Eldritch Milkshake Ducks: H.P. Lovecraft's Bigotry

Greetings, fellow nerds! So good to see you. We're doing a heavy topic today. One might even say it's vast, squamous and unknowable!!

Today's guest is a writer who's famous now, but died alone and unappreciated. We've coddled him, made excuses for him and struggled to come to terms with his flagrant misbehaviors for a hundred years. No more! Today we're getting in deep with the weirdest writer of the twenties and thirties: Howard Philips Lovecraft, the man himself!

You know this guy. He invented Cthulhu! Cthulhu's fun, right? Drives people crazy in their dreams, lives in sunken R'Lyeh, his neighbor is the Bloop. But there's plenty you may not know about Lovecraft. Namely, that he was--in the words of Stephen King, who's not known to mince words--a "galloping" racist, conspiracy theorist, and basically the original 4channer.

Mr. King is making an understatement here. Lovecraft was a titanic bigot, his paranoia fueled by Puritanism and self-induced isolation. His views run parallel to the "alt-right" movements of today, but with less subtlety. If Lovecraft had been born in 1990 instead of 1890, he wouldn't have had time for writing--he'd be too busy rampaging across Twitter, dumping isolationist, xenophobic rhetoric on everyone. This man was terrified by people of color--despite never having met any. On top of this, he was a conspiracy theorist before that was even a thing you did--he was convinced Irish Catholic immigrants were conspiring to control America.

Pictured: Lovecraft's distant relative (no, not really--calm down, Lovecraft Estate.)

What I aim to do here is answer how this came about--how a guy nicknamed "The Old Man" for his charming fussiness became filled with irrational fears of people he never even met. I will not make excuses for Lovecraft, here--the dude was a genius, but geniuses can also be assholes. What interests me more than absolving Lovecraft is understanding him. All bigotry comes from somewhere, and once you find out where it comes from, it becomes one step easier to handle.

I've said before on this very blog that we need to take steps to understand today's young men and why they're so goddamn crazy misogynist and violent, and I think Lovecraft is one of the keys to the whole thing. Because... well... Just LOOK at this guy.

Voted "Most Punchable Face of the 20th Century."

Just... just look at that face. This is one of the few, rare pictures of Howard smiling, and it's awful. You just want to smack the smugness off him, or maybe write him a manual on how to smile without looking like you've inhaled a pineapple. He looks ridiculous, nerdy in his clothing choice and, if his biography The Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft is to be believed, in his attitude. He was an insufferable jackass even to his friends, boasting of his "British" descent (neither of his parents had any connection to England) and refusing to edit any of his works--not because he thought they were perfect, but because he was so insecure he couldn't bear to look at a page once it had been written. Come on, H.P., you could've at least spell-checked your work.

Since every bigot is informed by their upbringing, let's look at Lovecraft's childhood. Jerkhood doesn't develop in a vacuum, and Howard's youth informed his attitude throughout his life. So let's see how he started... oh man.

Oh. Oh, dear.

Yep, that's baby Howard, wearing a dress. According to his biography, his mother--who later died in an insane asylum just like his father, both of them victims of mental illness--dressed him as a girl for most of his childhood, to simulate the daughter she'd never had.

Okay, not a great start. If a kid wants to wear a dress, fine, whatever--but I highly doubt Mini-Howard had a choice here. It's a classic case of bad parenting, and it left marks on Howard. He had issues with women for the rest of his life, from his fear of sex to his cold, calculating relationship with his wife. (They separated before his death--shockingly, the guy who wrote about "morbid, clammy slabs of Cyclopean marble" wasn't a warm and loving husband.)

"Honey, want me to draw us a sexy bubble bath?" "No thanks, dear, I'm busy doodling squamous, UNWHOLESOME horrors!"

Again, we're not making excuses for Howard. However, we can see how his early life jump-started inside him the burning core of bigotry: insecurity. His mother's erratic behavior and death terrified him, and he was forevermore a sensitive and delicate person. Someone so easily ruffled would have jumped at the chance to feel strong, about anything. And tragically, Howard felt strongly about just two things: weird fiction... and eugenics.

Pictured: The summary of HPL's entire writing career.

At many points in his life Howard engaged in racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric, from his famously horrible poem about black people and his rumored shock when his wife reminded him he was Jewish, to which he responded, "No, you're not! You're a Lovecraft!"

Yeah... Not our best guy, over here. Once again, talent does not preclude someone from being a complete irresponsible fuckstick.

But already we're seeing parallels here. A quiet, insecure white guy with a real sore spot about race (and women, and immigration, and his precious "white identity") sounds just like the shit we're dealing with today. The internet has radicalized an entire army of young, insecure racists, pushing them out into the street to spread hateful views and engage in deadly violence. While Howard never punched anyone in his life, much less committed murder, he was still the same type of radicalized, secretly hateful young white male we see today. History repeats itself, and America hasn't changed.

At least we've never elected Cthulhu. Though it's not for lack of trying.

