Guillermo del Toro Describes Series As ‘Lovecraftian,’ THQ To Publish

found via http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2010/11/del-toro-talks-secret-lovecraftian-game.html

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/guillermo-del-toro-describes-series-as-lovecraftian-thq-to-publish/2593/

Guillermo del Toro is my kind of dude. I feel this way not only because he directed a film that had a monster with eyeball hands in it, but because he likes to get way ahead of marketing. For example, in his latest MTV interview, the director has confirmed that he’s working with THQ, and his first game in a series of titles with the publisher will see a release around 2013. Subsequent games, he said, will be on three-year development cycles.

These comments are sort of a big deal, as these are all previously unknown details about a project del Toro leaked himself earlier this summer. Rumors have, however, connected del Toro with THQ since, but it’s nice to have the confirmation from the man himself.

Sadly, the director stopped short of going into specifics about his game, but he did drop this little nugget in the interview. “It’s horror… but it’s a very different type of horror game,” he said. “It’s not survival horror. It’s truly a strange, geeky mix. It’s a Lovecraftian thing. Let’s leave it at that.”



THQ has commented on its connection with del Toro, but it’s obvious the publisher isn’t as ready to talk about the relationship as he is.

At THQ, we are focused on the highest level of creative development by putting artists first. Guillermo del Toro is one of many creative artists that we respect and would be interested in working with. However, at this time, we do not have any formal announcement to make.


We’re still wondering what studio under the publisher’s banner del Toro is working with. A recent job listing from Volition still has us stroking our chins since it implies the studio is “collaborating” with a certain special someone, and not a studio, on a new RPG. Could this be the place handling the del Toro game? I assume we’ll learn if this is true or not the next time del Toro swings by MTV.

Weird Winter Tales

found via http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2010/11/weird-winter-tales-at-reading-central.html

http://suptales.blogspot.com/2010/11/weird-winter-tales.html

Weird Winter Tales



Cardinal Cox has sent me another pamphlet of his poems – and again, a Lovecraftian theme, which is always welcome. What’s more, he’s produced a tribute to Wells’ story ‘The Sea Raiders’, the original tentacled menace tale of terror. It’s a fascinating and wide-ranging little collection, beginning and ending with poems about Dagon, the fish-god of the Philistines. In between I learned about the Formorii (aka Fomorians) an aquatic people from Irish mythology, and the Wild Man of Orford.


The actual pamphlet is published for the below event, snipped from Ansible. Couldn’t find anything on the library website listed. But it looks good – the film is excellent and of course you get a free pamphlet of poems that confront you with the unspeakable horrors of the briny abyss. That’s a good day out by any standard.


4 Dec • Weird Winter Tales (H.P. Lovecraft event), Reading Central Library, noon-6pm. £3 (members £2). With Call of Cthulhu showing. Note corrected date. Contact info at readinglibraries org uk.

Cthulhu Mythos, As Imagined By Kids

found via http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2010/11/kids-draw-cthulhu.html

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”



— H.P. Lovecraft


So, I have the good fortune of being friends with some truly awesome people. One such awesome friend is Collen Kennedy who, among other creative musical endeavors, teaches a Children’s Choir in Canoga Park. Each year she puts together a “retreat” day for the kids, getting together a group of people to lead the kids through a wide range of activities. This year’s retreat day (which ran last Saturday) included a Super Hero themed live game (run by Andy Ashcraft), a drum circle (run by Richard Becker) and, lastly, a drawing/painting visual arts project that I ran.


This was the second time that I have worked with these kids and led them through some kind of painting/drawing project. The group consists of about 16 kids ranging from 8-18 years of age and a wide range of experience and comfort with expression and some of the various mediums of visual arts. Last time, not knowing the kids or their abilities I tried something kinda weird – I played a range of songs (jazz, r&B, metal…) and had the kids interpret the sounds and lyrics into pictures. I laid out a bunch of different art supplies (acrylic paint, watercolor pencils, crayons, pastel, charcoal) and some different types and colors of paper and just let them use whatever they wanted. It ended up working out very well and the kids and I had a lot of fun.


continues at http://davidmilano.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/cthulhu-mythos-as-imagined-by-kids/

Casino R’lyeh Cthulhu Mythos Poker Cards

http://www.arkhambazaar.com/oddities/other/casino-rlyeh-cthulhu-mythos-poker-cards

With his full house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu is all in! In glorious sunken R’lyeh, where Cthulhu waits dreaming in his black house, well, there’s not that much to do. They don’t have widescreen TVs or video game consoles (it’s really too wet). So how do weary Shoggoths, Deep Ones, and Star-spawn whittle away at the watery hours until the stars are right? At the Casino, of course! Casino R’lyeh offers the finest quality gaming this side of many-columned Y’ha-nthlei. Bring the terror and excitement of the Cthulhu Mythos to your poker night with the official Casino R’lyeh poker cards. The deck contains 54 standard poker-sized cards, with incredibly dark and beautiful artwork by Heather Hudson.

