Sunday, November 8, 2015

H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (1991)

by Michel Houellebecq

At first glance Michel Houellebecq’s biography H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life is a bit of a disappointment. It actually includes two lengthy stories by Lovecraft at the end of the book and, after the introduction by Stephen King, the essay itself takes up only a scant 62 pages. Though King is somewhat promiscuous in his praise for works of and about the macabre, it’s still something of a coup. As always, he takes an autobiographical approach, telling the reader about an idea that he had for a story called “Lovecraft’s Pillow” that tries to imagine what kind of strangeness could be absorbed by lying one’s head in the same place that Lovecraft did while he was writing his stories. Eventually, however, he arrives at Houellebecq’s essay, beginning with the fact that the author takes some arguable stances when approaching his subject. Which is good. Rather than a straight biography, of which there are already several, the author tries to get into the mind of Lovecraft, looking at things from his worldview, and then place his work within that context. There is also the argument that HPL is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, a view that is becoming more accepted as time goes on. The subtitle of the essay comes from the imagination of the writer of weird fiction who does not believe in the world as it is, and knows that there's nothing more. That writer will also cast aside human life as easily as academics want to cast aside Lovecraft. In King’s words,

          All literature, but especially literature of the weird and the fantastic, is a cave where both readers
          and writers hide from life. (Which is exactly why so many parents and teachers, spotting a teenager
          with a collection of stories by Lovecraft . . . are apt to cry, “Why are you reading that useless junk?”)
          It is in just such caves--such places of refuge--that we lick our wounds and prepare for the next
          battle out in the real world. Our need for such places never subsides, as any reader of escapist
          literature will tell you.

Houellebecq begins the brief first part of the essay with an assault on reality, making the claim that realistic fiction is worthless because of the way it simply reflects the mundane real world that we are mired in. In this context escapist fiction is exactly that, a way out. For Lovecraft, a man who held an extreme disliked for the world and the people in it, his transition to adulthood was a traumatic one, and was reinforced--in Houellebecq’s view--by an extreme materialistic view of the world, the idea that nothing else exists but matter. In Lovecraft’s words, “all rationalism tends to minimalize the value and the importance of life, and to decrease the sum total of human happiness. In some cases the truth may cause suicidal or nearly suicidal depression.” What is really at play here in Houellebecq’s assertion is that Lovecraft’s fiction is a jolt out of the numbness and mendacity of life. “To call it a shock would be an understatement. I had not known literature was capable of this.” But Houellebecq takes this even further to say that Lovecraft’s fiction isn’t even literature at all, but mythology.

To support this idea, he goes on to list all of the authors who subsumed their writing to encompass and expand on what Lovecraft had already written. The then states that, “In an age that exalts originality as a supreme value in the arts, this phenomenon is surely cause for surprise . . . nothing like it has been recorded since Homer and medieval epic poetry.” Well, there is something almost exactly like it that happened shortly after Lovecraft’s death with the advent of bebop in the jazz world when nearly every young musician--on every instrument, no less--began to copy Charlie Parker. His influence was far more widely felt in jazz than Lovecraft’s was even among authors of weird fiction. But it is significant, and Houellebecq calls the resulting homage “ritual literature.”

Part Two is the analysis of Lovecraft’s work. It begins with a brief summarization of the worldview of Lovecraft’s fiction, that amid the humdrum routine of human existence, in every gap in the web of the human presence on Earth, “in every place where human activity is interrupted, where there is a blank on the map, these ancient gods crouch huddled waiting to take back their rightful place.” But his essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, Houellebecq states, is a bit disappointing for the fact that it simply recounts the history of such literature without offering a glimpse into how Lovecraft would go on to change it, from describing a supernatural which not only depends on human existence but in many ways is created by humanity, to a supernatural in which man is so insignificant as to be meaningless in the design of the cosmos. Thus the fears that Lovecraft taps into are not just the primal one of human death, but the far more philosophical one of contemplating human non-existence. The initial discussion of Lovecraft’s fiction is setting. Rather than spending time on the banal and the intrusion of evil into it, Lovecraft usually begins his stories in media res, with the façade of human significance already cracked wide open.

Houellebecq sees a weakness in the fact that Lovecraft’s characters--often first-person narrators--do not have the ability to comprehend the significance of events as they transpire, that somehow they should be able to understand in the moment what they only seem to grasp in retrospect. Far from diminishing his great work, however, this only seems to make it that much more breathless in the retelling. Lovecraft’s work is then contrasted with that of the novelist, whose mission is to realistically replicate life--something Lovecraft believed was impossible--including all of it’s emotional baggage surrounding sex, finances, and personal relationships. Lovecraft eschewed all of these in favor of descriptions of things that could not be described, things outside of human experience. Lovecraft is far more interested in architecture, and the idea that man is only mean to “build vast beautiful, mineral things for the moon to delight in after he is dead.” In terms of sensual imagery, Lovecraft is also a master manipulator in the way that only writers are, using words to describe perception in ways that are also outside human experience, and yet utterly evocative. Finally Houellebecq delves into the elements of Lovecraft that resulted in the first of his stories to be published in France appearing in a collection of science-fiction. But unlike those writers descriptive detail, both scientific and topographic, are used by Lovecraft to reinforce the supernatural even more, demonstrating their aberration in defying humanity’s carefully constructed laws of the universe.

