James Baldwin at Miskatonic University

Lovecraft Country and the Tricky Mysteries of Lovecraft

My career as a reader of HP Lovecraft started at age 13, at the side of a hotel pool in Arizona. I remember reading The Dunwich Horror by the light of that eery turquoise glow, until long after my parents had gone to sleep. I felt like I had uncovered a profane secret. So adult books could be like this? My fate as a literary dork was sealed then and there. There’s no writer I’ve spent as much time reading as Lovecraft, and certainly no one I’ve reread so eagerly and indulgently. I’ve probably read The Shadow over Innsmouth a solid dozen times, and I hope to read it dozens more before the waves take me.

So when I heard there was a new HBO show called Lovecraft Country, I knew eventually I’d have to watch it. I knew nothing about it before tuning in, except that it was based on a book by another of Lovecraft’s many, many devotees. That devotee was Matt Ruff, who shares one important insight with showrunner Misha Green and executive producer Jordan Peele and everyone else involved in creating this story: One of the most important facts about HP Lovecraft is that he was an overpowering, raging, possibly record-setting bigot.

This is not a case of “one of your faves said something offensive one time.” Lovecraft’s racism, misogyny, and/or xenophobia—along with a whole host of other prejudices and phobias—made an appearance in just about every story he ever wrote. These bigotries are further confirmed by his letters. This is all very well documented, so I won’t belabor it here. Let’s just say that, even by the low standards of a WASPy dude in the Interwar United States, Lovecraft really had it out for anyone who didn’t look exactly like him.

To its credit, Lovecraft Country draws energy from this undercurrent immediately. On a dusty rural Illinois road and in a Chicago garage, characters debate Lovecraft’s own shortcomings (Lovecraft is an extant, albeit presumably deceased, character in this version of 1950s America) and the fact that John Carter of Mars was a Confederate soldier. They don’t reach many conclusions beyond a wry ambivalence. They don’t separate the art from the artist or disavow the troubling parts; they just agree that stories can be compelling in spite of their failings and those of their creators.

At least two of the main characters, Tic Freeman (Jonathan Majors) and his uncle George Freeman (Courtney B. Vance), are inveterate readers, mostly of fantastical pulp adventures. Their relationship to these narratives is realistic for cultivated genre fiction fans. Which is to say, they’re enthusiastic and even fanboyish without being as cluelessly reverent and literal as we always seem to fear someone else will be about made-up stories. Early on, at least, this show tries to treat both its audience and characters like grownups.

The first episode of Lovecraft Country was mostly interested in depicting what it might be like to be a Black person from the South Side of Chicago in the Fifties. There’s a lovingly rendered block party and a tussle with the cops over a hijacked fire hydrant. Later on, there are multiple run-ins with outright murderous crackers in little sundown towns. George Freeman is a professional traveler who composes guides to safe travel for Black Americans, a la the Green Book of that eponymous movie we definitely all saw. His job involves experiencing a lot of unsafe travel on behalf of his readers. By the time James Baldwin’s Cambridge Union speech is intoning over a montage of de facto and de jure segregation and persecution, we know what this episode is about, and it’s not the Cthulhu Mythos.

The conceit that gets these characters—the Freeman nephew and uncle, as well as firebrand neighborhood friend Leti Lewis (Jurnee Smollett)—out on the road is the disappearance of Tic’s troubled, alcoholic father. Closing in on his apparent location, in the rural Massachusetts that so inspired Lovecraft’s twisted pastoral, brings us our first encounter with monsters who don’t wield badges or hunting rifles. Soon we’re at a mysterious manor, where all is not as it seems, which turns out to mean it’s all exactly as it seems.

You may have heard that Lovecraft Country starts to fall apart in the second episode. If so, you have heard correctly. The first episode is almost anti-fantastical, invested in granular historical reality in a way that almost feels profaned by the intrusions of Lovecraft’s work. It all coheres and is well made.

One of the nicest things I could say about the second episode, on the other hand, is that it felt mashed together from multiple scripts, all of which might have worked on their own. Why is there a hayseed female quasi-sheriff with ravenous dogs in an otherwise idyllic and oblivious village protected by warlocks who have burrowing monster guardians? What happened to the creepy but possibly sympathetic servant who seemed so important? Why is the warlock guy’s runway-model daughter helping a cow give birth to some tiny monster? Is the tone supposed to be—man, I really, really could not keep track of the tone.

