(no subject)

[phosfate]

I read Lovecraft over the long weekend. I like him, what with that ability to quietly scare the living crap out of me and make me flee the house because it's got all scary in there.

But there's this problem. If you've ever read anything written before, say, 1960, you know you're gonna get casual racism. You're reading a harmless boarding school story and someone says something stupid about Jews, probably involving their nasal capacity and financial acumen. Or the detective grills a person of color, and the author decides he's gwine break out the colorful accent, yassuh, sho'nuff. It's there. There's nothing you can do about it.

Mr Lovecraft, however, took some of the (even then dubious) socialogical and anthropological thinking of the day and worked it into his supernatural milieu, so that non-white immigrants are literally subhumans, often members of ancient, hidden, devil-worshipping cults. So you get stuff like the jaw-dropping bit in "Herbert West, Re-Animator" where he describes an African-American boxer as resembling a gorilla, with long knuckle-scraping arms, and apparently means it seriously. Tom-toms are mentioned. Tom-toms. Lovecraft even scores a racist hat trick by dissing Jews and Italians on the same page. It's hard to know whether to laugh or go look for liquor. It also fucks up the story because it's hard to be scared and gobsmacked at the same time.

Oh well.

He also picks on the Kurds. I mean, Jesus, had he ever even seen a Kurd?

Lovecraft also has the mutant ability to crack my shit up, with a dry delivery that means you're often halfway through the next sentence before the soda comes out your nose. This particular volume has annotations of varying usefulness. Included was a fragment of a letter, describing a 1923 visit to the First Baptist Church in...oh, somewhere. Providence. Boston. Whatever. Let's watch:

"This is my maternal ancestral church, but I had not been in the main auditorium since 1895, or in the building at all since 1907, when I gave an illustrated astronomical lecture to the Boys' Club. We found this fane as pleasing within as without, the paneling and the carving above the doors being especially notable as specimens of Georgian workmanship. We ascended into the organ loft, and I endeavour'd to play "Yes, We Have No Bananas," but was balk'd by lack of power, since the machine is not a self-starter."

He talked like that a lot. Words such as "endeavour'd" and "balk'd" were apparently the American horrorist equivalent of "OMGWTFLOL," or "pwned."

Comments

[katemonkey.livejournal.com]

He's a racist, but he's the kind of jovial syphilitc-ridden old school racist!

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

"We hated everyone and we liked it!"

[saskia139.livejournal.com]

Ages ago I read a book by Lin Carter on the Cthulhu Mythos, in which he mentions both that dear old H.P. was a bigot even by the standards of his day, and that he liked to affect eighteenth-century spelling and grammar, particularly when he wasn't writing for publication (or, "the publick", as he might have said).

I still haven't actually *read* any Lovecraft, but I have heard a non-self-starting organ played. You need someone to pump the bellows. I have also heard Marvin Suggs and his All Food Glee Club perform "Yes, We Have No Bananas".

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Try At the Mountains of Madness.

[saskia139.livejournal.com]

Thanks! *makes note*

[ragdoll.livejournal.com]

It's been so long since I've immersed my self in ye old Cyclopean Horror that is HP that I'd forgotten all that. I should go back and torment enlighten myself again.

I still remember reading my Bobbsie Twins books as a kid and their housekeeper and handyman were black and their dialogue was written in the most godawful faux Steppin Fetchit patois imagineable. Even as a little kid, I thought it was stupid.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I tried to read a reprint of the first edition of an early Hardy Boys last year. Many of the supporting cast of this particular adventure were of Asian descent, and it was just ugly. Not to mention illegible. I had to give it up.

I'm pretty sure the word "honolable" figured in there.

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

You know, when they run Marx Brothers and Shirley Temple films in their uncut form, the station showing the film will put up a little warning plaque before the movie about the racism in the film, and point out that you kind of have to realize it's "of the era."

I have yet to see a warning plaque for James Bond films and the like about the rampant sexism within belonging to the era, however.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Try the John Gardney Bond novels. Not only is the sexism ramped up to the nth degree, it's stupid as well. Apparently Bond can dissasemble a gun in a sexy manner

[ragdoll.livejournal.com]

I am pretty certain I still have my old Bobbsies and Nancy Drews somewhere. I don't remember there ever being any really racist stuff in Nancy Drew but maybe I was just ignorant.

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I was able to turn up this though:

And, surely enough, so it was. The cow had wandered out of the woods, and, coming up behind Dinah, had licked her neck with a big red tongue. Perhaps the cow thought Dinah was a lump of black salt!

"Go 'way! Go 'long outer heah! Leef me be!" screamed Dinah, and catching up a handful of wooden plates she threw them at the cow. They
rattled on the animal's horns, and then, with another "Moo!" the creature turned and crashed back through the bushes.

