Лавкрафт. Биография

by L. Sprague de Camp

Подробная биография знаменитого короля ужасов раскрывает сложный, порой нелицеприятный образ Говарда Лавкрафта. Спрэг де Камп, известный своими произведениями в жанре фантастики и историческими сочинениями, прорисовывает в деталях жизнь обыкновенного человека, которому удалось стать ярчайшим мифотворцем XX века.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Lovecraftian, Horror, History, Cthulhu Mythos, American

664 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, both novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.

Reviews

[Thomas Zimmerman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I remember reading this soon after discovering Lovecraft, and it really pissed me off.
It is the most judgemental biography I've ever read.
You might be thinking L. Sprague de Camp went after Lovecraft for his notorious racism, but that isn't what he harps on. No, this author criticizes Lovecraft for writing too many letters, and never learning to type.
That really is my main memory of this book; De Camp bitching about how Lovecraft could have written more fiction and finished novels if he hadn't wasted so much time corresponding and writing by hand. It is ridiculous.
Also, the book is a bit of bore. There is nothing too juicy to write about a borderline shut in who lived with his aunts most of his life and traveled little. The main interest in the book actually came from Lovecraft's letters, which were often about his mythos. Interesting topics like HP's attitudes about sex (for example his short-lived marriage in New York) and his racist viewpoints are glossed over and excused.
At least, that was how I felt when i read this book.
Just stick to reading Lovecraft, and wait for a smarter biography to come out. Everything you need to know is probably on the wikipedia entry anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.P._Lov...

[Lucas Townsend · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this is indeed H.P. Lovecraft's first biography (first published in 1975, and only because of August Derleth's sudden death, who had initially planned the biography), I believe that de Camp made some poor choices in the writing of it.

The emphasis in his central argument, which he carries throughout the 450 page tome, is that Lovecraft was a man of contradictions. While all well and good, the fact that there is even an argument or thesis present within a biography is a cause for concern from the onset--and as I expected, the book is full of de Camp's snide comments, opinions, and recommendations of how Lovecraft should have lived his life. What really gets me about this is the fact that a) this is a biography, and b) Lovecraft had been dead thirty or so years before this was even being written, how on earth is he possibly going to be able to take de Camp's suggestions at living more effectively and profitably? Lovecraft lived the life he wanted; he knew the choices he made. Berating him for his failures isn't going to change anything, and really detracts from what is an informative narrative into an opinion-laced pulpit.

What absolutely grinds my gears is de Camp's complete inability to list the citations for many of the letters and correspondence that he is quoting from--many of the largest and most important passages that he includes lack a reference to a letter, year, point of contact, anything, without even a footnote. Sure, he does include references to his notes pages for some of the small asides, but when there is something that I see he has quoted that is absolutely essential to my professional research, and I look, and lo and behold, there is no citation anywhere on the page or in the notes, I lose my mind.

Of less import, he sets aside multiple pages interspersed within the biography to discuss his own views on fiction (in what it is and on the writing of it), as well as his own experiences and techniques; completely unnecessary in any biography, especially one of someone that you had never even heard of until after his death.

Nonetheless, I respect de Camp for at least making the first steps towards informing the populace of his life fifty years ago, and it was indeed informative. However, I'm sure that there is a reason that S.T. Joshi's work is considered the go-to biography of today.

Review may change contingent upon my opinion of Houllebecq's and Joshi's biographies, but my expectation is that Joshi's will be far more reserved, and thus, palatable.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horror writer icon H.P. Lovecraft was obscure in his life, but is well-known today, and arguably products of his fruitful imagination outpace his name in recognition- he could hardly have foreseen the image of his terrible elder god Cthulhu becoming chibi-fied into dolls, for instance, or for his references to become so common in gaming culture. Perhaps, as a lifelong pessimist, he could have seen coming the way his name has become synonymous with racism in speculative fiction and nerd culture more generally. Ironically, if he didn’t become so well-loved by a fervent cult in the mid-twentieth century, no one would have published his voluminous correspondence, which contains much stronger and more persistent racist content than do his stories (which could be pretty racist but not much more than was common in pulps at the time).

I’m reading Lovecraft for my upcoming birthday lecture, which juxtaposes the writer with crime writer Dennis Lehane and discusses both as promulgators of a genre vision of New England. Truth be told, chain-reading Lovecraft stories gets pretty old, pretty quickly- he’s best taken one at a time. I also “knew” about him and his various reputations, good, bad and indifferent, from my previous immersion in nerd culture, so who knows how I would have taken to him without that background. This birthday lecture is why I sought out this biography, which was also recommended by a correspondent of mine (alas, Lehane is still among the living and has not been biographized outside of brief journalistic profiles, to the best of my knowledge).

