Me, Myself and H.P. Lovecraft . . . Or, The Eldrtich World of Lovecraft Tributes

H.P. Lovecraft might be the most influential American author of the twentieth century that you've never heard of.  Chances are you know people he's influenced, from Stephen King to Mike Mignola.  But chances are equally great that if pressed, you might not really know Lovecraft from either of those two.  Lovecraft is a strange case of fame come too late.  In this case, his fame is almost entirely posthumous and due in large part to the efforts of friends after his early death to preserve his writing.

The most obvious reason you've never heard of Lovecraft--or if you have heard of him, never read him--is the dense, archaic prose in which he embeds his horrifying tales of the strange and eldritch.  Indeed, that prose is difficult for the uninitiated to fathom, and the threshold accordingly high.  Yet those who do plumb the depths of Lovecraft come away better for it; or at the very least, with a new perspective of humanity's role in the universe.

Because Lovecraft is the first author of the twentieth century.  What I mean by that is the H.P. Lovecraft was the first author to fully understand the anomie of the twentieth century as science removed humanity from its lofty position in the heavens.  The culture dissonance that would occur after the First and Second World Wars was preluded by H.P. Lovecraft.  His fiction divorces human beings of universal importance; to Lovecraft the universe is cold, and inhabited by beings so vast and powerful that their actions cannot even be described as malicious or aggressive.  They simply are, and to confront them is to beard madness.

For all of these reasons (and probably more) Lovecraft has made something of a comeback in the last few decades.  He's always enjoyed cult status, but the fall of the Soviet Union made him much more salient.  The rise of international terrorism and the absurd turn we've made in light of 9/11 makes him all the more relevant.  The mortgage crisis of 2008.  The Occupy Movement.  All are Lovecraftian.  Because he's all about forces beyond our understanding, and he knows that to confront them is to fall victim to madness.

Writers have paid tribute to Lovecraft for decades, but much of the earlier work focused on expanding the mythos Lovecraft had created.  August Derleth, who did the most to rescue Lovecraft from obscurity, also traded on the name and expanded the world that Lovecraft created, embedding his own moral and theological beliefs into a universe that Lovecraft understood to be largely amoral. 

Recently, I have had the pleasure to read two different takes on Lovecraft, and the idea of an uncaring, hostile universe.  The first was given to me as a gift, and features Lovecraft in historical settings.  Historical Lovecraft, published by Innsmouth Free Press, features 26 tales divided into roughly three historical epochs: Ancient history, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times.  Very much in the vein of stories initiated by Derleth, each story varies in how closely it hews to Lovecraft.  Some are deeply disturbing, and remind us that the universe is cold and dark; others feel like modern horror.  While you could make the argument that the modern zombie fascination is very Lovecraftian, the menace and the malevolence are simply lacking.  Nevertheless, disentangling Lovecraft from the early twentieth century New England in which he wrote allows us to see the broader implications of his mythos. 

The second collection of short stories is a collection of Lovecraftian science fiction.  The transition from Lovecraftian horror to science fiction is an easy one to make.  Alien seems so much like it came from Lovecraft's own imagination that one has to wonder if HR Giger and the writers (Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett) weren't channeling his spirit.  Initially considered a horror movie, Alien has come to be regarded as seminal in a new style of science fiction in the universe is--you guessed it--cold and amoral; daring to look it in the eye may reduce to you a gibbering mass.

Space Eldritch, published as an ebook (with a print version on the way) by Cold Fusion Media, takes a somewhat different approach.  Narrower in scope than Historical Lovecraft, the stories themselves are more intimate and less disturbing.  Science fiction owes a debt of gratitude to Lovecraft, and it shows in the writing of these pieces.  Often paying tribute to pulp sensibilities as much as to Lovecraft, except for a few touchstone Lovecraftian images, few of the pieces seem to disentangle themselves from the science fiction tropes we've become familiar with.  Both Mission to Mars (the godawful travesty featuring Gary Sinise and Tim Robbins) and Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall make appearances when we encounter something menacing lurking beneath the Martian soil (to be fair, however, Philip K. Dick's influence is just as ubiquitous in science fiction as Lovecraft is in horror.) 

Ultimately, this collection of stories simply lacks the menace of Lovecraft.  Maybe that's a product of our times.  We've become used to the idea that science has all the answers.  Or at the very least, that answers exist.  Lovecraft was less interested in that than in examining a universe beyond human ken.  And I think the authors of Space Eldritch have failed that test.  They're fully a part of the modern zeitgeist.  Maybe we can't go back, but I like to think that Lovecraft is still viable and an important perspective in these uncertain times.

Those Across the River Review

Fleeing the North in disgrace, WWI veteran and failed academic Frank Nichols and his soon-to-be wife Eudora, arrive in a tiny Georgian hamlet where Frank has just inherited the home of his recently deceased aunt.  Under the strict injunction to sell the house and absolutely not to move to Whitbrow (the aforementioned tiny hamlet), Frank does exactly the opposite.  But haunted by the specter of war, and the stigma of both cuckoldry and adultery, Frank takes this opportunity to be heaven-sent.  It doesn't hurt that just across the river is the ancient Savoyard plantation, where his great-grandfather was known to have treated his slaves so inhumanely, that they eventually rose up and slaughtered him.  Hoping to segue family tragedy into a book which might serve as passport back to his academic career, Frank is lured across the river and confronted by memories that simply refuse to die.

This very basic summary hardly does the book justice.  First of all, this is a supernatural horror story, and is currently up for nomination to win the World Fantasy Award.  Second, it deals with subject matter far more literary than this genre is used to.  The mental wounds that Frank suffered in the trenches of WWI still torment him; moreover, from the outset we're informed that while he's a nice guy, he's not above sleeping with another man's wife.  From this fragmented moral landscape, we're also offered a piquant reminder of the suffering and inhumanity of slavery.

This book is remarkably smart, not only in its subject matter, but also in the way that it deals with the persons of Frank and Eudora Nichols (as they eventually do marry).  Told in the first person, however, it necessarily focuses on his triumphs, defeats, fears and the quotidian tragedies that comprise human existence.  It doesn't surprise me at all that this book has been picked up to be made into a movie, directed by Tod "Kip" Williams, who directed Paranormal Activity 2.  Commentators have noted that Christopher Beuhlman writes like a combination of Flannery O'Connor and Stephen King, which is not an inapt comparison.

The singular flaw in the novel, however, comes late in the second act, and continues throughout the third act.  Once the mystery is revealed, and mortal lives are placed in danger, Beuhlman fails to utilize the wealth of characterization he has developed in the previous act.  Indeed, the first act reads so well because of the deeply characterized human beings who inhabit the fictional world of Whitbrow.  Their deaths, when they come are tragic, but we never have a sense of who they are under pressure; indeed, by the start of the third act they have simply disappeared and two new characters are introduced to help our protagonist win the day.

But this shortcoming is minor, and really only occurred to me after the fact.  It hardly detracts from the overall story.  It kept me up well past my bedtime and I can't say that I minded.  In fact, this might be my favorite book of the year and I heartily recommend it.