H.P. Lovecraft (Twayne's United States Authors Series, No 549)

Rating:
Summary: A meritorious appraisal of Lovecraft's place in literature
Review: Thanks to the urging of series editor Warren French, Twayne's United States Author Series includes this scholarly study of H.P. Lovecraft by Peter Cannon, and an excellent study of the neglected master of the macabre it is. I would not classify this as an introduction to Lovecraft and his body of work, although some of the blurbs on the back of the book itself deem this a great introduction that speaks to both loyal fans and skeptics. At least a rudimentary familiarity with Lovecraft's fiction, poems, and other writings is necessary in order to follow all of Cannon's arguments, and the Lovecraft neophyte will also find spoilers here for many of Lovecraft's most memorable works. This should not be considered a biography of Lovecraft, although it does contain much that is biographical in nature. This is as much literary criticism of an academic nature as it is biography, and Cannon manages to fuse the merits of both in an extremely instructive structural approach sure to enlighten even the most ardent of Lovecraft devotees.

Cannon's study begins with Lovecraft's childhood and early years, taking a look at the amateur journalism, travel pieces, and similarly obscure written pieces of those years. He then provides the reader with a most illuminating study of Lovecraft's early adult writings of the late 1910s and early 1920s; here, he is particularly interested in six prominent themes which speak quite clearly to the influences, both literary as well as physical and environmental, that came together to form Lovecraft's oddly personal worldview: the past, the sea, below (as in subterranean secrets and horrors), beyond (as in cosmic horrors), dreamland (making special note of the story ideas Lovecraft gleaned from his dreams), and decadence. By the mid-1920s, Lovecraft had come to see his beloved New England setting as the perfect environment for his horror stories, and this prominence on geography in the master horror writer's fiction leads Cannon to approach his mature output geographically. Here he examines each story of the given period in terms of geography and a number of other factors, making great use of the voluminous collection of personal correspondence reflecting Lovecraft's own thoughts on his work. The change evidenced in Lovecraft as well as his fiction from the move away from a stillborn marriage and unhappy abode in New York back home to the Providence he knew and loved is quite illuminating. Cannon's treatment of Lovecraft's ideas and slowly evolving opinion of mankind in general was of great interest to me, and there is much to be learned from Cannon's short but illuminating examinations of Lovecraft's individual stories and poems. Cannon points to a select number of the neglected revision stories Lovecraft basically ghost-wrote in "collaboration" with far less capable aspiring authors as holding great significance in the literary progression and legacy of the modern master of the macabre; Cannon's input here is invaluable because today's reader is hard pressed to determine just how strongly to associate Lovecraft with these revisions of other writers' amateurish fictional forays.

The book closes with a short look at Lovecraft's critical reputation, closing things out on a rather somber note. As a great admirer of Lovecraft, it does bother me that, despite important strides in recent years, his place in literature is still far from secure as many scholarly critics basically ignore the man and belittle his admirers as "juvenile" hero-worshippers of some kind of false god of fiction. Cannon's contribution to the Twayne's United States Authors Series is a step in the right direction, of course, but it does much to show just how long the journey to Lovecraft's critical acceptance by the academic community will be. Featuring a number of illustrative footnotes and a very useful bibliography of primary and secondary sources, Cannon's short but piercing examination of Lovecraft's place in American literature is something all Lovecraft fans will want to own, enjoy, and learn from.