/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.546269]

ok, so my question to /lit/ is this

why is calling Lovecraft a racist so popular. now i do own a copy if his biography which i have yet to finish and i do gather that he was indeed a snob in his British over American thing, but where did the claim to racism come from? i can't imagine that it can be an unfounded claim since almost everyone i talk to cracks a joke about it every time i bring him up.

anyone care to educate me?

[Anonymous No.546276]

I have never heard of this before, but I've heard of other famous people being called racists (Walt Disney for example), I've never heard anyone here in the UK do it though, it seems to be an American thing, white guilt is all the rage over there it seems.

[Anonymous No.546283]

he was racist even by the standards of his time
google his poem about niggers

[Anonymous No.546286]

Who the hell names a cat "nigger-man"

[Anonymous No.546291]

i had not heard it before then i was searching the internet and was assaulted with images like this, i really don't understand how this came to be accepted

[Anonymous No.546298]

>>546286

[Anonymous No.546305]

>>546283

oh wow o.o i had never seen that, yeah, that is rather racist

[Anonymous No.546307]

>>546305
nigger man

[Anonymous No.546311]

Lovecraft consistently figured cults and evil orders as being rooted in or resembling 'savage' or 'primitive' customs from Africa.

>The statuette, idol, fetish, or whatever it was, had been captured some months before in the wooded swamps south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed voodoo meeting; and so singular and hideous were the rites connected with it, that the police could not but realise that they had stumbled on a dark cult totally unknown to them, and infinitely more diabolic than even the blackest of the African voodoo circles. (Call of Cthulhu)

Various figures are described as having 'negroid' or otherwise racial features, which is usually seen as repulsive or negative.

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft#Examples

He saw 'savagery' and the primitive as lurking at the heart of the human condition, but as being closer to the surface outside of white western anglo-saxon civilisation. I remember reading a story where part of the horror came from inbred immigrant hicks of degenerate stock living in the hills.

And then there's this:

>The negro is fundamentally the biological inferior of all White and even Mongolian races, and the Northern people must occasionally be reminded of the danger which they incur in admitting him too freely to the privileges of society and government. …The Birth of a Nation, … is said to furnish a remarkable insight into the methods of the Ku-Klux-Klan, that noble but much maligned band of Southerners who saved half of our country from destruction at the close of the Civil War.

Like, seriously, DUH.

[Anonymous No.546324]

>>546298
The Dambusters' dog was called nigger.

[Anonymous No.546325]

>>546311

yeah, i actually remember those stories you referenced, i guess i just never really thought about it in that light, which now seems obvious. and i had never seen the poem or that last quote you had, i can totally see why he's called racist now. still a fan of his work, but happy i finally get where the reputation comes from now

[Anonymous No.546327]

>>546324
They changed it to "Trigger" in the TV version.

[Anonymous No.546340]

>>546325

Yeah, it doesn't detract from his work as such and if anything makes him a more interesting figure: you can link his terrified xenophobia and disgust at the foreign to the more general themes of alienation and isolation that pervade both his work and his life. He was clearly scared and horrified by a lot of things. No wonder he wrote so often about us being alone and doomed in an absurd and godless universe.

I remember writing a short story about a Lovecraftian protagonist who is terrified by rather ordinary situations - a comic indiction of the writer's worldview.

[Anonymous No.546343]

>>546327
>trigger

what is wrong with this world?

[Anonymous No.546360]

>>546340

I like that, you're right, there does seem to be a lot of himself in his work

random note

Have you ever read anything by Thomas Ligotti? I find his works ring similar to Lovecraft yet different. A lot of his work is a little too wordy for me however he does have some quality work :3

[Anonymous No.546363]

>>546360

wow, I epically failed with punctuation on that one.

[None !4A4P9buxy. No.546368]

On the Creation of Niggers
by H. P. Lovecraft

When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Iove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.

[Anonymous No.546369]

>>546360
You are the same faggot who keeps mentioning Thomas Ligotti

[Anonymous No.546375]

>>546369

O.o this is my second ever thread on this board, the first was about the muted post horn... so if someone has been mentioning Ligotti its not me, this is my first time mentioning him

[Anonymous No.546378]

Sorry, but even by the standards of the 1930's he was unbelievably racist. If you read some of his private writings, it's clear he doesn't even think non-whites are human.

[Anonymous No.546389]

>>546378

[Anonymous No.546396]

>>546389

rofl

[Isabelle Huppert !!IRpnwIFOnYO No.546413]

>>546369

>implying there's anything wrong with this

[Anonymous No.546414]

>>546269
He was American wasn't he?

[Anonymous No.546416]

>>546414

Geographically speaking.

[Anonymous No.546418]

>>546414

yes, however he liked to consider himself english

[Anonymous No.546424]

>>546413
>implying its not shit

[Anonymous No.546432]

>>546418
ugh I hate people like that.