Here’s a major spoiler: George Freeman, beloved wise uncle, apparently dies at the end of the second episode. That really threw me because I had decided that Lovecraft Country was going to embrace the vibe of the pulp adventure stories that Lovecraft was published alongside but didn’t write. I decided this right around the time the rich WASP warlock guy was igniting some magical ritual pillars as Gil Scott-Heron recited Whitey on the Moon. I felt that I had gotten confirmation when Tic, with an assist from a ghostly ancestor, blew up the whole creepy manor. It seemed like our mostly unimpeachable (other than the drunkard father, played with dutiful edge by Michael K. Williams) characters were on the edge of going Proto-Scooby Doo. They were going to swashbuckle their way through this wobbly, hurried, throw-it-all-at-the-manor-wall adventure of the week and swagger into whatever was next.

And then the uncle dies, I guess because this is an HBO show with the kind of budget that means major characters have to die with some regularity?

I don’t know what Lovecraft Country is going for. The first episode made sense and left the show with many opportunities to play around with the rich narrative universe that Lovecraft left behind. The second was all over the map, like a shakily led roleplaying session based on the sprawling fan-fiction universe that has grown out of the Cthulhu Mythos. It had next to nothing to do with Lovecraft.

Is it a failure to not make much use of Lovecraft in a show called Lovecraft Country? I would say so, if only because of what Lovecraftian storytelling has to offer the thematic interests the show laid out early on.

If you’re a protagonist in a Lovecraft story, you’re constantly trying to keep it together, trying to shut out intrusive thoughts that are tugging at the fraying fabric of your reality. You’re always having revelations that lay bare cosmic terrors you can barely comprehend, and then comprehending something even worse. At the end, you’ll likely either be dead, insane, and/or on your way to becoming a monster, figuratively or literally. You won’t change or resolve traumas or have love affairs or do the other things fictional characters are supposed to do. You’ll just be a weak vessel for overpowering terror.

I don’t want exactly that from these characters. I’m not sure what I do want after such a confusing second episode, but I’m at least interested in what these characters could do once they’ve had the revelation and lived through it. Lovecraft’s characters get overwhelmed, but most of them have never been through anything truly difficult before they meet the monsters. Lovecraft Country’s characters are realer, living with trauma but not reduced to conduits for it—just like the rest of us. These characters have been through plenty, and yet they’ve hit the road once again, for the sake of defiance as much as duty. Lovecraft Country established early on that it could treat its viewers like grownup. It should remind itself of the possibilities of doing the same with its characters.

For all his notorious flaws, Lovecraft himself can provide an assist. His work has its failings, but one of its virtues is that it’s endlessly re-purposeable, perhaps because it retains so many tantalizing mysteries even after you read every word. If Lovecraft Country wants to get back on track, it should consider going in search of its own ways of filling in some of the blanks left behind by a strange and lonely writer. Step one would be to stop treating the mythos like it’s a grab-bag of monsters and baddies. It’s so much more interesting and complicated than that, just like real life.

Calvin and Hobbes Corner

We have reached a crisis of leadership:

To recap, we have not made it to the Yukon. We’re still in the woods of what is likely exurban Ohio, probably a couple hundred meters from Calvin’s parents’ house. There was a fight in the last strip, and Calvin lost. Most crucially, he lost the all-important captain helmet. There’s no going back from here; there’s only going back.

Last week, I wrote about how mercurial Hobbes is. Sometimes he’s the wisest character in the series; sometimes he’s more conceited and selfish than even Calvin. This unpredictability is part of the genius of Calvin and Hobbes. Hobbes’s basic existence is forever unresolved, forever troubled. We know he is as real for Calvin as anything, but we also know he’s a stuffed tiger to everyone else. Here’s how the Calvin and Hobbes wiki frames the Hobbes conundrum, with an assist from Watterson:

Many readers assume that Hobbes is either a product of Calvin's imagination, or a doll that comes to life when Calvin is the only one around. However, both of these theories are incorrect. As Watterson explains in the Tenth Anniversary Book, "Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality than dolls coming to life": thus there is no concrete definition of Hobbes' reality.

Watterson explained: "Calvin sees Hobbes one way, and everyone else sees Hobbes another way." Hobbes' reality is in the eye of the beholder. The so-called 'gimmick' of Hobbes is the juxtaposition of Calvin and Hobbes' reality and everyone else's, with the two rarely agreeing. Hobbes is supposed to represent how imaginative kids see their stuffed animals.

One takeaway from this way of seeing Hobbes might be that he is both an autonomous character and whatever Calvin most needs him to be in the moment. In this case, Calvin, the only child, needs someone to treat him like a little brother. It’s not very nice, but it gets results.

Other fun things

— Since I wrote about the MFA life last week, I figured I’d share with you this craft screed by Leslie Epstein, which we recently read in my workshop. I don’t agree with most of it, but it’s the kind of thing that’s useful to disagree with!

— The Haunter of the Dark was Lovecraft’s last story, and one of his best. Good place to go if you’re curious about his work

— I was saying yesterday that now would be a good time to go to Obama-to-Trump counties to talk to actual people. This is a pretty good instance of that

A poem

Paisley Rekdal on memory