Lovecraft: A Biography [Mass Market Paperback]

L. Sprague De Camp (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (July 12, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345251156
• ISBN-13: 978-0345251152
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,498,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HPL, a man you could like., April 13, 2006

By 

W. Zeranski (Moscow, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lovecraft; A Biography, (Hardcover)

Okay, de Camp has been catching hell for this biography for decades. Well, I've read the book, as well as texts by other biographers, and de Camp's work is readable--and entertaining. The structure of the book is well laid out. I like the bits of Lovecraft's poetry used to head the beginning of each chapter, and I do agree with de Camp that the bulk of HPL's poetry to terrible. BUT--the horror poetry-- such as the `Fungi from Yoggoth' is outstanding.

Way back, twenty, twenty-five years ago, I read and I learned a great deal about HPL from this biography. I must add, it was the first major work done on Lovecraft's life and that is no small achievement, considering that at the time the book was published, Lovecraft was still a little-known horror writer for the Pulps.

de Camp's effort gave HPL's reputation a good and very positive shot in the arm. Positive? How can there be a positive when HPL's racism is such a sticking point. Well, the simple fact is, if you read the book--all the way to the end--you learn how much HLP changed. HLP, the so-called recluse, was very much apart of the world. He married. He divorced. He lived in New York and travel in the South. He was just like anybody else, then as well as now.

De Camp treats his subject with care simply by being honest. de Camp showed me a man I could like.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Filled with Information and Critique, January 16, 2010

By 

W. H. Pugmire "I never can be tied to raw, ne... (Sesqua Valley) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lovecraft; A Biography, (Hardcover)

Sprague was a friend and correspondent of mine for some few years, during the time when I first became obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft and determined to become a modern Cthulhu Mythos writer. I supplied some corrections and information after this hardcover edition of his HPL biography was published, which is why he kindly listed me in the paperback edition. There were some few corrections made in the mass market pb published by Ballentine. Sprague worked extremely hard on this book, and he got most of the biographical facts correct, thus as a biography this is a good book. Most of the critique, if I remember rightly, comes from Sprague's interpretation of what he considered Lovecraft's eccentricities; he often sounds as if he could get HPL on the psychiatrist couch and so lecture him on how to improve his soul (Sprague told me, for example, that I could be "cured" of my homosexuality, which even then seemed like a very old fashioned and conservative idea). Sprague was a successful and completely professional writer, and as such he had no patience with Lovecraft's non-commercial stance -- something about which HPL and E. Hoffmann Price exchanged many heated letters, some few of which may be found in the SELECTED LETTERS editions published by Arkham House (it was a topic that so bugged Price that he continued his arguments long after HPL's death in the letter columns of the fanzine NYCTALOPS). Sprague seems to be constantly scolding Lovecraft in this book for not behaving as a professional writer "should" behave, It is an attitude that finds its most perverse manifestation in this passage from Lin Carter's A LOOK BEHIND THE CTHULHU MYTHOS:

"Lovecraft was such a bundle of contradictions that he will be the despair of his eventual biographer. How does one deal with a man so quirky and changeful and perverse that within a month after selling his first story to WEIRD TALES, he turns around and writes a piece of snobbish idiocy to Long such as the following?:

'I am well-nigh resolv'd to write no more tales, but merely to dream when I have a mind to, not stopping to do anything so vulgar as to set down the dream for a boarish Publick. I have concluded, that Literature is no proper pursuit for a gentleman; and that Writing ought never to be consider'd but as an elegant Accomplishment, to be indulg'd in with Infrequency and Discrimination.'

In that passage you have much of what I would call the worst of Lovecraft, his weakness and his folly: the absurd pretensions to gentility on the part of a man who had lived barely above the level of utter poverty for three years; the ludicrous self-delusion of thinking himself an 'artist' -- the snobbishness of spelling 'literature' with a capital L -- and the silly affectation of 18th-century spelling and grammar. What an infuriating poseur he sounds in his letters!"

To which I would respond: but Lovecraft's family background and very early youth WAS a product of gentility; but Lovecraft WAS most definitely an artist, and his sincere attempts to create weird fiction that was Literary Art is why he has been published in Penguin Classics ans The Library of America; his spelling of 'literature' with an L was part of his quaint pose, which is one of the joys in his wonderful correspondence.

