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H.P. Lovecraft – emot världen, emot livet
I Lovecraft finner Houellebecq en historisk själsfrände och följeslagare på misantropins lockande väg.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
188 people are currently reading
4966 people want to read
About the author
Michel Houellebecq
78 books8,267 followersMichel Houellebecq (born Michel Thomas), born 26 February 1958 (birth certificate) or 1956 on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French novelist. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire; to detractors he is a peddler, who writes vulgar sleazy literature to shock. His works though, particularly Atomised, have received high praise from the French literary intelligentsia, with generally positive international critical response, Having written poetry and a biography of the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, he brought out his first novel Extension du domaine de la lutte in 1994. Les particules élémentaires followed in 1998 and Plateforme, in 2001. After a disastrous publicity tour for this book, which led to his being taken to court for inciting racial hatred, he went to Ireland to write. He currently resides in France, where he has been described as "France’s biggest literary export and, some say, greatest living writer". In 2010 he published La Carte et le Territoire (published the same year in English as The Map and the Territory) which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt; and, in 2015, Submission.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 435 reviews
July 24, 2024
The value of a human being today is measured in terms of his economic efficiency and his erotic potential--that is to say, in terms of the two things that Lovecraft most despised.
7.24.24 reread:
This second reading yielded an extra star. While I marveled again at King’s introduction, it was the way Houellebecq parsed the correspondence which generated the necessary frisson. I’m impressed with erudition, even from misanthropists.
Initial Review:
My chief surprise in this exploration was the effectiveness of the Introduction by Stephen King, equally erudite and folksy -- just as we'd expect him. Moving on to Houellebecq's love letter, I was disappointed that there simply isn't much there in terms of girth or ideas. The cataloguing of Lovecraft's extreme bigotry also appeared as an affectation on Houellebecq's behalf: see, I'm not alone in my vitriol and condemnation.
HPL's use of one-dimensional characters and the employment of scientific language is explored, though not at length. Houellebecq finds a resounding NO (or NON) in HPL, his attitude towards life. My response, remains that one must simply move on. We shouldn't worry about the Old Ones and instead about our own agency.
Apparently HPL faced a difficult, isolated life. He found fleeting happiness and likewise a multiculturalism which sickened him. He was poor, proud and died, as we all will, alone and misunderstood.
7.24.24 reread:
This second reading yielded an extra star. While I marveled again at King’s introduction, it was the way Houellebecq parsed the correspondence which generated the necessary frisson. I’m impressed with erudition, even from misanthropists.
Initial Review:
My chief surprise in this exploration was the effectiveness of the Introduction by Stephen King, equally erudite and folksy -- just as we'd expect him. Moving on to Houellebecq's love letter, I was disappointed that there simply isn't much there in terms of girth or ideas. The cataloguing of Lovecraft's extreme bigotry also appeared as an affectation on Houellebecq's behalf: see, I'm not alone in my vitriol and condemnation.
HPL's use of one-dimensional characters and the employment of scientific language is explored, though not at length. Houellebecq finds a resounding NO (or NON) in HPL, his attitude towards life. My response, remains that one must simply move on. We shouldn't worry about the Old Ones and instead about our own agency.
Apparently HPL faced a difficult, isolated life. He found fleeting happiness and likewise a multiculturalism which sickened him. He was poor, proud and died, as we all will, alone and misunderstood.
June 22, 2007
(Full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)
For Americans who don't know -- there's this French dude named Michel Houellebecq who a lot of Europeans are super pissed at. And that's because he's a writer, see, a brilliant one, who also happens to be a misanthrope, and who sincerely despises just about 98 percent of all humanity, and takes great care to detail all the ways they deserve his hatred in his provocative novels, which have all been big hits in Europe but virtually unknown here, unsurprisingly enough. And this includes 2001's sex-tourism farce Platform, which has just some incredibly unkind things to say about Muslims (as well as Jews, Christians, atheists, women, men, the old, the young, and anyone else who breathes oxygen); so much so that a group of Muslims decided to take him to court in Europe for attempting to incite racially-based violence. And the lawsuit became a continental sensation, not the least of which was because of Houellebecq being in court each day and affecting the exact haughty, bored, superior tone and look throughout the proceedings that got him into trouble in the first place; for refusing to apologize, for refusing to say "you must've misunderstood me," for acting like the entire lawsuit was beneath him to begin with, and proof of what a bunch of moronic meatsacks humanity actually is. And this of course turned him into an even bigger sensation in Europe than he already was, which of course was also routinely ignored by the press here in the US, so that to this day barely any Americans at all know who Houellebecq is or why so many people are angry at him.
Well, except McSweeney's, that is, the small press started by literary wunderkind Dave Eggers, which in the 1990s became the posterchild not only for American hipster intellectuals but also for the power of daily digitally-distributed original content, years before the term "blog" had even been invented. Their organization, which also includes the "anti-poser" lit-crit publication The Believer, has become well-known for introducing global authors to a grateful American audience; in fact, one could argue that they are almost single-handedly responsible for the US popularity of Haruki Murakami. So when Believer Books recently got a chance to reprint Houellebecq's very first full-length manuscript in English form for the first time, plus managed to convince horror icon Stephen King to write a new introduction, I have to imagine that they almost peed in their pants jumping at it; the result is the extended literary essay HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, originally written in 1988, a slim tone which much like Nicholson Baker's U & I is partly an analysis of a particular writer's oeuvre (in Baker's case, John Updike), partly a gushing love letter as to why they like these particular authors so much. And make no mistake; if you're already familiar with Houellebecq's fictional work, the essay will also suddenly make his own motivations and aims so much clearer, and make you understand his own work so much better too.
As a matter of fact...
For Americans who don't know -- there's this French dude named Michel Houellebecq who a lot of Europeans are super pissed at. And that's because he's a writer, see, a brilliant one, who also happens to be a misanthrope, and who sincerely despises just about 98 percent of all humanity, and takes great care to detail all the ways they deserve his hatred in his provocative novels, which have all been big hits in Europe but virtually unknown here, unsurprisingly enough. And this includes 2001's sex-tourism farce Platform, which has just some incredibly unkind things to say about Muslims (as well as Jews, Christians, atheists, women, men, the old, the young, and anyone else who breathes oxygen); so much so that a group of Muslims decided to take him to court in Europe for attempting to incite racially-based violence. And the lawsuit became a continental sensation, not the least of which was because of Houellebecq being in court each day and affecting the exact haughty, bored, superior tone and look throughout the proceedings that got him into trouble in the first place; for refusing to apologize, for refusing to say "you must've misunderstood me," for acting like the entire lawsuit was beneath him to begin with, and proof of what a bunch of moronic meatsacks humanity actually is. And this of course turned him into an even bigger sensation in Europe than he already was, which of course was also routinely ignored by the press here in the US, so that to this day barely any Americans at all know who Houellebecq is or why so many people are angry at him.
Well, except McSweeney's, that is, the small press started by literary wunderkind Dave Eggers, which in the 1990s became the posterchild not only for American hipster intellectuals but also for the power of daily digitally-distributed original content, years before the term "blog" had even been invented. Their organization, which also includes the "anti-poser" lit-crit publication The Believer, has become well-known for introducing global authors to a grateful American audience; in fact, one could argue that they are almost single-handedly responsible for the US popularity of Haruki Murakami. So when Believer Books recently got a chance to reprint Houellebecq's very first full-length manuscript in English form for the first time, plus managed to convince horror icon Stephen King to write a new introduction, I have to imagine that they almost peed in their pants jumping at it; the result is the extended literary essay HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, originally written in 1988, a slim tone which much like Nicholson Baker's U & I is partly an analysis of a particular writer's oeuvre (in Baker's case, John Updike), partly a gushing love letter as to why they like these particular authors so much. And make no mistake; if you're already familiar with Houellebecq's fictional work, the essay will also suddenly make his own motivations and aims so much clearer, and make you understand his own work so much better too.
As a matter of fact...
May 7, 2020
Ni H.P. Lovecraft, ni J.R.R. Tolkien n’ont pu même se douter du succès phénoménal que leur œuvre allait avoir quelques années après leur mort. Et encore ! Pendant assez longtemps, alors que leurs livres circulaient avec une notoriété grandissante, les critiques littéraires, drapés dans un snobisme hautain, considéraient l’un et l’autre de ces auteurs comme des phénomènes passagers, de mauvais gout, tout juste bons à exciter les hormones de quelques adolescents boutonneux du fond de la classe.
Houellebecq était de ces adolescents. Et ce livre sur Lovecraft est un hommage fervent du jeune auteur des Particules élémentaires envers celui de L’appel de Cthulhu. Houellebecq partage en effet de nombreuses choses avec Lovecraft — si bien que ce livre pourrait peut-être porter le titre M. Houellebecq, Contre le monde, contre la vie : « Une haine absolue du monde en général, aggravée d’un dégoût particulier pour le monde moderne », libéral et mercantile ; un certain racisme ou une peur de l’autre (l’Afro-Américain dans le cas de HPL, le Musulman Maghrébin dans le cas de MH) ; une existence relativement recluse (évidente dans le cas de HPL, discutable dans celle de MH qui, lui, aura connu le succès et les passages sur TF1) ; l’utilisation du vocabulaire scientifique est encore un autre point commun. La seule différence de surface entre ces deux auteurs concerne le traitement du sexe (Houellebecq consacre un passage assez long à ce sujet) : il est absent chez Lovecraft et omniprésent chez Houellebecq, mais dans les deux cas pour des raisons qui se rejoignent : un certain dégoût pour l’animalité humaine, refoulée dans un cas, surexposée dans l’autre. Chez l’un et chez l’autre, on retrouve la même impulsion à « dépasser les bornes », et les descriptions précises et cliniques de monstres visqueux chez Lovecraft sont finalement assez proches de celles des partouzes enfiévrées chez Houellebecq.
Ce livre est en partie une biographie, un peu romancée. Mais il est surtout une lecture de l’œuvre de Lovecraft, une analyse de ses procédés : les développements, par exemple, concernant ce que Houellebecq nomme « l’attaque en force » — démarrer une nouvelle par des considérations d’ordre métaphysique, à la façon d’Edgar Poe —, sont particulièrement éclairants. Et quoi qu’il en soit, il est clair que Houellebecq a entretenu un commerce intime avec l’œuvre de Lovecraft et qu’il en parle avec une passion qu’on lui voit rarement, et avec un sens de la formule bien envoyée, qu’on lui reconnaît souvent. L’influence de ce dernier sur les romans de l’écrivain français reste toutefois subtile et souterraine.
Les quelques pastiches inclus dans ce livre (par exemple, les origines de Abdul Al-Hazred, au début de la deuxième partie), sont surprenants et savoureux. Je reste assez curieux de lire la préface de Stephen King à l’édition américaine. Le récent En présence de Schopenhauer constitue sans doute le deuxième grand hommage de Houellebecq, qui permet de clore cette magnifique et ténébreuse trinité : Schopenhauer – Lovecraft – Houellebecq (et pourquoi pas Stephen King lui-même, après tout ?).
Le XXe siècle aura été marqué essentiellement par la mort de Dieu, la guerre totale, le triomphe du capitalisme et la naissance de nouveaux mythes. Je crois que Houellebecq ne s’y est pas trompé : s’il reste quelque chose de la littérature de ce siècle, Tolkien et Lovecraft se détacheront avec quelques autres, au-dessus d’un fatras assez mou.
