Gerhard's Reviews > Lovecraft Country

'We continue to look forward to the time, not far off now, when all travelers are treated as equals. And until that glorious day, we resolve to stride forth boldly, prepared for whatever challenges the road ahead may bring ...'
—The Safe Negro Travel Guide, Spring 1955 edition

I have yet to watch any episodes of the HBO limited series based on this book, but from the trailer it seems that enfant terrible Jordan Peele et al have upped the juice on the Lovecraft quotient, which is precisely what I felt is missing from the second half of Matt Ruff’s novel. Which is really a series of inter-connected stories.

I think I might have given this a higher rating if I had read it upon its original publication in 2016. ‘The Ballad of Black Tom’ by Victor LaValle was published in the same year. This year we’ve had the excellent ‘Ring Shout’ by P. Djèlí Clark. The ‘Safe Negro Travel Guide’ was prominent in the 2018 Oscar-winner ‘Green Book’. The Tulsa Massacre played a key role in Damon Lindelof’s 2019 ‘Watchmen’. I am also reminded of the wonderful Lovecraft-noir Tinfoil Dossier novellas by Caitlin Kiernan.

So it is clear that ‘Lovecraft Country’ seems to have effectively paved the way for a rather reactionary approach to Lovecraft (Ruff references the author’s poem ‘On the Creation of N*****s’, if anyone was in doubt). This acknowledges his innate racism while simultaneously subverting it. Is such an approach entirely successful though?

I would love to see Lovecraft transposed into a modern setting. So far it seems as if ‘whitewashing’ the author only works if set in the period in which he lived and wrote. But the world, and the horror genre, have moved on. Yes, a lot of today’s problems do have their origins in the past, but we need to be proactive in providing both solutions and resolutions.

SF has its own ghosts to deal with, like John W. Campbell, an avowed racist and general nutcase that has tainted the genre for far too long (just see the brouhaha about the 2020 Hugo Awards in New Zealand). Both horror and SF have taken the step to remove these names from some influential awards. Is this enough? The title ‘Lovecraft Country’ reminds me of the scene from Hamlet, fittingly referenced in Star Trek’s ‘The Undiscovered Country’:

The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?