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Nov. 11th, 2015 17:54There's some conflict going on somewhere on the internet about Lovecraft and his being a racist and probably some people are upset about it being pointed out, I don't know and I don't care.
Just seems like a good opportunity to dump my thoughts on how I could never get along with the whole genre. The Lovecraft and Chambers and Poe thing. It's not irrelevant if the author is a narrow-minded racist white man, in shows in every thought. I pick up on these things and often find out later an author I didn't like for unknown reasons is s
It just doesn't make good stories. Tellingly the main "horror' bit of Chambers seems to be a fear of some sort of mental contagion. Just really afraid of people getting dangerous ideas by reading dangerous books (the rest is just straight people on repeat). It's dead boring. I don't even know anything about Robert Chambers, but this looks like it was written by someone with a really uninteresting life.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Poe)- I like naval stories, and the situations about being trapped, running out of air, dehydrated, starving are actually scary. Then it all became about "black people are evil" and "whiteness is divine", literally. It's racist, but also it's not interesting, original, or actually awe-inspiring or horrifying.
I don't even remember what happened in Lovecraft, it was so boring and uncomfortable.
And that's why I never was into this whole 'cosmic horror' hype thing. And why it's not irrelevant to the story or genre that the author is racist. Lovecraft is racist and his stories aren't so amazing that we can't afford to let go of them, either. The whole genre just seems to be about some deeply conservative fears, I don't know why I'm the only one who's just not into it.
Just seems like a good opportunity to dump my thoughts on how I could never get along with the whole genre. The Lovecraft and Chambers and Poe thing. It's not irrelevant if the author is a narrow-minded racist white man, in shows in every thought. I pick up on these things and often find out later an author I didn't like for unknown reasons is s
It just doesn't make good stories. Tellingly the main "horror' bit of Chambers seems to be a fear of some sort of mental contagion. Just really afraid of people getting dangerous ideas by reading dangerous books (the rest is just straight people on repeat). It's dead boring. I don't even know anything about Robert Chambers, but this looks like it was written by someone with a really uninteresting life.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Poe)- I like naval stories, and the situations about being trapped, running out of air, dehydrated, starving are actually scary. Then it all became about "black people are evil" and "whiteness is divine", literally. It's racist, but also it's not interesting, original, or actually awe-inspiring or horrifying.
I don't even remember what happened in Lovecraft, it was so boring and uncomfortable.
And that's why I never was into this whole 'cosmic horror' hype thing. And why it's not irrelevant to the story or genre that the author is racist. Lovecraft is racist and his stories aren't so amazing that we can't afford to let go of them, either. The whole genre just seems to be about some deeply conservative fears, I don't know why I'm the only one who's just not into it.
