Talk:H. P. Lovecraft/Archive 3

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Public Domain question

The article clearly states that a search of the Library of Congress has turned up no record that the copyright on Lovecraft's work was ever renewed. Why, then, does the article go on to say "it is likely that these works are now in the public domain"?

To my straightforward way of thinking, if there is no documentation of a renewal, there has been no renewal. Can someone explain to me why I'm wrong? 168.9.120.8 (talk) 13:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The Lovecraft copyrights are a subject of some debate among various parties. All Wikipedia can do within the limitations of our policies on original research and verifiability is report what different publishers and scholars have claimed about the copyright. (The entire paragraph on copyright that begins with the Joshi quote is a summary of his argument, whether or not that's clear in the present version.) It's not really our place in this article to use our own judgment to decide what is or isn't public domain. Best, Brendan Moody (talk) 15:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. 168.9.120.8 (talk) 16:36, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Charles Baudelaire -> HPL

Charles Baudelaire currently says "Baudelaire was also an influence on H. P. Lovecraft, serving as a model for Lovecraft's decadent and evil characters in both "The Hound" and "Hypnos"."
I'm skeptical. Does anybody have anything for or against this? -- 201.37.229.117 (talk) 19:56, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

You could certainly delete it if you wanted to. Unsourced stuff is generally fair game for deletion. --MwNNrules (talk) 23:15, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Recommendations for starters

Hello everyone,
I know a talk page is not the right place to ask for such things, but the Usenet groups I found were not useful (spam). I have never read Lovecraft but would like to. What can you recommend? I do not care about length, complexity or so, I can cope with that. I would like to ready something typical by Lovecraft that does not require much background knowledge about his myths, backstories, etc.
Thank you very much, Florian Prischl (talk) 15:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

None of his stories requires background knowledge about his myths, backstories and so forth. They are all stand-alone pieces, separate from one-another but building into a greater whole if read together. I'd recommend you look up The Call of Cthulhu and other weird stories in the Penguin Modern Classics range as a starter. This is the first of three paperback collections of most of Lovecraft's tales and it will give you a solid selection of his various works. --Zoe.R (talk) 23:29, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

A story set on Venus?

What's the name of the story Lovecraft wrote, set on Venus? It involves a man who's checking on water pipes damaged by Venutian natives and while landing his jet aircraft in a clearing, damages a wing on a completely invisible building. The building turns out to be a roofless labyrinth, in which he gets lost even though he can clearly see through multiple layers of refraction-free walls. It's a totally stand alone tale, separate from everything else he wrote. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 06:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

• In the walls of Eris is what I believe you were referring to. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jamhaw (talk • contribs) 17:44, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

"In the Walls of Eryx" is the title. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.14.87.76 (talk) 01:17, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

MAN HE HATED BLACK PEOPLE —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.87.52.4 (talk) 15:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

While I sympathise with the emotions of the remark - I really like Lovecrafts work- but his period racial stereotypes are wince making at times... he was equally un-fair with Italians, Hebrews, Irish, Women, & even rural New England farmers. He was basically a cultural agoraphobe & had a horror of anything he perceived as "Foreign" (What ever the hell THAT meant) Yet was able to translate his horrors into effective cosmic mood pieces. He also befriended many young writers of various ethnic backgrounds & had some black people in his day to day life who he was congenial with. He made a number of wistful statements in his later years that he wished he had learned more about the world & the people in it while he was younger. You really have the feeling that if a young black author had written him he would have been just as happy to critique & offer advice to those endeavors as he did to the many young writers who he encouraged & corresponded with in his last decade... ...I'm just sayin' 208.74.107.254 (talk) 05:38, 9 May 2009 (UTC)MBD208.74.107.254 (talk) 05:38, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

No, he specifically disliked black people. He was always ambivelant on Jewish people (hence the marrige), & became actively pro-Jewish when it became obvious how anti-intellectual antisemitism was with nazi germany, for example: but he continued being directly hatefull towards people of colour, due to their association (in the West) with the irrational. If a black author, regardless of age, had written to him with any degree of politeness, Lovecraft would have classified him as an "higly intelligent mulatto" & be polite in return (see his travel guide to Charlston for an example): it would not have affected his view of black people in general. Also, "Medusas Coils" is really not very polite to fellow Poe fan Baudelaire. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.225.26.238 (talk) 14:50, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you but this isn't a forum for discussing the author, it is a talk page used to improve the article. I am sure there are some Lovecraft forums out there where you can discuss anything you want but unfortunately we need to keep the conversations on this page focused. read WP:TALK to better understand wikipedia's format for the talk pages.Coffeepusher (talk) 06:55, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

China Mieville introduction to At the Mountains of Madness

China Mieville wrote a very interesting introduction filled with various facts about the life and times of Lovecraft. He also discusses the themes of At the Mountains of Madness. Can this be used as a source? --MwNNrules (talk) 17:46, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Clarification on alleged cut-and-paste

Some text from the article's lead section was removed as a possible copyright violation from this Amazon page. However, a cursory examination of the page history reveals that the text in question originated here via minor alterations from many editors, and was lifted for use in the Amazon description, presumably by whoever prepared that Kindle edition. I've restored the material, as it's not a copyvio and describes an important aspect of Lovecraft's significance. Brendan Moody (talk) 22:16, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

"White Supremacy" Category

I know that Lovecraft was pretty unambiguously racist (the poem "On the Creation of N***ers" really makes me uncomfortable to be a Lovecraft fan, even to the extent that I quit wearing my H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society T-shirt in public after I discovered that the poem existed), but do we really need to include this article in the "White Supremacy" category? As true as that may be, it seems a little unfair for Lovecraft to be singled out as the only writer in this category.

