Greetings Everyone!
I did a recent interview with Brandon Wallace on the Truth & Shadow Podcast, hosted on Apple Podcasts! Among other topics, I discuss the connections between Lovecraft's Mythos and esoteric traditions.Please listen in!
JLS
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/truth-shadow-podcast/id1714476896?i=1000663314231
Greetings Everyone!
My new
book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird
Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury, the foremost academic
publisher in the United States and in the United Kingdom!
I hope
that all of you will pick up a copy; you can order it online from the
publishers and, of course, from Amazon and other online booksellers around the
world. The book is also available in
bookstores here in the states as well as overseas.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/
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, arguing that 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 its distant cousin the monkey. However, Blacks evolved from different, lower
quadrupeds. Thus, since white
Anglo-Saxons and Blacks are not descended from the same quadrupeds, they are
separate species, and therefore, 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—they represent, in fact, a threat to the purity of the white race.
JLS
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. You can order it online from Bloomsbury, my publishers, or from Amazon and other online
booksellers around the world. The book
is also available in bookstores here in the states as well as overseas.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/
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 birthright. This was the most traumatic event in Lovecraft’s life and it activated his white fragility, which had been latent up until this time. Lovecraft’s racism intensified as well, for he could see that he wasn’t as privileged or superior to the so-called inferior, non-white races as he had believed.
Lovecraft’s loss of his privileged lifestyle, 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 ended
up in failure. This pattern 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 and psychosomatic
problems that plagued him in Horror
as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft!
JLS
Greetings Everyone!
My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft:
White Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury. I
hope that all of you will pick up a copy; you can order it online from the
publishers and, of course, from Amazon and other online booksellers around the
world. The book is also available in
bookstores here in the states as well as overseas.
Lovecraft scholar Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, in his
essay “Tekeli-li: Poe, Lovecraft, and the Suspicion of Sameness” (2017) poses
these questions: “If the affective power of a text is derived from retrograde
sociopolitical points of view, to what extent is the reader who enjoys the
works implicated in approving of and disseminating those opinions? How, in short, should we read—and
teach—racist texts?”
After reading Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft, the reader should be in a better position to answer these questions, and though a few readers might find the answers easy, the majority, I think, will find them even more difficult. JLS
And when you get a chance, please check out my other books as well.
Greetings Everyone!
Please check out my new book: Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft!
Paul Rolland, Lovecraft scholar and author of The Curious Case of H. P. Lovecraft (2014), writes: “The deficiencies of the man do not...debase the quality of his best work. If anything, they invest it with a twisted passion that is missing from his more fantastic fiction.”
You may agree with this, or not. But “twisted passion” is the perfect phrase
to describe Lovecraft’s work, especially the racist works. Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft is, at
the very least, an attempt to study and understand exactly how passionate and
twisted Lovecraft really was.
And if you haven't already, check out my two other books! They are all fun to read!
Greetings Everyone!
My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft:
White Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently released by Bloomsbury, the
foremost academic publisher in the United States and in the United Kingdom!
I hope that all of you will pick up a copy; you can
order it online from the publishers and, of course, from Amazon and other
online booksellers around the world. The
book is also available in bookstores here in the states as well as overseas.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/
Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft is the first,
book-length study that addresses the topic of Lovecraft’s racism and white
privilege. The book will show for the
first time the full extent of Lovecraft’s racism, which ranges from the early
works—the hybrid, degenerative monsters tales, as I refer to them, to the
later, mature works—the great tales, as they are sometimes called, where
Lovecraft’s extra-terrestrial alien races—all of them cosmic slave
masters—square off against their own manufactured slave races and, in certain
cases, human slaves as well.
The book, in particular, studies how Lovecraft uses
his racial hatred creatively by developing racist images and narratives to
advocate for his xenophobic political beliefs: that western civilization is in
decline due to unrestrained immigration, miscegenation and hybridism; and that slavery is not only endemic, but justifiable among superior civilizations,
especially the white, Anglo-Saxon civilizations.
There is no writer in the English language, and
certainly, no writer of comparable magnitude to Lovecraft, who even attempts to
do such a thing. It is, quite literally,
an unprecedented phenomenon.
So, please check it out!
John L. Steadman