Lovecraft Filmfest and Cthulhu Con Wrapup

found via http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/


http://obscureclearly.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/lovecraft-filmfest-and-cthulhu-con-wrapup/




I went to the HP Lovecraft film festival and covered it for The Innsmouth Press. For complete coverage, please check out the full report.

2010 was the fifteenth year that the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival was held in Portland. This was its last year, as the current festival director Andrew Migliore is stepping down. One of the highlights of this years gathering was director Stuart Gordon presenting his film Dagon.


The Venue

The Hollywood Theater was built in 1926, during Lovecraft’s lifetime It’s an imposing, dramatic building that calls to mind 19th century Paris or Edinburgh.


The Goods


Lovecraft products abounded in every variety including dolls, t-shirts, shot glasses, Cthulhu underwear, and the soundtrack to Shoggoth on the Roof. For the big spenders, there was a limited addition “Casino R’lyeh Poker Set” for 250 dollars and some compilations of art books that sold for 400 dollars. In addition to the basic games (Call of Cthulhu, Munchkin Cthulhu, Arkham Asylum, Cthulhu dice, etc) on Saturday there was a version of a Lovecraft-inspired Monopoly called The Doom That Came To Atlantic City available for play-testing.

The Cthulhu-inspired Christmas carols were also amongst the most tempting wares available. A sample:


Rudolph the Red Nosed Cultist had a few insanities And if you ever saw him he’ll be chanting with great glee.


The Movies

The Burrowers:


This Horror-Western hybrid was well-told and tightly plotted movie. Clancy Brown (of Kurgan fame) stands out amongst a bevy of good acting. Like a lot of good horror movies, it is just as much about the interaction of the survivors and their intra-conflict as much as their inter-conflict with the antagonists.


Primal


This Ozzy horror flick does nothing particularly original but really does the horror movie tropes well. It is an almost perfectly constructed and executed movie, and the acting is surprisingly top notch. It also boasts the best ever cinematic use of the wallaby.


Dagon

Stuart Gordon flew in and both introduced the film and took questions after. He praised the Portland Lovecraft Festival and said that “every time I come here, I learn something about Lovecraft.” Dagon is creepy and much more somber in tone than his earlier work. The Spanish setting is inspired, as wandering through small Mediterranean alleyways is eery and the movie drips with wetness.


Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer:


This short was a highly stylized, loose adaptation of “Hounds of Tindalos,” done in the style of Neil Stephenson. Director Andrew Jones spoke to the audience after the films about this crowd favorite.


DERAILED


This French film was genuinely creepy and actually spine-tingling…maybe the closest to Lovecraft I’ve ever seen on the screen.


AM 1200


A festival favorite; it is as slick and polished as a mainstream Hollywood flick. It’s a top notch production, although the story is a little underwhelming. Director David Prior was available for questions after the film.


The Panels & Readings

Some of my favorite quotes from the panels:


■“Awards are the best marketing,” Victoria Blake


■“Break out. Use cyclopean as a verb,” Cody Goodfellow


■“Maybe someone like Raymond Carver could write an interesting story about a man coming home and having dinner with his wife, for everyone else it would be more interesting to write a story about a man who came home, stabbed his wife and ate dinner over her dead body,” Bill Nolan.


The People

Most people were here because they were fans of Lovecraft, but not many people were dressed up. (There were some who were here with minimal knowledge of Lovecraft. Two people behind me wondered which Lovecraft story Hellboy was from).


A few notable exceptions:


I learned from some long-term attendees that Paper/Rock/Scissors is played as “Tentacle/Necronomicon/Shoggoth.” It’s a pity that this is the last year of it, but there will be in one in Los Angeles next year. While it’s not as weird a location as Portland, LA has a unique eldritch horror all its own.

So You Want To Write A Lovecraft Story? Don’t Forget These 6 Clichés

http://weirdthings.com/2010/06/so-you-want-to-write-a-lovecraft-story-dont-forget-these-6-cliches/

found via http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2010/08/weird-things-six-cliches-of.html

I’ve been reading the 1980 Arkham House anthology “New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos,” in which 9 Lovecraft-lovin’ fiction authors were given the opportunity to trifle in the late horror master’s occult, cosmic sandbox, and it’s made me realize how easy it is to reduce Lovecraft’s time- and dimension-spanning vision to a stock set of props. That’s not a shot at the book, the contributors to which are, generally speaking, immensely imaginative in their takes on all things eldritch, stygian and squamish (if you can find it online, check out Basil Copper’s moody and frightening entry, “Shaft Number 247”).


Aside from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lovecraft is probably the inspiration behind the largest quantity of published fanfic. It just occurs to me that, given the current uptick in Lovecraft’s cultural stock value – Cthulhu plush dolls consorting among the superhero maquettes in so many comic stores, the continuous rumors surrounding Guillermo Del Toro’s never-gonna-happen “At The Mountains of Madness” adaptation, the recent DVD release of the documentary “Strange Tales – The Weird Life of H. P. Lovecraft” – it’s easy to get caught up in the physical landmarks of the author’s fiction while still ignoring their path, and that path’s downward trajectory into an insanity that transcends the clichéd jabbering symptoms of the stock lunatic, and defies the single crisp snap of the mind that is too often ascribed to the boundary between lucidity and madness.