Houellebecq était de ces adolescents. Et ce livre sur Lovecraft est un hommage fervent du jeune auteur des Particules élémentaires envers celui de L’appel de Cthulhu. Houellebecq partage en effet de nombreuses choses avec Lovecraft — si bien que ce livre pourrait peut-être porter le titre M. Houellebecq, Contre le monde, contre la vie : « Une haine absolue du monde en général, aggravée d’un dégoût particulier pour le monde moderne », libéral et mercantile ; un certain racisme ou une peur de l’autre (l’Afro-Américain dans le cas de HPL, le Musulman Maghrébin dans le cas de MH) ; une existence relativement recluse (évidente dans le cas de HPL, discutable dans celle de MH qui, lui, aura connu le succès et les passages sur TF1) ; l’utilisation du vocabulaire scientifique est encore un autre point commun. La seule différence de surface entre ces deux auteurs concerne le traitement du sexe (Houellebecq consacre un passage assez long à ce sujet) : il est absent chez Lovecraft et omniprésent chez Houellebecq, mais dans les deux cas pour des raisons qui se rejoignent : un certain dégoût pour l’animalité humaine, refoulée dans un cas, surexposée dans l’autre. Chez l’un et chez l’autre, on retrouve la même impulsion à « dépasser les bornes », et les descriptions précises et cliniques de monstres visqueux chez Lovecraft sont finalement assez proches de celles des partouzes enfiévrées chez Houellebecq.
Ce livre est en partie une biographie, un peu romancée. Mais il est surtout une lecture de l’œuvre de Lovecraft, une analyse de ses procédés : les développements, par exemple, concernant ce que Houellebecq nomme « l’attaque en force » — démarrer une nouvelle par des considérations d’ordre métaphysique, à la façon d’Edgar Poe —, sont particulièrement éclairants. Et quoi qu’il en soit, il est clair que Houellebecq a entretenu un commerce intime avec l’œuvre de Lovecraft et qu’il en parle avec une passion qu’on lui voit rarement, et avec un sens de la formule bien envoyée, qu’on lui reconnaît souvent. L’influence de ce dernier sur les romans de l’écrivain français reste toutefois subtile et souterraine.
Les quelques pastiches inclus dans ce livre (par exemple, les origines de Abdul Al-Hazred, au début de la deuxième partie), sont surprenants et savoureux. Je reste assez curieux de lire la préface de Stephen King à l’édition américaine. Le récent En présence de Schopenhauer constitue sans doute le deuxième grand hommage de Houellebecq, qui permet de clore cette magnifique et ténébreuse trinité : Schopenhauer – Lovecraft – Houellebecq (et pourquoi pas Stephen King lui-même, après tout ?).
Le XXe siècle aura été marqué essentiellement par la mort de Dieu, la guerre totale, le triomphe du capitalisme et la naissance de nouveaux mythes. Je crois que Houellebecq ne s’y est pas trompé : s’il reste quelque chose de la littérature de ce siècle, Tolkien et Lovecraft se détacheront avec quelques autres, au-dessus d’un fatras assez mou.
December 17, 2022
This is both a work of literary criticism and eulogy. Houellebecq simply adores the gentle, hard working, misanthropic and racist H.P.Lovecraft.
I had given up on reading a collection of Lovecraft stories a few years ago. But the fact that one of my favorite writers - Houellebecq was a huge fan of Lovecraft, revived my interest in him. I read this work of literary criticism/eulogy simultaneously with The Best of H.P.Lovecraft. I won't go into all the contents of Houellebecq's essay. I will simply mention the parts that I found really interesting.
Houellebecq credits Lovecraft with inspiring most of the important 20th century writers of horror fiction and even filmakers. He is right. I could see how Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes might have been inspired by Lovecraft's story Pickman's Model when they created Jimmy - the murderous, alcoholic and misanthropic painter in Art School Confidential.
There is a whole chapter dedicated to defending Lovecraft's racism. Houellebecq has often been called a racist and Islamophobe himself. Houellebecq believes that Lovecraft's racism was old-fashioned and also expresses admiration for a passage from a letter where Lovecraft tears into the "Italo-Semitico-Mongoloid". I think what Houellebecq means is that Lovecraft's was the racism of a civilized man that would never lead to violence or discrimination. As a failed writer, he was never in a position to discriminate against people of other races except with his pen.
Houellebecq sympathizes with Lovecraft's inability to fit in with the modern world. Unlike Francois, who makes peace with the Islamists by converting to Islam and starting a new life with multiple wives in Houellebecq's novel Submission, Lovecraft could never make any peace with the world. Attempts to find employment after his marriage were met with continued failure. He was too genteel, courteous and principled to survive in a world where sex and money are the reason to be. There are no hard-boiled characters in Lovecraft's novels. Most of them are gentle and scholarly and they are always victims of some unassailable evil.
The edition that I read has an introduction by a very amused Stephen King who is pleasantly surprised by Houellebecq's fierce defense of Lovecraft. There are also a couple of Lovecraft stories - The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness. Both of which were terrific.
I finished this book while on holiday in Coorg. Houellebecq is never boring and he is at his best here while defending one of his favorite writers. I think I will return to this book after I finish The Best of H.P.Lovecraft.
I had given up on reading a collection of Lovecraft stories a few years ago. But the fact that one of my favorite writers - Houellebecq was a huge fan of Lovecraft, revived my interest in him. I read this work of literary criticism/eulogy simultaneously with The Best of H.P.Lovecraft. I won't go into all the contents of Houellebecq's essay. I will simply mention the parts that I found really interesting.
Houellebecq credits Lovecraft with inspiring most of the important 20th century writers of horror fiction and even filmakers. He is right. I could see how Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes might have been inspired by Lovecraft's story Pickman's Model when they created Jimmy - the murderous, alcoholic and misanthropic painter in Art School Confidential.
There is a whole chapter dedicated to defending Lovecraft's racism. Houellebecq has often been called a racist and Islamophobe himself. Houellebecq believes that Lovecraft's racism was old-fashioned and also expresses admiration for a passage from a letter where Lovecraft tears into the "Italo-Semitico-Mongoloid". I think what Houellebecq means is that Lovecraft's was the racism of a civilized man that would never lead to violence or discrimination. As a failed writer, he was never in a position to discriminate against people of other races except with his pen.
Houellebecq sympathizes with Lovecraft's inability to fit in with the modern world. Unlike Francois, who makes peace with the Islamists by converting to Islam and starting a new life with multiple wives in Houellebecq's novel Submission, Lovecraft could never make any peace with the world. Attempts to find employment after his marriage were met with continued failure. He was too genteel, courteous and principled to survive in a world where sex and money are the reason to be. There are no hard-boiled characters in Lovecraft's novels. Most of them are gentle and scholarly and they are always victims of some unassailable evil.
The edition that I read has an introduction by a very amused Stephen King who is pleasantly surprised by Houellebecq's fierce defense of Lovecraft. There are also a couple of Lovecraft stories - The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness. Both of which were terrific.
I finished this book while on holiday in Coorg. Houellebecq is never boring and he is at his best here while defending one of his favorite writers. I think I will return to this book after I finish The Best of H.P.Lovecraft.
August 26, 2018
Έχοντας παιδιόθεν λατρέψει το λογοτεχνικό σύμπαν του H.P. Lovecraft, δεν είναι να απορεί κανείς που ευθύς μόλις έμαθα ότι ο πολύς Michel Houellebecq έχει σ’ ένα ολόκληρο δικό του βιβλίο ασχοληθεί με τα έργα και τις ημέρες του Μαύρου Πρίγκηπα του Πρόβιντενς (δανείζομαι τον χαρακτηρισμό από τον Stephen King), έσπευσα, χωρίς άλλες καθυστερήσεις, να το προμηθευτώ και να το διαβάσω με απληστία.
Το βιβλίο Χ. Φ. Λαβκραφτ: Εναντίον Του Κόσμου, Εναντίον Της Ζωής είναι ένα σχετικά εκτενές αφηγηματικό δοκίμιο, καρπός του πνευματικού έρωτα του γράφοντος για το έργο ενός από τους σημαντικότερους Αμερικανούς συγγραφείς του 20ου αιώνα και ακρογωνιαίου λίθου της λογοτεχνίας του φανταστικού, τον οποίο ο Ουελμπέκ (όπως, άλλωστε, και χιλιάδες άλλοι αναγνώστες) ανακάλυψε στα δεκαέξι του κι έπεσε «αμέσως με τα μούτρα στο έργο του, διαβάζοντας το ένα μετά το άλλο ό,τι δικό του υπήρχε στα γαλλικά».
Ο παράδοξος κόσμος του Λάβκραφτ, λοιπόν, που εξακολουθεί να σαγηνεύει τους αναρίθμητους, απανταχού της γης, αναγνώστες, είναι ένας κόσμος χωρίς στάλα ρεαλισμό. Ένα ‘αποκρο��στικό’ σύμπαν που τυχαίνει, ωστόσο, να αρέσει στους αναγνώστες του (πολύ) περισσότερο από τη δική τους οικτρή πραγματικότητα. Κι όχι απλώς γιατί η πραγματική ζωή είναι γεμάτη πόνο και απογοήτευση, όπως εξηγεί ο Ουελμπέκ, αλλά διότι, λόγω της εναργούς οραματικής δύναμης του Λάβκραφτ και της εντυπωσιακής αφηγηματικής του δεινότητας, οι αδιανόητοι και άφατοι κόσμοι που συναντά κανείς στα βιβλία του είναι τέτοιας πληρότητας, που ο αναγνώστης τους βιώνει την εγκατάλειψη του κόσμου των αισθήσεων, μια τρόπον τινά μεταρσίωσή του.
Βαθιά ρατσιστής, ανοιχτά αντιδραστικός και πουριτανός όσο λίγοι, ο Λάβκραφτ έζησε ενάντια στον κόσμο και στη ζωή. Ίσως, γι’ αυτό ακριβώς, δεν υπάρχει ίχνος ρεαλισμού στο συγγραφικό του σύμπαν: τα ίδια τα βιβλία του εναντιώνονται στην ζωή και τον κόσμο, οικοδομώντας μια πραγματικότητα απόκοσμη και εντυπωσιακή συνάμα, όπου τα μόνα αληθινά συναισθήματα που δοκιμάζει κανείς είναι ο θαυμασμός και ο φόβος.
Κράτησα για το τέλος μια διαπίστωση του Ουελμπέκ, την οποία και παραθέτω εδώ χωρίς περιττές επισημάνσεις:
Το βιβλίο Χ. Φ. Λαβκραφτ: Εναντίον Του Κόσμου, Εναντίον Της Ζωής είναι ένα σχετικά εκτενές αφηγηματικό δοκίμιο, καρπός του πνευματικού έρωτα του γράφοντος για το έργο ενός από τους σημαντικότερους Αμερικανούς συγγραφείς του 20ου αιώνα και ακρογωνιαίου λίθου της λογοτεχνίας του φανταστικού, τον οποίο ο Ουελμπέκ (όπως, άλλωστε, και χιλιάδες άλλοι αναγνώστες) ανακάλυψε στα δεκαέξι του κι έπεσε «αμέσως με τα μούτρα στο έργο του, διαβάζοντας το ένα μετά το άλλο ό,τι δικό του υπήρχε στα γαλλικά».
Ο παράδοξος κόσμος του Λάβκραφτ, λοιπόν, που εξακολουθεί να σαγηνεύει τους αναρίθμητους, απανταχού της γης, αναγνώστες, είναι ένας κόσμος χωρίς στάλα ρεαλισμό. Ένα ‘αποκρο��στικό’ σύμπαν που τυχαίνει, ωστόσο, να αρέσει στους αναγνώστες του (πολύ) περισσότερο από τη δική τους οικτρή πραγματικότητα. Κι όχι απλώς γιατί η πραγματική ζωή είναι γεμάτη πόνο και απογοήτευση, όπως εξηγεί ο Ουελμπέκ, αλλά διότι, λόγω της εναργούς οραματικής δύναμης του Λάβκραφτ και της εντυπωσιακής αφηγηματικής του δεινότητας, οι αδιανόητοι και άφατοι κόσμοι που συναντά κανείς στα βιβλία του είναι τέτοιας πληρότητας, που ο αναγνώστης τους βιώνει την εγκατάλειψη του κόσμου των αισθήσεων, μια τρόπον τινά μεταρσίωσή του.
