Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown Page #4

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this is as a strong as a statement about

how I felt it in my teenage years as anything

his writing wasn't may very possibly be disguised autobiography

He does seemed to be somebody who had an unhappy childhood and who felt he was physically repulsive

But did he feel that because of that he was an object of horror, that everybody shunned him

Certainly in termshis physical appearance he was sort of embarrassed about a number of things

he felt he had this ingrown facial hairs and that he felt that it's a disfiguring factor

so in a way, he's kind of using himself as a jumping-off point

but I think he would come off much more as the weirdo

that Colin Wilson makes him

if he really were like these characters in the stories

ultimately I don't think he was

when Lovecraft emerged from his own isolation, the consensusof the Providence was that

the house on Angell street was one to be avoided

and that Lovecraft and his mother were eccentrics

thought this view could be argued in the case of Lovecraft

Susie was indeed cause for concern

her home life was one of hypertension, where Susie was known to

cause major dramas over the slightest thing

on March 13th, 1919

around the same time her son was emerging as a writer

Susie Lovecraft had been admitted to the same institution that

claimed to her husband years before

Susie Lovecraft passed away on May 24th, 1921, not from nerves

but from a botchedgallbladderoperation

Susie's death was hard on Lovecraft

both emotionally and financially

she left her son a meager estate

which was already meager when she inherited it from her father

that inheritance plus an equally paltry income from ghost writing

barely met Lovecraft's expenses

he made little enough money himself and used to survive by hideous cans of beans

but I have to wonder about Lovecraft whether or not he would have taken any odd job, just to be able to make money and

I don't think he would he had a certain set of standards and again being, you know, he had a love of old pride

that he was a gentleman, he's an author and he was not just gonna take any odd job

Lovecraft moved in with his aunts, Lilian Clark and Annie Gamwell,

But aunts were no substitute for a mother

his fiction writing waned

relieve came from Lovecraft's fellow journalists,

"Herber West, Reanimator" actually is a very funny story and

Lovecraft intended it, I think, to be funny

it was commissioned for a humor magazine

for which Lovecraft received all of 5 dollars per installment

keep in mind it was a humor magazine called "Home Brew"

founded and edited by one of his armature friends, George Julian Houtain

Houtain said:
"You can't make them too horrible!"

so clearly Lovecraft is encouraged to write

just the most outlandish flamboyant horror that he could think of

Lovecraft chafed on to the reflections of the episodic writing

still the series debuted on January 1922

under the banner "Grewsome Tales"

later to be titled "Herbert West, Reanimator"

Herbert West

who was my friend in college and in after life

can speak only with extreme terror

Holding with Haeckel that all life is a chemical and physical process

and that the so-called "soul"is a myth

my friend believed that artificial reanimation of the dead

can depend only on the condition of the tissues

I love this sense of atmosphere on the "Herbert West" stories

the sense of flays

evidently were not in the movies but

the sense of history it gives you, a sense of place and context, that is extremely strong

now a lot of people feel that the influenceof Frankenstein" is heavy on that story

I disagree, because remember what Victor Frankenstein was doing was

creating an artificial man from different parts of human bodies

what Herbert West is trying to do is reanimated an entire living body

after it has theoretically dead

a very different conception, I think

West's adventures in reviving corpses were not

among Lovecraft's favorite works nor his most profitable

nevertheless, it was a small milestone in his career as a professional writer

during this time, Lovecraft also developed two fascinations

incongruent with his xenophobicpersonality:

Travel and a woman

Lovecraft had been lured away from Providence for a gathering of amateurjournalists in Boston

the prospect of intellectual discourse with his compatriots

was too rich to refuse

rare trip soon became a habit

even if Lovecraft preferred to stay within the northeast

where familiar traditions prevailed

on one such visit in 1921, H P Lovecraft met Sonia Haft Greene of New York

born on 16th, March1883

Sonia was far more experienced in the ways of the world, having being married once before

he met this woman who was a Jewish

one of the things that I found reading the letters, Lovecraft's letters

was how anti-Semitic he was

and the idea he ended up marring a Jewish woman I think is pretty extraordinary

and she must have looked at him with the side she wanted him

he wasn't the worst catch in the world I supposed he had a certain dignity

he was kind of tall and thin and bonny

she is just the opposite of him, she was very out-going and very social, and she sounded like she was fun

and you know she was the one ofas I understand, introduced him to sex

it was the shared passion for the literary however that attracted them most

during one of many moonlit walks together,

Lovecraft and Sonia encountered a weird gruntingnoise in the night

it was an obvious inspiration for one of his stories

but Lovecraft encouraged Sonia to write it instead

this encouragement earned Lovecraft a kiss, his first since childhood

and that, a rare sign of physical affection from his mother

Sonia's story became "The Horror at Martin's Beach", and was published in 1923

by that time she had convinced Lovecraft to test the waters of New York city

with a prolonged visit

she knew that Lovecraft had to be taken out of Providence,

that if he was really gonna had a life that he had to go out into the world, and she knew how talented he was

and she felt if he went to New York, where the magazines were actually published

and could meet some people and he could become a success

but in a growing metropolis teeming with immigrants,

an acute xenophobic like Lovecraft would soon experience problems

for the moment though, Lovecraft had every reason to be hopeful:

Sonia had entered his life, and in March 1923, "Weird Tales" magazine was born

as much as science fiction and fantasy might be marginalized today

it was certainly a lot more marginalized in the 1920s and 30s

"Weird Tales" was very influential as it happened

it was the best of all the "pulp" magazines, devoted to weird fiction to horror stories and a certain kind of sci-fi

tales of the fantastic had been increasing in popularity

publisher JC Henneberger saw potential

and dedicating an entire journal to the genre

there was a market there, as little paying as the market might have been,

as marginalized as the magazine might have been,

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