Part Three, the lengthiest section in the book, could be most aptly described by the title of one of the chapters in it: Antibiography. He had little in the way of money, and nibbled through a small inheritance throughout his life. He met Sonia Haft Greene in 1922 and she induced him to marry her two years later. When he moved to New York to live with her, his life seemed to begin anew, but things changed with Sonia lost her job and suddenly the city lost its appeal, all of which is described in his autobiographical story, “He.” Though he put everything he had into attempting to get a job, he had no experience and no one would hire him. Despair ensued, Sonia moved to Ohio for work, and after a year of separation he moved back to Providence and the couple divorced a few years later. It is at this point that a latent racism begins to emerge in his work, no doubt influenced by his time on the streets of New York City, watching immigrants and those he felt beneath him gaining employment while he was left to suffer. These personal horrors were also those that he employed in his writing, allowing all of his protagonists to resemble himself in some manner, and be tortured by those lesser species of sub-humans who did not.

This obsession, claims Houellebecq, is most evident in “The Dunwich Horror,” which can be seen as something of an inversion of the Christian mythos, by replicating those tropes in evil form. In this, Houellebecq makes a fascinating point. By casting himself as the victim and the sub-humans as the enemy, the gateway into this world for the old gods, Lovecraft was living his own nightmare. And this he sees as one of the major elements of Lovecraft’s later period, a genuine fear that comes across in his writing as few other writers have been able to achieve. But his fear extended to life itself. One of the anecdotes he relates earlier in the book is how Lovecraft kept a bottle of cyanide at hand with which to kill himself. And he ends the book with this quote by the writer:

          And as for Puritan inhibitions--I admire them more every day. They are attempts to make of life
          a work of art--to fashion a pattern of beauty in the hog-wallow that is animal existence--and they
          spring out of that divine hatred for life which marks the deepest and most sensitive soul.

One of the great joys of the piece is that Houellebecq is able to talk about Lovecraft’s style and use generous examples, but gives away nothing. In that, it is possible to read this book and still enjoy the works later but have a new appreciation of them. Not all of Houellebecq’s arguments are convincing, but all of them can be appreciated for the thoughtfulness and the way in which he weaves them into a cohesive theory of Lovecraft’s art. And in that respect, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, is an essential work in an ever-growing cannon of literature about one of America’s great, unsung literary talents.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Dracula's Guest (1914)

by Bram Stoker

Dracula’s Guest” is widely believed to be the original opening chapter of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, but the reason for that is primarily due to Stoker’s widow, Florence. Stoker had been planning to publish collections of his short fiction, and his wife decided to include the story in the third one published two years after her husband’s death. “I have added an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula. It was originally excised owing to the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband's most remarkable work.” It’s possible that she simply made the assumption that it was part of the larger work because of the title. Though it’s far more likely that its inclusion was at the insistence of the publisher in order to have the name Dracula in the title to ensure sales. If the story has any relationship to the novel itself it is probably as the beginning of an alternate draft. And it is all the more intriguing for that. As it stands, it certainly doesn’t fit with the epistolary construct of Stoker’s eventual novel, and the main character doesn’t appear to share any similarities to Jonathan Harker, as he is much more irresponsibly reckless for someone who has an important task to carry out for the Count. The draft idea has further traction because there are some real inconsistencies to the story that don’t lend themselves to the feel of a polished and completed work. What that novel would have been like with that character as the protagonist, however, is incredibly intriguing.

The story opens with an unnamed British traveller in Munich, heading out into the countryside by coach. In a scene that would be repeated in numerous Universal horror films, the innkeeper warns the coachman to be back well before nightfall as it is April 30th, Walpurgisnacht, “when, according to the belief of millions of people, the devil was abroad--when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel.” The coachman readily agrees, yet during their journey he is unable to convey to his rider exactly why the date is so infamous. This is the first of the inconsistencies, as the narrator seems genuinely frustrated by the coachman’s inability to tell him what he was so frightened of.

          There was just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his
          talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something--the very idea of which evidently fright-
          ened him; but each time he pulled himself up, saying, as he crossed himself: “Walpurgisnacht!”
          I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know his language.

