China Mieville on H.P. Lovecraft 

Great call, it's a fantastic story

"I'll take Cthulhu over you devils any day."

""but he wasn't writing in a time/place otherwise known for racial tolerance" Firstly, that's not an excuse. Racism has always been wrong and just because it was the done thing in its day does not make it acceptable or forgiveable. Secondly, while it's correct that the time in which Lovecraft was writing wasn't known for racial tolerance, Lovecraft was well-known to be exceptionally bigoted and racist EVEN BY THE STANDARDS OF HIS DAY. That's right, he was so goddamn racist that he made people in the 1920s and 1930s uncomfortable.

He was, actually, even more racist than was typical of his time. It wasn't some casual thing caused by lack of empathy and education. Lovecraft had debilitating xenophobia fueled by intense, naked fear of any culture different from his own. Dude dialed it up to 11. It was almost certainly the fuel for a lot of his work.

@Dhryke Considering people in his time were lynching folks and getting ready to eradicate entire populations in gas chambers, I wouldn't say he was the worst of the worst, nope. Not that it matters much... I'd worry more about the racists we have around us in the here and now.

Such an old comment, but it's interesting that I just read an academic paper defending Lovecraft's racism on the same basis. In fact, the paper compares him to ancient Greek thinkers who had no problem calling other cultures barbaric. I do think it is a stretch though. We're not talking about antiquity. It's the 20th century. Yeah, racism was prevalent, fascism was on the rise. However, there had been plenty of intellectuals against racism for the past 70 years, there were anti-fascists, socialists, and even precursors of postcolonial thought in the 1920s and 1930s. Science was divided on the issue, just like materialist proponents of racism, there were opponents who criticized that trend on scientific basis. It's not like people were in the dark and had not heard of any alternative to their version of reality. I love Lovecraft's imagination and creativity, I would even call him a revolutionary from stylistic standpoint just like T.S. Eliot. His work indeed opens up possibilities for revolutionary artists and thinkers. But his intention seems to be quite the opposite. Like the Nazi's horrifying V-2 rockets turned out to be a huge scientific contribution applied in the Apollo program. That's how cultural progress works I guess.

@@onurbole7921 Just to be clear. I was NOT defending his racism. He WAS racist and that's that. It's a bad thing. My gripe is with people who want to single him out to a greater degree than I think he deserves. Sure, there were intelligent people of his era that realized such things were cruel nonsense, even among Lovecraft's friends some chastised him for it... and maybe they had some effect, I don't know. I'm just tired of being preached to by people who on one hand despise the man, and on the other still seek to profit from his creations.

I don't think Mieville thinks H.P. Lovecraft is a bad writer. he acknowledges Lovecraft's talent and his role in furthering the horror genre. But don't live in a fairy tale world, Lovecraft was an ardent racist and many of his views were reactionary to the extreme. So extreme that a lot of his writer friends and his wife, some of which were also racist, told him to tone it down in letters. Just because he was too meek to physically hurt someone, it doesn't make him a good person.

+Llewellyn2844 "HPL was a brilliant writer and an old-fashioned gentleman." Lovecraft was a hack who weighed down his stories with archaic dialogue and strung together long sentences filled with various synonyms for "weird", "horrible" and "ugly". His early work was at best derivative of older, better authors...and at worst practically verbatim stolen from them. His later works were practically paint by numbers- a bland learned protagonist (who only has a token quirk or two to set him apart from every other bland learned lovecraftian protagonist) stumbles upon some rumor or weirdness that leads to some very old and/or alien ruins or creature that then drives said bland protagonist mad or paranoid. Other than a few twists, that basically describes every Cthulhu story ever. If it wasn't for the sense of continuity- how one off hand epitaph or nonsense phrase in one of his stories would be explained and expanded upon in another story- Lovecraft with would be entirely forgettable. "In spite of his private opinions," What private opinions? He made no secret of how little he thought of other races and cultures. He put many of his opinions right into his stories. He had a cat named after a racial slur, for god's sake. "there is NO evidence that he ever said or did anything to harm or inconvenience a black or a foreigner." Okay. This might just be me speaking as a middle class white guy with a reasonable stable living situation and income, but this sounds less like something worthy of praise and more like the barest of bare minimums one should abide by to be considered a decent human being. I mean, not contributing directly to the misery or inflicting violence upon our fellow man? This is a thing all of us are expected to do and I dare say most of us succeed at doing every day of our lives. "By all accounts, he was kindly, generous with his time, and always willing to offer free advice to younger writers." Indeed. He seems to have been very at home with people who shared his lifestyle and interests. He also seems to have been very much not at home with all those outside that tiny bubble. Indeed, you can find a strong streak of xenophobia running through his whole body of literature. After all, how many of his stories are about how our modern civilization (which is disproportionately depicted through the eyes of white male new englanders of routinely scholarly mindset- all traits in common with H.P. himself) under an unseen and insidious threat from disgusting alien things beyond our comprehension who want to topple all we know and love and take control for themselves. Sometimes, these alien forces seek to do so by BREEDING with us!...and in doing so we BECOME them, our own wills somehow usurped and twisted into their loathsome mindsets! Lovecraft's terrors are the same as a modern bigot, except Lovecraft had the pseudo-decency to dress them up as cosmic horrors rather than "Islam!" or "The Jews!". "Lovecraft will be read and remembered long after Mieville is dead and forgotten." Probably. And if he's very lucky, he'll be remembered for his writing alone and not as a huge racist.

China Mieville exceeded Lovecraft a decade ago. And this is a terrible defense of Lovecraft. Because he actually did do a lot to hurt black people. He published racist nonsense about them and worked to perpetuate every negative perception of blacks in the world, and the notion that racial mixing is the end of society.

He's also giving a positive account of Lovecraft as a writer. He's just also saying the Horror At Red Hook was an incredibly interesting racist story.

He did support Socialism which was the leading cause of unnatural death in the 20th century

What the fuck

What the fuck indeed.

In the future racists are going to jail. Racism is a piece of shit. Theres nothing alike (in good terms) for that bullshit.