I would propose changing the category to "White Supremacists." I would reserve the "White Supremacy" category for writers who significantly influenced white supremacist groups or who have a significant following among white supremacists, and I don't see a lot of evidence of that in Lovecraft's case. In fact, a lot of white supremacists would probably have a problem with Lovecraft's atheism and the fact that his stories are set in a decidedly non Judeo-Christian cosmos.

CommanderCool1654 6 July 2008 —Preceding comment was added at 18:07, 6 July 2008 (UTC) and edited at 23:14, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Well I don't know about that, but I agree with the first part of what you said. EchetusXe (talk) 12:33, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I recall reading in Lovecraft's letters that he considered the Arabic, Jewish and Chinese races as having greater intellectual potential than the Caucasian race. From what I know about real white supremacists (Richard Butler of the Aryan Nations and William Pierce of the National Alliance), I somehow doubt they would embrace Lovecraft. What is remarkable about Lovecraft is that the older he got, the less racist he became. Naaman Brown (talk) 22:10, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

"Letters" at the end of the "Background of Lovecraft's work" section

"Lovecraft was a prolific letter writer. During his lifetime he wrote thousands of these letters. However, the exact number of letters he wrote is still hotly debated. An estimate of 100,000 seems to be the most likely figure, arrived at by L. Sprague de Camp."

Here are my contentions with this part:

1. The word "these" seems to refer to some mention of specific letters, but I can't find where they are mentioned. Given that there is no other mention of letters outside of this paragraph, I think it is probably referring to the previous sentence and the concept of letters in general, in which case it should read "thousands of letters." Otherwise, people are going to search the article in vain for mention of "these letters."

2. Hotly debated by whom? I think there is a citation missing here.

3. "An estimate of 100,000 seems to be the most likely figure." Says who? Why is L. Sprague de Camp's figure more likely than anyone else's? Why can't we just say "L. Sprague de Camp estimates Lovecraft wrote 100,000 letters" and then give a citation?

Anyway, I tried to make these changes, but they were overturned by User:Crowsnest, who sent me a message advising me to use the sandbox before committing a change.

I admit I don't have much experience editing Wikipedia, so I probably violated some rule I'm ignorant of. I'd like someone who has more experience, and who agrees on these points, to please make these changes for me.

Thanks,

--75.169.135.154 (talk) 20:33, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I mistakenly reverted the edit by 75.169.135.154, not reading it correctly. My sincere apologies. I reinstated the edit by 75.169.135.154. -- Crowsnest (talk) 14:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem; I just wanted to make sure I wasn't stepping on any toes. --75.169.135.154 (talk) 19:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to attempt to merge this part into the "Letters" section which appears later. --75.169.135.154 (talk) 19:52, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Quotes vs Italics

The titles of Lovecraft's stories sometimes are put in quotes and other times put in italics. I'm going to out all short stories into quotes as per the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(titles). -CaptainJae (talk) 18:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Race

I think that the Race section is currently overweighted. Lovecraft was certainly racist, but the majority of people in his community were too in those days, and eugenics was the mainstream view. The section needs to be there, but 2-3 quotes should be amply sufficient to get the point across. I'm also not sure it's representative to include a poem whose offensiveness stands above anything else he wrote, written when he was quite young and, as far as I know, never published. Looie496 (talk) 19:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I second this motion. Lovecraft's racism was thorough, to be sure, but it wasn't extraordinary for his day, and it certainly does not warrant the excessive polemical analysis here. Is this reverse recuperation? I think most people who are familiar with the breadth of his work would agree that is not a primary theme or motivator for his writing. Let's cut it down to 2 or 3 examples at an absolute maximum to not distract from the rest of the article. Phrenology (talk) 23:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC) 07:34, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

---

I third (if that's correct) the motion. I think some context in his life frustrations may also be needed. His boyhood was certainly comfortable, but his family hemorrhaged money. Finally, in his late adolescence, they left the big house and moved to a flat. Each time they moved, it was to smaller and smaller quarters. When he went to seek his fortune in New York, he was not a very good businessman and moved to smaller and smaller quarters in meaner and meaner parts of town. It is possible he projected his career and materialist failures onto the immigrants with whom he was living cheek by jowl. This is conjecture on my part.

I'd also hasten to add that in the US armed forces that fought WW2 in a few years, servicemen were segregated. And the less said about the segregation in the south the better and as someone else mentioned, Hitlerism and eugenics were all the rage at the time. Jews were barred from gentlemen's clubs of New York and Boston until well into the '60s.

I'll close by suggesting that the racialism in his a) mature and b) major stories should be discussed, yes the poem with the n-word needs context. Was it published? Let us show the contradictions of the man. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.157.190.91 (talk)

True. An anonymous editor just removed the quoted poem, and I think that such "OMG what's this doing here?!" edits could be avoided by putting that quote (at least) more clearly into context. The article already does mention that he became less emphatically racist later in life, and it also notes that he was more vocal about it privately than openly, but quotes that aren't well integrated into the article may cause readers some confusion or annoyance. Who is like God? (talk) 06:58, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

The section, currently titled "Race, ethnicity, and class" does seem to go into spectacular detail about this. I'd recommend striking the subsection "examples" and incorporating one or two of the examples into the section. I'd think that would be sufficient. Шизомби (talk) 03:48, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Not only is this section too long a lot of it is off topic since it a sub-heading of Style. Too much of it is about what he believed. It should be balanced in length with the other Style sub-sections, unless this was the primary stylistic method for which his writing gained high praise. The lede says: Lovecraft exerts "an incalculable influence on succeeding generations of writers of horror fiction".[3] Stephen King has called Lovecraft "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." Nitpyck (talk) 03:00, 19 February 2010 (UTC)