The wizard was called “Le Sorcier”. Lovecraft wrote that story when he was 17, so I think we can cut him some slack that it wasn’t a masterpiece.
Can we cut him some slack about what he named his cat?
No, we can excuse lack of refinement in talent, but not racism.
I love Lovecraft’s work, but fuck is he incredibly racist.
Lovecraft’s racism is very much a product of fear, not racial superiority. Dude was extraordinarily terrified of everything remotely foreign. It’s why “strange creatures that are vaguely human but completely incomprehensible” is the generic terror in his stories.
In that sense, I find the motivations for his racism far less terrible than the motivations a racial supremacist has.
I agree. I just like telling people what he named his cat so they’ll know what a racist he was.
That said, Cool Air is a very good short story.
His racism is honestly the most horrifying part of his work.
Like there’s some good stuff there, but it’s the extreme racism that really gives me the heebie jeebies that make me put the books down and take a breather.
Lovecraft’s racism is what I call “hilarious racism”, if you’ll pardon the term. I’ve only ever thought that in connection with HP. He was very much a product of his times, as we all are. Eugenics was all the rage, and you can pick that out in his works.
Lovecraft wasn’t merely racist against non-whites, he was racist against anyone who wasn’t of the “right stock”. He might snob you if you were a white man, living in Rhode Island, of English or German descent, but came from the wrong family tree. LOL, this guy rated humans like dog breeders rate bloodlines. OG Playa Hater’s Ball.
And speaking of his times, look at when he wrote. We were just discovering how incomprehensibly monstrous the solar system was, how big the Milky Way was, just then understanding that we lived in a galaxy. And we didn’t know there were others. FFS, Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930.
Anyway, well worth reading his complete works. Good shit. Grab a copy off me.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KLBK1QQPc5ZuKm6nlveswoWKGBI-Hjeo&usp=drive_fs
Nah, his racism is well documented. Though if we want to talk about the cat in particular, it’s not known if he named it himself, when it went missing he was only 14.
But he was fine re-using the name in The Rats in the Walls, so if he didn’t name it, he was very fond of it.
Not that it matters at this point, but I saw somewhere that he had remorse for his racism later in life. Is this true? I have never seen anything to show it but I haven’t saught it out either.
It’s kinda funny how some of my favorite board games are based upon the setting. I love that they are heavy with diversity. It makes me think of Stephen King’s writing book, he says a story is no longer yours once it’s out there.
I’m glad Lovecraft made what he did, and that it’s so free tooled today. I think one day the Wizarding World will be the same (I refuse to keep calling the whole thing Harry Potter).
Not that it matters at this point, but I saw somewhere that he had remorse for his racism later in life. Is this true?
Keep in mind he died at 46, and at best went from “extremely racist” to “very racist.” His political views change, and I have always had a bit of a chuckle on his original assumptions:
As a result of the Great Depression, Lovecraft reexamined his political views. Initially, he thought that affluent people would take on the characteristics of his ideal aristocracy and solve America’s problems. When this did not occur, he became a socialist.
Simple is not bad, also a pretty good twist for the time he was writing.
Yes, I know he was a very racist dude.
I can’t help but think of this from the wizard’s point of view as a 4chan green text.
be me, an edgy young wizard. Want to pick a really cool wizard name and come up with “Charles LeSorcier.”
mfw the older wizards all make fun of my name.
get in an argument with a local noble and lose my temper. claim I put a curse on his whole family line that they will each die when they are 30.
remember I haven’t learned how to do it. go home and try to figure out how to cast a blood line curse. it’s too complicated, I can’t figure it out. Can’t ask the other wizards now because they already heard about the curse and they’d just make fun of me more.
make a secret lab in the noble’s basement and spend the next 10 years stuck there trying to figure it out. still fail. time’s up, he turned 30. if the noble doesn’t die they’ll all know I lied. finally give up and just sneak into his house and murder him. make it look like an accident.
mfw the other wizards fall for it. they all think I’m alright now. maybe they will forget about the bloodline thing by the time the noble’s kid is 30.
the bloodline thing is all they want to talk about. 18 years later I have to murder the next one. the other wizards are super hyped I pulled it off, want to be my friend now. none of them know how to cast a bloodline curse either.
mfw I’m stuck for the next few centuries hiding in a noble’s basement and murdering them every couple decades to cover my lie.
Okay but At The Mountains of Madness, The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath, The King In Yellow, Color Out of Space, that one with the witch and the human-faced rat, all quite good.
I agree with most of that however The King in Yellow was made when he was around 5 years old. People sort of put it into the Lovecraft universe because of the themes but nope has 0 connection at least in its inception. The whole Lovecraft universe is sort of a hog podge of other’s authors work as well who sort of expanded and formalized parts of it. Its honestly very cool what a group of authors can do when IPs and such aren’t hoarded in a huge vault being left untouched until its economically advantageous to use.
The witch and the rat is “Dreams in the witch house”, iirc. It was adapted into an episode of Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, worth checking out
No one said that blood-curdling cosmic horror had to be good to destroy the vestiges of your sanity.
