In Search of Lovecraft's Legacy: An Interview with S.T. Joshi
The world's foremost Lovecraft scholar addresses the thorny thicket of challenges that confront researchers, discusses contemporary authors following in Lovecraft's footsteps, and more.
S. T. Joshi (b. 1958) is a leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and other writers, mostly in the realms of supernatural and fantasy fiction. He has edited corrected editions of the works of Lovecraft, several annotated editions of Bierce and Mencken, and has written such critical studies as The Weird Tale (1990) and The Modern Weird Tale (2001). His award-winning biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), has already become a collector's item. An expanded and updated version, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, was published in 2 volumes in 2010.
But critical, biographical, and editorial work on weird fiction is only one aspect of Joshi's multifaceted output. A prominent atheist, Joshi has published the anthology Atheism: A Reader (2000) and the anti-religious polemic, God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003). He has also compiled an important anthology on race relations, Documents of American Prejudice (1999).
Joshi has compiled bibliographies of H. P. Lovecraft (1981; revised 2009), Lord Dunsany (1993), Ramsey Campbell (1995), Ambrose Bierce (1999), Gore Vidal (2007), and H. L. Mencken (2009). He has edited Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia (2005), Icons of Horror and the Supernatural (2006), and Icons of Unbelief (2008). His recent monographs include The Angry Right (2006), Junk Fiction: America’s Obsession with Bestsellers (2009), and The Unbelievers: The Evolution of Modern Atheism (2011). He has also published two works of detective fiction and has written a supernatural novel centering around H. P. Lovecraft, The Assaults of Chaos. [stjoshi.org]
Alex S. Johnson: You are considered one of, if not the foremost, expert in H. P. Lovecraft. When did your fascination with Lovecraft start?
S.T. Joshi: I believe I have given varying accounts of this seemingly epochal event in my life, since my memory of it has not always been clear. A little personal history is needed for background. I was born in India in 1958 and came to the US with my parents in 1963. (Both of my parents were professors.) We settled in the Midwest. By the age of ten I had developed an interest in horror and fantasy fiction (less so in science fiction—since I did not like contemplating the future!). I now believe that I first read Lovecraft in an anthology of horror stories for young adults edited by Betty Owen, Eleven Great Horror Stories (1969). This anthology—which I still own—was published by Scholastic Books, and its purchase (it cost me all of 95¢) was facilitated by my school, Burris Laboratory School in Muncie, Indiana. I read it in 1971, and I can only vaguely recall the atmosphere of decay and decadence in rural New England that was a feature of Lovecraft’s story. But later, in 1972, when I was scanning the shelves of the Muncie Public Library, I came upon the three Arkham House editions of Lovecraft published in the early 1960s. The name must have resonated with me (it almost seemed fictitious or pseudonymous), so I began reading these volumes. And yet, I made the mistake of starting with At the Mountains of Madness—a very difficult text to absorb (especially for one who was appallingly ignorant of science). I could not finish the long story, so I set the book aside. A few months later I started reading The Dunwich Horror and Others—and was hooked. I had become a Lovecraft devotee for life.
ASJ.: Lovecraft's complex legacy is mired somewhat in controversy. Authors in the Lovecraft tradition such as Caitlín R. Kiernan, whom I recently interviewed for Dark Entries, have been smeared with the label of “racist” on social media. You have spoken out against Social Justice Warriors who have a very limited understanding of the historical and cultural context in which Lovecraft wrote. What, if anything, do you have to say to those critics of theirs and yours?
STJ: I have indeed spoken out on this issue many times, and I can present a highly condensed version of my standard answer. The issue of course is Lovecraft’s racism. There is no denying that he was a racist; but the historical context is hugely important. The later 19th and early 20th centuries were a period of immense immigration into the US, and many “old Americans” (especially WASPs in politically conservative New England, where Lovecraft grew up) were alarmed at this influx. Moreover, “scientific” racism had blossomed among biologists and anthropologists in the later 19th century, among whom were Thomas Henry Huxley and other respected scientists. Lovecraft, who was a devotee of science from childhood, regarded their findings as sound—as did countless others. The overthrow of these pseudo-scientific theories was only beginning during the 1920s and did not conclude until well after Lovecraft’s death. What is more, I strongly object to the crude reductionism that so many of Lovecraft’s detractors engage in; i.e., “Lovecraft was a racist who wrote horror stories.” This is equivalent to saying that “T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were antisemites who wrote poetry,” or “Jack London was a white supremacist who wrote fiction.” These statements are undeniably true, but I hope we can all realise that there is more to the matter than that. Lovecraft’s fiction is not, as a whole, tainted by racism; only a few stories have a racist subtext. His signature contribution to literature—cosmicism, or the depiction of the vastness of the universe (both spatially and temporally) and the resulting inconsequence of the human race—is a doctrine that deals with the whole of humanity, not some chosen part of it.