Βαθιά ρατσιστής, ανοιχτά αντιδραστικός και πουριτανός όσο λίγοι, ο Λάβκραφτ έζησε ενάντια στον κόσμο και στη ζωή. Ίσως, γι’ αυτό ακριβώς, δεν υπάρχει ίχνος ρεαλισμού στο συγγραφικό του σύμπαν: τα ίδια τα βιβλία του εναντιώνονται στην ζωή και τον κόσμο, οικοδομώντας μια πραγματικότητα απόκοσμη και εντυπωσιακή συνάμα, όπου τα μόνα αληθινά συναισθήματα που δοκιμάζει κανείς είναι ο θαυμασμός και ο φόβος.
Κράτησα για το τέλος μια διαπίστωση του Ουελμπέκ, την οποία και παραθέτω εδώ χωρίς περιττές επισημάνσεις:
Αν αυτό που καθορίζει έναν συγγραφέα δεν είναι τα θέματα που διαλέγει αλλά αυτά που απορρίπτει, δεν μπορεί παρά να συμφωνήσει κανείς ότι ο Λάβκραφτ αποτελεί μια όλως ιδιάζουσα περίπτωση. Είναι γεγονός ότι μέσα στο έργο του δεν υπάρχει καμία αναφορά σε δύο πραγματικότητες πανθομολογούμενης σπουδαιότητας: το σεξ και το χρήμα. Όντως, καμία. Γράφει λες και τα δύο αυτά πράγματα δεν υπάρχουν καθόλου. Κι αυτό σε τέτοιο σημείο, ώστε, όταν ένα γυναικείο πρόσωπο εισάγεται στο αφήγημα – κάτι που σε όλο το έργο συμβαίνει μόνο δύο φορές- δοκιμάζει κανείς ένα παράδοξο συναίσθημα…
September 21, 2020
= Against the World, Against Life
September 1, 2016:
A informative and immersive biographical note about the man who designed the Necronomicon.
----
September 20, 2020:
Obsessive racism? Masochism? Fascination for the Evil?
Is obsessive racism a defining trait of Lovecraft's fiction? This is a question that still stands.
There are obvious racist prejudices expressed in Lovecraft's fiction and letters. Many features of his worldview have changed over time. Still, on the racial matter, these changes may very well have been insignificant-compared to those in his political leenings, his philosophical tastes, his aesthetics-according to his biographer S.T. Joshi, who can't be suspected of wronging his subject. However what seems dubious to me is Houellebecq's making of these bias the cornerstone of HPL's philosophy, writing and personality.
The point of view shared by Michel Houellebecq on the weird fiction writer, however inspiring, is also one mostly static and reductive. One can hardly state flatly that HPL ceased living in 1926, this is blatantly wrong, whatever the meaning of the verb "live". On the contrary, once back in Providence, RI, in April 17, 1926, after a trying two-year stay in New York, every Spring, Lovecraft made sure to travel throughout the United States to visit old cities in New England (Newport, Marblehead) and in the Southern States (Charleston, Richmond...), or even older and more distant cities (Québec, Saint Augustine...), whose landscapes enthrall him.
Also, Houellebecq overvalues the import of HPL and Sonia Greene's marriage : Lovecraft had been giving the slip to Sonia whole nights, time and again, obviously preferring to spend them with his friends, that is, long before Sonia's move in Midwest in order to find a new job situation, contrary to what Houellebecq claims in Against the World, Against Life.
Unfortunately, quotes excerpted from HPL's letters are unconsistently dated, or not dated at all. Few seem to go past 1926 if I rely on S.T. Joshi's own generous supply of letters in I Am Providence. Of all dates, 1926 is instrumental in HPL's future writing. Going further is critical when you want to issue a reliable assessment of the writer's life.
Finally, Houellebecq states that HPL's oeuvre is a religious one, deep down. In my opinion, nothing could be less true.
In fact, some of HPL's "continuators" or self-styled disciples (prominently August Derleth and Donald Wandrei) have construed his texts using the "religion" filter, unflinchingly parading the Old Ones and Cthulhu as gods of a notably manichean cult, inverting Christianism.
The great entities and "horrors" appearing in his most reknown stories are consistently and unmistakingly morally neutral. They are no agents of Evil incarnate, unlike HPL's characters and... Houellebecq seem to imagine.
In the end, Houellebecq's point of view is fascinating and, if not deceptive, at least exceedingly selective : Against the World, Against Life is mainly Houellebecq painting his own portrait between the lines. Houellebecq reading of Lovecraft proves compassionate on the one hand, hasty on the second hand.
Also, Stephen King has written a mildly entertaining preface to this book.
RELATED READINGS:
A biography of writer H.P. Lovecraft by a specialist of weird fiction:
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft
HPL's fictions:
The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
The Call of Cthulhu
A few books by Michel Houellebecq:
The Map and the Territory
Whatever
The Elementary Particles
THE BANDSTAND:
BLUT AUS NORD - Chorea Macchabeorum
===========================
1er septembre 2016 :
Une biographie renseignée et immersive sur l'homme du Nécronomicon.
----------
20 septembre 2020 :
Racisme obsessionnel, masochisme, fascination du Mal ?
Racisme obsessionnel ?
La question se pose. Effectivement, il y en a des éléments dans la fiction et la correspondance de Lovecraft, mais c'est une vision qui comme le reste est amenée à évoluer (bien que le changement soit infime sur le plan racial si j'en crois le biographe S.T. Joshi, qui ne peut pas être suspecté de charger la barque). Là où la prise de position de l'écrivain français est plus contestable, c'est là où il en fait le fondement de la vision du monde et de l'écriture de Lovecraft, une vision assez statique de sa vie.
Je crois, quand même, que la vision que propose Michel Houellebecq, toute stimulante qu'elle soit, est aussi largement statique et réductrice. On ne peut vraiment pas dire que HPL ait cessé de vivre en 1926. Au contraire, une fois revenu à Providence, le 17/04/1926, après une période de deux ans de vie éprouvante à New York, Lovecraft ne cessera de voyager à travers les États-Unis tous les printemps ou presque pour visiter les villes de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et du Sud en quête de sites fréquentés par les écrivains et les artistes, par amour profond de l'architecture d'époque géorgienne (Charleston, Richmond...) ou d'autres, plus anciennes et plus lointaines encore (Québec, Saint Augustine...), dont les paysages l'émerveillent.
De même, Houellebecq donne, je pense, un importance plus grande que de raison à la rencontre avec Sonia Greene, à qui Lovecraft faussait souvent compagnie déjà du temps où ils habitaient ensemble à Brooklyn, et non pas seulement après le déménagement de Sonia dans le Midwest pour chercher du travail comme l'avance Houellebecq au cours de son exposé.
Hélas, les lettres citées manquent de dates, ce qui laisse présumer que Michel Houellebecq n'a lu, lors de la parution de son livre en 1993, que le premier volume des lettres de Lovecraft qu'il cite en bibliographie, lettres qui ne s'étendent au plus tard qu'en 1926, date pourtant charnière de l'œuvre et de la vie de leur rédacteur.
Enfin, Houellebecq parle d'une œuvre d'essence religieuse. A mon avis, rien ne saurait être plus faux. Ce sont certains des "continuateurs" de Lovecraft (au premier rang August Derleth et Donald Wandrei d'Arkham House) qui ont choisi d'interpréter ses textes à travers un filtre religieux, quitte à faire des Grands Anciens ou de Cthulhu les dieux d'un culte particulièrement manichéen et qui subvertirait le christianisme...
Les entités des "grands textes" sont au contraire moralement neutres, non les agents d'un Mal incarné comme se plaisent à le penser les personnages de HPL et... Houellebecq ?
La vision que Houellebecq propose est donc à la fois fascinante et, sinon trompeuse, du moins très sélective : dans Contre le monde, contre la vie, c'est surtout Houellebecq qui dresse son autoportrait en filigrane. Sa lecture de Lovecraft est à la fois pleine de sympathie et hâtive.
Sinon, la préface de Stephen King est distrayante.
LECTURES PROCHES :
Biographie de l'écrivain H.P. Lovecraft :
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft
Ses fictions :
The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
The Call of Cthulhu
Quelques textes de Houellebecq :
La carte et le territoire
Extension du domaine de la lutte
Les particules élémentaires
BANDE-SON AMBULANTE :
BLUT AUS NORD - Chorea Macchabeorum
September 1, 2016:
A informative and immersive biographical note about the man who designed the Necronomicon.
----
September 20, 2020:
Obsessive racism? Masochism? Fascination for the Evil?
Is obsessive racism a defining trait of Lovecraft's fiction? This is a question that still stands.
There are obvious racist prejudices expressed in Lovecraft's fiction and letters. Many features of his worldview have changed over time. Still, on the racial matter, these changes may very well have been insignificant-compared to those in his political leenings, his philosophical tastes, his aesthetics-according to his biographer S.T. Joshi, who can't be suspected of wronging his subject. However what seems dubious to me is Houellebecq's making of these bias the cornerstone of HPL's philosophy, writing and personality.
The point of view shared by Michel Houellebecq on the weird fiction writer, however inspiring, is also one mostly static and reductive. One can hardly state flatly that HPL ceased living in 1926, this is blatantly wrong, whatever the meaning of the verb "live". On the contrary, once back in Providence, RI, in April 17, 1926, after a trying two-year stay in New York, every Spring, Lovecraft made sure to travel throughout the United States to visit old cities in New England (Newport, Marblehead) and in the Southern States (Charleston, Richmond...), or even older and more distant cities (Québec, Saint Augustine...), whose landscapes enthrall him.
Also, Houellebecq overvalues the import of HPL and Sonia Greene's marriage : Lovecraft had been giving the slip to Sonia whole nights, time and again, obviously preferring to spend them with his friends, that is, long before Sonia's move in Midwest in order to find a new job situation, contrary to what Houellebecq claims in Against the World, Against Life.
Unfortunately, quotes excerpted from HPL's letters are unconsistently dated, or not dated at all. Few seem to go past 1926 if I rely on S.T. Joshi's own generous supply of letters in I Am Providence. Of all dates, 1926 is instrumental in HPL's future writing. Going further is critical when you want to issue a reliable assessment of the writer's life.
Finally, Houellebecq states that HPL's oeuvre is a religious one, deep down. In my opinion, nothing could be less true.
In fact, some of HPL's "continuators" or self-styled disciples (prominently August Derleth and Donald Wandrei) have construed his texts using the "religion" filter, unflinchingly parading the Old Ones and Cthulhu as gods of a notably manichean cult, inverting Christianism.
The great entities and "horrors" appearing in his most reknown stories are consistently and unmistakingly morally neutral. They are no agents of Evil incarnate, unlike HPL's characters and... Houellebecq seem to imagine.
In the end, Houellebecq's point of view is fascinating and, if not deceptive, at least exceedingly selective : Against the World, Against Life is mainly Houellebecq painting his own portrait between the lines. Houellebecq reading of Lovecraft proves compassionate on the one hand, hasty on the second hand.
Also, Stephen King has written a mildly entertaining preface to this book.
RELATED READINGS:
A biography of writer H.P. Lovecraft by a specialist of weird fiction:
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft
HPL's fictions:
The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
The Call of Cthulhu
A few books by Michel Houellebecq:
The Map and the Territory
Whatever
The Elementary Particles
THE BANDSTAND:
BLUT AUS NORD - Chorea Macchabeorum
===========================
1er septembre 2016 :
Une biographie renseignée et immersive sur l'homme du Nécronomicon.
----------
20 septembre 2020 :
Racisme obsessionnel, masochisme, fascination du Mal ?
Racisme obsessionnel ?
La question se pose. Effectivement, il y en a des éléments dans la fiction et la correspondance de Lovecraft, mais c'est une vision qui comme le reste est amenée à évoluer (bien que le changement soit infime sur le plan racial si j'en crois le biographe S.T. Joshi, qui ne peut pas être suspecté de charger la barque). Là où la prise de position de l'écrivain français est plus contestable, c'est là où il en fait le fondement de la vision du monde et de l'écriture de Lovecraft, une vision assez statique de sa vie.
