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H.P. Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq
01/11/2006 . Source: Eamonn Murphy 
pub: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. 245 enlarged paperback. Price: £10.00 (UK). ISBN: 0-297-85138-1. Buy HP Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life in the USA - or Buy HP Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life in the UK  check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk and www.michelhouellebecq.com
H.P. Lovecraft, it seems, had something in common with Immanuel Kant. No, he was not a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable. Both were suspected of being not fully human and both had the 'heroic and paradoxical desire to go beyond humanity.' Kant wanted to create an ethical code valid 'not just for man but for all rational beings'. Lovecraft wanted to create a mythology that would mean something even for creatures of nebulous spiralling gas. (How could they read it?)
The main theme of the book is Lovecraft the life hater. According to Houellebecq: 'Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually.' Arts are for those who are fed up with the world. When the social engineers have us all straightened out there will be no readers, I suppose, and certainly no writers. Until then you saddos might entertain yourselves with this book, a literary/biographical essay on H.P. Lovecraft which includes two of his stories.
Lovecraft disliked life in general and modern life in particular. The concerns of most men, sex and money do not figure at all in any of his stories. Most modern horror writers start off with real life and then slowly introduce the supernatural or horror element. Richard Mathieson and Stephen King have written numerous good books with this technique. Lovecraft, on the other hand, dives straight into the weird world and wastes not a page in describing ordinary life as he takes us on 'journeys to penumbral worlds of the unutterable.'
Lovecraft never fitted society. He had some sort of nervous breakdown aged eighteen and spent the next five years doing absolutely nothing. Slowly he connected to the world again through writing and amateur journalism. In 1924, he married a beautiful woman (she chased him) and went to New York to have a go at real life. He failed miserably. It was a good time for the economy but no one wanted to employ him. They employed 'Italo-Semitico-Mongoloid' immigrants instead (his term) which turned him into a racist. Sonia, the wife, was very understanding but to find work herself she had to move around, which meant long separations. In the end, they divorced amicably and Lovecraft went back to being the Recluse of Rhode Island. He was possibly happier that way. Then he died young, always a good career move for an artist.
Creating a popular myth is as rare as creating a religion, says Houellebecq, and likens Lovecraft's success to that of Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, albeit without a central character and certainly no mere human. But Lovecraft was a materialist and so were his creations. There are horrors that cannot be dismissed with a crucifix or a spell, horrors that belong to science. Lovecraft's human characters were projections of himself, long, lean professors who relished the satisfactions of the mind. They existed merely to perceive those mythical horrors. The myth has lasted so well that computer gamesters now play in the land of the Elder Gods. Many of them have never read the stories and never will.
I did though. 'The Whisperer In Darkness' and 'The Call Of Cthulhu' are included in this book. They are two of the 'great texts', according to the author. The first is written by a lean academic investigator and consists largely of his correspondence with Henry Wentworth Akeley, 'last representative of a long, distinguished line who had veered into pure scholarship. A man of character, education and intelligence, albeit a recluse with very little worldly sophistication'(Lovecraft, in other words). A good story but it requires the protagonist to behave like a moron in order to achieve the denouement. This is a flaw.
The other tale uses a clever narrative structure to piece together the story of Cthulhu, who is Lovecraft's chief monster and has a whole Mythos named after him. Cthulhu is the closest possible alphabetical rendition of his name, which must sound like a sneeze. In 1926, when the tale was told, Cthulhu could survive a steamboat being rammed into his head. So what? Nowadays, we would nuke the bastard. He's not so scary in the cold light of day.
None of them are, frankly. But in reading about them you leave daylight behind. Lovecraft's prose takes you into the darkness. It is impossible to convey the effect in a review without quoting large chunks. The excellence of his style has bought him to the fringes of academia even as his subject matter has kept him out. It is only genre fiction after all. But he is still worth reading and so is the essay.
Own it now, on paper!
Eamonn Murphy
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