And yet, later in the story when the narrator himself becomes frightened, it is he who provides the description of Walpurgisnacht given above. In fact, this makes his British arrogance all the more insulting when he seems to have known all along why the man was frightened and yet refused to acknowledge it. “I pitied the poor fellow, he was deeply in earnest; but all the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native German.”

While it is the beginning of spring, and it is sunny out, the weather has not quite turned all the way, and the driver has been warned about a storm that is on the way. But the narrator has seen an intriguing road that leads down into a valley, which he wants to explore. At this, however, the coachman hops down and flatly refuses, and during their discussion there is plenty of foreshadowing about the folly of such an adventure.

          Then the horses became restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking
          around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by the bridles, and led
          them on some twenty feet . . . Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark
          clouds drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath of cold wind
          seemed to drift over us. It was only a breath, however, and more of a warning than a fact, for
          the sun came out brightly again.

The narrator insists on going, in spite of the warning, sending the coachman back to Munich and walking alone. Just before he loses sight of the coach, the narrator sees a man walking along the road who stops the coach. The horses rear in fright, and after the coach lurches forward the man seems to have disappeared. There is supposedly the ruins of an old village where the narrator is headed, which the coachman said was cursed, evil and unholy, something to do with dead people who would not die, looking very much alive in their coffins. After a couple of hours walking in the desolate countryside, the narrator feels a definite chill in the air, especially after the sun goes behind the trees. “The air was cold, and the drifting of clouds high overhead was more marked. They were accompanied by a sort of far-away rushing sound, through which seemed to come at intervals that mysterious cry which the driver had said came from a wolf.” Before long it begins to snow, hard and steadily, and soon the narrator winds up off of the road and seeks shelter in a dense copse of trees. Discovering a decaying rock wall, he decides to see if he can find the ruins of a home that might offer more protection, but when the storm breaks momentarily and the moon illuminates his surroundings he realizes that he is in a graveyard.

One of the things that always bothered me when I read the story before was the idea of a storm that suddenly comes out of nowhere. It was a sunny day in the spring, and while one understands a squall, it seemed to strain credulity to thing that something this sever could seeming appear with no warning. But recently I read a description from The Denham Tracts, written by Michael Denham in 1892, that talked about exactly this sort of phenomenon and demonstrating that it’s not as much of a freak occurrence as I had previously thought.

          In the mountainous parts of this country, towards the northwest, a very remarkable phenomenon
          frequently appears called the helm-wind. A rolling cloud, sometimes three or four days together,
          hovers over the mountain tops, the sky being clear in other parts. The [cloud] is not dispersed or
          blown away by the wind, but continues its station till a violent hurricane comes roaring down the
          mountain. Then, on a sudden, ensues a profound calm, and then again . . . the tempest gradually
          ensues. This tempest, however, seldom extends into the country beyond a mile or two from the
          bottom of the mountain.

Another of the inconsistencies in the story is the matter of language. Early in the story, the narrator claims to understand little German at all. “The advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native tongue.” At the end of the story, however, he is apparently listening to all of the conversation around him and understanding German with perfect clarity. There’s also the matter of the crypt at this point in the story, on which is written an inscription in German and which he reads quite easily, informing him that the countess buried there had died in 1801. This in addition to the Russian Cyrillic writing on the iron stake driven into the top of the tomb reading, “The dead travel fast.” The narrator is in no mood to explore any further, but when the snow turns to hail he is driven inside the crypt, and there he sees something inexplicable. “I saw, as my eyes were turned into the darkness of the tomb, a beautiful woman, with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier. As the thunder broke overhead, I was grasped as by the hand of a giant and hurled out into the storm.” The hand would turn out to be very real, though from here on the narrator loses any semblance of full consciousness. The last of his recollections of the event are related in a dreamlike state of near hallucination, and he wakes to find a great wolf sitting on his chest.

Though his rescue at first seems more than improbable, the denouement of the story is actually quite good in the way that it weaves all of the loose threads together, in addition to giving the reader information about Dracula’s motivations and identity. The end result is that the inconsistencies are minor and in no way detract from the telling of the tale. The collection the story first appeared in was Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories, from 1914, and included both published and unpublished works by the author. David O. Selznik originally purchased the story for MGM, but there was no way the studio could have produced the film owing to Universal’s copyright on the character name, and so he eventually sold it to Universal. The studio attempted to produce it as a film, but after numerous rewrites the film it was made into, Dracula’s Daughter, bears no resemblance to Stoker’s tale. Several other films have taken the name of the story for their inspiration, but none have followed the plot closely enough to be recognizable as Stoker’s work either. The story itself has also appeared in a variety of anthologies, and under a number of different names in collections edited by Peter Haining, attempting to make them appear as new stories by Stoker. What it may lack in finesse, “Dracula’s Guest” more than makes up for in thrills and is certainly a satisfying part of the Dracula mythos.