Interesting review.

The Classic Horror Stories of H.P. Lovecraft edited by Roger Luckhurst

bookslut.com

“Again, it’s context that reminds us, in this very scene, that what we’re reading is not only the emergence of a monster on the page, but the emergence of a genre — and perhaps that’s enough to forgive some utterly confounding prose. But Luckhurst’s forthright introduction has more context to offer readers than just an exploration of Lovecraft’s head-scratching style: it also reveals that the latter’s preoccupation with alien terrors is all too firmly rooted in his own unshakeable racism and xenophobia.

“This is not news to many Lovecraft readers, though a great number of collections of his work have been printed with little to no mention of the author’s politics in their introductions. It’s no secret that Lovecraft was a believer in eugenics, and was repulsed by the teeming number of immigrants and “lesser” people he encountered during his brief years in New York City. A staunch Anglo-Saxon Nativist, Lovecraft was in favor of strict immigration policies that would bolster New England against “racial suicide.” A passage from a letter describing denizens of the Lower East Side slums reads almost exactly like a description out of “The Dunwich Horror”: “They — or the degenerate gelatinous fermentations of which they were composed — seem’d to ooze, seep and trickle thro’ the gaping cracks in the horrible houses… and I thought of some avenue of Cyclopean and unwholesome vats, crammed to the vomiting point with gangrenous vileness, and about to burst and inundate the world…”

“In his 1991 introduction to An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H.P. Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi remarks on the surprising nature of Lovecraft’s stubborn ideas about race. In every other aspect of his life, Joshi states, Lovecraft applied a scholar’s curiosity, and was often reforming opinions when presented with logic or science. But in the matter of his xenophobia and fear of miscegenation within the Nordic race, he remained unmoveable throughout his life.”