Je crois, quand même, que la vision que propose Michel Houellebecq, toute stimulante qu'elle soit, est aussi largement statique et réductrice. On ne peut vraiment pas dire que HPL ait cessé de vivre en 1926. Au contraire, une fois revenu à Providence, le 17/04/1926, après une période de deux ans de vie éprouvante à New York, Lovecraft ne cessera de voyager à travers les États-Unis tous les printemps ou presque pour visiter les villes de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et du Sud en quête de sites fréquentés par les écrivains et les artistes, par amour profond de l'architecture d'époque géorgienne (Charleston, Richmond...) ou d'autres, plus anciennes et plus lointaines encore (Québec, Saint Augustine...), dont les paysages l'émerveillent.
De même, Houellebecq donne, je pense, un importance plus grande que de raison à la rencontre avec Sonia Greene, à qui Lovecraft faussait souvent compagnie déjà du temps où ils habitaient ensemble à Brooklyn, et non pas seulement après le déménagement de Sonia dans le Midwest pour chercher du travail comme l'avance Houellebecq au cours de son exposé.
Hélas, les lettres citées manquent de dates, ce qui laisse présumer que Michel Houellebecq n'a lu, lors de la parution de son livre en 1993, que le premier volume des lettres de Lovecraft qu'il cite en bibliographie, lettres qui ne s'étendent au plus tard qu'en 1926, date pourtant charnière de l'œuvre et de la vie de leur rédacteur.
Enfin, Houellebecq parle d'une œuvre d'essence religieuse. A mon avis, rien ne saurait être plus faux. Ce sont certains des "continuateurs" de Lovecraft (au premier rang August Derleth et Donald Wandrei d'Arkham House) qui ont choisi d'interpréter ses textes à travers un filtre religieux, quitte à faire des Grands Anciens ou de Cthulhu les dieux d'un culte particulièrement manichéen et qui subvertirait le christianisme...
Les entités des "grands textes" sont au contraire moralement neutres, non les agents d'un Mal incarné comme se plaisent à le penser les personnages de HPL et... Houellebecq ?
La vision que Houellebecq propose est donc à la fois fascinante et, sinon trompeuse, du moins très sélective : dans Contre le monde, contre la vie, c'est surtout Houellebecq qui dresse son autoportrait en filigrane. Sa lecture de Lovecraft est à la fois pleine de sympathie et hâtive.
Sinon, la préface de Stephen King est distrayante.
LECTURES PROCHES :
Biographie de l'écrivain H.P. Lovecraft :
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft
Ses fictions :
The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
The Call of Cthulhu
Quelques textes de Houellebecq :
La carte et le territoire
Extension du domaine de la lutte
Les particules élémentaires
BANDE-SON AMBULANTE :
BLUT AUS NORD - Chorea Macchabeorum
April 10, 2020
Τέταρτο βιβλίο του Μισέλ Ουελμπέκ που διαβάζω, πρώτο που δεν είναι μυθιστόρημα αλλά ένα εκτενές δοκίμιο για τον σπουδαιότερο, ίσως, συγγραφέα στο είδος του τρόμου και του φανταστικού, τον ιδιόρρυθμο Χ. Φ. Λάβκραφτ. Τώρα, όταν ένας συγγραφέας του επιπέδου του Ουελμπέκ, με την οξυδέρκεια και την ευρύτητα πνεύματος που κατά τη γνώμη μου τον διακρίνουν, ασχολείται με τη ζωή και το έργο μιας τόσο παράδοξης και ιδιαίτερης προσωπικότητας, τότε το αποτέλεσμα δεν μπορεί παρά να είναι άκρως ενδιαφέρον, ιντριγκαδόρικο και ικανό να προβληματίσει και να ταρακουνήσει. Ο Ουελμπέκ προσπαθεί και σε μεγάλο βαθμό καταφέρνει να κατανοήσει τον ψυχισμό και τον τρόπο σκέψης του Λάβκραφτ, που με τη στάση του απέναντι στον κόσμο και τη ζωή, έδειχνε ότι μάλλον ήταν ένας ξένος, κάποιος που δεν ταίριαζε. Ένας άνθρωπος που αδιαφορούσε σε ακραίο βαθμό για τις αξίες του σύγχρονου κόσμου, που υπέφερε από τους εφιάλτες της πεζής καθημερινότητας, με το υπέροχο αλλά όχι για όλα τα γούστα έργο του να αντανακλά τον ψυχικό του κόσμο και τον τρόπο που αντιμετώπιζε τη ζωή. Προφανώς τούτο το βιβλιαράκι δεν αποτελεί ένα ολοκληρωμέ��ο πορτραίτο του Χ. Φ. Λάβκραφτ, όμως παρουσιάζει στους αναγνώστες κάποιες κρυφές πτυχές της ζωής και του έργου του. Στα συν της έκδοσης είναι η πραγματικά υπέροχη εισαγωγή του Στίβεν Κινγκ. (7.5/10)
December 12, 2021
Houellebecq más Lovecraft, qué puede salir mal? El subtítulo ‘contra el mundo, contra la vida’ ya nos explicita el tema principal del ensayo, la competición de misantropías entre el escritor y el biografiado, apasionante ciertamente.
Es una biografía breve pero que contiene reflexiones muy interesantes sobre el recluso de Providence y su trayectoria vital y cómo de ella emerge una obra que ha ido amplificando su importancia con el paso del tiempo. Los libros posteriores de Houellebecq también están llenos de horror cósmico, pero no encarnado en dioses ancestrales, sino en nosotros mismos y la sociedad que hemos creado.
Un ensayo imprescindible, sobre todo para fans de ambos escritores. Feelgood lovers, no tocar ni con un palo.
Es una biografía breve pero que contiene reflexiones muy interesantes sobre el recluso de Providence y su trayectoria vital y cómo de ella emerge una obra que ha ido amplificando su importancia con el paso del tiempo. Los libros posteriores de Houellebecq también están llenos de horror cósmico, pero no encarnado en dioses ancestrales, sino en nosotros mismos y la sociedad que hemos creado.
Un ensayo imprescindible, sobre todo para fans de ambos escritores. Feelgood lovers, no tocar ni con un palo.
October 28, 2024
Lovecraft és Houellebecq - két olyan író, akivel kifejezetten ambivalens viszonyt ápolok. Világlátásuk taszít, nézeteiket több mint vitathatónak tartom, de életművük lenyűgöz - mintha téveszméik olyan konzisztens művészi szövedékké álltak volna össze, amit nem lehet borzongó csodálat nélkül szemlélni. No most e két ember közül az egyik ír a másikról (nem mondom meg, melyik melyikről), és hiába hagy hidegen úgy általában az irodalomtudomány, ez azért csak megüti az ingerküszöböm.
Világos amúgy, mi a közös a két alkotóban: mindketten ellenszenvvel figyelik a modernitást, sőt: magát a világot, az embereket pedig többnyire unalmas kreatúráknak tekintik, akiket egy huncut Teremtő csak azért potyogtatott köréjük, hogy idegesítse őket. Életellenesek, na. Mindketten korlátozott számú irodalmi eszközt bírnak, de azokat olyan magabiztossággal használják, mintha a végtagjaik lennének. Mesterévé váltak saját irritatív belviláguk kiárasztásának. Tagadhatatlanul okosak, a maguk korlátai között kifejezetten éleslátóak - amit például Houellebecq megérez és megért Lovecraftban, az nekem nagyon igaznak és izgalmasnak hat.
Külön érdekelt, mit kezd H. azzal a szimpla ténnyel, hogy L. akkora rasszista volt, mint ide Koppenhága. És nem is mellékesen, mintegy a művein túl - hanem pont ez a combos paranoiává fejlődött rasszizmus az a mag, amelyből az ún. "nagy szövegek" kinőttek. Az a leküzdhetetlen félelem az idegen, ősi, eltorzult élettől duzzadó fajoktól, no meg a fajkeveredéstől, ami L. utolsó regényeinek minden szavát áthatja, a szerző New York-i tartózkodásából fakad, amikor szegény munkanélküliként, a lepukkant negyedekben kószálva volt kénytelen versenyezni a különböző bőrszínű és etnikumú bevándorlókkal. És ebben a versenyben ő, a protestáns New England-i fehér intellektüel totális vereséget szenvedett - ugyanúgy, ahogy a tipikus lovecrafti főhős (a fehér, protestáns értelmiségi) bizonyul törpének a föld alól előkúszó ismeretlen és megzabolázhatatlan gonosz erőkkel szemben. Az ilyesfajta rasszizmus persze ritkán szül értékelhető művészetet - hogy lehet, hogy ebben az esetben mégis így esett? H. értelmezésében ez azért lett lehetséges, mert L. rasszizmusa nem szadizmusban nyilvánul meg, hanem mazochizmusban. Avatárjai a regényekben sosem megküzdenek a szörnyekkel, hanem csak állnak és bámulják azok képtelen nagyságát, eleve elfogadva saját áldozat-voltukat. Mindebben - ezt én teszem hozzá, H. nem részletezi - van valami mélységes és zavarba ejtő ambivalencia, ami talán szintén gazdagítja a lovecrafti életművet: bár az áldozatok rettegést és undort éreznek, ugyanakkor mindig le is vannak nyűgözve, bámulják és talán tisztelik a "Másik" végtelen erejét és különös viszonyát az élethez. Az vitathatatlan, hogy Lovecraft rasszista volt - de egy olyan rasszista, aki előbb ajánlotta volna áldozatnak saját magát, mint hogy kezet emeljen másra.
(Mindenképp meg kell említenem az előszót, Stephen King munkáját, ami hosszú évek után ismét kedvet csinált nekem ahhoz, hogy elővegyem a dolgait. Egyszerűen mert kiválóan ír. Az a rész, amikor a "kreatív képzelet vedléséről" elmélkedik, kifejezetten megragadott. Ez az a sérülékeny időszak az ember életében, amikor kialakul a gyermek képzeletéből az összetettebb felnőtt képzelet - ebben az átmeneti stádiumban a delikvenst már nem érdeklik a gyerekkönyvek, de még nem tudja, mit vegyen a kezébe helyettük. No most az oktatási rendszer pont ekkor erőlteti rájuk Jókait meg Gárdonyit, amivel azt tudatosítja bennük, hogy olvasni rossz*. Ellenben ha megtalálják azokat a műveket, amelyek az őket foglalkoztató időtlen problémákról és félelmekről szólnak, és egyben segítenek nekik kilépni a nyomasztó valóságból - megtalálják tehát Lovecraftot, Vonnegutot, egye fene: Kinget -, akkor van remény, hogy olvasóvá válnak. És pont ez az, ami miatt az irodalom egésze imába foglalhatná azon "peremírók" nevét, akiket az elefántcsont-torony lakói a zsánerbe száműznének.)
* Ezzel természetesen nem azt mondom, hogy Jókai meg Gárdonyi rossz. Hanem hogy nincs releváns mondanivalójuk egy tizenéves számára. Aminek köszönhetően a legtöbbjüknek rossz olvasni őket. Meggyőződésem, Jókai és Gárdonyi is jobban járna, ha az oktatás előbb az olvasás megszerettetésére koncentrálna, hogy aztán az olvasni szerető (ezért: a szöveggel küzdeni is képes) emberek maguktól fedezzék fel az agg mestereket.
Világos amúgy, mi a közös a két alkotóban: mindketten ellenszenvvel figyelik a modernitást, sőt: magát a világot, az embereket pedig többnyire unalmas kreatúráknak tekintik, akiket egy huncut Teremtő csak azért potyogtatott köréjük, hogy idegesítse őket. Életellenesek, na. Mindketten korlátozott számú irodalmi eszközt bírnak, de azokat olyan magabiztossággal használják, mintha a végtagjaik lennének. Mesterévé váltak saját irritatív belviláguk kiárasztásának. Tagadhatatlanul okosak, a maguk korlátai között kifejezetten éleslátóak - amit például Houellebecq megérez és megért Lovecraftban, az nekem nagyon igaznak és izgalmasnak hat.