Devil’s advocate, though – if you’re intent on adding to the bevy of lazy Lovecraft-inspired tales that, together, read like the Taco Bell menu, with each uniquely named product comprising the same dependable set of tired ingredients, here’s what you might want to include:


Giant, Really, Really Old Books of the Occult


The tomes are always heavy and dusty, with brittle, yellowed pages and a voluminous quantity of forbidden information regarding alchemy and the summoning of ancient powers. Sometimes they are written in archaic, forgotten languages, but, for the multilingual late bloomer, the library at Miskatonic University usually has the last existing translation. Someone’s always searching for these volumes so they can discover wild, pseudo-scientific secrets, but then they just end up summoning Nyarlathotep or a bunch of Shoggoths. Note to Hollywood: Please make a “NeverEnding Story” remake in which the kindly book dealer gives Bastian the Necronomicon. Lots of times, these books are owned by…


Find out AFTER THE JUMP!


Nutty Cult Members


These guys are crazy, but also crazy dedicated to one of the Elder Gods. Sometimes they’re bookish, lonely, quietly sinister and waiting patiently for the inevitable return of their sacred destroyer. These ones are usually old white guys. Other times, they’re crazy, and naked and killing people and actively trying to call an Old One down out of the void. These ones are usually young, black guys. (I would like to note that, despite Lovecraft’s well-documented racial prejudices, it hardly seems offensive to suggest that black people are proactive.) Either they’ll meet a main character and pull him into their twisted sacrificial and/or library-smelling web, or just sort of wander through the background, serving as silent portents of the Old One-fueled madness to come. Some of these cult guys have…


Ancient Stones/Statuettes/Obelisks/Pendants Covered with Frightening, Cryptic, Yet Macabrely Curious, Etchings/Pictographs/Runes


Lovecraft’s works are replete with bizarre monoliths, mysterious carved stones and horrific figurines, all of which tend to be rendered from some indestructible, unearthly and usually kinda green rock substance. Generally, they hold dark sway over the mind of their owners and, as such, lead hapless beachcombers, archaeologists, artists and everymen to dark, mind destroying dreams and revelations about the Old Ones and the ultimate fate of humanity. A great way to start even the palest Lovecraft imitation is to have someone find one of these objects. Ancient cave, ocean floor, paleontological dig, a bowl of Wendy’s chili (actually, that’d be a good idea for a combo corporate lawsuit drama, cosmic horror epic)… it doesn’t really matter where a character finds the evil chunk of crazy, just so long as it perverts mortal souls and molests reader expectations. Usually, these relics depict the Old Ones, which are…


Crazy, Indescribable Monsters That Make You Go Insane If You Even Just Look At Them


This is the easiest element to execute poorly because you don’t actually have to describe them. Just talk about tentacles and giant eyes and lobster claws and snouts, maybe a hoof here or a creepy ear way over there, all glanced fleetingly through black fog, a patina of fear and the swiftly descending venetian blind of insanity. Personally, I like to picture a half-zebra, two-thirds praying mantis with an anus where its everything should be. These guys appear around…


Cosmic/Dimensional Thin Spots


The Elder Gods are like the velociraptors in “Jurassic Park.” They’re testing our universe systematically for weakness. They remember. There are places where the border between the horrific parallel cosmos of the Old Ones and our Team Edward-rooting home sweet home is rubbing thin, and where, at times, the two co-mingle. This device is always a great way to explain why the nutty cult members are sacrificing folks at [remote location], or to explain why [miscellaneous creepiness] is occurring in [otherwise peaceful small town]. Probably a main character ends up travelling along the borders of two realities. Familiar things become monstrous. The sky darkens. The streets fill with unrecognizable refuse and eerie biological waste. Crazy, giant cathedrals appear in the distance. McDonald’s is called G’trn-ekny’s. One mark of the Old Things’ world is…


Wild, Geometrically Impossible Architecture
Like the creatures themselves, this Lovecraftian standby is great for the amateur scribe because, by definition, one can’t describe the indescribable. Ultimately, you probably just end up talking about how all the angles are impossible and how the sky is a color that isn’t actually a color. Probably also the sun is black and there are staircases set at impossible angles and the buildings have an infinite number of sides. Maybe the toilet seats are square. Definitely there aren’t any wheelchair ramps.

How Occultist H.P. Lovecraft Predicted His Own Death and the 9/11 Attacks

found via http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2010/08/lovecraft-prophet.html

The Warlock Asylum site brings us an interesting and quirky twist exploring H.P. Lovecraft’s prophetic abilities. Basically, this piece stretches numerology’s outer (or should I say outre?) limits by suggesting the Providence writer may have predicted not just his own death, but 9/11 as well. The article owes its origins to an exchange with noted scholar Dan Harms, and a viewpoint that sees Lovecraft as a sort of intermediary for channeling the Old Ones’ arcane knowledge.


Whether the argument raises chuckles or eyebrows, it’s definitely worth a read.


