Lovecraft apologia

In “HP Lovecraft in Brooklyn” [ FT396:36], Gary Lachman describes Lovecraft by using the terms “racism” and “xenophobia” as if they are synonyms. I would argue that while racists might be described as xenophobic, the inverse is not necessarily true and, in Lovecraft’s case – despising anyone “non-Nordic” but marrying a Ukrainian Jew – is misleading. To describe a kleptomaniac as a thief, to criticise a Tourette’s sufferer for their potty-mouth or to assume that someone has a poor memory because they have to check that the hall light is off 13 times before settling down to watch TV or go shopping are similarly simplistic. In a sense, they all describe aspects of conditions with a degree of correctness but are quite poor in helping to define them.

Lovecraft, as revealed in his own letters quoted by Lachman, seems to have suffered clinical reactions when he found himself in the midst of the NY “mongrel herd”; Sonia, his wife, remarking that he would “become livid with rage” and “almost lose his mind” walking through the racially mixed street crowds. Elsewhere, he happily states that one of his hopes was for a “kindly gush of cyanogen” that would “asphyxiate the whole gigantic abortion and... clean out the place.” Racists might indeed agree with him, but these first-hand observations mark Lovecraft’s condition as clinical rather than cultural, pathological rather than political and unbidden rather than as the result of cold deliberation: the hallmarks of a mentally ill person rather than a mere social deviant.

None of this excuses the repulsive sentiments Lovecraft expressed, of course; but just as we, as much as we might desire not to, recognise that the OCD sufferer, the kleptomaniac and people with Tourette’s syndrome cannot be judged in the same way that we might judge our own behaviour, condemning HP Lovecraft as simply a “racist” seems rather cruel in its oversimplicity.

Robert T Walker

Wagga Wagga, New South Wales