"And Dinah thought that was I, tickling her with a fish tail," said Bert, laughing.

"Dat's what I did, honey!" the colored cook said, with a laugh. "I s'pected yo' was up to some ob yo' all tricks!"

Even as a kid, I knew of no black women who screamed "Lawksamercy!" at the drop of a hat.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

There was one Bobbsie Twins early book incident...

the father was babbling on about some damn thing or the other and had occasion to mention how the family was native to the land they were living on.

The little daugher, easily the most annoying, expresses suprise that they are natives, for they did not wear grass skirts and carry spears

[ashenmote.livejournal.com]

I had pretty much the same sentiment when I revisited Frankestein last week. Here I believed Shelley had not much opportunity to employ any flowery racism in her story. But she managed.

But nothing can really gross you out when you grew up with Karl May's (german author) fictitious journey accounts. He's infamous.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Shit. Now I've got to re-read Frankenstein.

[ashenmote.livejournal.com]

Heh. Don't miss the shifty turkish token heath then.

But she doesn't actually need the treacherous foreigners to come to business.

[rackhamrose.livejournal.com]

*here via shoiryu's friendslist*

Amen. I once read a story of his--I forget which one, it had an underground city and Darkly Hinted Forces Of Evil and a Virginian guy who ate half of his best friend or something--and while it was very serious and creepy and "eeew"-inducing, the main character had a cat called Nigger-Man.

Can't tell you what a scene-killer it was to be reading about this creepy underground city, and the skeletons of long dead, and the strange carvings on the walls... and then there's a noise, and all of a sudden, Nigger-Man comes racing around the corner!

I mean, hell, C.S. Lewis had a sinister cat who was very important to the plot, too, but reading about "Ginger" doing something unexpected isn't quite as jarring.

[ymfaery]

He also picks on the Kurds. I mean, Jesus, had he ever even seen a Kurd?

He might have gone whey over there at one point.

I'm sorry. Honest.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

BITCH I MAKE STABBITY ON YOUR HEAD!

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

I can highly recommend "Shadows over Baker Street", a Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft crossover zine... er, I mean anthology. But it reads like a zine. ;) Neil Gaiman's story, A Study In Emerald, won a Hugo at the last World con -- he actually posted the story online on his website if you want a taste of the anthology. I haven't seen any rampant racism yet and I'm halfway through it! YAY modern writers writing in an old-world patois, but not *too* old-world!

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I got it a couple months ago (thanks, Amazon Marketplace!), but I've only read "A Study in Emerald" so far. I'm glad to hear it won a Hugo.

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

He was also the emcee, so it was quite cute the way he didn't know what to do with the award once he'd won it! So he reverently put it on the floor next to the lecturn and continued emceeing the show.

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

I will give it to the turn of the century types. They managed to take racisim to the utmost peak. They hated everybody for imagined reasons. For not imagined reasons.

In a weird way they were sort of universal about it. Everyone not exactly like them, and born in the same block was in for it.

Plus, the more they get into it, the more and more apparent it gets they have never actually met black people before.

I give bonus points for hating the Kurds. That's one that was ahead of it's time.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I give bonus points for hating the Kurds. That's one that was ahead of it's time.

Truly. H.G. Wells is somewhere, gnashing his teeth and saying, "DAMN DAMN DAMN!"

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Some Googling brings up this great excerpt ---

I am an addict of the old Tom Swift books and, in a small way, a
collector. I read my first one when I was about 7 (_Tom Swift and His Air
Scout_). Nontheless, even my tiny intellect could see that the books were,
truth to tell, quite poorly written.....very comparable to the dime novels
in quality. It is alittle discouraging to find these books being lionized
while *really* good kids writers like Haggard, Dumas, Blackmore, Stevenson,
ERB etc. recede into oblivion. One wonders how the "home school" crowd
handle the charachter of Eradicate, Tom's black handyman who gets to say
lines like "Massa Swif', I jes' done discombobulate mah posterior". So much
for revisionism. The Swift books were not the worst offendor in this
regard. For really unbridled racism a perusal of the novels of "Roy
Rockwood" is worthwhile. Rockwood is best remembered today as the
pseudononymous author of the Bomba series. His more interesting books are
imitation Tom Swifts
Perhaps it indicated the unhealthy state of my ego, but I always
identified with Tom's friend Ned, who was stupider and less athletic than
the hero, went out with a less attractive girlfriend, and was given to
saying things like "whew!" when Tom condescended to explaining the
principle behind the bicycle pump

[apoplexia.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three?

*sings* "Ausgerechnet Bananen. Bananen verlangt sie von mir!"