ASJ. There is also a complex intersection between the work of authors Caitlín R. Kiernan, Billy Martin/Poppy Z. Brite, and Ramsey Campbell insofar as all three are also highly influenced by the work of William S. Burroughs. What do you see as the nexus between Burroughs, Lovecraft and these authors?
STJ: I actually see relatively little relationship between Lovecraft and Burroughs. The latter may have read the former, but if the former had had a chance to read the latter, he would have disdained him. Lovecraft was living at a time when literary Modernism (as embodied in the work of James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and others) was revising the aesthetic rules that governed fiction and poetry; and although Lovecraft himself was (as Steven J. Mariconda has noted) a “reluctant” Modernist in some aspects of his aesthetic theory and practice, he was largely an aesthetic conservative. He adhered to Oscar Wilde’s dictum that “The artis is the creator of beautiful things,” and that is what he sought to do in his work.
ASJ. Who are some of the up and coming authors in the Lovecraft tradition whose work you admire?
STJ: Caitlín R. Kiernan is, of course, hardly an up-and-coming writer (she has been around since the 1990s at least), but her work remains consistently vibrant and dynamic, reinterpreting Lovecraft in provocative ways while remaining true to his vision. I helped Jonathan Thomas (who—lucky devil!—lives in Lovecraft’s Providence, R.I.) get a start in publishing, and he has done remarkably well, with five collections of short fiction plus the scintillating novel The Color over Occam (2012), perhaps the best Lovecraftian novel ever written. (It is a very loose sequel to “The Color out of Space.”) Thomas’s Lovecraftian tales have now been gathered in the volume Malign Providence (Centipede Press, 2022). In my Black Wings series (2010–23) you can find a host of writers, old and new, who have done outstanding work in the Lovecraftian tradition—from veterans such as Kiernan, Steve Rasnic Tem, Nancy Kilpatrick, the late W. H. Pugmire, and others, to relative newcomers such as Norman Partridge, John Langan, Donald Tyson, Richard Gavin, Simon Strantzas, Lois H. Gresh, and many others.
ASJ: What advice would you give to younger H. P. Lovecraft researchers and authors?
STJ: There is still much to do in Lovecraft scholarship. My colleague David E. Schultz and I are on the verge of completing the publication of a series of 24 volumes of Lovecraft’s letters—the entire corpus of his surviving correspondence, so far as we have been able to obtain it. It contains an immense wealth of information that will have to be digested in order to come up with viable and innovative analyses of Lovecraft. Of course, every generation must come up with its own understanding and appreciation of Lovecraft, and I have seen interesting takes on Lovecraft from the perspectives of gender/queer theory, colonialism, etc. In terms of those who wish to write in the “tradition” of Lovecraft, all I can say is: Be yourself. Nothing is to be gained by writing mere pastiches; these will always be inferior to the originals. Use Lovecraft as a springboard for your own ideas, beliefs, conceptions, and perspectives. Lovecraft can give you a leg up, so long as you don’t submerge your own personality to his.
ASJ: What in your opinion are some areas of Lovecraft research that have been insufficiently explored?
STJ: Believe it or not, in spite of the enormous quantity of biographical information (much of it embodied in my interminable biography, I Am Providence, 2010), there is still a need to do further work of this kind—in particular, in placing Lovecraft in the context of his times. The political, social, cultural, and intellectual currents of his time need to be absorbed before one can understand the origin and substance of Lovecraft’s views on these issues. Perhaps a more granular analysis of his fiction can be done. Recently a scholar examined what he called “small details” in Lovecraft’s tales, which he (correctly, in my view) saw as reflecting far from insignificant elements in Lovecraft’s overall worldview or aesthetic goals. His poetry is still understudied. Much of it may be aesthetically inferior, but it says a lot about him that he devoted so much time to it. So I believe we shall be making new discoveries in Lovecraft for generations to come.