Külön érdekelt, mit kezd H. azzal a szimpla ténnyel, hogy L. akkora rasszista volt, mint ide Koppenhága. És nem is mellékesen, mintegy a művein túl - hanem pont ez a combos paranoiává fejlődött rasszizmus az a mag, amelyből az ún. "nagy szövegek" kinőttek. Az a leküzdhetetlen félelem az idegen, ősi, eltorzult élettől duzzadó fajoktól, no meg a fajkeveredéstől, ami L. utolsó regényeinek minden szavát áthatja, a szerző New York-i tartózkodásából fakad, amikor szegény munkanélküliként, a lepukkant negyedekben kószálva volt kénytelen versenyezni a különböző bőrszínű és etnikumú bevándorlókkal. És ebben a versenyben ő, a protestáns New England-i fehér intellektüel totális vereséget szenvedett - ugyanúgy, ahogy a tipikus lovecrafti főhős (a fehér, protestáns értelmiségi) bizonyul törpének a föld alól előkúszó ismeretlen és megzabolázhatatlan gonosz erőkkel szemben. Az ilyesfajta rasszizmus persze ritkán szül értékelhető művészetet - hogy lehet, hogy ebben az esetben mégis így esett? H. értelmezésében ez azért lett lehetséges, mert L. rasszizmusa nem szadizmusban nyilvánul meg, hanem mazochizmusban. Avatárjai a regényekben sosem megküzdenek a szörnyekkel, hanem csak állnak és bámulják azok képtelen nagyságát, eleve elfogadva saját áldozat-voltukat. Mindebben - ezt én teszem hozzá, H. nem részletezi - van valami mélységes és zavarba ejtő ambivalencia, ami talán szintén gazdagítja a lovecrafti életművet: bár az áldozatok rettegést és undort éreznek, ugyanakkor mindig le is vannak nyűgözve, bámulják és talán tisztelik a "Másik" végtelen erejét és különös viszonyát az élethez. Az vitathatatlan, hogy Lovecraft rasszista volt - de egy olyan rasszista, aki előbb ajánlotta volna áldozatnak saját magát, mint hogy kezet emeljen másra.
(Mindenképp meg kell említenem az előszót, Stephen King munkáját, ami hosszú évek után ismét kedvet csinált nekem ahhoz, hogy elővegyem a dolgait. Egyszerűen mert kiválóan ír. Az a rész, amikor a "kreatív képzelet vedléséről" elmélkedik, kifejezetten megragadott. Ez az a sérülékeny időszak az ember életében, amikor kialakul a gyermek képzeletéből az összetettebb felnőtt képzelet - ebben az átmeneti stádiumban a delikvenst már nem érdeklik a gyerekkönyvek, de még nem tudja, mit vegyen a kezébe helyettük. No most az oktatási rendszer pont ekkor erőlteti rájuk Jókait meg Gárdonyit, amivel azt tudatosítja bennük, hogy olvasni rossz*. Ellenben ha megtalálják azokat a műveket, amelyek az őket foglalkoztató időtlen problémákról és félelmekről szólnak, és egyben segítenek nekik kilépni a nyomasztó valóságból - megtalálják tehát Lovecraftot, Vonnegutot, egye fene: Kinget -, akkor van remény, hogy olvasóvá válnak. És pont ez az, ami miatt az irodalom egésze imába foglalhatná azon "peremírók" nevét, akiket az elefántcsont-torony lakói a zsánerbe száműznének.)
* Ezzel természetesen nem azt mondom, hogy Jókai meg Gárdonyi rossz. Hanem hogy nincs releváns mondanivalójuk egy tizenéves számára. Aminek köszönhetően a legtöbbjüknek rossz olvasni őket. Meggyőződésem, Jókai és Gárdonyi is jobban járna, ha az oktatás előbb az olvasás megszerettetésére koncentrálna, hogy aztán az olvasni szerető (ezért: a szöveggel küzdeni is képes) emberek maguktól fedezzék fel az agg mestereket.
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July 3, 2024Non merci. No mercy.
Michel, you know I love you, but, please, delight me with something else, maybe with some other elementary particles, it's your best trick, so far. Or try something about the Great Islamization of the Planet.
Hey ! Don't shoot ! I was just kidding !
Now, seriously, why, for Mighty Mouse's sake, would I read one's biography, be it Lovecrafts ? I'm really not ecstatic about what X thinks Y is. The essence of an author lies in their fuckin' poor existence ? The only exception which caught my attention was Julian Barnes, about Flaubert. But there is Art, in every syllable. You know what art is, Michel ? That thing that gives you goosebumps. Maybe I love Lovecraft's horrors, but maybe his mundane life is a horror that only kills my time, in cold blood.
Imagine, if you will, a dusty tome titled " Biographies of Authors You Never Asked For. "
Inside, things like " In the year 1897, late in night, H.P. Lovecraft consumed a bowl of oatmeal. The consistency was neither too runny, nor too lumpy. Critics speculate that this influenced his cosmic horror. "
Or :
" Michel Houellebecq, the enigmatic French writer, favored mismatched socks. Some say it symbolized the existential chaos of modern life. Others suspect he just couldn't find the other sock. "
Besides, Lovecraft's silence on sex and money beckons us to ponder the unspeakable. Was he secretly a cultist ?
Perhaps Lovecraft's biography exists in a superposition - both read and unread. Only when observed does it collapse into irrelevance.
Schrödinger nods approvingly.
So, mon cher Michel, we strike the deal with the particles, ou pas ?
Just in case, I let my number.
+33 (0)1 34 79 20 20.
No, it's not hot line. Fais -moi confiance.
Michel, you know I love you, but, please, delight me with something else, maybe with some other elementary particles, it's your best trick, so far. Or try something about the Great Islamization of the Planet.
Hey ! Don't shoot ! I was just kidding !
Now, seriously, why, for Mighty Mouse's sake, would I read one's biography, be it Lovecrafts ? I'm really not ecstatic about what X thinks Y is. The essence of an author lies in their fuckin' poor existence ? The only exception which caught my attention was Julian Barnes, about Flaubert. But there is Art, in every syllable. You know what art is, Michel ? That thing that gives you goosebumps. Maybe I love Lovecraft's horrors, but maybe his mundane life is a horror that only kills my time, in cold blood.
Imagine, if you will, a dusty tome titled " Biographies of Authors You Never Asked For. "
Inside, things like " In the year 1897, late in night, H.P. Lovecraft consumed a bowl of oatmeal. The consistency was neither too runny, nor too lumpy. Critics speculate that this influenced his cosmic horror. "
Or :
" Michel Houellebecq, the enigmatic French writer, favored mismatched socks. Some say it symbolized the existential chaos of modern life. Others suspect he just couldn't find the other sock. "
Besides, Lovecraft's silence on sex and money beckons us to ponder the unspeakable. Was he secretly a cultist ?
Perhaps Lovecraft's biography exists in a superposition - both read and unread. Only when observed does it collapse into irrelevance.
Schrödinger nods approvingly.
So, mon cher Michel, we strike the deal with the particles, ou pas ?
Just in case, I let my number.
+33 (0)1 34 79 20 20.
No, it's not hot line. Fais -moi confiance.
May 9, 2008
Reading a book by one of your current favorite authors about your all-time favorite author is possibly one of the best literary experiences I can imagine.
In H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life Michel Houellebecq, the bitterly cynical, oft-misunderstood French misanthrope and champion of 21st-century nihilism, attempts to demystify exactly what it is about Lovecraft's fiction that has allowed it to remain fresh and relevant after nearly a century.
And he succeeds in ways I never thought possible.
I was introduced to Lovecraft's work at the age of 11. With childhood disappearing further and further behind me, I found a deep fascination with the horrid, unnameable monsters populating the bizarre Providence gentleman's tales. As with the suddenly-burgeoning mysteries of adulthood manifesting in my life, Lovecraft's unspeakable shamblers from the stars also defied logic and struck me with a profound, nearly paralyzing fear. As I grew older, my focus expanded to include not just the eldritch beings barely contained in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, but Lovecraft's clinical view of the universe as a near-entity of its own, pitilessly indifferent to the plight of humanity, an unremarkable and insignificant accident lost amidst the ceaseless, timeless and immutable drone of the music of the spheres. Not surprisingly, this new understanding of Lovecraft's work neatly coincided with my freshly-developed interest in human evolution, a passion which stripped away my self-righteous and inflated notion that we stand above all life in the world. And now, at a time when I've determined there are questions which shall forever remain unanswerable, Lovecraft's work resonates just as soundly as it did then, for "Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath?"
Houellebecq, whose own work is focused almost entirely on the banal, realistic horrors of modern life, has adapted Lovecraft's world view so soundly into his own work (without sight of nary one rugose, tentacled horror)it belies a truly deep-seated love and understanding of the master's craft, and, indeed, his life. And, like any other of Houellbecq's fictional works, this book is full of sharp, terse insights that are pure crystallizations of every ineffable feeling and unfocused thought I've ever had about Lovecraft's life and creations. His argument--that the manner in which Lovecraft lived as he did, wrote what he did, and wrote the way he did, as a rejection of life itself--is the most profound thing I've ever heard said of the man or his work.
I cannot recommend this book enough. I've already read it multiple times and will continue to do so as (and if) the years go on. The addition of two of Lovecraft's finest stories ("The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness") as a postscript only add to the value of this slim tone. If you, after reading Lovecraft's work, ever looked to the black seas of infinity above and wondered if the piecing together of disassociated knowledge shall either drive us mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age, then please, I implore you--read this book.
In H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life Michel Houellebecq, the bitterly cynical, oft-misunderstood French misanthrope and champion of 21st-century nihilism, attempts to demystify exactly what it is about Lovecraft's fiction that has allowed it to remain fresh and relevant after nearly a century.
And he succeeds in ways I never thought possible.
I was introduced to Lovecraft's work at the age of 11. With childhood disappearing further and further behind me, I found a deep fascination with the horrid, unnameable monsters populating the bizarre Providence gentleman's tales. As with the suddenly-burgeoning mysteries of adulthood manifesting in my life, Lovecraft's unspeakable shamblers from the stars also defied logic and struck me with a profound, nearly paralyzing fear. As I grew older, my focus expanded to include not just the eldritch beings barely contained in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, but Lovecraft's clinical view of the universe as a near-entity of its own, pitilessly indifferent to the plight of humanity, an unremarkable and insignificant accident lost amidst the ceaseless, timeless and immutable drone of the music of the spheres. Not surprisingly, this new understanding of Lovecraft's work neatly coincided with my freshly-developed interest in human evolution, a passion which stripped away my self-righteous and inflated notion that we stand above all life in the world. And now, at a time when I've determined there are questions which shall forever remain unanswerable, Lovecraft's work resonates just as soundly as it did then, for "Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath?"
Houellebecq, whose own work is focused almost entirely on the banal, realistic horrors of modern life, has adapted Lovecraft's world view so soundly into his own work (without sight of nary one rugose, tentacled horror)it belies a truly deep-seated love and understanding of the master's craft, and, indeed, his life. And, like any other of Houellbecq's fictional works, this book is full of sharp, terse insights that are pure crystallizations of every ineffable feeling and unfocused thought I've ever had about Lovecraft's life and creations. His argument--that the manner in which Lovecraft lived as he did, wrote what he did, and wrote the way he did, as a rejection of life itself--is the most profound thing I've ever heard said of the man or his work.
I cannot recommend this book enough. I've already read it multiple times and will continue to do so as (and if) the years go on. The addition of two of Lovecraft's finest stories ("The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness") as a postscript only add to the value of this slim tone. If you, after reading Lovecraft's work, ever looked to the black seas of infinity above and wondered if the piecing together of disassociated knowledge shall either drive us mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age, then please, I implore you--read this book.
