Robert M. Price - Lovecraft controversy

[Malone]

http://www.rifuture.org/lovecrafts-r...rovidence.html

This from Robert M. Price's Facebook account:


"Having now read several posts from those who were offended by my remarks Thursday night at 1st Baptist, including several friends, I must say I am astonished and very grieved. I am amazed at how they misunderstood me. How can they think I was replicating HPL's racism, that I was attacking Affirmative Action (didn't they hear the word "epistemology"?), etc.? I am afraid I am going to have to rethink my involvement in Lovecraft fandom, especially participation in future events. I don't know if I or others would feel comfortable if I attended. Hmmmm.... I thoroughly enjoyed NecronomiCon, as I always have. Not sure I would be welcome at the next one. We'll see."

[qcrisp]

And this is the bit from his speech where he uses the word "epistemology":

Quote

Superstition, barbarism and fanaticism would sooner or later devour us. It appears now that we’re in the midst of this very assault. The blood lust of jihadists threatens Western Civilization and the effete senescent West seems all too eager to go gently into that endless night. Our centers of learning have converted to power politics and an affirmative action epistemology cynically redefining truth as ideology. Logic is undermined by the new axiom of the ad hominem. If white males formulated logic, then logic must be regarded as an instrument of oppression.

Seems like he touched a sore point.

Quote

The blood lust of jihadists threatens Western Civilization and the effete senescent West seems all too eager to go gently into that endless night.

Really? I could probably barely put a news channel on for 5 minutes without being told Islamic extremists are trying to kill me, and it was our 'strong' aggressive foreign policy that created many of these maniacs in the first place. As for threats to western civilisation, you're more likely to be killed by a cop in America than ISIS.

Lovecraft wasn't a 'prophet' for predicting the rise of brutality in certain places of the world. That has come about due to specific conditions that the West itself has hugely exacerbated through aggressive foreign policy and selling arms. Lovecraft just thought they were subhuman and more inherently evil due to their darker skin. Hatred for Islamic extremism is obviously justified, but acting like it is the biggest threat to our Western civilisation is buying in to the media narrative rather than reality, and using this to justify a certain strain of Lovecraft's prejudice whilst also including a reference to The Horror at Red Hook is hugely misjudged for many obvious reasons.

Still, we all make mistakes and I'm sure this will fade away pretty soon. Price isn't a bad guy.

[hopfrog]

One of the main reasons I did not attend NecronomiCon was because I did not want to be around vile anti-Muslim, anti-Obama idiots. These past few years, it seems, Bob cannot give a public lecture on E'ch-Pi-El without bringing in his far-right political stance, if but for a moment. It ruins the atmosphere of warm-heartedness and "family" that is a very attractive aspect of participating in ye Lovecraft community, a fantastic group of people. I'm lucky in that I have my own mini-Lovecraft gatherings with S. T.--whom, of course, a lot of people dislike because they find him self-center'd, dogmatic, arrogant, egotistical, whutever. The one thing that gave me intense heartache in not attending the convention was to not dwell in Providence, that magical city, and to miss hanging with the always delightful Ramsey Campbell.

The irony here is that I find Lovecraft, as a personality reveal'd in his correspondence, wonderful and delightsome in so many ways; and I consider him a good person in his personal conduct with humanity, judging from every personal account I have read of yem whut knew him in life as either personal friend or correspondent. And yet there is so much about him that also repels me profoundly, and I doubt that I cou'd tolerate his company were he alive to-day. So, I continue to read him, and to buy new editions of his books--my new set of H. P. LOVECRAFT'S COLLECTED FICTION: A VARIORUM EDITION has me in a state of eldritch ecstasy. And I have a keen desire to purchase the new book of essays on Lovecraft by Donald Burleson recently publish'd by Hippocampus Press, even though his racist anti-Muslim sickness is so grotesque.

I will add that Bob fully deserves getting this year's Robert Bloch Award at the convention.

Price should have just said "Superstition, barbarism and fanaticism would sooner or later devour us." Because this statement is undeniably true, although I would say "attempt to devour us." The game isn't over yet. I would advocate the employment of every resource, however merciless, to prevent this from happening. That he singled out Muslims is only true in that they are the most virulent strain of irrational idiocy today. We have our own brand of superstitious nonsense to contend with, Evangelical Christianity. Lovecraft wouldn't disagree. He loathed Christianity as much as he did other moronic religions.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Quote Originally Posted by hopfrog

One of the main reasons I did not attend NecronomiCon was because I did not want to be around vile anti-Muslim, anti-Obama idiots.