-Grim Blogger

Warning: The Link refers to the page “Papers In The Attic: A Simon Necronomicon Practitioner’s Journal” … I guess that says it all …

Nemonymous Ten: Null Immortalis Reviewed

http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2010/08/nemonymous-ten-null-immortalis-reviewed.html

Nemonymous Ten: Null Immortalis, edited by D.F. Lewis, is the last in an illustrious line of anthologies devoted to making fiction stand squarely on its own legs. Previous Nemonymous volumes did this by famously leaving the author’s name off of each story until months after publication, making readers guess at the faces responsible for the often excellent fiction. Since Null Immortalis is the finale, there is no guessing here. However, there is little lost by breaking with tradition, because the lineup of tales in this capstone book more than makes up for lost anonymity (or is it nemonymity?) in sheer quality.


Like previous anthologies, the editor’s eccentric and very open guidelines have set the parameters for this last literary venture: all stories here are conceived from the phrase “Null Immortalis” and contain a character named Tullis (from S.D. Tullis, winner of the last Nemonymous competition), and many reference the ghostly fan blades adorning the anthology’s front and back covers. Naturally, there are a lot of references to oblivion and eternity to be found, almost two dozen completely different Tullises, and story lines fired from pure imagination.


The stories crafted and laid out by Lewis’ impeccable editorial selection amounts to nothing less than a feast for all the senses, and a gallery of literary iconography for the intellect that cannot help but prompt deep contemplation. One such story is “Lucien’s Menagerie” by David Fitzpatrick, where a tormented woman must spend the night with her dead ex-husband’s haunted taxidermy in order to inherit the mansion. Fitzpatrick’s piece tugs on fear from two angles–the realistic and the supernatural–and skillfully portrays the unheard of cruelty that can surround immortality. This is hardly the only story where emotions run deep, hand-in-hand with horror. Cameron Pierce’s “Broom People” pairs self-loathing with surrealism in a story that runs purely on its own logic–and it works. Gary Fry’s “Strings Attached” delivers a deeper melancholy experienced by a man who hopes to settle in a small town, sandwiched between bureaucratic corruption and hazy memories of a clown dabbling in darkness rather than laughs.


Although Nemonymous books have traditionally been an eclectic mix without genre boundaries, many of the stories in Null Immortalis exude the heavy atmosphere of weird fiction. How could it be otherwise with some of the writers featured here? Reggie Oliver’s contribution, “You Have Nothing to Fear,” exhibits a slightly more subtle terror than those that have appeared elsewhere in his oeuvre. Yet, the “nothing” festering just beneath the surface of Oliver’s tenuous relationships is no less powerful, and the villainous aristocrat who takes center stage will linger repugnantly in readers’ memories well after absorbing this tale.”The Man Who Made the Yellow God” by Mark Valentine is another story cross referencing the weird with Null Immortalis. An accursed elder recounts how he came by his immortality after one eyed idols bewitched him long ago. Stephen Bacon’s “The Toymaker of Bremen” is another effective sample of high strangeness. A Tullis boy learns about his own limited mortality after staying with a mysterious German family following his parents’ disappearance. Bacon’s offering is exceptionally original, and one of the book’s richest in atmosphere.
Immortality is certainly a heady subject, but several authors chose to take it along more lighthearted avenues. Richard Gavin’s “Only Enuma Elish” introduces us to a loner whose elderly female neighbor believes she is a Babylonian goddess. Gavin’s story is a balanced concoction of unease and humor floating just above the mysterious overlay that has always characterized his fiction. “Holesale” by Rachel Kendall is a palate cleansing dark comedy, chronicling the last frenzied misadventure of a black hole salesman. Andrew Hook’s “Love is the Drug” illuminates a future where emotions are distilled into recreational substances. Hook thoughtfully portrays the love drug as a blessing and a curse. Meanwhile, Bob Lock’s “Haven’t You Ever Wondered?” stars D.F. Lewis himself and Null Immortalis as meta-fictional constructs threatened by inter-dimensional interlopers. This is an inspired and unusual sci-fi story that is especially pleasing to longtime Nemonymous devotees.


More serious meta-fictional boundaries are breached in the real S.D. Tullis’ story, “The Return.” The young Tullis girl has returned…changed, following a curious disappearance. Her soullessness and startling actions make this the most directly chilling horror story in Null Immortalis. D.P. Watt’s “Apotheosis” similarly draws outside its fictitious borders by presenting a sort of literary experiment by which all writers’ words are collectivized into an entity named Tullis, the greatest author in the world. Watt’s stylistic repetition lends an extra jolt to his story, a play on language very at home with the Lewisian fondness for coining new terms like “Nemonymous.”


S.D. Tullis’ potent horror is virtually equaled by a couple other works. Derek John’s “Oblivion,” which imaginatively drags its horrors up from history’s depths and into the daylight, is particularly haunting. Insane dates and incantations lead an inquisitive narrator to a place where immortality is oblivion, an intelligent and eerie meditation on these dichotomies clothed in fiction. A handful of other stories utilize more tangible real life threats to generate anxiety. Joel Lane’s “The Drowned Market” pans in on a disgruntled author whose implied rampage is cut short by a confounding transformation mirrored in his literature. “The Scream” is a story about an invisible tumor, a sinister business empire spearheaded by Tullis, and a secret society, all impressively woven into a coherent and engaging narrative by Tim Casson. The Great Recession (or Depression 2.0) looms in the background of both tales by Lane and Casson.


