Photo: Michael Stevens,
CC by-nc-sa
The 70
th anniversary of Lovecraft’s death, which puts the quietus to the copyright dispute over his oeuvre, and probably moves the stars to rightness besides, is approaching.
On CNN.com’s front page this morning, there was a curious headline: “Providence: Following the Footsteps of a Horror Icon.” First, a moment to entertain an unthinkable thought, but then dismissal. Maybe it was because Stephen King or whoever had spent a little time there, because it couldn’t be that the foundational horror author Howard Phillips Lovecraft had a following among… travel writers? But in a moment of sanity-blasting revelation, I saw that the AP was indeed putting out a location piece on Lovecraft’s place in the history of Providence, RI; whatever the city thinks of him, he thought highly enough of it to have “I AM PROVIDENCE” carved into his headstone.
In the time I allot myself to write a blog posting, it’s hard to sum up my feelings about this article. Lovecraft’s stories have given me a great deal of pleasure over the years, and at some level I’d like to see more interest in his work in the literary mainstream so that more people might share that pleasure. But part of his work’s appeal is that it impels so many subcultural currents, in a way that might be imperiled by more general appreciation. “The Call of Cthulhu” is a great novella, as good as anything in the form, but perhaps more critical is that the idea of Cthulhu has taken on a life of its own, as a shared signifier of a taste for weirdness, a high-fidelity signal of participation in a rich, shared imaginary universe.
By “participation,” I mean not merely “consumption” but “creation.” It is said of the Velvet Underground’s album The Velvet Underground & Nico that everyone who bought it started a band. Similarly, Lovecraft seems to disproportionately attract creators, provoking even productive ones (e.g. Stephen King, a vocal Lovecraft admirer) to pastiche. During his life, and in the near century since his death, the universe he created has been further populated those who loved him and his stories. The Temple of Dagon, over there on my blogroll, is just one easily-accessible manifestation. Even the less-talented and less-motivated are often stirred, like the dreamers moved to nightmare by Cthulhu’s call. I’ve been there myself, writing several scenarios for the Lovecraftian horror role-playing game The Call of Cthulhu, and frequently drawing on the idiom in much of my writing and design. My unease at a wider popularity for Lovecraft might be from a selfish desire to see him best beloved by those most likely to expand on his legacy, who will tell me more stories the way that HPL might have.
As a happy postscript, the 70th anniversary of Lovecraft’s death is coming up on 15 March, and with it an end to the acrimonious copyright dispute that has marred, however slightly, his otherwise sterling literary estate. His entire body of work will pass uncontroversially into the public domain, and presumably live forever (and now indisputably legally) on the Internet and its successors, or at least until the stars are right and the earth — and all of existence — cleared for its true masters. I urge raising a glass not just to HPL’s memory, but to the shared memory he created for us all.
