[HN Gopher] Lovecraft and Me - How cosmic horror gave me hope (2...
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Lovecraft and Me - How cosmic horror gave me hope (2020)
Author : bikenaga
Score : 56 points
Date : 2023-11-11 00:38 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (yalereview.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (yalereview.org)
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| As a longtime Cthulhu cultist, I've always thought that the
| mythology is much more interesting that Lovecraft's actual
| writing. I consider Alan Moore's Providence to be the ultimate
| interpretation of Lovecraft's mythology.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Cthulu the Titan like god thing, from South Park?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Yes - He features in a lot of different popular media and was
| first portrayed in H.P.Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu
| (published 1928).
|
| The mythology of Great Old Ones etc. is usually referred to
| as the Cthulhu Mythos, though Cthulhu is definitely not the
| most powerful being. (That honour would probably go to
| Azathoth - a blind, mad sleeping god who happened to create
| our universe as part of his dreams - don't wake him up!)
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Im def a fan after South Park XD
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Horses for courses. When I had my Lovecraft kick as a teenager,
| I had zero interest in going on to read the stuff that later
| authors set in the same universe. Derleth et al. seemed like
| mediocre talents just riding on Lovecraft's coattails.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Yeah, I haven't read any Derleth, though I am a fan of
| Charles Stross' Laundry Files series. Also The King in Yellow
| by Robert W Chambers is in my opinion an essential addition
| to Lovecraft's mythology.
| momentoftop wrote:
| I'm the opposite. One of the things I love about Lovecraft is
| how oblique the mythology is in his writings. I don't know much
| about Azathoth, save that he's somehow "Lord of all Things",
| while being a "Blind Idiot God." That seeming contradiction is
| tantalising and the last thing I want is to see it fleshed out.
|
| It's fear of the unknown, after all, not fear of the things
| that have detailed wiki pages.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I find the extra detail adds to the horror, though I'd
| generally agree. The scariest horror films are the ones that
| hint rather than depicting everything.
|
| With Azathoth, I find it more disturbing to consider that our
| entire universe is just a fragment of a dream by Azathoth,
| and the pipers play a tune to keep him asleep, as what
| happens to a dream when the dreamer awakes?
| nextaccountic wrote:
| What I find most disturbing is that it makes more sense
| than most creation myths, at least from my modern point of
| view; and it paints humanity hanging by a thread, like 20th
| century fears of being hit by a supernova, or a meteor, etc
| (of course we had apocalyptic themes through all of history
| though)
|
| Or rather, anyone that had a dream with a person that said
| "don't wake up, or I will die" can relate
| momentoftop wrote:
| I love the idea of hanging by a thread, of complete
| existential and cosmic precarity. To again quote the
| opening of Call of Cthulhu, science will reveal "our
| frightful position [in reality]". I like the fact that,
| for Lovecraft, the answer to such terrifying revelations
| is mostly to draw the curtains and ideally brick up the
| window and insist "nothing to see here." The opening
| quote offers that as one solution, but it's recurrent in
| his stories. It's what the protagonists end up doing in
| the Dunwich horror mentioned in the blogpost.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Also this specific tidbit explains how he can be lord of
| all things (he created the universe anyway) but still be a
| blind idiot fool (he apparently doesn't even realizes
| what's happening)
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I like the description "monstrous nuclear chaos beyond
| angled space" as it implies that Azathoth isn't a
| reasoning, thinking being, but something that is totally
| beyond human comprehension. As an atheist, one thing that
| annoys me about the depictions of various deities is when
| they have petty human reasoning and desires. I like to
| think the relationship is more akin to ants thinking
| about humans - the ants have no way to even grasp the
| nature of humans and humans have no interest (or at least
| most people don't) in what an ant believes or worships.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Agree. In Lovecraft's hands, I regard it as maybe the most-
| honest and -accurate depiction of cosmic reality--of that
| horror-adjacent feeling one may experience trying to actually
| _imagine_ the universe--in fiction, but the effect falls
| apart if you start filling in the gaps. Most of the broader
| "mythos" stuff since Lovecraft can still be fun in about the
| same way that Catholic mythology's fertile ground for horror,
| but it's not the same thing and it's not as interesting.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| You're probably already aware of it, but I think his take on
| Swamp Thing was also rare and incredible.
| hoten wrote:
| I can relate to the author's frustration of forgetting large
| chunks of their childhood. My memory has always been poor, and
| I'm often envious of people who seem to know their upbringing
| like the back of their hand - as without it some acts of
| introspection ("knowing yourself") are more difficult.
|
| At least he had some letters! Bring born post-internet I have no
| letters, and the modern equivalent of IM or whatever internet
| communities are too easily lost.
| eulgro wrote:
| Speaking for myself I think through childhood I have just been
| too damn busy all the time with school and my own projects,
| never actually taking time to be bored and recall the past. And
| by not continually remembering myself the recent past, I
| eventually forgot about it when it became a distant past.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Speaking for myself I think through childhood I have just
| been too damn busy all the time with school and my own
| projects
|
| Me too, but I remember playing with my neighbor. The details
| are gone but I remember about some specific moments and
| experience too.
|
| > And by not continually remembering myself the recent past,
| I eventually forgot about it when it became a distant past.
|
| Why is it important to remember the past from such a long
| time ago?
