H.P. LOVECRAFT: b. Providence, R.I., August 20, 1890

Born in New England on this day in 1890, H.P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft became the dean of modern horror. His unadorned literary style did not preclude him from eventually garnering a cult fandom of immense proportions. He has had an incalculable and dramatic influence on the horror genre with respect especially to the short story, and a concomitant impact on the film genre, by dint of the widespread adoption of his ideas by a wealth of imitators.

His conception of Cthulhu, an exceedingly ancient reality parallel to our own, existing in such close proximity that the boundary between the two cosmos' may be breached at any time, and inhabited by tentacled creatures whose very existence is antithetical to human life, has pervaded the fabric of modern horror literature. Stephen King in "Danse Macabre" his novel length critical essay on horror, characterizes Lovecraft's artistic integrity:

"(Lovecraft) has been called a hack, a description I would dispute vigorously, but whether he was or he wasn't, and whether he was a writer of popular fiction or so-called "literary fiction" (depending on your critical bent), really doesn't matter very much...because either way, the man himself took his work seriously...he wasn't simply kidding around or trying to pick up a few extra bucks; he meant it...(King's italics)"

Lovecraft's stories, at their best, are genuinely frightening, whether he is working within the context of Cthulhu, as in the dreadful and seminal "The Call of Cthlhu" or when he is delving into the grotesquely peopled backwaters of the haunting New England territory he re-invented so effectively, as in the gruesome and disturbing "The Picture in the House" (wherein Lovecraft himself would probably have acknowledged a debt to Edgar Allen Poe.) The terrifying "The Colour out of Space" is absolutely essential reading for any student of the genre.


Visit The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society at:
http://www.cthulhulives.org/toc.html



For further reference, see also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos