculiar, self-educated, semi-recluse from Providence named Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
That is a conclusion no one, including Lovecraft himself, would have predicted. As he was dying in 1937 at age forty-six, he may well have felt he had lived in vain. His stories–sixty or seventy works of various lengths and completeness–resided in scattered notebooks and throwaway pulp magazines, uncollected and unlikely to be remembered.
But it now seems beyond dispute that H.P. Lovecraft is the most important American writer of weird fiction in the twentieth century–and one of the century’s most influential writers of any kind of fiction. His admirers range from the Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges to such contemporary masters of darkness as Stephen King and Neil Gaiman. Each year winners of the "World Fantasy Award" take home a trophy modeled on Lovecraft’s gaunt, lantern-jawed face. Nearly every author of supernatural fiction and dark fantasy sooner or later tries his hand at a Lovecraftian homage or pastiche.
The article contains some good analysis of Lovecraft’s literary work, but it also contains information on Lovecraft’s private side:
Lovecraft–under-sexed, neurasthenic, a Mama’s boy–actually got married in 1924, to a Jewish woman who described him, mirabile dictu, as "an adequately excellent lover." The couple resided in hated New York City for two years, until the marriage broke up and Lovecraft happily moved back home to Providence. In his later years, this once wholly introspective voyager traveled all around eastern America, from Quebec to New Orleans, from Cleveland to Key West.
He actually competed in an ice-cream eating contest and was reportedly offered the editorship of a periodical called the Magazine of Fun. He remained an almost literally starving writer, however, with so little income at one point that he ate his suppers out of cans, being unable to afford a stove. A typical dinner might consist of cold hot dogs, biscuits, and mayonnaise. Lovecraft died from cancer in 1937: forty-six years old and apparently doomed to be forgotten.
I can sympathize with Lovecraft’s poverty, as there was a time in grad school when I was so dirt poor in Arkansas that we were in constant danger of being evicted from our apartment, we couldn’t afford much-needed medicine, dollar packs of hot dogs were a principle means of subsistence, and cheese was something I regarded as "rich man’s food." I well remember picking loose change out of the couch to try to get enough coins that my wife and I could go to the market for a pack of hot dogs and a can of frozen lemonade, which would represent all the food we’d have to eat, ’cause the cupboard was bare.
Another summer (before I was married), I was so poor that all I could afford to eat was 17 cent boxes of low-quality, generic, Always Save Macaroni & Cheese–every single day. While macaroni & cheese had previously been a favorite dish, I couldn’t stand the thought of eating it for several years afterward.
Something that the article doesn’t mention is that Lovecraft’s friend, correspondent, and fellow weird fiction author Clark Ashton Smith (whom Lovecraft referred to as Klarkash-Ton) attributed Lovecraft’s death to malnutrition. Apparently Lovecraft was so impoverished that at certain points he was subsisting on food costing only $1.40 a week (a ridiculously small sum even in the 1930s).
Perhaps it was severe malnutrition that weakened his immune system enough to allow his stomach cancer to develop.
Bitterly ironic that a man who ate so little would be killed by a disease that gave him intense stomach pains.
Even more bitter is the fact that Lovecraft would have made more money if he had written more fiction, but criticism of his work demoralized him as a writer, keeping him from writing as much as he otherwise would have.
Now he’s considered one of the giants of 20th century American literature.
I still don’t buy his thesis that the universe is vast and uncaring and doesn’t give a whit about puny men.
God still loves H. P. Lovecraft.
Steve and I love to reminisce about the first 5 or 6 years of our marriage. When we look back on them we laugh a lot and the kids love to hear the stories. Some of the best times of my life was when we were living from paycheck to paycheck. Anyway, as the years passed he advanced in his field and life was good. But now we are back to those days of penny pinching and I’m glad our kids can witness these times also and grow from it. Yes, it is difficult but I have seen our kids transformed and they have made many sacrifices. I cherish those days of snuggling on that very old little loveseat couch.
Excellent–Lovecraft is one of the greats. The most horrifying of his ideas is that of man being alone in the cosmos, and at the mercy of those both powerful and indifferent. Real existential despair is the the core of the horror.
What’s also nice about his horror is that it is true, creepy horror–not the blood-soaked gore that passes for it these days. What the man could do with suggestion and mystery (“non-Euclidian geometry”) is astonishing.
Plus, he was a true New Englander, and his love of the region shows in his attention to detail.
Late I came to Lovecraft — I’d played the game Call of Cthulhu and knew great gobs about the mythos before ever I read a story by the man himself. Oh, but I have enjoyed him. The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath is a fun, fun book. The best part is that I can take the rest of Lovecraft slowly. There are so many of my favorite dead authors who have no stories or novels left for me to discover. Lovecraft is still open.
When I went to a friend’s wedding in Rhode Island, we drove by an old town on hills by the sea, the steeples and houses lit by the sun piercing through weird racing clouds. We all just looked at each other, grinned, and said, “Lovecraft country.”
“Pickman’s Model” is one of the most bone-chilling stories I’ve ever read . . . scares me to this day. Without Lovecraft, there would be no Stephen King. It’s about time he was recognized in this manner. =)
The day my wife and I got married (we were in college)we had $15 dollars with which to buy groceries. We bought chicken backs (on sale), canned biscuits and a few other things. We boiled the chicken backs and then methodically picked ALL the meat from the bones and made chicken & dumplings that was actually excellent.
In those days a date was a frozen chocolate pie and two forks!
“You try telling the young people of today that… they won’t believe you.”
Great Python reference!
Forgive my ignorance, but didn’t you have Ramen noodles? They’re great when you don’t have money — I especially like the “Oriental” flavor. What’s that supposed to be, anyway?
Ramen noodles were not eaten in the household of my boyhood, so I didn’t know what they were at first.
By the time I got married, though, Ramen noodles were *definitely* added to the dirt poor diet we often had subsist on.
For those who may not know, Ramen noodles are essentially a block of cardboard that has been through a shredder and reassembled as a block that you then boil and apply a pack of spices to.
The Lovecraft in the Walls
Sure, he used words like gibbous, shibboleth, shambling, degenerate, and phrases like towering monoliths and non-Euclidean geometry too much, and contributed plenty of glossolalia like “Ia! Ia! C’thul’hu F’thag’n” and “Mwl’fgah pywfg fhtagn Gh’tyaf n…