March 24, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my newest book! You can get it at Amazon, Bloomsbury and other on-line book sellers.

In my previous series of postings, we have studied H. P. Lovecraft’s theory of devolution—Lovecraft believed that pure-blooded white, Anglo-Saxons who have intimate contact, especially sexual contact, with blacks or non-whites risk devolving, i.e. moving from a higher evolutionary stage to a lower stage.  That is, their blood becomes tainted by contact with those who don’t have pure blood and they become more like animals than humans.  Over time, these hybrids literally transform into monsters. 

Lovecraft read about fictional characters such as Mr. Hyde and Dorian Gray who reinforced his devolutionary fears.  Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was particularly inspiring.   Dracula is undead, neither alive nor dead. This state of being, according to Stoker, represents an impurity in the blood that causes a living, human being to devolve into a monster.  Dracula, thus, is similar to the kinds of hybrids that result from sex between whites and  blacks.

Lovecraft was also influenced by J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire-lesbian novel Carmilla (1872).  The title character, Carmilla, is a vampire, like Dracula.  She seduces a young woman, Laura, and drinks her blood, hoping to turn her into a creature like herself, just as Dracula does with Mina Harker.

Carmilla is beautiful on the surface, but beneath, she is a monster.  In one graphic scene, Laura sees her as a monstrous, black cat: “four or five feet long...[moving] with the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage... I felt it spring lightly on the bed.  The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted...deep into my breast.”    

The moral of Le Fanu’s novel is the same as Bram Stoker’s: devolution results from tainted blood and is a stronger force than evolution!

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS

March 11, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my newest book! You can get it on Amazon, Bloomsbury and other on-line book sellers.

In my previous postings, I argued that H. P. Lovecraft’s theory of devolution derives, in part, from  Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Lovecraft was also influenced by Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel Dracula (1897).

The title character, Dracula, is a perfect embodiment of devolution and degeneration.  He is, of course, undead, neither alive nor dead.  But the living part of him is animalistic, not  human.  When we first see him in the castle, he reminds us of an old satyr: ugly, decaying and repulsive; as hideous as Hyde or Gray.  

There is a particularly graphic description of him lying in a box in an old chapel, gorged with blood.  The narrator, Jonathan Harker, describes him as if he were a “filthy leech,” his eyes burning like coals; his flesh swollen and puffy; and with  blood trickling from his mouth.  Obviously, being undead is akin to devolving into a lower life-form.

The moral of Stoker’s novel is the same as Stevenson’s and Wilde’s novels: devolution is stronger than evolution!

The themes of degeneration and devolution are central, also, in  J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire-lesbian novel Carmilla (1872), a novel that is almost as popular as Dracula.   We shall look at this book in my next posting.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS

February 28, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my newest book! You can get it on Amazon, Bloomsbury and other on-line sites

In my previous posting, I argued that H. P. Lovecraft’s theory of devolution derives, in part, from  Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Lovecraft was also influenced by  Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of  Dorian Gray, written around the same time.

The plot is fairly well-known: Dorian Gray, a beautiful young man, wishes that he could stay young and beautiful while his portrait ages.  He gets his wish; he looks exactly the same for twenty years; the painting, however, grows old and ugly.

Dorian complicates the issue by living a terrible, evil life—he commits murder and he drives men as well as women to suicide.  The portrait reveals Dorian’s inner corruption and it ends up looking even worse than simply an ugly, old man; it looks like a  misshapen, degenerate monster—a half-human, half simian monster.

At the end of the book, Dorian can no longer stand seeing himself like this and he stabs the portrait; the painting  becomes beautiful again, but Dorian dies, and he leaves behind  the ugly, deformed body of his alter ego—much as  Jekyll in death left behind the hideous body of Hyde.

The moral of Wilde’s story is the same as Stevenson’s: devolution is stronger than evolution!

The themes of degeneration and devolution are also central to Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula.  And this goes for J. Sheridan Le
Fanu’s equally famous novel Carmilla.   We shall look at these books in my next two postings.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107706/

JLS

February 16, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my newest book: Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, available on Amazon, Bloomsbury, and other online booksellers!

