Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown Page #2

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spices evolve and became extinct

but it is not something you could process

humanity was limited to earth

which made humanity itself small and threatened and fragile, so because

he was a frightened and fragile being himself

he populated that emptiness with monsters

frequent visits to the attic gave Susie the impression that

her son was trying to hide from the world and others

that he was a vulnerable child and comfortable with himself

the relationship of Susie Lovecraft with her son was problematical at best

clearly she loved him but I think because of what had happened to her husband, Lovecraft's father who had died of syphilis

I think she developed some weird love-hate relationship with Lovecraft

called him hideous, said to a neighbor that he had hideous face and that's why

he wouldn't go outdoors much

Susie repeated these opinions enough times that her son actually grew to believe them

insecurity mixed with classical tendencies

segregated young Lovecraft from others his age

but this solitary childhood, only kindled his imagination

I used to be tormented constantly with a peculiar type of recurrent nightmare

in which a monstrous race of entities, called by me 'Night-Gaunts'

usedtosnatch me up by the stomach, they carried me up through infinite leagues of black air

over the towers of dead and horrible cities

with vast aggregations of night-black masonry

embodying monstrousperversions of geometrical laws

feeding his taste for the macabre

was the recent discovery of tales by Edgar Allan Poe

Lovecraft is the most significant descendant of Poe

and you can see that heritage most clearly in those early stories that

evoke affects such as those in "The Tell-Tale Heart", say

"The Tell-Tale Heart" could have been written by Lovecraft

he may have wanted to be a little like Edgar Allan Poe

but he went into a whole different direction with his imagination

you know Poe talked about how short stories should be

everything should be there to create one particular affect

whereas Lovecraft I think goes for much moresort of a bigger canvas somehow than Poe did

in his teenage years, Lovecraft would attempt quiet a few of stories in the Poe style

most however, were destroyed by Lovecraft

I think too many writers are too hard on themselves had to be said that,

you know Lovecraft epitomized this trend

and I actually thinks that there's one positive thing to be bought from that, he was a great writer

I think you know, any writer who feels down about their own work

should read Lovecraft's comments about his own work

he almost never has a good thing to say about his own work

this may be a kind of version of what he perceived as "good manners"

because there's no doubt that he would have thought

it's very ill-mannered to praise his own work

I think that Lovecraft was full of insecurities at that time, he really didn't know what to pursue in terms of a career

maybe he didn't feel that he needed a career

at least in terms of the money because he felt that the money would always be there

but shortly there after he discovered that the money wasn't gonna be there

in 1904, Whipple Phillips was already suffering from poor investments

in a failed dam project

the stress of it all no doubt tribute to his death on March 28th, 1908

the house on Angell Street was sold

the library that schooled Lovecraft for 12 years went with it

he loved that place, it was there he knew the only security he ever had

even though with only 3 blocks away, the new home Susie had picked for her son was an unknown country

though high-school would offer some enjoyment

Lovecraft was vexed by the subjects that escaped him

Lovecraft said he had a full scale nervous break-down

we don't really know what that means

I personally believed that it was the result of his discovery that

his lack of knowledge or lack of proficient in mathematics

prevented him from pursuing a career as astronomer

in the summer of 1908, he simply left school and never returned

Lovecraft's reclusion would last from 1908 until 1917

judging from his letters, this break-down

had all the remarks of a deep depression

I shall know human society that had givenmyself too much but a failure in life

to be seen socially by those who had known me as a youth

they foolishly expected great things of me

Lovecraft himself was a pretty crazy person, he was kind of nuts, wondering around

I don't, I don't mean, I think "eccentric" is a better word

even for his time, he must have been not only a recluse but an oddity

he would go out occasionally apparently, and people saw him walking down the street in a raincoat

with the flapps up to his collar and

and looking straight ahead not try to make eye contact with anybody

one activity that endured through this period was his reading

this exposed Lovecraft to the amateur pulp magazines

that would one day be the ablert of his own work

I think amateur journalism saved Lovecraft both as a writer

and as a human being

there was Lovecraft in 1913, 1914 basically rotting away, he clearly didn't know what to do with himself

and then all of a sudden here was this small world of amateur journalism where there are other

people like him

trying to be writers but not writing for money

and I think for that moment, that was important to Lovecraft

because amateur journalism was a kind of school for writers

Lovecraft went on to publish his own amateur magazine "The Conservative"

in its pages he exhibited a strong passion for the beliefs he formed during his isolation

including a pronouncedxenophobia

the most alarming tendency observable in this age

is a growing disregard for the established forces of law and order

weather or not stimulated by the noxious example of the almost subhuman Russian rabble

the less intelligent element throughout the world

seems animated by a singular viciousness

every artist with every work of art is a product of his or her time

and he reflected that a lot of very American feelings

the feelings he had intellectually with beliefs in racism and so on

are reprehensible they were then as they are now, and yet in a sense

you can't expect the guy to leap out of his skin at modernsensibilities

he has this really, this really archaicbudging idea that

for society to be stable then it had to be homogeneous

he just didn't like to see the culture he knew go down to drain which he felt would happen

just by erosion as more and more immigrants came

sort of a "Pat Buchanan" kind of a thing

this absolutely genuinely worry of the evils of breeding, of mixed breeding

and breeding in general I suppose

you know the evils of taking purity with an almost Aryan sense of pride

regardless, "The Conservative" attracted fellow amateurs

both sympathetic and contrary

they were attracted by Lovecraft's erudite mind

and as a result Lovecraft developed very close ties

to a number of these amateur journalists, and these became life-long friends of his

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