January 25, 2024

 Greetings Everyone!

My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, has just been 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.amazon.com/Horror-Racism-H-Lovecraft-Fragility/dp/B0C5CPHCR2

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.

John L. Steadman

January 18, 2024

Greetings Everyone!

My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, has just been 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.amazon.com/Horror-Racism-H-Lovecraft-Fragility/dp/B0C5CPHCR2

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.

So, please check it out!

John L. Steadman 

January 11, 2024

 Greetings Everyone!

My new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales, has just been 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.amazon.com/Horror-Racism-H-Lovecraft-Fragility/dp/B0C5CPHCR2

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

 

January 1, 2024

Greetings Everyone!

 It is common knowledge among readers that H. P. Lovecraft, the greatest writer of horror and science fiction since Edgar Allan Poe, was a racist—a particularly vitriolic, more than average racist, in fact, whose fictional and nonfictional works are peppered with racist images.

Most readers, also, can point to Lovecraft’s two most egregious racist works: “The Horror at Red Hook” and the particularly noxious poem “On the Creation of Niggers,” as especially disheartening examples.

However, the extent of Lovecraft’s racism is not generally understood. Nor is it commonly understood how Lovecraft’s racial hatred impacted nearly all of his greatest fictional works, making them even greater and ultimately transforming them into disturbing, anxiety-ridden masterpieces.

Check out my new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft! The book will be released on January 11, 2024 and it is the definitive, book-length study that addresses all of these issues and concerns.

Happy New Year!

https://www.amazon.com/Horror-Racism-H-Lovecraft-Fragility/dp/B0C5CPHCR2

JLS

December 26, 2023

 Please check out my new book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft!  And I hope everyone will have a Happy New Year! 

   

December 25, 2023

 Merry Christmas Everyone!

JLS

December 4, 2023

 

Check out my  new  book!  

The title is : Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird Tales.  The release date is January 11, 2024.

In this book, I provide a new perspective on Lovecraft's life and work, focusing on the overlap between the writer's personal beliefs and the racist images and narratives in his speculative fiction.

Building on recent debates about Lovecraft and drawing on the concept of "white fragility," I argue  that the writer's fiction reflects his feelings of resentment and anger towards non-white persons and was used to advocate for his racist, xenophobic political beliefs – that western civilization was in decline and slavery was justifiable among "superior" civilizations. In making these claims, Lovecraft's tales pit humans against extra-terrestrial aliens, developing a terrifying, futuristic vision of the Earth as a plantation planet.

The book can be pre-ordered now in bookstores across the world and on Amazon, Google, Bloomsbury and other online sites.

JLS