Megazanthus Press, which has “published” the first spectral anthology in existence (Nemonymous Six), has never been shy about experimental styles. This boldness continues with Null Immortalis, where several stories demand a deeper level of focus from readers to unravel. Tony Lovell’s “The Shell” brings into view a couple’s daily life and the husband’s nocturnal existence, ultimately blurring into mutually inseparable realities marred by subtle cues that will easily provoke heated interpretations. “Violette Doranges” is a mystery buried alive in the meaning of this name, a febrile quest after the eponymous character in a phantasmal environment painted by its author, David V. Griffin. As with “The Shell,” interpretations of who or what Violette Doranges actually is are sure to be diverse. “The Green Dog” by Steve Rasnic Tem links up a green dog, a bizarre mirror, and a dying man in a painful and moving relationship that subsumes a mildly absurd character into a believable one through vibrant prose. Tim Nickels’ tale “Supermarine” is exploratory by several more orders of magnitude. A mythic wartime invasion on the liminal rock of Gibraltar is overshadowed by rich doses of magical realism, an almost decadent journey illuminated in a layered style certain to delight those who love a literary challenge.


The unifying theme in this last roundup of stories can be applied to the whole of Null Immortalis, and perhaps all of Nemonymous too. These tales, these books, are nothing less than dreams laboriously rendered into prose. The horrors, the heavens, and the gray voids in between preserved by the editor and his authors are attempts to communicate their visions on a common theme in a dialogue as labyrinthine as any philosophical discourse, and far more entertaining. Null Immortalis’ probing into space, psyche, and time is four-dimensional, and few story collections ever chance at achieving this. For this reason, Nemonymous will be missed, and will one day live on in collectors’ clutches, occasionally crossing vast distances for large sums of money. Null Immortalis is a distinguished epitaph for the series, but it may also drift into the future as relentlessly as the fan blades on its cover, a subversive ark intent on spawning new literary flora when and where they are least expected.


-Grim Blogger

H.P. Lovecraft: Rational Socialist?

http://www.counter-currents.com/2010/08/lovecrafts-politics/

found via http://grimreviews.blogspot.com

Lovecraft’s Politics



Kerry Bolton

To many of his admirers, the scariest things H. P. Lovecraft wrote were not about Cthulhu, they were about politics. But, as I hope to show, the politics of this master of looming, irrational, metaphysical horror are solidly grounded in reality and reason.
Lovecraft, like many of the literati who turned to Left- or Right-wing politics early in the 20th century, was concerned with the impact of capitalism and technology on society and culture. The economic reductionism of capitalism was simply mirrored by Marxism, both of them emanations of the same modern materialist Zeitgeist.


Beginning in the late 19th century, a pervasive discontent with materialism led to a search for an alternative form of society, including alternative foundations for socialism, which occupied Europe’s leading socialist minds like Georges Sorel. What emerged early in the 20th Century was variously called “neosocialism” and “planism,” the most prominent exponents of which were Marcel Deat in France and Henri De Man in Belgium. Neosocialism, in turn, influenced the rise of fascism.[1]
Neosocialists primarily feared that the material abundance and leisure promised by socialism would lead to decadence and banality unless joined to a hierarchical vision of culture and education.


This was, for instance, the focus of Oscar Wilde’s The Soul of Man under Socialism, which envisioned an individualistic socialism that liberated humanity from economic necessity to pursue self-actualization and higher cultural and spiritual activities, even if these consisted of nothing more than quietly contemplating the cosmos.[2]


Such concerns cannot be dismissed as effete dandyism. They were shared, for instance, by the famous Depression era New Zealand Labour politician John A. Lee, a one-armed hero of the First World War who more than any other individual tried to pressure the 1935 Labour Government into keeping its election pledges on banking and state credit.[3] In Lee’s words:
Joe Savage . . . sees socialism as piles of goods fairly equitably divided and work equitably divided. I am sure he never sees it as the opportunity to play football, get brown on a beach, dance a fox trot, lie on one’s back beneath the trees, enjoy the intoxication of verse, the perfume of flowers, the joys of a novel, the thrill of music.[4]


Lee envisioned a form of socialism that was not directed primarily towards “piles of goods and work equitably distributed” as an end in itself, but as the means of achieving higher levels of being.


These neosocialist concerns were also shared by the fascists and National Socialists. Combating the enervating and leveling effects of wealth and leisure, and edifying the characters and tastes of the masses were the goals of Dopolavoro in Fascist Italy and Strength Through Joy in National Socialist Germany, as disquieting as this thought may be to socialists of the Left.


While it seems unlikely that Lovecraft was aware of this ideological tumult in European socialism, he arrived at similar conclusions in some key areas.


