In a strange coincidence, Salon lead with a Lovecraft story today–supposedly coverage of the release of “H.P. Lovecraft: Tales” from the Library of America…but naturally, Salon instead takes the usual opportunity to regale us with the usual “why is he famous? He’s awful…oh, and a repressed racist”, etc. etc.
After reading it, I was irritated enough to fire off a letter to the editor, which I present here:
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“It would have been nice if Laura Miller’s piece on Lovecraft had presented any quotes or arguments from the opposing side of the issue, rather than her fixation on the “Lovecraft-as-hack-racist-or-at-best-campy-oddity” angle.
Some might even say that it would have been professional, rather than this example of High School journalism-class mediocrity.
It should have been a clue that her juiciest quotes to back her angle came from Edmund Wilson, a long-dead critic….oh, and her nameless writer pal who supposedly ashamedly denies that his award bust is a likeness of Lovecraft.
In the end, I suppose it is a tribute to Lovecraft’s enduring nature that now, some 70-odd years after his works were originally published, it’s still fashionable for hipper-than-thou, self-declared intelligensia to write hatchet-jobs about him and his work.”
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You don’t fuck with my Providence Homie, Yo.