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degringoladeBest I can figure, HP Lovecraft started writing around 1914, at the beginning of the storm times that began with the first world war, and through the stupidity of a a tragically wrong peace process culminated in the depression and the second world war. I argue that Lovecraft wrote the main body of his work during the "Roaring Twenties".
Lovecraft has never gone completely out of style. But I do argue that interest peaked again in the Seventies, at least in the crowd I ran in. Then interest waned and went onto the back burner for another fifty years, where interest restarted.
Welcome to 2020.
Obviously my interest in H.P. has a history. I wonder just how much of that history has to do with me and how much has to do with the storm-times we are appearing to be heading into. Even more important, how much of my current interest in Lovecraft is an interest stemming from all my doubts about the culture I am embedded it and it's effects on the world around me.
Lovecraft fell out of favor in my case because I had bought into a system. I swam and worked in that system and got my thirty pieces of silver for the effort. But over the past ten years, I have begun to focus on the cracks of the system, and these cracks are legion and getting longer and wider with each passing year.
I guess that Lovecraft tells us that the unknown is a scary place. This little fact is poorly understood by the bulk of Americans or Westerners in general. We have lived in a carefully crafted simulacrum where "adventures" are purchased at the local recreation store and are confined to weekends off where one scrambles to get home in time to spend Monday at the office.
Speaking from the dark past, I can tell you that adventures usually aren't something that are done during the process of pursuing a career. Adventures are things that have very uncertain outcomes and a very, very big chance of failure. As a matter of fact, the bigger the adventure, the better the chance you ain't coming out on the other side alive.
So Lovecraft speaks to us of the kind of adventure that our society has done it's level best to eradicate. One might even posit that real adventure is the farthest thing from most peoples minds.
Lovecraft has never gone completely out of style. But I do argue that interest peaked again in the Seventies, at least in the crowd I ran in. Then interest waned and went onto the back burner for another fifty years, where interest restarted.
Welcome to 2020.
Obviously my interest in H.P. has a history. I wonder just how much of that history has to do with me and how much has to do with the storm-times we are appearing to be heading into. Even more important, how much of my current interest in Lovecraft is an interest stemming from all my doubts about the culture I am embedded it and it's effects on the world around me.
Lovecraft fell out of favor in my case because I had bought into a system. I swam and worked in that system and got my thirty pieces of silver for the effort. But over the past ten years, I have begun to focus on the cracks of the system, and these cracks are legion and getting longer and wider with each passing year.
I guess that Lovecraft tells us that the unknown is a scary place. This little fact is poorly understood by the bulk of Americans or Westerners in general. We have lived in a carefully crafted simulacrum where "adventures" are purchased at the local recreation store and are confined to weekends off where one scrambles to get home in time to spend Monday at the office.
Speaking from the dark past, I can tell you that adventures usually aren't something that are done during the process of pursuing a career. Adventures are things that have very uncertain outcomes and a very, very big chance of failure. As a matter of fact, the bigger the adventure, the better the chance you ain't coming out on the other side alive.
So Lovecraft speaks to us of the kind of adventure that our society has done it's level best to eradicate. One might even posit that real adventure is the farthest thing from most peoples minds.