Is this more people than Price (and maybe Burleson too)?

I do occasionally hear about such people in Lovecraft fandom, and apparently a full-on bigot on Eldritch Dark who I never actually witnessed but I'd like to think this is not a growing trend.

I've been reading a lot about the political divide in fantasy and science fiction right now (which I believe started in the 60s?) and fortunately I don't think the weird/horror fiction community has anything even vaguely approaching that. Not to say that it hasn't got its own problems.

[hopfrog]

My wish is to see renew'd concentration of H. P. Lovecraft's literary achievements, a subject that is not free of controversy, but at least its emphasis is on writing weird fiction. Often, when I read posts regarding HPL's racism, it becomes clear that a majority of the commentators have read very little of Lovecraft's Work. I prefer to discuss HPL with persons who have actually read him. It is Lovecraft as an author that intrigues me, just as it is Robert M. Price as a Lovecraftian scholar that wins entirely my admiration.

Quote Originally Posted by hopfrog

My wish is to see renew'd concentration of H. P. Lovecraft's literary achievements, a subject that is not free of controversy, but at least its emphasis is on writing weird fiction. Often, when I read posts regarding HPL's racism, it becomes clear that a majority of the commentators have read very little of Lovecraft's Work. I prefer to discuss HPL with persons who have actually read him. It is Lovecraft as an author that intrigues me, just as it is Robert M. Price as a Lovecraftian scholar that wins entirely my admiration.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline despised Jews and wrote anti-Semitic tracts excoriating them. This doesn't diminish the importance of his canon. The same should apply to all authors, including Lovecraft. As much fun as it is lapping up the bile of Celine, HPL had more important things to say than humanity is filth. He is an undeniably important author in Western literature.

[qcrisp]

I don't know much about Price, but based on the article, the clip, and the other bits and pieces I do know, it doesn't seem accurate to characterise him as being "far-right" in his politics.

He might not have been tactful, he might not have even been right (well, he makes a number of different points, all of which, of course, are open to debate, and I think his dichotomy of rational-scientific-west/irrational-unscientific-non-west is simplistic to say the least), but the very worst he has done is express a valid concern in a tactless way.

I've said before, it's not my country where a lot of this political tension is prevalent (though, unfortunately, the country where I live seems to be absorbing the same attitudes like blotting paper), but I rather long for the days when people were less frigidly anxious and po-faced and more forgiving.

I must admit what could be called an elitist distaste at the world's sudden 'discovery' of Lovecraft recently. In the early nineties, a character in an Irvine Welsh novel is reading Lovecraft and says of him, "He was a nazi old cunt, but he could spin a yarn." A friend told me this, and we laughed. "Yeah, that'll probably be how he's remembered in the end."

It turns out that what we said in jest might have been partly true, except that the current popular judgement is minus the perspective that humour brings, and leaning towards forgetting that he could "spin a yarn".

And Irvine Welsh wrote this over twenty years ago, and even at the time we thought this was a sign that Lovecraft had at long last arrived in the mainstream. How tedious it is to see the same stuff raked up by people just discovering Lovecraft now. It's as if some well-to-do tourists stopped at a creaky old village in the backwoods and loved its rustic charm, and texted all their hip friends to visit, and then told the villagers that they had to clean up their act and look respectable because important visitors were on their way. "Stop sleeping with your sisters you hicks, and mind your language! The public have a right to enjoy your traditional ways and scenic beauty without being offended!"

The ways of the world never cease to weary me.

[njhorror]

Quote Originally Posted by qcrisp

I don't know much about Price, but based on the article, the clip, and the other bits and pieces I do know, it doesn't seem accurate to characterise him as being "far-right" in his politics. How tedious it is to see the same stuff raked up by people just discovering Lovecraft now. It's as if some well-to-do tourists stopped at a creaky old village in the backwoods and loved its rustic charm, and texted all their hip friends to visit, and then told the villagers that they had to clean up their act and look respectable because important visitors were on their way. "Stop sleeping with your sisters you hicks, and mind your language! The public have a right to enjoy your traditional ways and scenic beauty without being offended!" The ways of the world never cease to weary me.

yeah, makes sense to me.