[Anonymous No.546434]

>>546432

from what i have read he was a rather stuck up person

[Anonymous No.546436]

>>546414
He was english and lived in XVIII in his soul

[Anonymous No.546440]

He was quite clearly more racist than most people at the time.
some caveats though:
The poem is from when he was 14 years old.
He hated Jews in much the same way yet he: married one, had one for a protege (who incidentally wouldn't hear a bad word said about the man), started hating the Nazis whom he liked, once their policies went from discrimination to violence. (in his eyes)
Was horrified to find out his great grandmother was Welsh.

miscegenation and race are two themes not uncommon to his books, yet very few of them actually has it as their main thing. Arthur Jermyn, Red Hook and possibly the Shadow over Innsmouth comes to mind. Far more have offhand lines like the Reanimator and the Call of Cthulhu.

[Anonymous No.546444]

>>546311
>Klansmen
That isn't the whole line though.

The Conservative has not yet witnessed the picture in question, but he has seen both in literary and dramatic form The Clansman, that stirring, though crude and melodramatic story by Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., on which The Birth of a Nation is based, and has likewise made a close historical study of the Klu-Klux-Klan, finding as a result of his research nothing but Honour, Chivalry, and Patriotism in the activities of the Invisible Empire. The Klan merely did for the people what the law refused to do, removing the ballot from unfit hands and restoring to the victims of political vindictiveness their natural rights. The alleged lawbreaking of the Klan was committed only by irresponsible miscreants who, after the dissolution of the Order by its Grand Wizard, Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, used its weird masks and terrifying costumes to veil their unorganised villainies.
Race prejudice is a gift of Nature, intended to preserve in purity the various divisions of mankind which the ages have evolved.

* Response to observations made in In A Minor Key by Charles D. Isaacson, in The Conservative, Vol. I, No. 2, (1915), p.4

[Anonymous No.546445]

Psst... racist...

He's an amateur in my fields!

[Anonymous No.546449]

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Supernatural_Horror_in_Literature/The_Dawn_of_the_Horror-Tale

>Much of the power of Western horror-lore was undoubtedly due to the hidden but often suspected presence of a hideous cult of nocturnal worshippers whose strange customs--descended from pre-Aryan and pre-agricultural times when a squat race of Mongoloids roved over Europe with their flocks and herds--were rooted in the most revolting fertility-rites of immemorial antiquity.

[Anonymous No.546451]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqq0lMhPTb4

This is a song about Lovecraft in Red Hook, or anyway about feeling like him.

>>546360

Nope, I'll have to check out this Ligotti fellow.

Generally I feel like Lovecraft is not an amazing writer. He just had an incredibly interesting set of neuroses and fears which he rendered very faithfully into words. My brother's friend said "read Lovecraft if you want to know what racist people feel like ALL THE TIME". A bit reductive, and there's plenty more going on, but it's true!

[Anonymous No.546454]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqq0lMhPTb4

This is a song about Lovecraft in Red Hook, or anyway about feeling like him.

>>546360

Nope, I'll have to check out this Ligotti fellow.

Generally I feel like Lovecraft is not an amazing writer. He just had an incredibly interesting set of neuroses and fears which he rendered very faithfully into words. My brother's friend said "read Lovecraft if you want to know what racist people feel like ALL THE TIME". Very reductive, and there's plenty more going on, like
>>546440 says, but it's true!

[Anonymous No.546470]

>>546265
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[Anonymous No.546474]

>>546445

Bullshit.

[Anonymous No.546478]

Also he lived in NYC and had trouble getting work.
Unlike the immigrants. :3

[Anonymous No.546816]

His hatred and distrust of the Chinese, and other asians, is quite apparent in his works, but I don't see why people care. It's just his opinion and belief, and it was quite a common and wide-spread feeling in his time, historically speaking. Maybe society today is just hyper-sensitive to any form of racism, ignoring that it is a personal opinion, and instead desirous to shove down the throat of any so-called racist hours after hours of insults and lectures against racism, because, somehow, personal beliefs are wrong.

[Anonymous No.546826]

>>546816
Ok, you think it's ok to be racist, and the reason it's ok is because it's a "personal belief?" Are you retarded?

[▂▅▇█▓▒░◕‿‿◕░▒▓█▇▅▂ !!f6/8IWchZdI No.546829]

>>546816
RY U MAD THO?

[onionring !Rrxa7zePwI No.546846]

>>546816
racist attitudes are not mere personal beliefs, but atavistic tendencies that actually harm other people and disrupt social order/other goody goody social stuff.

more importantly, racism makes you look like a troglodyte, a barbarian outside the gates of the modern cosmopolis

[Anonymous No.546852]

I like how in Mountains of Madness, he describes how the Shoggoths developed intelligence and revolted against the masters that created them, and condemns this as inappropriate behaviour. He then does the "liberal" thing and describes those master aliens as being the "men of their day".

He's not specist, but he is willing to recognize races even in other species and condemn them lol