04-29-2017 | #391 | |||||||||||
Mystic
Join Date: Apr 2017
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
This is long debunked... | |||||||||||
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04-29-2017 | #392 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Sep 2014
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
It gets tricky when discussing ghosts, demons, spirits, faeries etc. They get all mixed up and a term like Yokai seems to lump them together sometimes.
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04-29-2017 | #393 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: Oct 2013
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
Furthermore, the reason that I keep bringing up the publication of The Horror at Red Hook is to point out that if Lovecraft had really desired to scare his readers using miscegeny there were few social consequences that would have stopped him from doing so as literally and frequently as he used incest. He could have easily filled Innsmouth and Arkham with hundreds of Heathcliffs. On the other hand, authors who did engage in extended metaphors had identifiable political, social, or religious motives for treating their chosen subjects obliquely. If anyone had actually delivered evidence that Lovecraft was deliberately concealing alternate interpretations, I might actually respect the notion that his fiction had a thematically racist subtext - but the best argument in this direction is De Camp style meditations that Lovecraft's aliens were a subconscious, xenophobic projection. If this were a classroom discussion of literary interpretation, I also wouldn't object to "equally valid interpretations" - but in this case, I've been personally confronted and ostracized by people for appreciating Lovecraft. Butler, Arnason, Older, etc weren't/aren't pushing for a postmodernist reading of Lovecraft. Finally, nothing I've said implies that Lovecraft's racism was morally justified by his historical context - I don't see why I have to state this at length, but when I refer to how racist the wider public was in Lovecraft's era I'm only noting that Lovecraft's politics wouldn't have subjugated him to the same backlash we now see for authors like Orson Scott Card (or Lovecraft today). This is a descriptive statement, and one that you actually support when you list far more popular racist authors from the general time period. | |||||||||||
04-29-2017 | #394 | |||||||||||
Acolyte
Join Date: Dec 2014
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
That...does not follow. Leaving aside the raped women in "The Horror at Red Hook," there's no connection between what you just said and your conclusion. You are aware that there is a difference between racist and racialist, right? And that a work can be informed by or influenced by racism without itself being an outright work of "Those people of another race are inferior to us! And want out women!" right? Because outside of a couple stories ("The Street," "The Horror at Red Hook," "Medusa's Coil") most of the racial elements in Lovecraft's fiction are not overt, they're details of the plot, background, and characterisation. Sounds like you need a better class of friends. ...because you were talking about moral justification. The fact that Lovecraft could hypothetically have gotten away with publishing worse than he did in terms of race is not exactly a feather in his cap. The fact that other people held more extreme positions on race - publicly - does not excuse his own prejudices, but it does help to provide some context for understanding his life, beliefs, and fiction in that regard. The crux of your argument seems to be "Well, Lovecraft could have published much worse, but he didn't, so we know that all interpretations of his work trying to find more racism than a surface-level reading of the text allows are bull####." That's false on its face - just because Lovecraft could have written worse doesn't mean he would have, and his intent is not clear - or important. There are multiple valid interpretations of Lovecraft's fiction; some have greater claim to justification for others, based on what we know of Lovecraft's life and what he said of his fiction. | |||||||||||
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04-29-2017 | #395 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
Butler? Did she ever talk about Lovecraft? Unless you're talking about a different Butler? | |||||||||||
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04-29-2017 | #396 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: Oct 2013
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
That fact that you're actually arguing with me about what I'm saying should give you little bit of pause here. I can understand confusing a normative and descriptive case if someone just says "X died in a car accident because they weren't wearing a seat belt." - but when it's stated repeatedly that what they meant was the causal reading of the statement, that old Academic idea of the charitable reading is warranted even if you're not completely satisfied with the phrasing and grammar. If this is representative of how you go about your literary criticism then I can rest my case. | |||||||||||
Last edited by Speaking Mute; 04-29-2017 at 02:28 PM.. |
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04-29-2017 | #397 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Apr 2013
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
These cries of "racism" are just symptomatic of our time. We are obsessed with race. I don't give a damn about Lovecraft's racial views anymore than I care Dostoevsky was extremely xenophobic.
Xenophobia is almost certainly an evolutionary trait that once was useful and now is harmful. A small gene pool has its own advantages. Gregory Benford once pointed out that a tribe with great rock throwers would benefit greatly from a limited gene pool, increasing the number of great rock throwers with each generation. Intelligent parenting is the cure for xenophobia. Tolerance is learned; hating those different from you comes too easily. The universe is not kind, warm and fuzzy. Life is not fair. Teach your children well, as the song says; it's more productive than debating the racism of a man born in the 19th century. I think it ironic that the most tolerant man on earth today is almost certainly a rehabilitated racist. | |||||||||||
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04-29-2017 | #398 | |||||||||||
Acolyte
Join Date: Dec 2014
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
The whole of our entire argument has been actually arguing you with what you are saying, because what you are saying is not entirely correct, and I am entirely pedantic enough to argue the finer points. We both agree Daniel Jose Older is full of ####, that was never a matter of contention. | |||||||||||
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05-05-2017 | #399 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 2,294
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
The new trophy thing is pretty dire. Had it been up to me, I'd've tried to commission Patricia Piccinini:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Piccinini | |||||||||||
“Absolutely candid, carefree, but straightforward speech becomes possible for the first time when one speaks of the highest." - Friedrich Schlegel
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05-05-2017 | #400 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Sep 2014
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Re: Octavia E. Butler against Lovecraft (World Fantasy Award).
If you want to make people really uncomfortable.
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