The strangest thing about Lovecraft's prejudice is that of all people, he should be the most capable of using imagination to understand the unknown. The guy penned hundreds of pages about cosmic, alien entities, and referred to his Elder Ones aliens as "scientists" and "men of reason." Lovecraft engaged in plenty of gross, imperialist thinking--one of the narrators in "Call of Cthulhu" is killed by a mysterious swarthy man from overseas, the implication being Cthulhu's human minions are all people of color and foreigners... for some reason? Yet at the same time, Lovecraft had enough self-awareness to write this:

"Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand..."

... Damn.

"Yeah, man! Worlds of life, energy and matter, duuude!"

Someone capable of thinking outside the box like this--outside the scope of normal human life, and normal human minds--should have been able to see through the bigotries of his time, at least a little. But racism is a system, not just an attitude. The quiet prejudices of his friends--Robert Howard, August Derleth, and others--buoyed Lovecraft's pre-existing views.

None of them put any checks on his suspicion of  immigrants, or questioned him when he set his stories in "exotic Egypt" and wrote about the dangers of race-mixing. Why would they? R. Howard, for his part, was busy writing Conan the Barbarian stories--in a Hyperborea full of tribal caricatures and scantily-clad women, to boot. The nerds of Lovecraft's time couldn't be expected to reign in his attitudes... or teach him how to be more accepting, kinder, and less girl-phobic.

"Mr. Howard, you're sure these stories don't come across... just a little overcompensating?" "WHAT NO, WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT!"

And so, we're stuck with Racist Lovecraft, rather than the idealized version we'd prefer. All we can do is enjoy the parts of his work we like the most--the cosmic terror of his creatures, the creeping dread of his prose. Instead of lamenting his regrettable, isolationist attitude, we should do more to erase those toxic views in our own society.

And we need to do it quickly. Because despite his talent, despite the mystery and beauty of his works, the last thing we need is a new generation of Lovecrafts.

Life After Arrowhead

                We all remember the world that was. Things like Reagan, New Coke, Walkman, the Ayatollah: all legends. The stories are meaningless, but we hang onto them, clutching them in the cold whispering night. I can taste the mist even, through my duct-tape seals: it has a tangy, metallic flavor that’s vaguely artificial. Someday it will fill my lungs completely, and oh, what a relief that’ll be. Because then the fear will be done with.

                I was a little girl, back when it happened. I’ll never forget the blood, the panic: hunched behind glass, we waited. So much screaming. But that’s over, and I have a purpose now. I’m a runner, a courier between the pockets of humanity that huddle in sealed-off factories and rubberized basements, in the tops of skyscrapers where only the flying things can get you.

                My name is Lupita.

                There’s barely any uppers, in the grocery stores and pharmacies. Decades of scavenging have picked those places clean. Spiders with the faces of men live there now; they've webbed up the leftovers. Good luck getting through that silk; your hands will burn off, and then how will you play your vinyls? So I make my first run of the day without the bennies or caffeine or methamphetamine pounding through my skull, hammering at my heart. I run clean, without a buzz. Maybe it’s for the best: there’s less fear, like this. The anxiety comes from real things.

                My Hazmat suit is patched in a dozen places; it’s a kaleidoscope of color, but they don’t see color, so I’m okay. One of these days, the seals are going to break, and I'll be dinner. I often wonder what’ll get me: whom among the scuttlers and flyers and pre-Cambrian rippers of flesh will do the honors. Some of them have acid venom; others just tear you limb from limb. I’d prefer to get stepped on by a Big One, if I’m honest, or  just fall in a sinkhole. Those deaths are quick, simple. Maybe even fun, if you’re zonked out on blues or reds.

                I wake up in the elementary school. Walls etched with chalk, kerosene lamp glowing. It’s a sturdy place, a leftover of brutalism that’s survived into the aughts, although its students haven’t. They’re still there, mummified little bodies webbed up in classrooms or scattered in the halls. I live in the maintenance shed, attached to the main building by one flimsy door. I open this door and pass by the bodies, like I do every day. I’ve never dreamed of cleaned them up. They’re my friends, Gap Tooth and No Face and Stripped Skin. Besides, moving them would risk attracting attention, releasing old scents that make my neighbors anxious. Excited.

                I sprint down the hall, the mist oozing over the visor of my suit. It’s thinner in here—thinny, you might say. I have a machete today, and that’ll do. Ran out of bullets years ago.

                God, I’m hungry.

                It’s like a dream, hammering down these old tiles and into the street, past the yellow buses with their flat decaying tires and rictus skeins of old mucus. The sky is gone, hidden in gray. The fog coats everything, turning objects into specters that hang half-hidden and lurch from the white as I approach.

It’s quiet. Particles of something unpleasant float, bouncing off the thin plastic of my suit’s visor. Spores, maybe, or a new breed of killer unleashed by Arrowhead. Evolution works fast, on the other side: things come through that were bred in weeks, days, to become perfect killers. Heard a guy say once he’d seen the portal, and it’s nothing but darkness over there, deep todash. I wouldn’t mind that.

                At least in the darkness, you can’t see what’s eating you alive.

