Does Lovecraft still matter? A new annotated volume argues in favor of this old horror writer. Lovecraft, who died five months before his 47th birthday, also “shrewdly created an American pantheon of horror,” Klinger said of the hardcore New Englander. “He was the first writer of supernatural literature to understand the psychological consequences of the generations of Puritanism and the warping of the human psyche that resulted.”
I always get a chuckle out of accusations that Puritans twisted our civilization. Where would America or the world be without the Puritans of England and its New World colonies? Nowhere. They would be unrecognizable to us, if we could see such an alternate history.
Speaking of Alt-history, Lars’ Death’s Doors
It’s strange believing him a genius in understanding “puritan” psychology considering many of his own strange personal beliefs that resulted from his paranoid lifestyle and disturbed upbringing, all of which had nothing to do with the puritans.
Agreed – there’s a big difference between “Puritan = 16th Century English Calvinists” and “Puritan = traditional New England culture”
Lovecraft, though, really goes out of his way to criticize the specific Puritan figures. And, to my way of seeing it, he’s terribly unfair to them.
Why not get his own opinion on the matter?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtAoPbw5SmUJHLpDJe67m0g
AskLovecraft@gmail.com