September 25, 2020
Pues no tenía ni idea de que Houellebecq había escrito este pequeño ensayo sobre H.P. Lovecraft. Me acerqué al libro por curiosidad (y porque no era muy largo, todo sea dicho) y, de nuevo, me he llevado toda una sorpresa con el francés y su fascinación por el autor de Providence.
Ya no solo porque te dé datos interesantes, es que entre tanta cita y tanta adoración por él, Houellebecq a veces parece empaparse de la oscuridad y dioses antiguos. De entre las muchas partes que he subrayado, dos de mis favoritas:
Leemos sus cuentos con la mismísima disposición de ánimo que le obligó a escribirlos. Satanás o Nyarlathothep, qué más da, pero ya no soportaremos un minuto más de realismo. Y, para decirlo todo, Satanás está un poco devaluado por culpa de sus prolongadas relaciones con los vergonzosos recovecos de nuestros vulgares pecados.
"Los escritos de HPL tienen un solo objetivo: llevar al lector a un estado de fascinación. Los únicos sentimientos humanos de los que quiere oír hablar son la maravilla y el pánico. Construye su universo sobre ellos, y exclusivamente sobre ellos. Está claro que se trata de una limitación, pero de una limitación consciente y deliberada. Y no hay auténtica creación sin cierta ceguera voluntaria."
Y bueno, eso, que una pequeña maravilla. Me encanta Houellebecq y me encanta Lovecraft, y leer a uno hablando sobre el otro con tanta adoración ha sido toda una sorpresa.
Ya seáis fans de un escritor o el otro, recomiendo esta lectura.
A destacar: Otra cita con más razón que un santo:
"Cuando uno ama la vida, no lee. Ni tampoco va mucho al cine. Digan lo que digan, el acceso al universo artístico queda más o menos reservado a los que están un poco hasta el gorro."
Ya no solo porque te dé datos interesantes, es que entre tanta cita y tanta adoración por él, Houellebecq a veces parece empaparse de la oscuridad y dioses antiguos. De entre las muchas partes que he subrayado, dos de mis favoritas:
Leemos sus cuentos con la mismísima disposición de ánimo que le obligó a escribirlos. Satanás o Nyarlathothep, qué más da, pero ya no soportaremos un minuto más de realismo. Y, para decirlo todo, Satanás está un poco devaluado por culpa de sus prolongadas relaciones con los vergonzosos recovecos de nuestros vulgares pecados.
"Los escritos de HPL tienen un solo objetivo: llevar al lector a un estado de fascinación. Los únicos sentimientos humanos de los que quiere oír hablar son la maravilla y el pánico. Construye su universo sobre ellos, y exclusivamente sobre ellos. Está claro que se trata de una limitación, pero de una limitación consciente y deliberada. Y no hay auténtica creación sin cierta ceguera voluntaria."
Y bueno, eso, que una pequeña maravilla. Me encanta Houellebecq y me encanta Lovecraft, y leer a uno hablando sobre el otro con tanta adoración ha sido toda una sorpresa.
Ya seáis fans de un escritor o el otro, recomiendo esta lectura.
A destacar: Otra cita con más razón que un santo:
"Cuando uno ama la vida, no lee. Ni tampoco va mucho al cine. Digan lo que digan, el acceso al universo artístico queda más o menos reservado a los que están un poco hasta el gorro."
October 18, 2017
-De su obra y legado, pasando por su vida para ello.-
Género. Ensayo (por más que la editorial lo considere una biografía y que, en realidad, no deje de serlo).
Lo que nos cuenta. El libro H. P. Lovecraft. Contra el mundo, contra la vida (publicación original: H. P. Lovecraft. Contre le monde, contre la vie, 1991) es un acercamiento a Lovecraft, a su producción, su estilo, su vida y a los posibles elementos nucleares que definieron tanto al escritor como su trabajo.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ensayo (por más que la editorial lo considere una biografía y que, en realidad, no deje de serlo).
Lo que nos cuenta. El libro H. P. Lovecraft. Contra el mundo, contra la vida (publicación original: H. P. Lovecraft. Contre le monde, contre la vie, 1991) es un acercamiento a Lovecraft, a su producción, su estilo, su vida y a los posibles elementos nucleares que definieron tanto al escritor como su trabajo.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
July 11, 2021
michel houellebecq se, za promjenu, upustio u zahtjevan posao literarno približiti h. p. lovecrafta, jednog od najčudnijih i najmisterioznijih autora. i učinio je dobar posao. od lovecrafta pročitala sam samo "planine ludila" i nisam bila baš oduševljena; sad znam da je moje (ne)razumijevanje te knjige bilo posljedica nepoznavanja lovecraftovog stila i opusa. da sam pročitala ovo houellebecqovo djelo prije nego sam se upustila u "planine ludila", više bih ga cijenila.
houellebecqova knjiga daje iscrpan i temeljiti prikaz lovecraftovog privatnog (usprkos relativno oskudnim informacijama) i stvaralačkoga života, a upotpunjena je s tri lovecraftove priče ("snovi u vještičinoj kući", "iza zidova sna" i "on" - pretpostavljam da su odabrane kao prepoznatljiv i tipičan primjer lovecraftovog opusa) i, kao poslastica na samom kraju knjige - "mali pregled lovecraftiane": abecedni popis likova, mjesta, stvorenja, i ostalih pojmova na kojima je lovecraft izgradio svoju književnost.
bio ljubitelj lovecrafta ili ne, ili ako te zanima njegovo djelo, ova houellebecqova knjiga izvrstan je temelj za krenuti. a u meni je pobudio želju dati lovecraftu još jednu šansu.
houellebecqova knjiga daje iscrpan i temeljiti prikaz lovecraftovog privatnog (usprkos relativno oskudnim informacijama) i stvaralačkoga života, a upotpunjena je s tri lovecraftove priče ("snovi u vještičinoj kući", "iza zidova sna" i "on" - pretpostavljam da su odabrane kao prepoznatljiv i tipičan primjer lovecraftovog opusa) i, kao poslastica na samom kraju knjige - "mali pregled lovecraftiane": abecedni popis likova, mjesta, stvorenja, i ostalih pojmova na kojima je lovecraft izgradio svoju književnost.
bio ljubitelj lovecrafta ili ne, ili ako te zanima njegovo djelo, ova houellebecqova knjiga izvrstan je temelj za krenuti. a u meni je pobudio želju dati lovecraftu još jednu šansu.
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May 5, 2025What is Literary Indigestion?
-
By "literary indigestion" I mean a mixture of immiscible parts. Styles, voices, purposes, paces--anything that's made of incompatible parts. The relation between the elements might be dissonant, as in Naked Lunch or Derrida's Glas, where unrelated and incompatible texts are deliberately juxtaposed. Or it might be surprising to see different sorts of texts and images thrown together, as in maximalist fiction, Oulipo, and "collage fiction," from Perec to Gaddis and Wallace.
This book isn't indigestible in those interesting senses, where the implied author or narrator is intending readers to wonder about the text's coherence. It's indigestible because the three people involved--the young Houellebecq, his idol Lovecraft, and the elder statesman King--are so different.
Lovecraft: for me, he is a rum writer. His prose is both ornate and viscous. It can look like perfumed glue. He seldom wrote parsimoniously: in order to wrench the weird from the ordinary he seems to have felt he needed to use every romantic and orientalist trope ever invented. His stories and books are full of entangled grotesqueries, abyssal horrors, sinister maelstroms of time, polyphonic histrionics, portentous mumblings, poisoned landscapes, hyperboles of wailing despair, and the whole lexicon of nineteenth-century bathos, each one inflated to bursting. Like Poe as Mister Creosote. From Lovecraft's point of view, Poe must have seemed so spare and anemic that he was nearly invisible, fragile like the unfortunate character in "The Man Who Was Used Up."
Houellebecq: I haven't ever liked him either. People who are offended or shocked by him are too easily upset (too bourgeois, too similar to his imagined targets), and people who are thrilled or challenged by him need to read Celine instead. (Here's a nasty review.) In this text he worships Lovecraft for his supposed "hatred" of "the world" and "life," and forgives him for his racism (naturally) and lack of interest in sex and politics (more surprisingly). Houellebecq says Lovecraft's phobias make him "ever more present, ever more alive." It's a passionate essay, but also an opportunistic one, because Houellebecq wants to announce his devotion to someone who is widely disparaged, who had "great passion" (which nevertheless "one may deplore"), who hated humanity and the world, who wanted to warn everyone of the disaster ("evil") lurking everywhere--a person who was, however, unlike Houellebecq himself in almost every way.
King: I haven't been a fan since I was fifteen. Like everyone else on Earth I've read his books, and when I was young, I even read one or two out loud. For me the admixture of familiar North American life doesn't increase the horror. His books are like letters written with a flare-tip marker: they can be full of color, but if they're left out, a year later they are bleached back to the blank paper. In this book King is especially unappealing, because he opts for a patrician tone: he's not passionate about either of his subjects, and he seems mainly interested in demonstrating a calm and benevolent detachment. He defangs Houellebecq, diplomatically bypassing his many obscenities and provocations, and he normalizes Lovecraft, painting him as an exemplary but typical early twentieth-century writer of "weird fiction."
Of the three, Lovecraft wins: he's genuinely strange, and often repulsive. His racism, which Houellebecq emphasizes and King ignores, is spectacularly unreflective and offensive. His brief sexual history is very odd. When I read Lovecraft, it's for the queasy mixture of late Symbolism or decadent (fin-de-siècle) prose, baked-in racism, and occluded sexuality.
Second is Houellebecq, who went on to write novels intended to shock, and appears more interesting than I had anticipated here just because of the transparence of his need to attach himself to the least likely and most culturally distant model of transgression in order to underwrite his future misbehavior. He was at an especially interesting point in his career when he wrote this, in need of a model to support a practice he hoped would be pure transgression, as ferocious as Sade.
That would put King last: if you'd never read anything of his besides the essay in this book, you'd think of him as a senior writer like Bellow or Updike, asked to write a pleasant lecture for an association of retired academics, or like a retired publisher, with no stake in the subject except being acknowledged as an authority. That's indigestion.
-
By "literary indigestion" I mean a mixture of immiscible parts. Styles, voices, purposes, paces--anything that's made of incompatible parts. The relation between the elements might be dissonant, as in Naked Lunch or Derrida's Glas, where unrelated and incompatible texts are deliberately juxtaposed. Or it might be surprising to see different sorts of texts and images thrown together, as in maximalist fiction, Oulipo, and "collage fiction," from Perec to Gaddis and Wallace.
This book isn't indigestible in those interesting senses, where the implied author or narrator is intending readers to wonder about the text's coherence. It's indigestible because the three people involved--the young Houellebecq, his idol Lovecraft, and the elder statesman King--are so different.
Lovecraft: for me, he is a rum writer. His prose is both ornate and viscous. It can look like perfumed glue. He seldom wrote parsimoniously: in order to wrench the weird from the ordinary he seems to have felt he needed to use every romantic and orientalist trope ever invented. His stories and books are full of entangled grotesqueries, abyssal horrors, sinister maelstroms of time, polyphonic histrionics, portentous mumblings, poisoned landscapes, hyperboles of wailing despair, and the whole lexicon of nineteenth-century bathos, each one inflated to bursting. Like Poe as Mister Creosote. From Lovecraft's point of view, Poe must have seemed so spare and anemic that he was nearly invisible, fragile like the unfortunate character in "The Man Who Was Used Up."
Houellebecq: I haven't ever liked him either. People who are offended or shocked by him are too easily upset (too bourgeois, too similar to his imagined targets), and people who are thrilled or challenged by him need to read Celine instead. (Here's a nasty review.) In this text he worships Lovecraft for his supposed "hatred" of "the world" and "life," and forgives him for his racism (naturally) and lack of interest in sex and politics (more surprisingly). Houellebecq says Lovecraft's phobias make him "ever more present, ever more alive." It's a passionate essay, but also an opportunistic one, because Houellebecq wants to announce his devotion to someone who is widely disparaged, who had "great passion" (which nevertheless "one may deplore"), who hated humanity and the world, who wanted to warn everyone of the disaster ("evil") lurking everywhere--a person who was, however, unlike Houellebecq himself in almost every way.
