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