The Love of Ruins: Letters on Lovecraft
Scott Cutler Shershow · Scott Michaelsen
Feb 2017 · SUNY Press
Ebook
206
Pages
About this ebook
Explores issues related to race and religion in Lovecraft criticism.
Today, H. P. Lovecraft is both more popular and controversial than ever: the influence of his Cthulhu mythos is everywhere in popular culture, his cosmic pessimism has reemerged as a major theme in contemporary philosophy, and his racism continues to spark controversy in the media. The Love of Ruins takes a fresh look at a figure widely acknowledged as the father of modern horror or weird fiction. In these pages, Lovecraft emerges not as the atheist and nihilist he is often claimed to be, but as a kind of psychonaut and mystic whose stories, through their own imaginative rigor, expose the intellectual bankruptcy of their authors racism. The Love of Ruins is itself written in the form of letters, in order to do homage to Lovecrafts love of the form of the personal letter (he wrote more than 100,000), and to emulate Lovecrafts lifetime practice of thinking-as-corresponding.
The Love of Ruins ranks among the small handful of the very best Lovecraftian analyses. Erudite, sophisticated, and insightful, this volume is a pure joy to read. A must have for anyone interested in Lovecraft or the field of dark fantasy. Gary Hoppenstand, author of Clive Barkers Short Stories: Imagination as Metaphor in the Books of Blood and Other Works
Today, H. P. Lovecraft is both more popular and controversial than ever: the influence of his Cthulhu mythos is everywhere in popular culture, his cosmic pessimism has reemerged as a major theme in contemporary philosophy, and his racism continues to spark controversy in the media. The Love of Ruins takes a fresh look at a figure widely acknowledged as the father of modern horror or weird fiction. In these pages, Lovecraft emerges not as the atheist and nihilist he is often claimed to be, but as a kind of psychonaut and mystic whose stories, through their own imaginative rigor, expose the intellectual bankruptcy of their authors racism. The Love of Ruins is itself written in the form of letters, in order to do homage to Lovecrafts love of the form of the personal letter (he wrote more than 100,000), and to emulate Lovecrafts lifetime practice of thinking-as-corresponding.
The Love of Ruins ranks among the small handful of the very best Lovecraftian analyses. Erudite, sophisticated, and insightful, this volume is a pure joy to read. A must have for anyone interested in Lovecraft or the field of dark fantasy. Gary Hoppenstand, author of Clive Barkers Short Stories: Imagination as Metaphor in the Books of Blood and Other Works
About the author
Scott Cutler Shershow is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and author of Deconstructing Dignity: A Critique of the Right-to-Die Debate. Scott Michaelsen is Professor of English at Michigan State University and coauthor (with David E. Johnson) of Anthropologys Wake: Attending to the End of Culture.
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