|
| I remember what happened last week more clearly than what
| happen last year.
|
| I remember my final months in university a bit more clearly
| that the first year, which itself is clearer than my
| childhood.
|
| Actually I had to count how long ago were my final months,
| it's been 6 years.
|
| However, some key points and formula from the first year are
| still extremely clear in my head, because I've been using
| them frequently.
|
| Forgetting about the distant path may be a feature, not a
| bug: it's like a garbage collector running in the background
| taking care of memories that haven't been retrieved in a long
| time, to make room for new ones that may be more useful. Old
| but useful memories aren't touched by the GC.
|
| I'd say that's good: I care way more about the board game I
| played last week that some obscure details about childhood
| toys that have 0 utility in the present.
|
| Nostalgia is just a preference for the well know, causing
| desire to revive the past masquerading as utility, making us
| wrongly discount present day innovations by lack of
| familiarity with them.
| eulgro wrote:
| It was a reflection I had after realizing how much others
| remember their childhood and I forgot most of it. It made
| me think on how I got there. But in the end I tend to draw
| the same conclusion as you do: I forgot because it had no
| value besides a nostalgic one. And I like you tend to
| rationalize nostalgy. I don't give much value to the past,
| except maybe an educational one.
| bouvin wrote:
| I am a longtime devotee of Lovecraft. For a deep dive into the
| man's life, I direct your attention to the Voluminous podcast
| [1], which covers a bit of H.P. Lovecraft's extensive
| correspondence. He was a fascinating character, simultaneously
| infuriating, repugnant, intellectual, sympathetic, and kind. When
| he wrote at his best, he was exceptionally good.
|
| I lean more towards the belief that what was created between
| Lovecraft and his friends regarding their shared universe while
| Lovecraft was alive is superior to what came later. Subsequent
| revisions introduced elements like order, good vs. evil, etc.,
| which, in my opinion, are fundamentally at odds with the
| incomprehensibility of cosmic horror.
|
| These days, of course, Cthulhu seems more suited to a pair of
| plush slippers.
|
| [1] https://www.hplhs.org/voluminous.php
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| As you mention a podcast, I'd better mention BBC's The
| Lovecraft Investigations as they are a modern interpretation
| and most excellent.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06spb8w
| throwanem wrote:
| I thought the most recent season fell off a little, but
| you're not wrong that it's quite good overall, and very much
| in the "mythos" character given Simpson's prior work in audio
| drama.
| momentoftop wrote:
| The article mentions ST Joshi a few times, who I think deserves
| credit not just as the foremost scholar of Lovecraft, but
| possibly for bringing attention to Lovecraft in the 60s and
| 70s. I thoroughly enjoyed his "Decline of the West", which
| pores over Lovecraft's correspondences trying to get a broad
| handle on his philosophy and aesthetics. He strikes me as a
| pretty complicated individual, with his early bigotry and his
| later slightly less malignant cultural chauvinism always being
| at odds with his cosmicism. And I think his nostalgic, escapist
| fantasy might generally have been at odds with his
| uncompromisingly scientific realism, perhaps contributing to
| his somewhat bitter and bleak view of the sciences (each
| straining in their own direction).
|
| (I once owned one of those cute green Cthulhu plushies)
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| S.T. Joshi is well known in cultist circles. He features in
| the Exegesis Lovecraft documentary:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20869650/
| globalnode wrote:
| What a fantastic writer Kieran is (and H.P. Lovecraft, I did read
| a few of those old books as a teenager).
| photochemsyn wrote:
| A very well written article, with interesting personal anecdotes.
| Lovecraft is certainly iconic, with a writing style that seems to
| belong more to the 19th than the 20th century - but which was
| heavily influenced by more modern scientific concepts, such as
| non-Euclidean geometry and the size of the known universe. One
| additional fact not mentioned in the article is that Lovecraft
| was an ardent atheist, and produced at least one searing
| criticism of religion in general, in particular of
| 'utilitarianism', i.e. the notion that even if not true, religion
| has societal benefits:
|
| https://www.skeptical-science.com/essays/letter-religion-lov...
|
| As far as the question of Lovecraft's prejudices and the 2016
| decision to remove his image from the World Fantasy Award, well,
| one might as well cancel most if not all of the signers of the
| American Declaration of Independence over their support for
| slavery and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. Cancel
| culture and book burning is redolant of authoritarian ideology
| and shouldn't be tolerated in any modern society - as more and
| more people have come to realize, so there's some hope.
|
| Many of the derivative works published by various authors have
| instead poked fun at Lovecraft's prejudices ("Lovecraft & Carter"
| by Johnathan Howard has an alternative timeline in which
| Lovecraft has children who engage in race mixing, etc.), which is
| a much better way to address the issue. There are a great many
| such derivative works spanning sci-fi and fantasy genres, which
| shows how influential Lovecraft has been.
| tptacek wrote:
| Whether or not a private organization chooses to award people a
| bust of HP Lovecraft or a trophy of a spooky tree has really
| not much at all to do with the article we're reading and
| discussing. This isn't an article about "the Howard" award.
|
| _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article
| or post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article
| or post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead_
|
| And you did the exact same thing. You could have just replied
| to the substantive first paragraph and ignored the rest.
| pvg wrote:
| Replies to comments on articles aren't comments on
| articles.
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