You can read all about Lovecraft’s theory of evolution, which reveals a fear on his part that degeneration is a stronger force than development; that human beings can more easily devolve than they can evolve. Lovecraft’s theory derives, in part, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), a book that Lovecraft was very familiar with.

Mr. Hyde is described by numerous characters in the novel as “deformed” or “degenerate.”  When  Jekyll transforms into Hyde, this can be interpreted as a devolution from a higher form of life into a lower one.  Over the course of Jekyll’s transformations, Hyde begins to dominate Jekyll, such that Jekyll finds it increasingly difficult to make the transition back to his integrated self.

Finally, in the climax, Jekyll cannot return to being Jekyll; frustrated, he commits suicide and dies.  Interestingly, however, Jekyll still cannot break free; the dead body that remains is Hyde’s body.  The transformation is permanent, even in death.

Here, Stevenson is making the same argument that Lovecraft makes in his hybrid, degenerative monster tales: devolution is stronger than evolution!

In my next two postings, I will examine two additional Victorian horror masterpieces that inspired Lovecraft’s evolutionary theories: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

JLS

February 9, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my recent book,  Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales!

In my last posting, I talked about Lovecraft’s racist, polygenetic theory of  evolution.  Lovecraft argues that  Anglo-Saxons and the other white races, who are genuine human beings, are descended from advanced types of apes.  In contrast,  blacks and the lesser races are descended from lower, less evolved apes. Therefore, blacks and whites are  separate species and blacks should not be considered as human beings.

In his fictional works, especially in the early works—the tales that I refer to as the hybrid, degenerative monster tales—Lovecraft carries this argument even further.

He suggests that when it comes to separate, but similar species such as blacks and whites, there is a built-in genetic barrier that excludes members of the “lower” species from becoming members of the “higher” species.  However, the reverse is not true— members of the higher species can move between the barriers  and de-evolve if they so desire, but this will force them to leave their “humanity” behind.

You can read all about Lovecraft’s theory of de-evolution and how he uses it to justify his xenophobic political beliefs in Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft!

In my next posting, I will examine one of Lovecraft’s main sources for his views about de-evolution—Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

JLS

January 22, 2025

 Greetings Everyone!

I hope that all of you will pick up a copy of my recent book,  Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales!

In two of his earliest poems, “De Triumpho Naturae” (1905) and “On the Creation of Niggers”(1912), Lovecraft upends Darwin’s theory of evolution by proposing a theory of polygenesis, as opposed to genesis.

According to this theory, humans, including the superior types of humans—white Anglo Saxons—evolved from some type of highly developed quadruped, complete with pointed ears and a tail, like their distant cousin the monkey. However, Blacks evolved from different, lower quadrupeds. 

Thus, or so the theory holds, since white Anglo-Saxons and Blacks are not descended from the same quadrupeds, they are separate species, and therefore, Lovecraft concluded, Blacks should not be considered as human beings.

You can read all about Lovecraft’s theory of polygenesis in Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft, and how Lovecraft uses this theory to insist that Blacks, like monkeys and apes, must be kept separate from humans—that they represent, in fact, a threat to the purity of the white race. 

JLS

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

January 7, 2025

 Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope that all of you will pick up a copy of my recent book,  Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales!

Lovecraft lost his privileged lifestyle in his teen years, when he and his mother were forced to move out of their  Providence Rhode Island mansion and live instead in rented rooms located just blocks from their former house. 

This was the most traumatic event in Lovecraft’s life and his racial hatred against non-whites intensified, for he could see that he and his mother weren’t as privileged or superior to these so-called inferior races as he had believed.

This event, also, triggered a pattern of loss and failure that characterized Lovecraft’s life from that moment onwards: whenever he found himself facing a “crisis,” he would freeze up and be unable to act—thus, whatever he was trying to accomplish usually ended up in failure. 

The pattern of loss and failure is evident not only in the various personal crises that Lovecraft found himself having to face in his adult life, but we see this same pattern of behavior reflected in the lives and careers of the fictional protagonists in his major works.

You can read all about Lovecraft’s personal traumas and the psychological & psychosomatic problems that plagued him in Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft!  

All of these traumas and problems laid the foundation for most of his greatest tales, especially “The Rats in the Walls,” The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “The Dreams in the Witch-House."

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/

JLS