The Age of Lovecraft...

SEDERHOLM, Carl G., & Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, The Age of Lovecraft, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis MN, 2016.

Octavo; paperback; 256pp. Fine

After Houllebecq and Harman, you’d think I’d had enough of mind-bending philosophy to last me a lifetime, but no – it seems there’s plenty more to be had. We live in the age of the post-humanists; the object-oriented ontologists; the philosophers of speculative reality. All these burgeoning fields of thinking have found in HPL a writer who captures the quintessence of their theories in his works, almost 80 years after his death.

It’s a big turnaround. In 1945, American literary critic Edmund Wilson said of Lovecraft that his work was simply “the horror of bad taste and bad art”. This champion of the Library of America series – a publishing endeavour that seeks to capture all that is best of American writing – would be spinning in his grave to discover that HPL is now a title within that collection. Some have said that HPL’s inclusion shows that American literature has reached some kind of nadir, but I suspect the speculative realists would have something to say about that.

(I myself have some titles from the Library of America series, specifically the two-volume collection of Raymond Chandler’s works. It seems that no matter what accolades HPL receives, they’re always going to be hard-won. I mean, it doesn’t get much pulpier than Chandler, so how does his inclusion barely raise a ripple while Lovecraft’s causes conniptions?)

The publishing of the new title, The Age of Lovecraft, is an overview of all the discussion that HPL is engendering around the world at the moment. The editors – Carl H. Sederholm & Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock – approached the exercise with a twofold question in mind, seeking its resolution: “Why Lovecraft? Why now?” Accordingly, they have commissioned a series of essays which form the chapters of the work and the sheer weight of multi-syllabic words that have ended up on paper as a result is a reason to give pause. Herein are discussions of HPL’s stylistic gimmickry, his debt to the Gothic tradition – even his use of sound within his stories. Most of the writers owe a debt to Graham Harman’s Weird Realism at some point, so if you’re interested, that book might well be worth finding before you tackle this brute.

I say “brute”, but I don’t mean to cast aspersions. This is an even-handed embracing of all things Lovecraft with critical eyes examining why so many people take his work onboard as a kind of cultural touchstone. That being said, it’s a weighty academic tome, with all the jargon that philosophers love to splash around. Bookending the brain-bending material are a Foreword written by Ramsey Campbell and an Interview with China Miéville – neither of which are as good as the material which they sandwich, but if you’re a fan, you might consider them the wading pools of this Lovecraftian Wet ‘n’ Wild extravaganza.

Given the state of play in America at the moment, I was wary about looking at this collection. Any discussion of Lovecraft inevitably wends its way towards his racism, and I half suspected that the groundswell xenophobia coming out of his home country was going to answer that “Why Lovecraft? Why now?” statement in a heartbeat. I have to confess that I’m only partway through the volume and I’m still gingerly picking my way, expecting some kind of horrible alt-right enthusiasm at each page turn. Hasn’t happened yet, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it won’t.

What’s of particular interest to me are the various discussions about Lovecraft pastiche and HPL-inspired writing and how most of it fails to live up to the format imposed by its exemplar. Having reviewed many collections of such material, I’m feeling quite justified in my responses, and starting to see more clearly where the line divides between ‘Lovecraftian’ and ‘Not’. Hopefully the editors of those collections will pick this volume up at some point and refine their own thinking on the matter.

In the meantime I heartily recommend this book for serious analysers of Lovecraft’s material. If you’re just trolling for ideas for a new Cthulhu tattoo, then perhaps Metallica’s new album is something better to spend your money on: despite the lurid cover, there’s little going on here that will satisfy a fan-boy’s geeky urges. I’m not going to give this book a score in Tentacled Horrors because I think that it’s too fundamental to be treated as an entertainment. A recent “Fortean Times” review gave it 9 out of 10 and recommended it for all HPL fans; I’m not so sure it’s everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re a deadly serious Lovecraft fan – not just a wearer of a Cthulhu ski mask – then you need this book.

*****

PS: There are dissenters to this point of view. Amazon has some fairly scathing reviews about the value of this collection, written by folks with perhaps better qualifications to comment than I have. Before you shell out your hard-earned - and it is an expensive volume - read around and draw your own conclusions.