If the first iteration of the Lovecraft myth was of a lone genius scribbling away his tales of cosmic horror unacknowledged in Providence, L. Sprague de Camp, a man of the golden age of science fiction, seems to be the author of the second iteration of the myth- Lovecraft, tragic victim of what made him great. Apparently, August Derleth, first and most dedicated votary of the first iteration of the Lovecraft cult, dropped dead before he could write this biography, and the contract passed to de Camp. De Camp makes heavy use of Lovecraft’s thousands of surviving letters and is able to follow the author’s career month by month, giving his opinions of the various projects Lovecraft pursued and generally giving a thoroughgoing picture… if one with a distinct framing.

De Camp’s writing is sprightly, irreverent, lightly swaggering in that way of scifi writers of his time. He was a man of the world, author of nearly a hundred books, and a major critical figure in scifi/weird-fiction circles (he also wrote a biography of Lovecraft’s friend Robert E. Howard, of “Conan the Barbarian” fame). In short, he was as different from Lovecraft as it was possible for another white, basically conservative, male speculative fiction fan of his time to be. And seeing as that was largely the ambit in which de Camp (and Lovecraft) walked in and wrote for, de Camp makes much of the implied difference.

De Camp doesn’t downplay what many modern readers will want to know about, Lovecraft’s bigotry, except by way of comparison with the amount of attention de Camp dedicates to Lovecraft’s distinctly type-B personality and unprofessional working habits and demeanor. Lovecraft’s dread of rejection, refusal to “lower” himself to self-promotion, blown opportunities for advancement, inability to type even, come in for de Camp’s disapproving notice. Lovecraft’s bigotry gets tied up in this- de Camp depicts his “ethnocentrism” (a term he seems to prefer to “racism” for some tired midcentury reason) as one of his many impractical attachments to outmoded ways of thinking and doing things, that kept him in Providence, cozened by older female relations, unable to keep the good wife he won in the person of Sonia Greene, and generally failing to be the sort of ubermensch de Camp saw himself and his fellow scifi golden agers — an impressive bunch, if with impressive failings — to be.

One of the more relatable things about Lovecraft, to me, is his disdain for life, from his horror at biological fact to his preference for the dreamed over the real. His participation in “amateur journalism,” which de Camp lightly chides as a waste of time, reminds me of the people I know who’ve gotten really into blogs and/or forum cultures, complete with wrangling and factionalization. I think Lovecraft resounds as much with nerds to this day in part because he was one of them, and one who transcended without selling out… by the expedient of dying before he could and having his devotees popularize his work.

But make no mistake- he was racist as fuck. De Camp keeps promising what amounts to a “face turn” in later life. He did marry a Jew, after all, though he kept making anti-semitic remarks during and after his marriage. He got less bad about white ethnics in his later years, even making a mob of Italians (led by a priest, natch) save the day in one of his better late stories. One of the reasons de Camp prefers charges of “ethnocentrism” to “racism,” it seems, is that Lovecraft had a great pride in his notional “aryan” ancestors, which he dampened some later on. To broaden out into the ways his worldview affected his work, later stories like “At the Mountains of Madness” show a certain sympathy with the alien other that rivals his earlier outbursts of horror at difference for their emotional charge. But he was still writing shit about black people basically until the end, died believing Mussolini was pretty good (and FDR, too, for what it’s worth), and really didn’t change that much. You get the impression de Camp wished Lovecraft would stop being racist in the same way he wished he would buck up and learn to type- because it was embarrassing.

How much does Lovecraft’s bigotry matter? Well, I think for the fandom culture it matters somewhat what they name their prizes et al for, in terms of being welcoming to the people Lovecraft scorned. I don’t bother with the old get-out of “separating art from artist;” I believe can and should appreciate and enjoy the works of artists of all kinds with their eyes open. It’s just a fact that a lot of innovative artists were lousy people and/or had rotten politics. If you understand art as something other than a set of interchangeable entertainment products, which I do but which it appears a troubling number of popular critics do not, you can’t just swap them out for nicer people and have yourself a nice, clean culture. If nothing else, the repressed has a way of returning… as it happens, I’m not sure if Lovecraft was that much of a genius in and of himself. But in some respects the proof is in the pudding: we’re still talking about him, he helped define the genre of horror, and Cthulhu isn’t going to leave our collective imagination any time soon. We’re into at least a third iteration of the Lovecraft myth — Lovecraft as monster — and arguably a fourth — Lovecraft as figure less than the sum of his works — and who knows where it’s going to go from there. There’s limits to how much I care — I’m only a horror guy incidentally, for projects such as this year’s birthday lecture — but it’s an interesting process to watch. ****

[Octavio Villalpando · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovecraft es mi actor favorito de todos, sin importar el género literario, el estilo o el periodo al que pertenezcan. Desde esa vez que cayó en mis manos una vieja edición de "El horror de Dunwich" de Alianza ya no tuve remedio. Empezar a leerlo y empezar a amar el efecto que sus letras le producián a mi joven imaginación fue una sola cosa. Hoy en día, muchos años después, ésta devoción sigue presente, y me atrevo a decir que se ha incrementado.

