HP Lovecraft - Classic Or Dud?

I always loved that one. Anyone know the name so i can go read it....NOW?

The Shunned House.

not too good.

It's not like I'm drawing from a very deep pool of knowledge, but I can't really think of another early 20th century writer who writes about other races and classes with the same virulent and obsessive disgust as Lovecraft. It's probably partly because, as that article says, Lovecraft was afraid of/disgusted by everything, and I don't think it's a reason not to read his books, but it's still pretty notable. At the risk of being condescending, just because everyone was racist back then doesn't mean that some weren't more racist (or at least more actively interested in race) than others.

He was married to a Jewish woman(as I recall), and while he obviously thought black people were more closely related to apes that whites, in doing so he admits he has the same origins and they fall between.
Furthermore, I can't think of an instance where he as an author in any way speaks poorly of a race of people any more 'virulently' than any other author of his time(if possibly a bit more bluntly, subtlety was never his strong suit when it comes to matters of human interaction). He speaks of primitive cultures as the kind who would commit what modern society calls heinous acts and bang away at drums around fires and throw spears at unsuspecting travellers. Thing is, that's
A: a plot device. SOMEONE has to worship the Old Ones
B: not something to be viewed as a negative in that world. THEY are the 'correct' culture in those stories!

He, if anything, was a bit of a narcissist. Anything that related to himself or his tastes was viewed as better. New England is where all his stories take place, or are 'based from' in some way. That's the ONLY place the upper-class people he wrote as could come from in his mind. They were all white, they all liked the same things as him, and so on.
He really comes off more IGNORANT than anything.

And this makes him different from the racists of his era how?

no, he wasn't an unbelieveably vile human being. Political leaders are vile, not this guy. This guy was just an antiquated tightass from New England who was fucking neurotic and was able to channel his imagination into these weird stories.

My take is that Houellebecq is right on when he writes about HPL "failing at life."

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), Today 3:52 PM. (Ned) (later)

he ain't no houllebecq girl

You have me on H.G. Wells, but his writing style is different from the what really became what is now called 'speculative fiction.'
The more pulp fiction style, writting with fascination, amazement, etc.
I always found H.G. Wells to lack feeling, and be more of a drawn out 'what if.'

This is all a matter of tastes, in any case.

Would I have hung out with him? No.
Would I have exchanged letters? probably.

October 18, 2006 - Guillermo del Toro is gearing up to shoot Hellboy 2: The Golden Army in January, but he's already planning his next project after that. In a chat with IGN, the fan favorite director revealed that his long-developing adaptation of HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness might be next on his schedule.

"Mountains of Madness, which is a project I've had for several years, if it comes to fruition I'd rather do that immediately while the iron is hot," del Toro says. "But it all depends on so many factors — creative, personal — that every time I predict what I'm going to do next, I fail."

Details on when/how/if the project is going to happen are sketchy, but del Toro has a clear idea of how he will portray the classic horror tale on screen, and he says it will definitely be a studio picture. Adapting Lovecraft's unique style to the movies has proven to be a difficult undertaking for filmmakers in the past, but the helmer says that he's enhanced At the Mountains of Madness' story (about an expedition to Antarctica that turns creepy fast) so that it will work on screen.

"The albino penguins, the gigantic city… The hard thing about that novel is it's very much a record of an expedition, so the narrative is brilliant in that it's a little bit dry but it's not character-based," he says. "There are many characters that you don't know — you don't even know who the hell the expedition is [made up of] until you have it referenced in another book of Lovecraft's."

Fleshing out those characters will be key to making the film work, he explains.

"You need to create the character dynamics and the arc of the story, which is not in the book," says del Toro. "Also, the horror in the book is only ambiguous and it's kept open at the end. And you can still capture that atmosphere, but then you have to take it and go to a climax [in the movie]. Which in the book is really a climax by almost using negative space in the narrative; it's what you don't see that makes it. That essentially goes against the very essence of show business, because you don't show anything. I think that what we're doing is good and it's as good as we can [do when] adapting Lovecraft. But it's a project that's been with us for several years now. It's not an easy project to set up."

one documentary I heard about him pointed out certain ambiguities in HPL's creepy racist vision - that his actual commitment to racism was weak, in that it could collapse when he was brought face to face with the object of his fear and loathing. So he rants away about TEH JEW and then marries a Jewish woman. However, he did seem to externalise problems in his own life by positioning them on non-WASP types. There is some amazingly racist rant about the degenerate races infesting New York that he sent to a pal when his attempt to earn a living there (as a repo man) came to naught.

BTW, if you want a cheap laugh, see if you can find a copy of the job application letters he was sending out when he was in New York looking for work.

"A repo man's life is always...squamous."

"I do not know of this 'relationship' you speak of."

I can answer this one. There were three just in the last year or two:

(1) Some guys in L.A. made an excellent period adaption of CoC. Silent, B&W.

http://www.cthulhulives.org/store/images/CoCDVDfront.gif

(2) Also, a short film called Experiment 17. A fake docu about what happened when the Wehrmacht found a copy of the Necromicon after they raided the Bibliotheque Nationale.

(3) Late Bloomer, a short based on Clay McLoed Chapman's monologue where a 7th grade sex-ed class goes insane after learning forbidden knowledge.

However, John Carpenter and Peter Straub are already confirmed, so this is gunna be fun.

It has Tori Spelling in it.

Unless The GZeus is younger than 5, it's almost certain that Stuart Gordon's Dagon came out in his lifetime as well. Bryan Moore's take on Cool Air is pretty damn good, as is Christian Matzke's Nyarlathotep (and his Imperfect Solution).

There's a festival every year in portland about this:

http://www.hplfilmfestival.com/

I've volunteered there this year & last. The guy who run it also operates Lurker Films, which specializes in HPL adaptations and other weird stories.

not so un-nameable after all!

Yeah, the filmmakers brought footage of the Cthulhu flick in progress to the festival last night. I think they're still working on it in Astoria.

ha ha

they had an adaptation of "Dream of the Witch House" in that Masters of terror thing. It was OK

I kinda wish that more of thoes Master of Horror thing had a standalone appeal, like the "Homecoming" ep(zombie vets from Iraq return to vote).

http://myspace-358.vo.llnwd.net/00280/85/36/280096358_l.jpg

seriously though... i liked it a lot, it's really in the spirit of hpl.

i'm enjoying this luc sante article! it made me LOL!

and Ryleh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYrQRcy45RQ

an animated short from france