Re-reading Lovecraft

I normally don't do a lot of re-reading. There are stories that stick with me, and there are some that I enjoy going back and re-reading - mostly, these are the books that stay on my shelf year after year, and don't get donated when I run out of room and have to clear out the stuff I feel is highly unlikely to ever wind up in my "to be re-read" pile...

Then there are the books and stories that I remember having read, but the details escape me - and I find myself re-reading those in part to see if there's a reason I don't remember them that well. Rereading the works of H.P. Lovecraft is turning into one of these experiences. I'm finding that some of the real horror in rereading Lovecraft comes from the author's worldview as expressed through his characters...

It's often a mistake to assume that an author's characters reflect the opinions, politics, or religious beliefs of the author, especially when the author's chosen genre is highly speculative and not necessarily grounded in ordinary reality, as with Lovecraft's nameless horrors inflicted on sleepy New England villages. Robert Heinlein, for example, is assumed by many readers (several of whom should know better) to have been a rabid jingoist and male chauvinist based on (mis)reading several of his characters, despite a preponderance of evidence contra (see Spider Robinson's essay "Rah, Rah, R.A.H." ). Since authors create not only the heroes of their works, but also their villains, it seems faintly ridiculous to assume that any given character is automatically a stand-in for the author - unless one can spot a pattern after careful analysis of several works by the same author.

In the case of Lovecraft, I'm spotting some trends that will bear further analysis. His work was produced during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the language used is a product of that time. Lovecraft is known for his purple prose, with certain horrors hidden behind a veil of Victorian sensibility while others are written off as "indescribable" after a couple of descriptive paragraphs set up whatever context there may be for an unnamed horror from the Void... And yet, his descriptions of people often contain points of view that are markedly racist (animals, too - one unfortunate black cat is saddled with a moniker I cannot bring myself to type), while others display attitudes about race and social class that are jarring to modern sensibilities.

It has been many years since I first heard of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos. I believe I was in junor high when TSR published the edition of "Deities and Demigods" (a reference book for the game Dungeons and Dragons) that included several fictional pantheons, including those of Michael Moorcock's Melnibone, Fritz Leiber's Newhon, and the Chulhu mythos. My local library had plenty of Fritz Leiber, and I glommed onto as much Moorcock as I could all through high school (along with Tolkein, Bradbury, Burroughs, and Asimov), but it was not until I got to college that I managed to lay hands on actual Lovecraft stories. I read several collections, which left me agreeing with many critics that Lovecraft's strength lay in his creation of a truly creepy mythos rather than in his writing per se. Now, some 25 years later, I'm discovering another problematic dimension to the stories I remember perhaps a little less fondly than I remember Leiber and Moorcock (both of whom still reside on my 'will be re-read eventually' shelves).

More Literary Popcorn

Still working out how to label things for future reference, sorting, etc - but "popcorn books" is definitely going into the mix. An awful lot of fiction writing is, for me, the equivalent of popcorn - I can chew through a ridiculous amount of written material (with a high degree of comprehension and retention) very quickly, if it's well-written, engaging, or otherwise fun to read. If it's highly technical, I can still get through it, but getting the data into short-term (and then long-term) memory takes some effort - and if it's just turgid, dull, or hard to "identify with" (I hate the phrase, but I haven't yet come up with a better one), I'll just give up (like I did on the True Blood series, whose protagonist has me rolling my eyes every couple of chapters).

So - this weekend, my popcorn bucket included the Nice Girls novels, written by Molly Harper - Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs, Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men, and Nice Girls Don't Live Forever. They cross the line into Paranormal Romance, with not only a romance arc to each book, but an overarching romantic arc across all three (and a lot of loose ends tied up neatly in the third) - but they're still a lot of fun to read, even as a not terribly romantically-minded guy (INTP for those who buy into Meyers-Briggs typing). I'll probably plow through her Naked Werewolf series over the next couple of days, and then I'll be relaxed enough for another foray into Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.

Working Backwards: The Dresden Files

I've set up a list of current books I'm reading (technically, there are more than three, but the other one I've actually started reading is for research purposes, and I've put that particular project on hold for a little while), but I'd also like to start listing the other books I've read recently. My wife and I picked up Kindle readers this year (after using the free software on our various phones and computers), so I'll probably start with the titles I've read there, along with the books we picked up on our vacation trip to DC this summer.

So - first up is the entire run of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels, plus the short story collection:

1. Storm Front
2. Fool Moon
3. Grave Peril
4. Summer Knight
5. Death Masks
6. Blood Rites
7. Dead Beat
8. Proven Guilty
9. White Night
10. Small Favor
11. Turn Coat
12. Changes
13. Ghost Story
14. Side Jobs (short stories)

I chewed through these pretty quickly - Butcher's protagonist, Harry Dresden, is a fun character to read. The series is selling well enough that Butcher can get away with cliffhanger endings (at least on the last 2 novels), so I'm looking at the short-lived TV series to fill in part of the gap while I wait for the 14th novel.