Después de haber leído toda su obra de golpe, ahora es un rito leer algo suyo (o relacionado con él) al menos una vez cada mes. Y cada vez voy encontrando nuevos matices que hacen aún más interesante su re-lectura. Nuevas cimas de imaginación que no había explorado antes, nuevos horrores, y paradójicamente... mucha ternura. Sí, ¡ternura! ¡Ah, cabrón! ¿cómo es que un relato de "horror" puede producir "ternura"? Pues sí, conforme voy conociendo su vida, conforme voy sabiendo de las carencias, anhelos y miedos que Lovecraft hubo de encarar, no deja de causarme tristeza el ver reflejado en sus textos de ficción los patéticos anhelos que tenía, esas barreras que trataba de poner entre él y un mundo para el cual la mayor parte del tiempo fue un extraño. La vida de Lovecraft es toda una oda a la frustración. Talento tenía, más del que muchos humanos pueden esperar tener jamás, sin embargo también tenía tantas cosas que imposibilitaron el que ese talento le hubiera servido mejor en vida. Hoy podemos decir que hubiera sido muy sencillo para él el crear cientos de relatos más, escribir una novela, no sé, hacer mil cosas más que le hubieran permitido tener una vida más adecuada a sus necesidades. Pero lo cierto es que ya desde entonces, él no era un hombre de su tiempo. ¡Y jamás lo va a ser! Ya lo hemos arrebatado del corto periodo de vida en el que estuvo en la tierra, aún sigue siendo una sombra fuera del tiempo porque jamás va a ovlidarse su legado, seguirá y seguirá, nuevamente y por siempre un extraño en los tiempos ordinarios de la humanidad. ¡Y lo merece!

Sprague de Camp hace una muy buena labor en su libro, es un recorrido muy ameno, aunque en lo personal eché en falta un poco más de precisión en cuanto a fechas, sin embargo tiene todo para adentrarse en la vida y personalidad del último gran maestro de la literatura de horror que ha morado en la tierra.

Muy recomendable.

[Patrick.G.P · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times I underestimate my love for H.P.Lovecraft and his bibliography.
Since I was a teenager his works have meant extremely much too me, and I have read and re-read his tales numerous times.
Up until now I actually only knew the most basic facts about his life (!), which I had learned from
various forewords in his collections.
L.Sprague De Camp's book is a massive tome and I must say I enjoyed every sentence in it immensely! It was truly exhilarating learning more about Grandpa Theobald and I regret not having delved into his bio earlier than this. He led a fascinating if not a bit sad (in more ways than one) life.

The only thing I would criticize the book for is, as many others have pointed out, De Camp's harsh critical tone of more "trivial" aspects of Lovecrafts life.
Had he managed to stay a bit more objective in his writing, I think the book would have been even better.
Overall a great book,that made me even more eager to explore the mythos and Lovecraft even further than before!

[Rhuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great biography of an American literary giant who even yet does not receive the credit he's due. Stephen King is but a hack compared to Lovecraft, to whom King owes so much. King is a "giant" in the US middle brow world only because the American reader is largely ignorant of Lovecraft. As biographer and Lovecraftian de Camp says, it's partly HPL's fault: as a reclusive pseudo-gentleman he did not pursue commercial writing as did lesser talents.

Sprague de Camp offers not only professional but personal insight into a contradictory and complex man. In today's terms Lovecraft was the prototype "incel" living in mama's house, inventing his own world of D&D rather than indulging in electronic fantasy. De Camp's critique is spot-on, despite the "insult" Lovecraftians here interpret it (and implicitly of themselves and their own reality-escaping.) But no matter the snobbery that can be used against him (as opposed to his own) he was a creator and innovator of the fantastic, rivalled only by Poe and better than anyone now pursuing the craft he loved.

[Martin Gibbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovecraft was kind of a mess. This was the first biography I'd read about the author, and so it was a surprise to find that it was not entirely the most accurate.

The book itself is well-written and very detailed in describing the life of Lovecraft, while sprinkling in snippets from his various stories. It certainly helped to align the biography with the body of his work, though at times it feel like it was disjointed.

We get a little mention of Lovecraft's racism, but it does seem that de Camp is trying to criticize Lovecraft for things that don't necessarily need critizing. Yet the insights into the publishing world in the '30's was very interesting--and the need to market and peddle one's work is still relevant today.

A decent work with many words. Could have spent the last few weeks finishing it doing other stuff, but all in all it was OK.

Now back to reading the original... "At the Mountains of Madness" awaits!