Lovecraft, like other writers who rejected Marxism,[5] deemed both democracy and communism “fallacious for Western Civilization.”[6] Instead, Lovecraft favored:


. . . a kind of fascism which may, whilst helping the dangerous masses at the expense of the needlessly rich, nevertheless preserves the essentials of traditional civilization and leaves political power in the hands of a small and cultivated (though not over-rich) governing class largely hereditary but subject to gradual increase as other individuals rise to its cultural level.[7]


Lovecraft feared that socialism, like capitalism, would pave the way for universal proletarianization and the consequent leveling of culture. Thus he proposed instead full employment and the shortening of the work day through mechanization under the cultural guidance of an aristocratic socialist-fascist regime.


This again was probably a perceptive insight arrived at independently by Lovecraft, but it was very much a part of the new economic thinking of the time. In England, the Fabian-socialist review, The New Age, edited by guild-socialist A. R. Orage, became a forum for discussing Maj. C. H. Douglas’ “Social Credit” theory, which was proposed as an alternative to the debt finance system, with the issue of a “social credit” to all citizens through a “National Dividend” allowing the full value of production to be consumed. They also aimed at fostering mechanization to decrease work hours and increase leisure, which they thought would be conducive to the blossoming of culture. (These ideas have renewed relevance as the eight-hour workday, the long-fought gain of the early labor movement, is becoming a rarity.)


Both Ezra Pound and New Zealand poet Rex Fairburn were Social Crediters because they judged it the best economic system for the arts and culture.
Lovecraft was concerned at the elimination of the causes of social revolution, and he advocated the limitation of the vast accumulation of wealth, while recognizing the need to maintain wage disparities based on merit. His concern was the elimination of the “commercial oligarchs,”[8] which in practical terms was the purpose of Social Credit and of the neosocialists.


While regarding the primary goal of a nation to be the development of high aesthetic and intellectual standards, Lovecraft recognized that such a society must be based on the traditional social organization of “order, courage and endurance,” his definition of civilization being that of a social organism devoted to “a high qualitative goal” maintained by the aforesaid ethos.
Lovecraft thought the hierarchical social order best fitted to the practicalities of the new machine age was a “fascistic one.” The “demand-supply motive” would replace the profit motive in a state-directed economy that would reduce working hours while increasing leisure hours. The citizen could then be elevated culturally and intellectually as far as innate abilities allowed, “so that this leisure will be that of a civilized person rather than that of a cinema-haunting, dance-hall frequenting, pool-room loafing clod.”
Lovecraft saw no wisdom in universal suffrage. He advocated a type of neo-aristocracy or meritocracy, with voting rights and the holding of public office “highly restricted.” A technological, specialized civilization had rendered universal suffrage “a mockery and a jest.” He wrote that, “People do not generally have the acumen to run a technological civilization effectively.” This anti-democratic principle Lovecraft held to be true regardless of one’s social or economic position, whether as menial laborer or as an academic.
The uninformed vote upon which democracy rests, Lovecraft wrote, “is a subject for uproarious cosmic laughter.” The universal franchise meant that the unqualified, generally representing some “hidden interest,” would assume office on the basis of having “the glibbest tongue” and “the flashiest catch-words.”


His reference to “hidden interests” can only refer to his understanding of the oligarchic nature of democracy. This would have to be replaced by “a rational fascist government,” where office would require a prerequisite test of knowledge on economics, history, sociology and business administration, although everyone—other than unassimilable aliens—would have the opportunity to qualify.[9]


A year after Mussolini took power in 1922 Lovecraft wrote that, “Democracy is a false idol—a mere catchword and illusion of inferior classes, visionaries and dying civilizations.” He saw in Fascist Italy “the sort of authoritative social and political control which alone produce things which make life worth living.”


This was also why Ezra Pound admired Fascist Italy, writing “Mussolini has told his people that poetry is a necessity to the state.”[10] And: “I don’t believe any estimate of Mussolini will be valid unless it starts from his passion for construction. Treat him as artifex and all the details fall into place. Take him as anything save the artist and you will get muddled with contradictions.”[11]


Such figures as Pound, Marinetti, and Lovecraft viewed fascism as a movement that could successfully subordinate modern technological civilization to high art and culture, freeing the masses from a coarse and brutalizing commoditized popular culture.
Lovecraft thought the cosmos indifferent to mankind and concluded that the only meaning of human existence is to reach ever higher levels of mental and aesthetic development. What Sir Oswald Mosley called actualization to Higher Forms in his post-war thinking,[12] and what Nietzsche called the goal of Higher Man and the Overman,[13] could not be achieved through “the low cultural standards of an underdeveloped majority. Such a civilization of mere working, eating drinking, breeding and vacantly loafing or childishly playing isn’t worth maintaining.” It is a form of lingering death and is particularly painful to the cultural elite.


Lovecraft was heavily influenced by Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler.[14] He recognized the organic, cyclic nature of cultural birth, youthfulness, maturity, senility and death as the basis of the history of the rise and fall of civilizations. Thus the crisis brought to Western Civilization by the machine age was not unique. Lovecraft cites Spengler’s The Decline of The West as support for his view that civilization had reached the cycle of “senility.”


