July 14, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy of my most recent book: Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales! You can get  it online from Bloomsbury and of course, from Amazon and other booksellers in the US and around the world. 

H. P. Lovecraft, in his hybrid, degenerative monster tales, makes use of  the miscegenation narrative, which holds that sexual liaisons or intimate, non-sexual associations between members of different races, or species, pose a threat for Anglo Saxon whites.  

In Lovecraft’s view, miscegenation always debases the white partner — male or female — and it can lead to the production of mixed race children, which are, in effect, not only an abomination against natural law, but also a threat to the longevity of the white race and to the survival of western civilization in general.

As a further elaboration of the miscegenation narrative, there are two types of miscegenation narratives in Lovecraft’s fiction.  First, there is miscegenation by blood; in these cases, the relationship between the two parties is always sexual, and hybrids are produced.  Second, there is miscegenation by association; in these cases, no sexual contact occurs; the danger, thus, arises merely from the contact between the partners.

Check out my book for analysis of how Lovecraft uses his miscegenation narrative  in some of his most popular tales: “Herbert West—Reanimator,” “The Lurking Fear,” “The Rats in the Walls” and one of  his greatest tales: “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”!

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

JLS 

June 18, 2025

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!

Lovecraft makes extensive use of racist images in both his early and later works.   These images are drawn from Lovecraft’s observations of members of the non-white race that he most despised and abhorred,  African Americans,  especially as he observed them in the slums of his hometown Providence, Rhode Island and at close quarters during his brief residence in the Red Hook district of New York.

Lovecraft focuses on the simian and ape-like characteristics that he insisted on seeing in the faces and forms of  the locals and then simply projects these onto his monsters.  He does this in a very conscious and deliberate manner in order to enhance the horror and the repugnance that these creatures inspire in the minds of his readers (or at least, so Lovecraft presumed).

Check out my book for analysis of how Lovecraft uses these images creatively in some of his most popular tales: “Arthur Jermyn,” “Herbert West—Reanimator,” and “The Rats in the Walls”!

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

JLS

May 23, 2025

 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!

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.

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

JLS

May 10, 2025

 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!

Paul Rolland, Lovecraft scholar and author, 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.”

"Twisted passion” is the perfect phrase to describe Lovecraft’s work, especially the racist works.  One could argue, in fact, that this twisted  passion enhanced Lovecraft's fiction, especially the hybrid, degenerative monster tales, making them much more frightening and  investing them with raging, nearly psychotic emotion.

You may agree with this, or not.  But my book is, at the very least, an attempt to study and understand exactly how passionate and twisted Lovecraft really was.

So, please check it out!

JLS

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

 

April 23, 2025

Greetings Everyone!

My book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury!  I hope all of you will pick up a copy!

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: western civilization is in decline due to unrestrained immigration, miscegenation and hybridism; and, 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!

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

John L. Steadman 

April 5, 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 is tainted by contact with those who don’t have pure blood and they become more like animals than humans.  These whites also risk producing hybrid children who literally are monsters. 

Lovecraft’s theory was influenced by two great vampire novels: Bram Stoker’s  Dracula and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla.  Both the title characters are undead, devolved creatures that are  more animal than human.  Thus, being “undead” is equivalent to being a Lovecraftian hybrid.

Interestingly, the recent movie Nosferatu, which has drawn mixed reviews, captures perfectly what the real vampire may have been like, at least the historical vampire.  According to records dating back as far as the 1200’s in Europe and elsewhere, vampires are almost always lower-class, peasant workers, ordinary looking if not outright ugly;  not gorgeous or handsome counts or countesses, and certainly not the teen heartthrobs  pictured in the Twilight saga or in the Interview with the Vampire film franchise.

Though Count Orlac, the vampire in Nosferatu, is, indeed, a nobleman, at least in terms of his title, he is a grotesque, hideous monster.  He is only remotely human in appearance, and though he is undead, like Dracula and Camilla, he is much more repulsive than they are.  He is basically a rotting corpse, decaying second by second, literally falling apart as he seeks out his victims.  He drinks the blood of both males and  females alike, and he does this like a large, filthy, leech, laying naked on top of them as he slurps up their blood gluttonously. 

At the end of the film, Orlac is destroyed by sunlight streaming in through the apartment window of his last victim, the wife of the film’s rather ineffectual male protagonist—the final image of Orlac’s naked, rotting body  lying on top of the heroine’s dead body, represents the epitome of graphic, unpleasant cinema. 

The moral of Nosferatu is the same as the morals of Bram Stoker’s and Le Fanu’s  novels: 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 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