[Federico Arteaga · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography of Lovecraft's helped me put in perspective a writer we are prone to idealize. HPL was a profoundly flawed person with countless shortcomings in life; De Camp's portrait of the man is brutal at times and, though he misses the magic and romance of Lovecraft's romanticized vision of the world and his life decisions, this kind of tough love is indispensable for a devout HPL reader and aspiring writers of strange fiction.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was given this book by a fellow Lovecraft fan, which he had had for some 40 years and had just reread it. The book was written by L. Sprague DeCamp, himself a well-respected SFF author, who certainly was influenced by Mr. Lovecraft (as have the likes of John Faris, Stephen King and Dean Koontz, among others of the horror genre). Mr. DeCamp’s meticulous research and interviews are quite obvious, although this (paperback) edition has, by the author’s admission, been shortened from the original in response to what he felt were valid criticisms of excessive verbosity, repetitions and other snags; also, the original extensive list of references was eliminated from the paperback edition. Nonetheless, the endpapers of this edition contain a number of photographs of Lovecraft, his family, his wife, the homes where he grew up, and friends.
Mr. Lovecraft is, for want of a better term, the father of the modern horror story. Most of his tales are from the 1920’s and are largely situated in New England, his birthplace. (by the way, I am wending my way through the “Complete Lovecraft,” a mammoth work encompassing his fiction, poetry, correspondence and essays; gonna be awhile before that’s finished). Mr. Lovecraft was an enigmatic person, mostly a recluse who nonetheless had friends in a journalism group; a man with strongly racist and anti-Semitic leanings who married a Jewish woman; a man plagued by the absence of a mentally-ill, institutionalized father and a doting, overprotective mother, who along with two aunts raised him after his father’s death. Lovecraft had a frail constitution and missed much of his elementary and secondary education due to what was described as both physical and emotional maladies. He reportedly did not complete high school or attend college. Although intelligent, he was chronically underemployed, relying on family for support. Relatedly, despite his prodigious oeuvre, he apparently made little or no money from any of it, indicating that his writing was for his entertainment and that of his friends and relatives. He was very formal in his writing and speech, preferring a stilted, anachronistic Victorian mode of communication.
Lovecraft’s fiction in marked by at times florid descriptions of weird, vaguely threatening landscapes; evil forces affecting the very soil of a house suspected to be haunted;, extraterrestrial beings (“The Old Ones”) which exist in the cracks between conscious and unconscious thought and which are awaiting a sign to emerge and conquer; an alien leader (Cthulhu) with an octopus-like face and the ability to control humans’ thoughts; and flawed, vulnerable and plagued humans who throw themselves upon these forces, sometimes for generations. His influences include Lord Dunsany and Edgar Allen Poe (whose “The Narrative of H. Gordon Pym” is the basis for “At the Mountains of Madness,” in which an underground civilization of supposedly extinct aliens is discovered underneath Antarctica). The reader will cringe and shudder (well, this one has done so) upon reading many of these passages, not a few of which are thematically linked.
Lovecraft has been praised for both his comprehensive “Cthulhu Mythos” and for being a sort of combination of science fiction and fantasy. However, most of these positive comments, as well as large-scale sales of his writings, did not come until decades after his death, and his writings continue to be widely read. I greatly enjoyed this book, although according to Wikipedia Mr. DeCamp’s research has been criticized for not being thorough enough, with the book “I am Providence” by S. T. Joshi considered as more comprehensive and updated. Maybe I’ll read it someday. Five stars.

[Miguel Rico García · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biografía del Maestro de Providence, sin duda uno de los mayores escritores de literatura de terror de toda la historia.

Esta biografía (escrita por L. Sprague de Camp), aunque es algo antigua, me ha parecido muy completa y bien documentada. No creo en absoluto que haya quedado desfasada, sino que sigue sirviendo como referencia muy válida sobre la vida de Lovecraft.
La fuente fundamental sobre la que el autor se apoyó para componerla fue la abundante correspondencia que Lovecraft dejó con bastantes personas. A partir de ella (y de otras fuentes), el autor recrea la vida y el pensamiento del escritor norteamericano.

Me parece meritorio el haber escrito una biografía que, en mi opinión, se lee de manera bastante fluida aún cuando el protagonista de ella hubiera tenido una vida más bien falta de grandes acontecimientos vitales. Lovecraft no era, en absoluto, un hombre de acción, ni su vida fue la más apasionante, pero sí que estuvo impregnada de una gran creatividad y de un mundo interno rico y fecundo.
El autor saca provecho de esto y nos ofrece en la biografía una completa radiografía de las ideas de Lovecraft y de su manera de ver el mundo. Es por esto por lo que no me ha decepcionado en absoluto el libro, ya que lo que más me interesaba a mí era un análisis ideológico y psicológico del personaje, y dicho análisis forma parte de todos o casi todos los diecinueve capítulos que lo componen.

También se hace un somero resumen y análisis de los principales relatos lovecraftnianos, por lo que, como no podría ser de otra forma, no solo el autor, sino también su obra, está presente en el libro.