King: I haven't been a fan since I was fifteen. Like everyone else on Earth I've read his books, and when I was young, I even read one or two out loud. For me the admixture of familiar North American life doesn't increase the horror. His books are like letters written with a flare-tip marker: they can be full of color, but if they're left out, a year later they are bleached back to the blank paper. In this book King is especially unappealing, because he opts for a patrician tone: he's not passionate about either of his subjects, and he seems mainly interested in demonstrating a calm and benevolent detachment. He defangs Houellebecq, diplomatically bypassing his many obscenities and provocations, and he normalizes Lovecraft, painting him as an exemplary but typical early twentieth-century writer of "weird fiction."
Of the three, Lovecraft wins: he's genuinely strange, and often repulsive. His racism, which Houellebecq emphasizes and King ignores, is spectacularly unreflective and offensive. His brief sexual history is very odd. When I read Lovecraft, it's for the queasy mixture of late Symbolism or decadent (fin-de-siècle) prose, baked-in racism, and occluded sexuality.
Second is Houellebecq, who went on to write novels intended to shock, and appears more interesting than I had anticipated here just because of the transparence of his need to attach himself to the least likely and most culturally distant model of transgression in order to underwrite his future misbehavior. He was at an especially interesting point in his career when he wrote this, in need of a model to support a practice he hoped would be pure transgression, as ferocious as Sade.
That would put King last: if you'd never read anything of his besides the essay in this book, you'd think of him as a senior writer like Bellow or Updike, asked to write a pleasant lecture for an association of retired academics, or like a retired publisher, with no stake in the subject except being acknowledged as an authority. That's indigestion.
August 6, 2023
Allora vedrete una possente cattedrale. E i vostri sensi, veicoli di indicibili eccessi. Tracceranno lo schema di un delirio integrale. Che si perderà nell'innominabile architettura dei tempi.
Non sapevo che H. fosse un fan di HPL e che ci avesse scritto un saggio. Tra l’altro, la sua prima pubblicazione. Incappatoci per caso e volendo da tempo provare a leggere qualcosa di HPL, mi ci son buttato.
H., da grande scrittore qual'è, ha fatto, credo, quello che si era prefisso e quello che cercavo, farci appassionare al solitario di Providence.
Dal punto di vista letterario HPL si inserisce nel filone mistery-horror-gotico di Poe espandendolo nel campo fantasy e sci-fi. Erige grandi architetture - H. trova un parallelo con Piranesi e Monsù Desiderio - e interi mondi fantastici che si intersecano, creando un effetto di grande impatto, con una realtà definita in dettagli fisici, chimici, matematici, geografici, storico-culturali molto precisi. Crea figure mostruose, fondando il mito dei Grandi Antichi, coloro che terrorizzano e minacciano costantemente l’umanità.
La sua cifra stilistica è una prosa colta, con accumulazioni di aggettivi e avverbi, con incedere lento e crescente, con tono a volte delicato ed a volte brutale, tesa a rendere anche sensorialmente i suoi mondi ed a formare un senso complessivo di grandiosità che esalta ed affascina.
Sul piano personale, nessuno sconto: HPL è portatore di un razzismo cosmico e altamente ripugnante. Ciononostante, ci suscita grande tenerezza, per l’infanzia difficile, le ristrettezze economiche che lo hanno angariato tutta la vita, le difficoltà a socializzare e ad approcciarsi alle donne e al sesso. Le grandissime delusioni professionali provocate dai ripetuti rifiuti dei propri lavori da parte degli editori, che rimarranno confinate su riviste di infimo valore. I modi sempre gentili (tolti gli scazzi con gli editori). La morte di cancro in giovane età. Tutto ciò ha influito sulla sua letteratura: non frontalmente, ma nel profondo, queste idiosincrasie hanno innestato le sue visioni di mondi paurosi e ostili. Il suo è un disagio esistenziale. È una guerra – un olocausto dice H. – contro il mondo e contro la vita.
E così mi spiego anche la predilezione di H. per HPL, entrambi due grandi nichilisti e misantropi.
Questo quello che penso di aver capito. Ora sono pronto per leggere HPL e farmi una mia idea.
Non sapevo che H. fosse un fan di HPL e che ci avesse scritto un saggio. Tra l’altro, la sua prima pubblicazione. Incappatoci per caso e volendo da tempo provare a leggere qualcosa di HPL, mi ci son buttato.
H., da grande scrittore qual'è, ha fatto, credo, quello che si era prefisso e quello che cercavo, farci appassionare al solitario di Providence.
Dal punto di vista letterario HPL si inserisce nel filone mistery-horror-gotico di Poe espandendolo nel campo fantasy e sci-fi. Erige grandi architetture - H. trova un parallelo con Piranesi e Monsù Desiderio - e interi mondi fantastici che si intersecano, creando un effetto di grande impatto, con una realtà definita in dettagli fisici, chimici, matematici, geografici, storico-culturali molto precisi. Crea figure mostruose, fondando il mito dei Grandi Antichi, coloro che terrorizzano e minacciano costantemente l’umanità.
La sua cifra stilistica è una prosa colta, con accumulazioni di aggettivi e avverbi, con incedere lento e crescente, con tono a volte delicato ed a volte brutale, tesa a rendere anche sensorialmente i suoi mondi ed a formare un senso complessivo di grandiosità che esalta ed affascina.
Sul piano personale, nessuno sconto: HPL è portatore di un razzismo cosmico e altamente ripugnante. Ciononostante, ci suscita grande tenerezza, per l’infanzia difficile, le ristrettezze economiche che lo hanno angariato tutta la vita, le difficoltà a socializzare e ad approcciarsi alle donne e al sesso. Le grandissime delusioni professionali provocate dai ripetuti rifiuti dei propri lavori da parte degli editori, che rimarranno confinate su riviste di infimo valore. I modi sempre gentili (tolti gli scazzi con gli editori). La morte di cancro in giovane età. Tutto ciò ha influito sulla sua letteratura: non frontalmente, ma nel profondo, queste idiosincrasie hanno innestato le sue visioni di mondi paurosi e ostili. Il suo è un disagio esistenziale. È una guerra – un olocausto dice H. – contro il mondo e contro la vita.
E così mi spiego anche la predilezione di H. per HPL, entrambi due grandi nichilisti e misantropi.
Questo quello che penso di aver capito. Ora sono pronto per leggere HPL e farmi una mia idea.
August 20, 2019
It was interesting. Nothing new, but all very laconic and on point. Especially that Houellebecq, unlike some other fanboys, is not in denial about Lovecraft's racism, he's specifically naming it and analyzing it.
September 17, 2020
Уельбек-письменник мені нецікавий, і навіть неприємний. Втім, коли я натрапив на цю тоненьку книжку про Лавкрафта - я завагався: "А раптом таки щось цікаве?"
І не шкодую.
По-перше, книга Уельбека коротка. Біографії, авторства де Кампа Лавкрафт. Биография чи Джоші Жизнь Лавкрафта - об’ємні томи, обсягом понад 600 та понад 1000 сторінок відповідно. І через це Уельбек не "розтікається мислю по древу", а пише дуже чітко і конкретно. Він не губить лісу за деревами. В цьому його перевага: замість реконструкції деталей біографії ГФЛ він вибудовує лінійну оповідь, яка має відповісти на питання "Чому ГФЛ геній?"
По-друге, Уельбек пише не лише і не стільки біографію, скільки розказує про метод Лавкрафта. І це дозволяє краще зрозуміти творчість ГФЛ.
І це найбільше відкриття книги. Творчість ГФЛ - як класична музика: потрібно вчитися його читати. Адже Уельбек показує, які центральні теми ГФЛ (сни, міфології), як він вибудовує свої оповідання (тотальність жаху, "нічні марення").
Зокрема, якби не Уельбек, я б не здолав "Сновидних пошуків Кадата". Адже цей текст навіть фанати визнають нечитабельним. Але якщо озброїтися знанням прийомів Лавкрафта, то читання йшло вже легше. Адже тепер знаєш, чого чекати від тексту, як його сприймати. Зокрема, "Кадат" - це "нічне марення", повторюване, безглузде. Не потрібно вчитуватися в кожне слово, не шукати правдоподібності описів, а вхопити атмосферу і сприймати його як сон і кошмар. Так, в сні часопростір зовсім інший, ніж в реальності.
Структурно книга Уельбека складається з трьох частин, де перша - біографія Лавкрафта, друга - розповідь про метод Лавкрафта, а остання - дискусія про його расизм.
Проте всі вони становлять єдність: Уельбек показує, як біографія привела Лавкрафта до його методу письма, а як його метод письма випливав з його цінностей. Це ідеальний короткий вступ до ГФЛ. Якщо вам хотілося познайомитися з його творчістю, але перші тексти розчарували / відлякали, то Уельбек може виправити ситуацію і показати, чим же ГФЛ геніальний.
П.С. І так, я згоден з Уельбеком: ГФЛ перевершив По у своїй готичності та впливові на літературу жахів. Стиль ГФЛ дещо "дубовий" (в нього немає психологізму від слова "взагалі"), але це і є його стратегія: як інакше розповісти про жахливе. І це неймовірно: ефект жахливого досягається не психологізмом, але енциклопедичністю викладу. Але краще прочитати самого Уельбека, який цю думку пояснює більш розлого ;)
І не шкодую.
По-перше, книга Уельбека коротка. Біографії, авторства де Кампа Лавкрафт. Биография чи Джоші Жизнь Лавкрафта - об’ємні томи, обсягом понад 600 та понад 1000 сторінок відповідно. І через це Уельбек не "розтікається мислю по древу", а пише дуже чітко і конкретно. Він не губить лісу за деревами. В цьому його перевага: замість реконструкції деталей біографії ГФЛ він вибудовує лінійну оповідь, яка має відповісти на питання "Чому ГФЛ геній?"
По-друге, Уельбек пише не лише і не стільки біографію, скільки розказує про метод Лавкрафта. І це дозволяє краще зрозуміти творчість ГФЛ.
І це найбільше відкриття книги. Творчість ГФЛ - як класична музика: потрібно вчитися його читати. Адже Уельбек показує, які центральні теми ГФЛ (сни, міфології), як він вибудовує свої оповідання (тотальність жаху, "нічні марення").
Зокрема, якби не Уельбек, я б не здолав "Сновидних пошуків Кадата". Адже цей текст навіть фанати визнають нечитабельним. Але якщо озброїтися знанням прийомів Лавкрафта, то читання йшло вже легше. Адже тепер знаєш, чого чекати від тексту, як його сприймати. Зокрема, "Кадат" - це "нічне марення", повторюване, безглузде. Не потрібно вчитуватися в кожне слово, не шукати правдоподібності описів, а вхопити атмосферу і сприймати його як сон і кошмар. Так, в сні часопростір зовсім інший, ніж в реальності.
Структурно книга Уельбека складається з трьох частин, де перша - біографія Лавкрафта, друга - розповідь про метод Лавкрафта, а остання - дискусія про його расизм.
Проте всі вони становлять єдність: Уельбек показує, як біографія привела Лавкрафта до його методу письма, а як його метод письма випливав з його цінностей. Це ідеальний короткий вступ до ГФЛ. Якщо вам хотілося познайомитися з його творчістю, але перші тексти розчарували / відлякали, то Уельбек може виправити ситуацію і показати, чим же ГФЛ геніальний.