ASJ. Of your voluminous publications, including your definitive H. P. Lovecraft biography, which are you proudest to have authored?
STJ: For the centennial of Lovecraft’s birth (1990), I wrote H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Starmont House, 1990)—a full-scale study of Lovecraft’s philosophy and how it is manifested in his literary work. I think I did a reasonably good job of it, but there is always more to be said on this subject. Of course, I did work pretty hard for two years (1993–95) in writing I Am Providence (which first appeared in truncated form as H. P. Lovecraft: A Life [Necronomicon Press, 1996]), but there are probably things there that need revising or touching up. If you’re talking about work outside of Lovecraft scholarship, I am rather happy with Unutterable Horror (2012), my history of supernatural fiction. And as for works entirely outside the domain of the weird, I am just wrapping up an immense two-volume history of atheism, titled The Downfall of God. The first volume will come out later this year from Pitchstone Publishing. In my judgment this is far and away the most consequential book I have ever written.
ASJ. What to you is the essence of cosmic horror? Is our place in the universe as perilous as HPL described it?
STJ: The suggestion of the infinite gulfs of the cosmos is not an easy task, although writers ranging from William Hope Hodgson to Arthur C. Clarke have done so. The key here is that the corollary—humans are insignificant in the cosmos—can only be made by an atheist. If, for example, we are the special creation of a benevolent god, then we are significant in the universe, no matter how large (temporally or spatially) it is. It is precisely because Lovecraft was an atheist that he could portray us as (in Voltaire’s words) ants dancing on a grain of sand. We shall always be important to ourselves; that is only natural. But our eventual annihilation, and the universe’s lack of concern in that event, are undeniable certainties. Of course, it is difficult to have a cosmic perspective all, or even much of, the time: we live in the present and in our own skins, and the world and other people are inescapable realities to us. But a cosmic perspective can actually be a comfort, making certain seemingly cataclysmic events in our own day take on a lesser importance. (But, in my judgment, this should not lead to callousness about human or animal suffering—that would be immoral and contemptible.)
ASJ: Non-Western authors such Jayaprakash Satyamurthy in Bangalore, India also explore Lovecraftian themes. Have you read his work, and if so, what are your thoughts?
STJ: No, I fear I am not familiar with this writer. Interestingly, however, a novice writer from India, Aditya Dwarkesh, wrote a splendid story set in Calcutta, which I published in Black Wings VII (2023). I’m sure there are other non-Western writers out there doing good work, either in the specifically Lovecraftian realm or in the broader realm of weird fiction, but I am sadly ignorant of them.
ASJ. What are some of the more unusual Mythos derived media you’ve seen?
STJ: I am always amused at how Lovecraft’s work has infiltrated comic books. Lovecraft himself sampled some of the comic strips of his day—Krazy Kat, Dagwood & Blondie, etc.—and found nothing but contempt for them. Of course, there were no such things as “comic books” in his day, but I doubt he would have found much interest in them. He was so devoted to weird fiction (as opposed to the weird in any other media—radio, film, etc.—that it was just beyond his understanding how the weird could be manifested in these areas. I was amused by the fact that I myself appear as a character in Alan Moore’s Providence. I believe there are actually one or two Lovecraft “pop-up” books that are of some merit. You gotta indoctrinate the young into Lovecraft!
ASJ. What are some upcoming projects you’re working on?
STJ: I am just wrapping up the second volume of my history of atheism. After a short break, I will plunge into a full-scale biography of Clark Ashton Smith. But don’t be alarmed! It will be vastly shorter than I Am Providence, as the source materials are far fewer. 300 pages will probably be sufficient for the job. I have, over the decades, prepared editions of many writers of weird fiction, and that work will continue. Lord Dunsany’s work goes into the public domain in 2028, so I may begin the issuance of a collected edition (fiction, plays, poetry) of Dunsany. I revere his work, and have been lucky enough to spend time in Dunsany Castle in Ireland, cataloguing his papers and manuscripts. Even though I am now a senior citizen, I imagine I can always find something productive to do until I lapse into harmless senility.