En cuanto al biógrafo, es bastante crítico con determinados aspectos de la vida de Lovecraft, y, sobre todo, con la perspectiva fatalista y, a menudo, apática con la que él la asumía. Sin embargo, también se muestra comprensivo con una de las cuestiones que más polémico ha vuelto al Maestro de Providence: su declarado racismo. El biógrafo deja claro que el racismo del que Lovecraft hacía gala no era en absoluto algo extraño ni denostado en los Estados Unidos en los que se crió y maduró, sino todo lo contrario. Además, también muestra que, si bien nunca llegaron a desaparecer, sí que sus postulados racistas se fueron moderando con la edad.

Por lo demás, el autor defiende la obra de Lovecraft frente a algunas críticas descarnadas que llegó a sufrir. No le considera uno de los más grandes escritores de la Literatura universal, pero sí le considera un escritor a la altura de Poe, y un adelantado a su tiempo en lo referente a la literatura de ciencia ficción, lamentando que, debido a su pasividad y a su torpeza a la hora de lidiar con las cuestiones vitales cotidianas, no llegara a dedicarse a la literatura de manera más profesionalizada y, por ende, que no hubiese escrito más de lo que escribió.

En conclusión, me ha parecido una biografía muy completa, bien documentada y analítica. Imprescindible para quienes estén interesados en conocer quién fue Lovecraft más allá de sus obras.

[reherrma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Der Name H.P. Lovecraft ist seit einem Jahrhundert immer noch in aller Munde, obwohl viele seine Werke geschweige denn sein Leben kennen, aber jeder verbindet das Horror-Genre mit seinem Namen. L.Sprague de Camp, selbst einer der legendären Gestalten, die die SF und Fantasy-Genres Anfang des Jahrhunderts geprägt haben, hat sich mit dieser Biografie an eine der komplexesten Persönlichkeiten der amerikanischen Literatur gewagt.
Er leistet mit dieser Biografie gleichzeitig eine Werkschau des Lovecraftschen Œvres und spürt dessen Ursprüngen nach. Die immense Fleißarbeit bemüht sich um Objektivität. Immer wieder scheint freilich de Camps persönliche, oft harsche Kritik an einem Mann durch, den er, ein Tatmensch durch und durch, nicht wirklich verstehen kann. Die Biografie liest sich trotzdem spannend wie ein Roman, da de Camp sein enormes Lovecraft-Wissen dem Leser nicht vorsetzt, sondern es sachkundig aufbereitet, gliedert und mit viel trockenem Witz präsentiert. Das Ergebnis ist ein ein Muss für Freunde der Phantastik die hinter die Kulissen blicken möchten.
Es gab und gibt viele Biografien oder persönliche Erinnerungen über Lovecraft, aber vieles war offenbar Stückwerk oder haben persönliche Ansichten verbreitet. Erst L. S. de Camp hat mit diesem Band sich die Mühe gemacht, ein Gesamtbild zu rekonstruieren. So wurde Lovecraft gern als Rassist, Antisemit und Bruder im faschistischen Geiste gegeißelt; entsprechende Äußerungen wurden seinen Briefen entnommen. De Camp nimmt Lovecraft nie in Schutz, der in der Tat schauerlich über “Fremdblütige” herziehen konnte. Andererseits war Lovecraft diskriminierend in einer Ära, welche die Unterdrückung von Minderheiten als selbstverständlich betrachtete. Anders ausgedrückt: Wie Lovecraft sprachen viel zu viele US-Amerikaner. De Camp liefert dafür deprimierend überzeugende Belege. Als Zeitgenosse Lovecrafts weiß er zudem gut, wovon er spricht. Wer mehr über Lovecraft und die Entstehung des Horror-Genres wissen will, kommt um diese Biografie nicht herum, allerdings ist sie mit 640 Seiten (für mich) ein gewaltiges Werk das man nicht so eben in einem Rutsch durchliest...

[Ángela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un enfurruñado señor nos cuenta la historia de Lovecraft. Por alguna razón, no me imagino su historia contada por alguien que no fuese un enfurruñado señor.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bad biographies are never so-called for a lack of good style and grace in the prose. Any life, be it one of near-mythic intrigue or of the most hum-drum ordinariness, is still a life; still strange, complex, simple, distant and familiar all at once, and even the worst prose stylist will have difficultly diminishing that if they can recognise what made the life they write of so significant. Bad biographies, in other words, are the ones that are disinterested in their own subject.