П.С. І так, я згоден з Уельбеком: ГФЛ перевершив По у своїй готичності та впливові на літературу жахів. Стиль ГФЛ дещо "дубовий" (в нього немає психологізму від слова "взагалі"), але це і є його стратегія: як інакше розповісти про жахливе. І це неймовірно: ефект жахливого досягається не психологізмом, але енциклопедичністю викладу. Але краще прочитати самого Уельбека, який цю думку пояснює більш розлого ;)
December 6, 2025
Lovecrafts Kosmos des Grauens und des existentiellen Unbehagens gegenüber dem Menschlichen als Spiegelungsfläche der Poetik Houellebecqs
August 15, 2024
Questo piccolo saggio è come l’enorme diamante incastrato e custodito nel teschio di un vecchio pirata in Bianca e Bernie.
Houellebecq è la sciabola che Penny usa per forzarne la mandibola e restituire a noi questo impareggiabile tesoro.
Più orrorifica delle creature e dei mondi lovecraftiani è la povertà, la ricerca costante e sempre fallimentare di un qualsivoglia impiego, il rifiuto smaccato e un’inadeguatezza totale d’aderenza al Reale.
Accettando la propria vita nella sua totalità come un terribile fallimento, nell’Orrore da lui creato Lovecraft fa della sua scrittura un Capolavoro, “ una gigantesca macchina dei sogni, di portata ed efficacia senza precedenti.”[ cit . ]
È l’incubo VERO, da cui tutti hanno imparato e continuano a nutrirsi , grati. [ King in primis con fotonica prefazione al testo. ]
🎶chi
mi
salverà ?
🎶
Houellebecq è la sciabola che Penny usa per forzarne la mandibola e restituire a noi questo impareggiabile tesoro.
Più orrorifica delle creature e dei mondi lovecraftiani è la povertà, la ricerca costante e sempre fallimentare di un qualsivoglia impiego, il rifiuto smaccato e un’inadeguatezza totale d’aderenza al Reale.
Accettando la propria vita nella sua totalità come un terribile fallimento, nell’Orrore da lui creato Lovecraft fa della sua scrittura un Capolavoro, “ una gigantesca macchina dei sogni, di portata ed efficacia senza precedenti.”[ cit . ]
È l’incubo VERO, da cui tutti hanno imparato e continuano a nutrirsi , grati. [ King in primis con fotonica prefazione al testo. ]
🎶chi
mi
salverà ?
🎶
August 3, 2015
El Lovecraft de Houellebecq es irresistible: materialista(!), ateo, xenófobo. Pero también un gran poeta original y creador de mundos que exceden la literatura y por ahí anida la admiración del frenchute.
El capítulo bisagra del ensayo, creo yo, es Odio Racial. Allí se cita una carta de Lovecraft a un amigo sobre sus paseos por el Lower East Side neoyorquino: para esa época (1924-1925) habitado mayormente por negros, mulatos, judíos e italianos...
Las cosas orgánicas que rondaban por esa espantosa cloaca no podrían calificarse de humanas, ni siquiera torturándose la imaginación. Eran monstruosos, nebulosos bosquejos del pitecántropo y la ameba, toscamente modelados en alguna arcilla hedionda y viscosa producto de la corrupción de la tierra. Reptaban y supuraban por las calles grasientas, entrando y saliendo por puertas y ventanas de una forma que recordaba a una invasión de gusanos, o a desagradables criaturas surgidas de las profundidades del mar. Esas cosas —o la sustancia degenerada en gelatinosa fermentación de la que estaban hechas— parecían rezumar, infiltrarse y fluir a través de las grietas abiertas de aquellas horribles casas, y pensé en una hilera de tinas ciclópeas y malsanas, llenas hasta el borde de ignominias gangrenosas, a punto de rebosar para inundar el mundo entero en un cataclismo leproso de podredumbre semilíquida...
Esta experiencia con 'los otros' resuena como en esta descripción del personaje de Wilbur, en El horror de Dunwich...
Aquel gigante cabrío inclinado ante él parecía el engendro de otro planeta o dimensión; como algo que pertenece sólo en parte a la humanidad y está ligado a negros abismos de esencia y ser que, como fantasmas titánicos, se hallan más allá de todas las esferas de la fuerza y la materia, el espacio y el tiempo. Un momento después, Wilbur alzó la cabeza y empezó a hablar con esa voz extraña y resonante, que insinuaba órganos fonadores distintos a los del resto de los mortales. (V)
En los puntos polémicos de la vida de HPL procede con bastante lucidez y honestidad, comentando los fragmentos de las cartas que cita (Houellebecq será misántropo, pero es un tipo derecho.)
No le pongo 5 estrellas porque es muy corto; varias de las ideas principales hubiera estado bueno que sean más desarrolladas.
February 13, 2012
I read this book at the library about a week ago. What follows are my notes as I was reading this book:
A brilliant study....first published in France in 1991 and translated into English a few years ago...evocatively written, like a novel.
Lovecraft created a great popular myth, which is rare in literature...of the Great Old Ones Houellebecq writes "they have heard the roars of the very first mammals and will know the howls of agony of the very last."
Contrasts the approach of H.P. Lovecraft with other writers. Richard Matheson might start a story with the quotidian...Lovecraft does not.
A possible shortcoming of Lovecraft's works--the protagonists take long to understand the menace..they may even seem clueless.
Houellebecq observes that Lovecraft in his fiction makes no allusion to sex or money.
Eroticism doesn't mix well with Lovecraftian fiction.
The only human sentiments that Lovecraft is interested in are wonderment and fear.
The sole function of the protagonists in Lovecraft's stories is to perceive.
Lovecraft's stories tries to give an impression of objectivity---he utilizes math and the sciences; gives the longitude and latitude of locations and the dates and times of events...
It is clear that Lovecraft was a racist..his experience looking for a job in New York along with immigrants he detested...in his letters he decribes "Italico-Semitico-Mongolids" in terms like the hideous creatures of his weird fiction...The role of his racial hatred in his fiction has often been underestimated...
Lovecraft was married for a few years and this appears to be the happiest time of his life....
After Houellebecq's text are two stories by Lovecraft: "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness."
A brilliant study....first published in France in 1991 and translated into English a few years ago...evocatively written, like a novel.
Lovecraft created a great popular myth, which is rare in literature...of the Great Old Ones Houellebecq writes "they have heard the roars of the very first mammals and will know the howls of agony of the very last."
Contrasts the approach of H.P. Lovecraft with other writers. Richard Matheson might start a story with the quotidian...Lovecraft does not.
A possible shortcoming of Lovecraft's works--the protagonists take long to understand the menace..they may even seem clueless.
Houellebecq observes that Lovecraft in his fiction makes no allusion to sex or money.
Eroticism doesn't mix well with Lovecraftian fiction.
The only human sentiments that Lovecraft is interested in are wonderment and fear.
The sole function of the protagonists in Lovecraft's stories is to perceive.
Lovecraft's stories tries to give an impression of objectivity---he utilizes math and the sciences; gives the longitude and latitude of locations and the dates and times of events...
It is clear that Lovecraft was a racist..his experience looking for a job in New York along with immigrants he detested...in his letters he decribes "Italico-Semitico-Mongolids" in terms like the hideous creatures of his weird fiction...The role of his racial hatred in his fiction has often been underestimated...
Lovecraft was married for a few years and this appears to be the happiest time of his life....
After Houellebecq's text are two stories by Lovecraft: "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness."
August 1, 2011
"H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" is an excellent(albeit brief)analysis and survey of Lovecraft's life and its central influence on his work. The reason this is such an excellent and bold work is because Houellebecq pays tribute (in a most personal way) to a fellow writer. Some will find this book to be offensive, but few will have enough ammo to argue against Houellebecq uncompromising conclusions and lucid insights. I also found Houellebecq's writing to be more interesting and entertaining than S.T. Joshi's (who is considered the greatest Lovecraft scholar/biographer) writings on Lovecraft.
This book will indubitably be enjoyable for Lovecraft novices and connoisseurs alike. The book also includes two Lovecraft stories: "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness", thus "H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" is a virtual college level introductory course on Lovecraft. Stephen King's introduction is also quite the tribute to Lovecraft.
In short, I highly recommend "H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" to anyone that even has the most minor interest in Lovecraft.
Not only is "H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" an excellent analysis of Lovecraft, but it is also a great guide for writers.
This book will indubitably be enjoyable for Lovecraft novices and connoisseurs alike. The book also includes two Lovecraft stories: "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness", thus "H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" is a virtual college level introductory course on Lovecraft. Stephen King's introduction is also quite the tribute to Lovecraft.
In short, I highly recommend "H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" to anyone that even has the most minor interest in Lovecraft.
Not only is "H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" an excellent analysis of Lovecraft, but it is also a great guide for writers.
June 7, 2021
I loved this concise and sharp analysis of the enigma that is Lovecraft. Houellebecq expertly explains the nihilism present in Lovecraft’s works, while heaping a ton of well-deserved praise.
Now I need to re-read Lovecraft.
Now I need to re-read Lovecraft.
May 30, 2008
Come for Houellebecq's essay about Lovecraft (wherein, in 1991, Michel essentially drafts the thematic and stylistic blueprint for his future novels), but stay for the suprisingly awesome Lovecraft tales. (I rarely have nightmares but have since reading these -- seriously!)
Read
December 26, 2023Ett författarporträtt som är både ömt och personligt, utan att fördenskull vara onödigt vördnansfullt ("Det finns något inte helt litterärt hos Lovecraft").
För mig har den store Cthulhu alltid varit ångesthantering, hans kosmiska likgiltighet har för mig varit ett slags "vad gör det om hundra år, när allting kommer kring?".
Sidenote: Sanatorium förlag ger ut denna i tre olika varianter - jag fick den med omslagsbild av Erik Svetoft, en illustratör jag blivit väldigt förtjust i sistone.
För mig har den store Cthulhu alltid varit ångesthantering, hans kosmiska likgiltighet har för mig varit ett slags "vad gör det om hundra år, när allting kommer kring?".
Sidenote: Sanatorium förlag ger ut denna i tre olika varianter - jag fick den med omslagsbild av Erik Svetoft, en illustratör jag blivit väldigt förtjust i sistone.
July 18, 2019
I read this years ago and bought it when I saw it on the shelf of a local bookshop, mainly because I was intrigued by the title and also because I had heard of Lovecraft, but didn't know anything about him. It turns out he was pretty strange indeed and was racist, a strong misanthropist generally and not too keen on society full stop. I think he had a wife for a while, so he must have cut her some slack, even though she was a part of the lousy human race he so hated. He got terminally ill at some point and was supremely nice to his nurses, as he was so happy he was going to be dead soon and so felt relief and probably eased up on humanity, knowing he'd be done with it all soon after...
An odd man then and not all that likable, but the second half of this book has two of his short stories- The Call of Cthulu and The Whisperer in the Darkness and he certainly could write! He had a very elegant style it seems and could create very creepy and chilling tales that give you the shivers and both are very good stories indeed. I'd definitely like to read more from him as he had a gift for high quality, weird horror and its a shame he didn't have a happier life, although if he had of done, there would be none of his messed up classic tales to enjoy I suppose...hmm.
May 23, 2021
Seems pretty good, if I, while reading it wanted to re-read all of Lovecraft over again.
The longer Lovecraft was forced to remain in New York against his will, the greater his repulsion and his terror, until they reached alarming proportions. Thus he would write to Belknap Long, “the New York mongoloid problem is beyond calm mention.” Further on in the letter he declares, “I hope the end will be warfare…” In another letter, in a sinister presage, he advocates the use of cyanide gas.
The longer Lovecraft was forced to remain in New York against his will, the greater his repulsion and his terror, until they reached alarming proportions. Thus he would write to Belknap Long, “the New York mongoloid problem is beyond calm mention.” Further on in the letter he declares, “I hope the end will be warfare…” In another letter, in a sinister presage, he advocates the use of cyanide gas.
February 14, 2022
It contains two of the best H.P. Lovecraft stories written. The essay is interesting and well written. A well presented book that should be added to every dedicted Lovecraftian fan.
February 3, 2024
کتاب کوتاهی پر از جملات سخت و سنگین که حتی من عاشق لاوکرفت را هم از خواندن و تمام کردنش فراری داد.
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