Lovecraft saw cultural decline as a slow process that spans 500 to 1000 years. He sought a system that could overcome the cyclical laws of decay, which was also the motivation of Fascism.[15] Lovecraft believed it was possible to re-establish a new “equilibrium” over the course of 50 to 100 years, stating: “There is no need of worrying about civilization so long as the language and the general art tradition survives.” The cultural tradition must be maintained above and beyond economic changes.[16]


In 1915 Lovecraft established his own political journal called The Conservative, which ran for 13 issues until 1923. The focus of the journal was defending high cultural standards, particularly in the field of Letters, but it also opposed pacifism, anarchism, and socialism and supported “moderate, healthy militarism” and “Pan-Saxonism,” meaning “the domination of English and kindred races over the lesser divisions of mankind.”[17]


Like the neosocialists in Europe, Lovecraft opposed the materialistic conception of history as being equally bourgeois and Marxist. He saw Communism as “destroying the zest for life” for the sake of a theory.[18] Rejecting economic determinism as the primary motive of history, he saw “natural aristocrats” arising from all sectors of a population regardless of economic status. The aim of a society was to substitute “personal excellence for that of economic position”[19] which is, despite Lovecraft’s declared opposition to “socialism,” nonetheless essentially the same as the “ethical socialism” propounded by Henri De Man, Marcel Deat et al. Lovecraft saw Fascism as the attempt to achieve this form of aristocracy in the context of modern industrial and technological society.


Lovecraft saw the pursuit of “equality” as a destructive rationale for “an atavistic revolt” against civilization by those who are uneasy with culture. The same motive was the root of Bolshevism, the French Revolution, the “back to nature” cult of Rousseau, and the 18th Century Rationalists. Lovecraft saw that the same revolt was being taken up by “backward races” under the leadership of the Bolsheviks.[20]


These views are clearly Nietzschean, but they even more specifically resemble those of The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Underman[21] by the then popular author Lothrop Stoddard, whose work would certainly have attracted Lovecraft, with his concern for the maintenance and rebirth of civilization and rejection of leveling creeds.


Although Lovecraft rejected egalitarianism, he did not advocate a tyranny that represses the masses for the benefit of the few. Instead, he viewed elite rule as a necessary means for achieving the higher goals of cultural actualization. Lovecraft wished to see the elevation of the greatest number possible.[22] Lovecraft also rejected class divisions as “vicious,” whether emanating from the proletariat or the aristocracy. “Classes are something to be gotten rid of or minimized—not to be officially recognized.” Lovecraft proposed to replace class conflict with an integral state that reflected the “general culture-stream.” Between the individual and the state would exist a two-way loyalty.


Lovecraft regarded pacifism as an “evasion and idealistic hot air.” He declared internationalism “a delusion and a myth.”[23] He saw the League of Nations as “comic opera.”[24] Wars are a constant in history and must be prepared for via universal conscription.[25] Historically war had strengthened the “national fiber,” but mechanized warfare had negated the process; in fact the mass technological destruction of the First World War was widely recognized as dysgenic. Nonetheless the European, and specifically the Anglo-Saxon, must maintain his supremacy through firepower, for “a foeman’s bullet is sweeter than a master’s whip.”[26] However, as one might expect from an anti-materialist, Lovecraft repudiated the typical modern cause of warfare, that of fighting for mercantile supremacy, “defense of one’s own land and race [being] the proper object of armament.”[27]


Lovecraft saw Jewish representation in the arts as responsible for what Francis Parker Yockey would call “culture distortion.” New York City had been “completely Semiticized” and lost to the “national fabric.” The Semitic influence in literature, drama, finance, and advertising created an artificial culture and ideology “radically hostile to the virile American attitude.” Like Yockey, Lovecraft saw the Jewish Question as a matter of an “antagonistic culture-tradition” rather than as a difference of race. Thus Jews could theoretically become assimilated into an American cultural tradition. The Negro problem, however, was one of biology and must be recognized by maintaining “an absolute color-line.”[28]


This brief sketch is sufficient, I think, to show that H. P. Lovecraft belongs among an illustrious list of 20th century creative geniuses—including W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Knut Hamsun, Henry Williamson, Wyndam Lewis, and Yukio Mishima—whose rejection of materialism, egalitarianism, and cultural decadence caused them to search for a vital, hierarchical alternative to both capitalism and communism, a search that led them to entertain and embrace proto-fascist, fascist, or National Socialist ideas.






Notes


[1] Zeev Sternhell, Neither Left Nor Right: Fascist Ideology in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).


[2] Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891.


[3] After the tour of C. H. Douglas to New Zealand, the banking system and usury were very well understood by the masses of people, and banking reform was a major platform that achieved Labour’s victory. As it transpired, they attempted to renege, but Lee succeeded in getting the Government to issue 1% Reserve Bank state credit to build the iconic and enduring State Housing project that in one fell swoop reduced unemployment by 75%. Lee soon became a bitter opponent of the opportunism of the Labour politicians. However the state credit, albeit forgotten by most, stands as a permanent example of how a Government can bypass private banking and issue its own credit.


[4] Erik Olssen, John A. Lee (Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press, 1977), p. 66.


[5] K. R. Bolton, Thinkers of the Right (Luton: Luton Publications, 2003).


[6] H. P. Lovecraft: Selected Letters, ed. August Derleth and James Turner (Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1976), Vol. IV, p. 93.


