I am so beastly tired of mankind and the world that nothing can interest me unless it contains a couple of murders on each page or deals with the horrors unnameable and unaccountable that leer down from the external universes.
—H.P. Lovecraft
The paradox, however, is that we prefer this universe, hideous as it is, to our own reality. In this, we are precisely the readers that Lovecraft anticipated. We read his tales with the same exact disposition as that which prompted him to write them. Satan or Nyarlathotep, either one will do, but we will not tolerate another moment of realism. And, truth be told, given his prolonged acquaintance with the disgraceful turns of our ordinary sins, the value of Satan’s currency has dropped a little. Better Nyarlathotep, ice-cold, evil, and inhuman.
It’s clear why reading Lovecraft is paradoxically comforting to those souls who are weary of life. In fact, it should perhaps be prescribed to all who, for one reason or other, have come to feel a true aversion to life in all its forms. In some cases, the jolt to the nerves upon a first reading is immense. One may find oneself smiling all alone, or humming a tune from a musical. One’s outlook on existence is, in a word, modified.
The myth maker
HP Lovecraft was a kindly misanthrope and a visionary materialist who disdained writing but created an astonishing body of work that transcends its cult status, writes Michel Houellebecq (book excerpt in the Guardian)
Update: Download an audiobook: HPL’s “The Thing on the Doorstep” (Zombie Astronaut)
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