H. P. Lovecraft's first biography, written by the mostly but unfairly forgotten L. Sprague de Camp (a contemporary of Asimov and Heinlein, and a man with a very good prose style indeed), flirts with outright bad just enough times for the whole affair to seem hair-rendingly redundant. de Camp launches on a contemptuous first note, declaring himself relatively unattached to Lovecraft and unable to see the merit that the likes of, say, August Derleth (Lovecraft's correspondent and first editor proper) were all too eager to see without much reservation. The attempt is to seem balanced; the attempt fails. From this ominous note, de Camp sprinkles the rest of the story, from Lovecraft's circling journey from Providence, to New York, and back to Providence, with dismissiveness, bemusement, and enough exhausted resignation for it to become frequently uncomfortable. He despairs too often of Lovecraft's professional failings. He denounces Lovecraft's racist outbursts, then follows them, sometimes near-immediately, with his own sudden tangents on homosexuals and feminists, whom he addresses several times as 'deviants'. Worst of all, his critical digressions on Lovecraft's writings are so uniformly disapproving that, besides 'At the Mountains of Madness', de Camp seems to feel that Lovecraft never even wrote a worthwhile or lasting horror story - all of which leaves one wondering what on earth motivated him to expend five hundred pages on his subject in the first place!

Yet, despite this sometimes palpable feeling of disdain from de Camp, he never allows his opinions to so carry the book away that it becomes unreadable. Far from it; though deeply problematical, the book cannot but remain essential reading for any serious Lovecraft devotee or scholar, though 'I Am Providence' by S. T. Joshi has probably trumped it by now. de Camp provides plentiful access to Lovecraft's illuminating and absolutely gigantic body of correspondence - a privilege given how expensive those letters are in published form - and his telling of the macabre fabulists' story is richly detailed and broad in topic and scope, covering almost every pre-WWII social issue that might've concerned the author.

His discussions of Lovecraft's notoriously fierce racism, though perhaps marred by its insistent description as 'ethnocentrism', are empathetic without being undeservedly sympathetic, but the great achievement of the book is that, for all its flaws, it does make one feel, for an instant, what kind of emotional life it was that Lovecraft experienced, and in that sense de Camp succeeds as a biographer. Whether this is an attractive achievement is another question - do not to come to this book for a story of misunderstood genius ending in a final triumph. Here you open up the story of a truly lonely life, a life of thwarted ambition and bottle-corked bitterness, much of which will seep through unbidden and sting the heart of the reader, even as they note that, had it not been so, we might never have been left with all those wonderful, terrifying stories, and certainly with a whole different conception of the weird tale.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography is much derided due to de Camp's overreach in his psychological analysis of Lovecraft, and this criticism is justified, but I encourage fans to read it just the same. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

This biography has quite a few good qualities which in my estimation more than outweigh it's shortcomings. For one thing de Camp does not let Lovecraft off the hook when it comes to his racism and chauvinism. I also appreciated de Camp's willingness to describe Lovecraft as refusing to give up his childlike romantic views of the world and class hierarchy and how no one suffered more from this stubbornness than Lovecraft himself. Lovecraft would have benefited immensely from a simple Liberal Arts education at a university, but he coddled himself to such a degree he never even finished high school. This weakness greatly restricted his intellectual and professional development throughout his life.

I recognize Joshi's two volume biography is now the standard, but I actually got less out of it than from this work. I think Joshi is too enthralled with his subject to write objectively. Joshi's insecurities also mar his work. To my mind, Joshi's need to elevate Lovecraft writing to the scholarly plain leads to at least as much overreach in his analysis as you will find in de Camp's analysis of Lovecraft's character.

De Camp creates a portrait of Lovecraft as a messed up adult who lived a very unconventional life, but one who still emerges as likable on many levels, understandable on even more. This book helped me appreciate Lovecraft's writing more, not less, and for that alone it gets my recommendation.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was loaned to me by the horror-fantasy writer and, now, GoodReads author, Larry Santoro. I'd read most everything by Lovecraft that had ever been published--well, at least his fiction and his book about the craft of horror writing, not his newspaper science articles, poetry or amateur fandom pieces--over the years and had long been interested in knowing it the stories about his eccentricities--so compatible with the character of his writing--were true. Conclusion: he was much less bizarre than I had thought. Indeed, he'd been married, had lived in New York City, held common racist notions of the time etc. He was almost, but not quite, "normal".

During the seventies I had occasion to travel to Providence, RI, staying a weekend at the home of some college students there. On a drive somewhere Lovecraft's old house was pointed out to me. Recently, returning to Providence with friends from Vermont who have a daughter there, I had occasion to ask about the Lovecraft house. Sadly, I was told that it no longer exists.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

H.P. Lovecraft inspired many a conspiracy theorist with his ominous tales of the Ancient Ones and the persistent references to some sort of "Them" in his short stories and novellas. This biography is lively and interesting, which is to be expected considering the author, L. Sprague De Camp, produced some memorable science fiction and fantasy himself. Lovecraft was a strange bird, and his writing reflected that. Unlike Poe though, whose life was seemingly intertwined with his tragic, forboding tales, Lovecraft didn't seem to walk around looking over his shoulder or searching for the "Them" that his stories certainly proclaimed to exist. The "Illuminatus" trilogy by Shea and Wilson relied heavily on Lovecraft, who they speculated was an innocent dweeb who inadvertently stumbled upon part of the truth about "Them" in his writings. Reading this story of Lovecraft's life is especially essential for all those who are enraptured by his fantastic stories.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the book (despite being called “A Biography”) badly overstocked with criticism, subjectivity & in some way unnecessary opinions about HPL personality (mostly negative) that bubble over from author here and there throughout the whole book, it’s hard not to admit that Sprague de Camp did a great work through the letters and memories collecting all the complicated pieces together in such a smooth and readable way that even a anti-epistolary snobs like I am will find captivating.