                A big scuttler goes by, not fifteen feet away. I freeze; the little ones are blind, but the big ones are clever, smarter than the ‘average bear,’ if you kennit. This one's pretty dumb; its feelers play over my suit, and it gives me a nudge with its pincers, just to see if I’ll run. If I’ll turn out to be food.

                I hold perfectly still, as its sucker-mouthed tongue plays over my arm.

                Eventually it gets bored and skitters off. These things have quick metabolisms; it needs to find food quickly, or starve. I wait till it’s a shadow on Green Street, before I start running. My sealed boots go thwap-thwap, thwap-thwap against ancient, cracked concrete.

                My first stop is Wordboy’s house, by the pond. He picked out a nice place, an old mansion type of deal. Lanterns in the drive, lots of windows. He replaced the glass with sheet-metal and the door with a long airlock tunnel, made of duct-taped steel. Must’ve taken him ages to build it, but he’s a smart one. Taught me all my words.

                Wordboy’s in a talking mood. Once he scrubs me off, he invites me inside. I strip off the suit and lie nude on his moth-eaten couch. He doesn’t mind; Wordboy’s gay as lord. No boob has ever turned his gaze. I tell him the bodies are still where they lie, at the school.

                “Good,” he says. “Keep the bastards off your scent. How’s the shed?”

                I tell him it’s fine, though the latrine could use some work. He nods; plumbing is an issue when you can’t churn up earth without attracting hungry mouths. He’s had similar problems, and candles flicker in every corner of his home, masking his scent. One day, I think, this whole place will burn down.

                “Wordboy,” I say, and I ask him—it’s become sort of a joke, you see—I ask him this every time. “Wordboy, when’s it gonna end? When’s the mist going away?”

                He laughs. “When the army comes back, and television comes on, and Project Star Wars is back on the budget.” He’s stooped and his teeth are rotted from eating processed junk to survive, but when he smiles I still see the old professor in him. He waves his empty rifle at the chalkboard in the corner. “Been tracking their migration patterns—south, like always. But slower.”

                I nod. It makes logic. Whatever’s coming through Arrowhead wants to fill the whole world—stuff it to the brim, with teeth and claws and greedy mouths. It hasn’t done that yet, but if the migration’s slow, it must be close. “You think when the mist is everywhere, maybe they’ll move on?”

                He shakes his head. “Never. This ecosystem is too perfect—everything eats everything else on their world, but ours... ours is a free buffet. All you can eat, forever.”

                I throw up my hands. “Wordboy, you don’t give me hope, sai.”

                “I know.” He taps the stock of his Remington. “But we’ll rebuild. We’re a stubborn breed. That’s why I have my books, ken? Someday we’ll build a way to stop them.”

                His arrogance is immense. I roll my eyes. “Sure, sure. And someday I won’t shit in a bucket.”

                “I’m telling you. Things will change.” The worst part is, he really means it. Smart types think they have it all figured out; me, I think with my legs. It’s the only thinking worth doing, when a thousand grasping arms are reaching for your meat. “Someday, Lupe, we’ll fix it. Until then…” And he presents me with a miracle. An unwrapped, still-fresh Twinkie, virginal and yellow in its translucent shell. “Here. For the Hodgson books you brought me.”

                I take it. “Is this… real?”

                “As real as anything from the dead past.” He shrugs. “Tastes better than hydroponic carrots, at least. Try.”

                I do. My body is starved for carbs. I want to save the treasure for later, but I can’t help it: my fingers rip open the wrapper. “It’s beautiful.”

                He laughs. “I’m sure the manufacturers would appreciate your review.”

                My first bite is heavenly: stale, yes, stale as dead skin. But so fluffy, and sugary, and light on my mouth! Melting, on my tongue! My eyes roll, and this time it’s from pleasure. Once my Twinkie-gasm is over, and I lick my fingers clean, I stand. “Can’t stay. Lot of runs before dusk.”

                “I can dig it.” He hugs me, and I hug him back. We aren’t family, or even close friends, but we both understand this need, the need for mutual human contact that’s been lost in the face of the forever-darkness. The sunless earth. “I wish you’d come and stay here.”

                I shake my head. In my stomach, the Twinkie churns nauseously, unrecognized by digestive enzymes. “No. I need to be alone. They smell you, if you gather. That’s how they got Brighton.”

                He sighs. “If we don’t gather, we’re just going to go extinct. Matter of time.”

                I don’t care. I don’t like people. They scare me, because at least with Big Ones and the scuttlers, you know what you’re getting. But faces are hard to understand, and caring is harder. Better to be alone, and safe, with my Atari and my corpses. “I know,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

                He nods. “Well. If you change your mind… I’m here.”

                “Yes.”

                I put on my suit, I pass through the airlock with its mist of ethanol-bleach. My boots hit the pavement and I am running, running, past the lumbering legs of something ten times my size that sweeps the ground with a clawed tentacle. I run past a man-faced spider, fighting with its fellows over the last scraps of a dog’s bones. My feet pound the roads, my face stares blank and gauzy from the fogged-up visor.

                Someday, I think, breathing hard. There’s Twinkie on my breath.

                Someday.