August 13, 2020 - Art History Thursday - H.P. Lovecraft
It's Art history Thursday! How about a spot light on one of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft!
H.P. Love craft, or Howard Philip Lovecraft was born in Providence Rhode Island on August 20th 1890. Best know for his collective works that framed the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, his writings have far reaching effects to this very day! Called by some the Father of Pulp fiction, and largely recognize as the Father of Cosmic horror and modern horror, Lovecraft drew heavily on his influence by Greek mythology, Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Shelly, as well as the current political and social climate of the time.
Lovecraft’s cosmic horror is a basic and fairly simplistic fictional ideology. In a nut shell he states that Man, humanity itself, is inconsequential to the vastness of the cosmos and we can be swept aside in a blink of an eye, by uncaring forces, indeed by forces that might not even vaguely realize we exist at all.
But because of this Nihilistic view of reality, he was able to populate it with fantastic terrors, unnamable horrors beyond the comprehension of human thought. In his mind, there were terrors so vast, so incalculable, that mortal man would be totally unable to fathom even the smallest part of it. And many in his stories who tried, went mad with the slightest glimpse of the whole cosmic terror.
A prolific letter writer, he corresponded with some of the recognized master of horror of the day and together they created the universe of the Cthulhu mythos cycle. Writers like August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, and Robert Bloch.
The true tragedy of Lovecraft, was that during his life, he was never able to support himself with his writing, which now is one of the best selling in the genera. He made small sums of money from editing, and sold his stories to pulp magazines for very little money. He died alone and penniless in 1937 at the age of 46.
Now his work is ubiquitous, with volumes of his stories still in print, his work has influenced music, games, movies and multimedia, as well as spawned a whole new generation of writers crafting stories in the Cthulhu Mythos.
Lovecraft the man, was a sickly and introverted sort, he suffered from depression and was extremely Xenophobic and was, as most men of his time, a racist. Reading any one of his short stories, you can see how these beliefs influenced his narratives. Particularly the Red Hook Horror (Aug. 1925) and the Rats in the walls (September 1923). He was also Thalassophobia, he had a fear of living things from the sea and detested all kinds of seafood, particularly squid and octopus. It is no wonder that so many of his creations were tentacled and squid like, or horrors that came from the sea.
H.P. Lovecraft’s first published work was “The tomb” (Written June 1917) But was not published until March 1922. He wrote prolifically for the two decades, always publishing his works for very little, in pulp magazines and as serialized stores in weird tales and others. The last thing he wrote was in November of 1935, the stories “The Shadow out of Time” and "The Haunter of the Dark".
Of coursed his most famous story is “The Call of Cthulhu” September 1926. While it may have been his most famous story, it is by no means his best. It is oddly structured and told mainly in flashbacks and thought newspaper clipping and articles, it is not his best work, but it is worth reading just for the source materials of the entire Mythos Cycle.
For those who never have read Lovecraft, I encourage you to do so, but I must make some warnings. First of all, the language is very formal and very much of its time. His stories are mainly told though narrative of a single character, and often times, done in such a way as to leave you wondering how the characters relate to the story.
Lovecraft is more about ambiance and description than action and character development. Still, it is required reading for any real fan of Horror, particularly Comic horror.
If I were to recommend Lovecraft’s work to anyone, I would tell you, if you didn’t want to read all of it, to start with “At the Mountains of madness” March 1931, “The Call of Cthulhu” September 1926, “The Color out of Space” March 1927, “The Dunwitch Horror” August 1929, “The Shadow over Innsmouth” December 1931, “Pickman’s model” September 1926 and of course, “The Rats in the Walls" September 1923.
There have been several very good movie adaptations of his work and some not so good. The Movies of Stewart Gordon are great, particularly “Reanimator” 1985, “Dagon” 2001, “From Beyond” 1986 and Andrew Leman’s “Call of Cthulhu” are notable. The 2011 Indy “The Whisperer in Darkness” Written and produced by Sean Branney, Andrew Leman, and David Robertson and distributed by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society shows that even a low budget movie can be a solid adaptation.
The following movies didn’t hit the mark, but to be far, it is hard to adapt Lovecraft’s writing, since so much of his narrative is mood, and feeling and “The indescribableness of the thing”… But that didn’t stop some from trying! One of the earliest adaptation as for 1970’s “Dunwitch Horror” Staring Sandra Dee and Dean Stockwell. While its not a bad movie, it is not really very faithful to the story.
The SyFy network did a terrible adaption of the story in 2009, and not even Dean Stockwell, this time playing Dr. Henry Armitage and the great Jeffery Combs as Wilber couldn’t save it!
One of the latest adaptions to be made was 2019 “Color out of Space” with Nic Cage. If you’re a Lovecraft fan, or a Nic Cage fan, give it a try, or if you just want a wild movie that makes little sense, this one if for you, otherwise…
Want to learn more? The following links will take you to comic terror!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft