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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Earlier this year, a quasi-amateur "pulp" writer vaulted into the national literary canon when the Library of America published H. P. Lovecraft: Tales. Now McSweeney's Believer Books makes available in English a perspicacious essay on the reclusive horror-fictionist by a controversially antiliberal French novelist. Houellebecq finds Lovecraft's significance in his rejection of human importance. A thoroughgoing materialist, Lovecraft based the horror in his stories on the perception that humanity was doomed to extinction well before the end of the cosmos. The monstrous, implacable, arational Old Ones--Cthulhu and the rest--that Lovecraft repeatedly depicts as eventually invading and destroying human civilization are simply the imaginative expression of a deeply pessimistic cosmic fatalism that Lovecraft's own stunted life seemingly endorsed. Lovecraft was against life and the world because science and rationality told him they were meaningless and ephemeral. Yet what inspirationally disturbing and vivid fiction Lovecraft's beliefs animated. Without his example, would the fiction of Stephen King, who contributes an argumentative introduction here, and such superb movie shockers as Alien ever have existed? Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
See all Editorial Reviews
Earlier this year, a quasi-amateur "pulp" writer vaulted into the national literary canon when the Library of America published H. P. Lovecraft: Tales. Now McSweeney's Believer Books makes available in English a perspicacious essay on the reclusive horror-fictionist by a controversially antiliberal French novelist. Houellebecq finds Lovecraft's significance in his rejection of human importance. A thoroughgoing materialist, Lovecraft based the horror in his stories on the perception that humanity was doomed to extinction well before the end of the cosmos. The monstrous, implacable, arational Old Ones--Cthulhu and the rest--that Lovecraft repeatedly depicts as eventually invading and destroying human civilization are simply the imaginative expression of a deeply pessimistic cosmic fatalism that Lovecraft's own stunted life seemingly endorsed. Lovecraft was against life and the world because science and rationality told him they were meaningless and ephemeral. Yet what inspirationally disturbing and vivid fiction Lovecraft's beliefs animated. Without his example, would the fiction of Stephen King, who contributes an argumentative introduction here, and such superb movie shockers as Alien ever have existed? Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
In this prescient work, Michel Houellebecq focuses his considerable analytical skills on H. P. Lovecraft, the seminal, enigmatic horror writer of the early 20th century. Houellebecq’s insights into the craft of writing illuminate both Lovecraft and Houellebecq’s own work. The two are kindred spirits, sharing a uniquely dark worldview. But even as he outlines Lovecraft’s rejection of this loathsome world, it is Houellebecq’s adulation for the author that drives this work and makes it a love song, infusing the writing with an energy and passion not seen in Houellebecq’s novels to date. This book is indispensable reading for anyone interested in Lovecraft, Houellebecq, or the past and future of horror.
See all Editorial Reviews
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49% buy the item featured on this page: H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life  (6) |
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