There is much of what I call "bad attitude" toward Lovecraft in the book, which comes about from the author's stress on the value of being a professional and commercial writer; but as HPL wrote in his famous letter to Edwin F, Baird, WEIRD TALES' first editor, "...I pay no attention to the demands of commercial writing. My object is such pleasure as I can obtain from the creation of certain bizarre pictures, situations, or atmospheric effects; and the only reader I hold in mind is myself." Here is an example of de Camp's critcism, in which he reprints Lin Carter's comments on "The Nameless City," a story included in the third Penguin edition of HPL's fiction:

"All such words denote, not physical facts, but the narrator's emotional reaction to facts. Not all adjectives are objectionable; a moderate use of them gives the story color. But adjectives like 'horrible' and 'ghastly,' which merely convey the mental state of the author or his fictional narrator, slow the story down without enhancing it. As my colleague Lin Carter, in criticizing Lovecraft's story 'The Nameless City' puts it:

The story is overwritten, over-dramatic, and the

mood of mounting horror is applied in a very artificial

manner. Rather than creating in the reader a mood of terror,

Lovecraft DESCRIBES a mood of terror; the emotion is applied in the

adjectives--the valley in which the city lies is 'terrible'; the

ruins themselves are of an 'unwholesome' antiquity; certain of the altars

and stones 'suggested forbidden rites of terrible, revolting, and

inexplicable nature.' Of course, if you stop to think about it,

such terms are meaningless. A stone is a stone, a valley is a valley,

and ruins are merely ruins. Decking them out with a variety of

shudderry adjectives does not make them intrinsically shuddersome.

This excess of modifiers is simply a beginner's bad writing. Poe did much of it, for in his day it was considered 'fine writing'; but standards have changed. To the young Lovecraft, however, Poe could do no wrong."

This is such a load of ichor -- and there is something quite pathetic about a writer as prosaic as Lin Carter condemning the imaginative prose of H. P. Lovecraft. In "The Nameless City," a valley IS MUCH MORE than a valley, and the antique ruins are so much more than "merely ruins." This is one of my favorite tales by HPL, and I have written my own sequel to it, "Immortal Remains." Yet even S. T. is highly critical of the tale:

"The absurdities and implausibilities in this tale, along with its wildly overheated prose, give it a very low place in the Lovecraft canon. Where, for example, did the creatures who built the nameless city come from? There is no indication that they came from another planet; but if they are simply early denizens of the earth, how did they come to possess their physical shape? Their curiously COMPOSITE nature seems to rule out any evolutionary pattern known to earth's creatures. How do they continue to exist in the depths of the earth? The narrator must also be very foolish not to realise at once that the entities were the ones who built the city. Lovecraft does not seem to have thought out the details of this story at all carefully."

Now to me such criticism is nonsense. The story is a tale of phantasy and horror -- it does not NEED to make any kind of "logical" sense or have its roots in mundane reality. Had Lovecraft stopped to add such details to the story about the history of the reptilian race, he would have dragged the narrative to dull slowness. His aim in writing the tale was to evoke a mood of mystery and terror, and in this he is superbly successful. This was one of Lovecraft's favorites among his own works, and I love this tale.

The hardcover first edition offered here of de Camp's biography is the best edition of this book, for it contains an index that was not included in the paperback. I return to this book now and again, just for the joy of reading the Life of H. P. Lovecraft, which has so shaped my own. I share with Lovecraft an inability to behave as a professional writer perhaps "should" -- I lack the discipline that is required to live as a full-time commercial writer. Some of us simply cannot exist like that, nor do we wish to. But this in no way minimizes our sincere work in the genre of weird fiction.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For the most part, informative--yet annoying., October 30, 2003

By 

e5150 (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lovecraft; A Biography, (Hardcover)

I could NOT read this all the way through due to the author's constant reminders of Lovecraft's racism. It got annoying after a while. On every other page it seemed he was nitpicking about some comments Lovecraft made about Jews or Blacks, which made me think "why include these in your book if all you're going to do is rag on him for it? We got the picture after your first criticism!"
Besides that, a book about Lovecraft can only be as exciting as its' subject, which is to say it isn't. HPL didn't do much. He just liked to stay home, and even when he was married he would much rather have done anything else than spend time with his wife. He didn't have any drama in his life and it sure doesn't make for good reading, except for the exploits of his creepy mother during his long drawn out youth.
There is good coverage of his pulp fiction "career" and the trials he had to go through to get published. It's funny reading about these magazine editor idiots who turned down his fiction for one reason or another. Had they but known what would happen to HPL posthumously....
HPL's attempts to get a "real" job are covered and are quite cringeworthy. He was certainly not cut out for a sales position.