Selected Letters III: 1929-1931

Selected Letters of H.P. Lovecraft #3

by H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth (Editor), Douglas Wandrei (Editor)

Selected Letters III (1929-1931) is a collection of letters by H. P. Lovecraft. It was released in 1971 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,513 copies. It is the third of a five volume series of collections of Lovecraft's letters and includes a preface by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei.

Genres: Lovecraftian, Biography, Nonfiction, Horror

451 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia

Reviews

[Jeff Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

HP Lovecraft has to be amongst the most divisive authors there has ever been, part of which is because he is both incredibly complex and simplistically caricatured. The basic image of the lonely hermit, writing his works of terror by candlelight whilst harbouring terrible racist views is simply wrong, but it is as embedded in popular culture as his mispronounced, tentacled monstrosity, Cthulhu.

The key to understanding the old gent is through his letters, a large volume of which have been released under collected works to his most famous correspondents – August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E Howard to name but a few. However, it is only when you read the ‘Selected Letters’ where you get the full picture. You may read both volumes of the Derleth collection and never once appreciated the side of HPL who sailed on glass bottom boats off Florida, who championed the consumption of cheese and ice cream and loved nothing more than sitting in the sunshine, wearing a straw hat.

The great tragedy is that these Selected letters are not easily available, even as a collector it took me years to track down all 5 volumes, of which this one, Volume 3, may be one of the most important works in the Lovecraft canon.

Every letter in this collection shares an aspect of Lovecraft, as you begin to understand how he simply pours his mind onto the page (as he confirms in a voluminous 2-day letter to Frank Belknap Long); his knowledge is incredibly expansive, as he talks with confidence on local history and dialect, ancient history, astronomy amongst everything else. Often self-deprecating, he is the first to criticise his own work, singling out ‘The Colour Out Of Space’ and ‘The Music of Erich Zann’ as two he does hold up above the rest, and tragically we see the disappointment caused by his rejection from Putnam’s and of his tale ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’, now widely recognised as one of his very best.

We have the fabulous concept of his living into the 1960’s/70’s (interestingly, had he not died, would Arkham House exist? Would his stories have ever ‘broken’ through or would he have been writing of the horrors that surrounded him in the era of Hippies, Counter Culture and multi-culturalism (although I bet he would have loved watching ‘The Twilight Zone’). The point of multi-culturalism is an important one, because generally labelled as ‘racist’ author, this is, again, far too simplistic. ‘The Horror at Red Hook’ is one of the stories most often cited for this, but it’s just a story. To understand further you need to know more about the man, where he was from and how he lived; don’t get me wrong – HPL put some shocking words on paper, but individual elements of a man’s life from 100 years ago do not make the whole picture. In a letter to Maurice Moe he states “…I smile at some of the bigoted carpings I used to pull off in the [New York] days! …but with grey hairs has come a knowledge that this is a very diverse world, in which many different systems of action and preference have an equal right to existence.” Much of what is thrown at the man who has been dead 87 years comes from quotes taken from his difficult experiences of living in New York for a short period, and in many ways is the equivalent of the modern celebrity being held to account for a ‘tweet’ from ten years previous. People change, but those who are unable to answer back are at the mercy of who shouts the loudest.

Now, HPL was no saint, and his views are essentially at odds with life in 2024, but context is important. He understood that the world was changing, New York told him this, and he understood that future generations would integrate and multi-culturalism (not his word, but the concept) would become the norm. He understood that segregation would slow the process (and predicted it), but would ultimately fail (had he lived through the 50’s and 60’s he would have seen this happening, and we will never know how he would have reacted in his old age to a greater exposure and understanding to the races that made up America). He knew this, because he knew that he lived in the ‘isolated’ community of New England and his first commitment was to England (God Save The King! punctuates these letters) and he was desperate to hang onto it in his lifetime, even if he accepted he was already an ‘old’ generation. He loved Providence, as evidenced by his extensive knowledge of the local history, and simply didn’t want it to change. He talks of the fight against ‘machine culture’, which he detested but understood the inevitability of its prevalence: “What is to be, is to be, but we are not obligated to grin and pretend we like it.” His letters to James Morton (who doesn’t let HPL off, giving him the full lash of his tongue when appropriate) are amongst the most insightful on this element to Lovecraft and I look forward to reading the collected volume.

But again, I, like so many before me, have been distracted by this side HPL, important as it is. As I stated, the letters maketh the man – go to these volumes and discover that far from being a hermit, he loved to travel – as much as his meagre funds would allow, and was most disappointed when he failed to cross the Gulf to visit Cuba. He jokes how his glasses make him look like Harold Lloyd, reminisces on going to the theatre with Harry Houdini, who he worked with on a number of ghost-written tales and talks with confidence about Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and the theories of Albert Einstein. Hermit he was most certainly not. This volume also reveals more of his, admitted, terrible attitude towards music, which he blames on abortive violin lessons as a child. Detractors of the old gent will no doubt revel in the fact that he did enjoy the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ during one concert visit, whilst Stravinski sent him to sleep…

So if you want to understand Lovecraft, read his letters, and if you really want to understand the many sides of his personality, read the 5 volume ‘Selected Letters’ if you can get hold of them…and if you seriously want to discuss HPL with me, then you better have done…

[Ashley H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore this man, even if he hates bread.