Nearly every writer critical of Lovecraft on this ground cites as the prime example of his racism a particular poem supposedly written by him in 1912, but I regard that attribution of authorship as doubtful. Are Lovecraft’s space aliens and other-worldly creatures proxies or stand-ins for humans of color? Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff is a 2016 novel that satirically explores that question, following an African-American protagonist who is a fan of Lovecraft in the era of Jim Crow. To what extent Lovecraft’s social and political views influenced his created universe is the subject of the title essay in Lovecraft and a World in Transition, a collection by Lovecraft scholar and biographer ST Joshi. As does every horror writer, he exaggerated his own irrational fears in his stories: his phobia of seafood manifests, one might conclude, in his siting the lair of Cthulhu in the lost city of R’lyeh sunken under the Pacific Ocean. I do not believe it is possible to separate the man from his work: Lovecraft the man was afraid of nearly everything unfamiliar, and that discomfort – dread, really – of the “other” is what permeates and distinguishes the world view expressed in his fiction. My goal here is not to excuse his racism, but to place it in a context of Lovecraft as a human being with very real flaws. There is no question that HP Lovecraft, influential writer of horror fiction and son of Providence, held views that were clearly racist, outdated outliers even by the standards of his time.
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