I enjoyed this reading very much. No matter how many pages author spent on his classical “de Camp “teaching” HPL and guessing what person Lovecraft would be and what he would yield if he do this and that in certain way instead of just being HPL”, though it could be quite annoying for one reader, it is, for Tsathoggua’s sake, a MUST read for a fan!

[Scott Ferry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would put this book at 4 stars for the overall research and possibly the growth of the author with regards to his feeling about Lovecraft at the end of the book. Especially maybe the last paragraph or 2. He states clearly at the beginning that he wasn't really into Lovecraft and Derleth had been the one who was going to write a bio but never did. I did not enjoy so much though the author's nitpicking and critiquing Lovecraft when I doubt he has written anything better. He just goes on and on throughout the book. For myself a lot of Lovecraft's downfalls and character flaws for sure added to his writing and he may not have been able to write what he did without them. This book though left me wishing to read another biography on Lovecraft with maybe a different perspective and approach.

[Omaira · Rating 3 out of 5]

[no haré reseña]

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Lovecraft when I was a kid and thought it was really cool. I dislike his books now after growing older and reading a lot more. I think his work is juvenile, for the most part, and the product of a weak mind that reached out but neither pulled nothing down or pulled himself up. I still have a grudging affection for The Shadow Over Innsmouth because it's so silly and also because it actually features an identifiable evil. The Colour Out Of Space is a good story until the hysterics of the cabin owner becomes silly and not disturbing. The rest is mostly trash, and posturing trash, too. His fondness for antiquated spellings is irritating in the basest sense but also reveals a man in desperate pursuit of . . . what? Being admired? Being condescending? His Anglophilism is repulsive but especially his version. He was also a typically unfunny racist, naming his cat N___r and writing embarrassing poetry about people he somehow managed to view as inferior to his own feeble self, his ancestry and his immediate family. All of this unpleasantness is described in L. Sprague de Camp's biography, which has its own axe with Lovecraft to grind but mostly does a fair job of telling how his eventless life went. I guess it's unfair of me to slight a biography of a mostly uninteresting person to be uninteresting. But I genuinely find this well-researched biography to hold so little to recommend it. Do I regret reading it? Somewhat in the same way I did after reading No Laughing Matter by Anthony Cronin, except in a very different way. In the latter case I liked, no loved the subject, -- still do, in fact. In the case of Lovecraft it was like watching Grey Gardens in black and white and backwards. It was dull, like a long march on unvaryingly flat land. Lovecraft is such a tedious character and his agonies are so draining to even contemplate. His face looms behind your eyes after you suffer through another chapter of this lonely and miserable life like the vision of one of the fish-people in Innsmouth, bulging gray eyes, moon face and hideous mouth.

All you Weirds out there who like Lovecraft, I'm not meaning to knock you. I like a lot of work by writers who were influenced by Lovecraft. There's my weak disclaimer.

If the job of life is to be like God's spies and come back from dying with a lot of growth and experience then I do feel that Lovecraft failed in our common task. He did write a lot that meant and means a lot to a lot of people much more worthwhile than he, and that is giving him some credit.

[etienne]

Frontloading the criticism made the later praise more effective and I found Lovecraft a fairly charming man by the end of it, seeing him as a friend as well. When I return to his stories I feel less so but I am glad to understand better this influential character, his context and his relation to the lives people led then and now. I appreciated the occassional allusions to the great Norwegian economist Thorstein Veblen in critique of nordophile H.P.'s stunted & tragic simulation of leisure class values while barely scraping by and never finding stable employment, all to the detriment of his marriage, his desire to tour the world, his fellow-feeling towards mankind, and the length of his life. I felt for him and found myself relating to his striving for gentlemanly ethics and my heart was warmed by his successes and moments of social butterflying when he escaped the ruins and cemeteries of his imagination and had something in mind beyond a worship of the mystery of death. Of this and other biographies I have read of the man I left feeling inspired by the autodidact DIY man-of letters self-realization, as hindered as it may have been, for he followed his dreams and left a mark.