[7] Selected Letters, vol. IV, p. 93.


[8] Selected Letters, vol. V, p. 162.


[9] Selected Letters, vol. IV, pp. 105–108.


[10] Quoted by E. Fuller Torrey, The Roots of Treason (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984), p. 138.


[11] Ezra Pound, Jefferson and/or Mussolini, 1935 (New York: Liveright, 1970), pp. 33–34.


[12] Oswald Mosley, Europe: Faith and Plan (London: Euphorion, 1958), “The Doctrine of Higher forms,” pp. 143–47.
[13] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1975), “The Higher Man,” pp. 296–305. A glimpse of Nietzschean philosophy is alluded to in Lovecraft’s “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” where Carter discerns words from beyond the normal ken: “‘The Man of Truth is beyond good and evil,’ intoned a voice. ‘The Man of Truth has ridden to All-Is-One…’” (Lovecraft, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath [New York: Ballantine Books, 1982], “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” p. 189).


[14] Oswald Spengler, The Decline of The West, 1928 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971).


[15] “Fascism . . . was a movement to secure national renaissance by people who felt themselves threatened with decline into decadence and death and were determined to live, and to live greatly.” Sir Oswald Mosley, My Life (London: Nelson, 1968), p. 287.


[16] Selected Letters, vol. IV, p. 323.


[17] H. P. Lovecraft, “Editorial,” The Conservative, vol. I, July 1915.


[18] Selected Letters, vol. IV, p. 133.


[19] Selected Letters, vol. V, pp. 330–33.


[20] Selected Letters, vol. V, p. 245.


[21] Lothrop Stoddard, The Revolt of Against Civilization: The Menace of the Underman (London: Chapman and Hall, 1922).


[22] Selected Letters, vol. IV, pp. 104–105.


[23] Selected Letters, vol. V, pp. 311–12.

[24] Selected Letters, vol. IV, pp. 15–16.

[25] Selected Letters, vol. IV, p. 22.

[26] Selected Letters, vol. IV, pp. 311–12.


[27] Selected Letters, vol. IV, p. 31.

[28] Selected Letters, vol. IV, pp. 193–95.

LOVECRAFT AND THE HORROR OF THE CITY

http://thedodologist.blogspot.com/2010/08/lovecraft-and-horror-of-city.html

found via http://grimreviews.blogspot.com/

Among H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, few are as infamous as The Horror at Red Hook, his nightmarish description – written in August 1925 – of a hideous cult of devil worshipers in New York’s poorest districts. It’s not hard to see why. Lovecraft wasn’t an epigone of toleration at his best of days. And Red Hooks wasn’t written on one of those. The story reflects his hatred of urban life in general and of New York especially, a city he moved to after his marriage to Sonia Greene in 1924.



But even if it’s racism is vile and the story in itself is rather badly structured (Lovecraft didn’t like it much, but then again he was hard on himself in general), it is deeply fascinating. Not the least for it’s attempt to portray the city itself as some kind of a monster. It is a thing of decadence and horror, an atavistic return to a pre-civilized condition.

The best description of this condition, though, isn’t to be found in Red Hook. It is instead the opening of another story he wrote the same month: He. He is, as stories go, a true failure, but it’s first half (it is short), with it’s description of the old New York hidden in the new, is still Lovecraft at his best: A writer of architecture – houses and streets and the moods they convey. The opening pages are urbanity-as-horror at its most fascinating:

My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyse, and annihilate me.


The disillusion had been gradual. Coming for the first time upon the town, I had seen it in the sunset from a bridge, majestic above its waters, its incredible peaks and pyramids rising flower-like and delicate from pools of violet mist to play with the flaming golden clouds and the first stars of evening. Then it had lighted up window by window above the shimmering tides where lanterns nodded and glided and deep horns bayed weird harmonies, and itself become a starry firmament of dream, redolent of faery music, and one with the marvels of Carcassonne and Samarcand and El Dorado and all glorious and half-fabulous cities. Shortly afterward I was taken through those antique ways so dear to my fancy—narrow, curving alleys and passages where rows of red Georgian brick blinked with small-paned dormers above pillared doorways that had looked on gilded sedans and panelled coaches—and in the first flush of realisation of these long-wished things I thought I had indeed achieved such treasures as would make me in time a poet.


But success and happiness were not to be. Garish daylight shewed only squalor and alienage and the noxious elephantiasis of climbing, spreading stone where the moon had hinted of loveliness and elder magic; and the throngs of people that seethed through the flume-like streets were squat, swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eyes, shrewd strangers without dreams and without kinship to the scenes about them, who could never mean aught to a blue-eyed man of the old folk, with the love of fair green lanes and white New England village steeples in his heart.


So instead of the poems I had hoped for, there came only a shuddering blankness and ineffable loneliness; and I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had ever dared to breathe before—the unwhisperable secret of secrets—the fact that this city of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Old New York as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite dead, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in life.


Read the entire story here. It ends like this: “I have gone home to the pure New England lanes up which fragrant sea-winds sweep at evening.” As was, of course, H.P. himself to do not that much later.