Review: Weird Realism - Lovecraft and Philosophy

HARMAN, Graham, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, Zero Books/John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Alresford Hants. UK, 2012.

Octavo; paperback; 269pp. Minor wear. Very good to near fine.

“Immanuel Kant was a real pissant

Who was very rarely stable

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar

Who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume

Schopenhauer and Hegel

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine

Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel...”

-“The Philosophers’ Song”, Monty Python

I couldn’t resist starting this review with a quote from Monty Python; conveniently, it name-checks all of the philosophers whose work Harman employs in his overview of Lovecraft’s oeuvre, so it seemed particularly pertinent.

Right from the outset, I should confess that I’m no fan of philosophy. Personally – and I know I’m going to roast in Hell for this opinion – it all seems like so much obfuscation and jargon to confuse minor points of observation. I waded my way through Houellebecq’s deconstruction of HPL with one eye locked on Wikipedia to try and get to the bottom of what he was driving at; I feel I’m not much further along in my intellectual development with this offering, but at least I seem to be making some headway.

Graham Harman is the pioneer of what he calls Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO for short), which he has generated off the backs of Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger and David Hume which (and here I’m about to reveal my shortcomings in the philosophy department) all turn on the ability to “know” an object in and of itself. Apparently, our understanding of an item’s “thing-ness” is a function of our own intake of its generated qualities and not the “thing itself”. Harman tells us that Heidegger championed the poetry of someone called Hölderlin whose work encompassed this idea of the gap between the idea of the object and the object itself; in response, he tells us that, just as Hölderlin was the champion of Heideggerian philosophy, Lovecraft is the champion of his OOO.

This all relates to Lovecraft’s ability to create “gaps” in the ideas of his works, and boils down to his attempts to describe the indescribable which are a strong feature of his tales. Harman points out many instances where HPL offers us a phenomenon in his narrative and then, in trying to create a word-picture of it, gives us extremes between which two poles the reality of the phenomenon uneasily sits. For example, in “The Colour Out of Space”, he references Thaddeus “lapsing into an inane titter or whisper” as extremes so far apart in terms of human utterance as to leave the reader flailing uneasily in trying to picture the end result. Too, he cites instances where HPL offers what seem to be helpful clues as to an object’s form but which fall completely by the wayside in pinning down the thing’s true nature, a specific example being the attempt to describe the Cthulhu idol presented by Inspector Legrasse in “The Call of Cthulhu”.

Harman explains that HPL’s “gaps” exist at the point where his “vertical” descriptions fail to intersect with his “lateral” axis of explanation. To be honest, a lot of this escaped me, and was frustrating because I felt that he could have made the point in less obscure language. It seems to boil down to the fact that experience and expectation don’t always align with the tenuous physicality that HPL lends his odd manifestations. The best example he offers is that of the character of Joe Sargent in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” whereby the townsfolk of Newburyport simply have a nebulous and unquantifiable aversion to him, while the narrator signifies him with incoherent layers of attributes that stubbornly work against each other.

Like Houellebecq, Harman champions HPL’s use of hyperbolic language as an indicator of the narrator’s state of mind, rather than a pulpy tendency towards extremism. He cites many instances in his analysis where the inclusion of a word such as “blasphemous”, or “squamous”, heightens the emotional state of the story’s protagonist, whereas a less capable writer would fling in such verbiage in an attempt to sway the emotional state of the reader.

The book comes in three parts. The first and last sections are where Harman expounds his theory that HPL perfectly embodies his notions of Object-Oriented Ontology; the central section is an extensive review of the major works of Lovecraft, pulling out excerpts of the language in order to demonstrate the effective use of technique to heighten the unease and tension within the reader’s mind. For many this exercise will seem long and overblown; others will enjoy exploring the subtle stylistic tricks that Harman has identified as essential to Lovecraft’s writing toolbox.

Most people I know who read Lovecraft are the type who found him at an early age or through fandom of various kinds and have locked onto him as part of popular culture. It’s interesting to read, therefore, of Harman’s enjoyment of Lovecraft, coming at him from an academic viewpoint at the age of 37, and finding himself a convert. He declares that the opening paragraphs of “The Dunwich Horror” are the best example of scene-setting in English literature and that “The Whisperer in Darkness” would challenge its position in this regard but for the fact that it starts with a weak opening paragraph that would be better dropped in favour of the second (an observation which the HP Lovecraft Historical Society translated into film in its movie version of the work). Some would take objection to his point that the last 60 pages of “At the Mountains of Madness” could be excised to provide a stronger narrative but, each to their own. Not toiling in the same field of endeavour as Harman, I can only extrapolate how pleasing it must be to find a writer who exemplifies everything you’re trying to get across.

At the end of this exercise, I don’t know if my perceptions of reality have been altered or ineradicably skewed towards the weird. I was entertained by the literary autopsy to which the book devotes the majority of its space; others, may be less interested. I’m going to give it a solid four Tentacled Horrors and, like the kid in the Gary Larson cartoon, I’m going to ask to be excused – my brain is full.