[Bryan Whitehead · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is prolific writer L. Sprague DeCamp’s 1975 attempt to distill the life of one of horror fiction’s most influential and enigmatic figures down into just under 450 pages. And for the most part, he succeeds. The picture DeCamp paints isn’t always flattering. In fact, he devotes a great deal of space – though perhaps not an inordinate amount – to Lovecraft’s vile bigotry and other personal failings. On the other hand, he also does an excellent job of revealing Lovecraft’s state of mind at key points in his writing career, helping scholar and casual fan alike develop a greater understanding of the man and the mind behind beloved tales. My only real gripes about DeCamp’s effort are that I could have done without the hearty doses of his personal opinions about his subject’s life and work (often irksome and distracting even when I agreed with him), and the organization could have been a little tighter. Otherwise this is a must-read for any serious student of Lovecraft and the genre he helped pioneer.

[Will Mayo]

What, if anything, can one say about Mr. Lovecraft? A recluse who distrusted anyone unlike himself. A racist and a xenophobe that shed most if not all of his fears through the travels of his final years. A writer whose posthumous success was for the most part despite himself. L. Sprague de Camp explores all of this in his well written biography and the impression this reader is left with is mostly of how Lovecraft, like many writers, faced the darkness within himself and conjured up a universe in his fiction that was neither moral nor immoral but rather amoral in nature. Of a cosmos where mankind occupies a lonely backwater and is no way shape or form in charge of his destiny. Of Lovecraft's creation of Elder Gods that are neither good nor evil but rather bat man away the way a fellow might well bat away a fly. This worldview may, despite all Lovecraft's prejudices, be the most meaningful and lasting of his many creations. I thank the late de Camp for filling us in on the life of a most curious man.

[Alexandre Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficile de déterminer où s'arrête la médiocrité de Lovecraft et où débute la mauvaise foi de son biographe. Si l'on en croit De Camp, l'auteur avait peu de qualités: raciste jusqu'à la moelle, sa correspondance le confirme; poseur, vieux jeu, difficile de le nier; incapable d'occuper un emploi, dépressif, suicidaire... bref, la totale. Le biographe n'en laisse pas passer, tant et si bien que l'on croit déceler chez lui une forme de colère contre son sujet. Il aurait voulu que Lovecraft apprenne à taper à la machine, qu'il cesse de perdre son temps à écrire des lettres, qu'il soit plus habile pour vendre ses histoires. Tout de même, on en apprend pas mal sur cet auteur culte, même si le biographe s'acharne un peu sur des éléments plutôt banals. J'aurais apprécié une plus grande analyse des textes, mais j'ai trouvé mon compte dans les nombreuses sections sur le marché littéraire des années 30, très bien expliqué.

[Jorge Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually give pretty high stars but this only gets three from me. All the way through I am thinking 'L. Sprague de Camp, if all this negativity is all you have to say about Lovecraft why on earth did you write such a lengthy biography? (and it was long). The detail he goes into about Lovecraft's xenophobia and racism is all good and should be there but there is a lot of negative criticism not just of Lovecraft's character, personal life, sexuality(or lack of) but also his story writing.
I almost didn't finish it due to the repetitiveness of it. There is lot's of information in there which is good but to be honest I am more interested in his correspondence and idea sharing with other weird tales legends like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith which wasn't covered in much detail.
Overall, I am glad I am finished and can move on to something else ;)

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't necessarily love whatever the funk this guy who wrote this name be...

but there are many times I laughed out loud and empathized with Lovecraft...

Did not know I loved the dude, even more than his work, esp.

the note about stopping at roadside ice creamery and having one

of every flavor.

Again did not know I loved this dude, I heard from the herd he was evil;

even his biographer here cantankerously rails against his subject!

; but there you have it, Love for Lovecraft. A great inspiration for budding

poets I'll be passing on their way.

[Дмитрий Давыдов · Rating 5 out of 5]

Очень интересная и подробная биография одного из моих любимых писателей, зачастую раскрывающая его нелицеприятные стороны. В книге много деталей, начиная от внешнего образа Лавкрафта и заканчивая его взглядами. Де Кэмп проделал большую работу: он и разгреб кучу бумажного материала (включая письма), встречался с его знакомыми, плюс изучил много других вещей, которые помогли бы понять лавкрафтовское миропонимание

Ну и отдельно стоит упомянуть качественный русский перевод

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really easy and entertaining read of the life and misgivings of H. P. Lovecraft. It gives not just a picture of Lovecraft's life but the world, literary works, contemporaries, and psychologies that made him the unique being that he was. It holds nothing back, exposing both terrible and admirable traits but always keeping things even with contrary statements from those that lived in his small corner of the world and who either hated or loved him. A brilliant book, worth rereading at some point.

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sin tanto material objetivo para analizar (las más de setenta mil cartas que escribió Lovecraft no podrían ser fuente absolutamente fidedigna), e incluyendo mucha reseña y semianálisis de los cuentos (lo cual no necesariamente forma parte del constructo biográfico), Sprague de Camp logra una muy sólida e interesante visión sobre el maestro del horror cósmico. Muy meritoria biografía.

[Josh Dollins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously out of date now still a fun quick read for fans of Lovecraft and Lyon