Between
the Interstice
On Lovecraft and Weird Fiction
"Back
then, with the visions, most of the time I was convinced I'd lost it. There
were other times, though, where I thought I was mainlining the secret truth to
the universe."
------------
Rust Cohle, True
Detective
Behind the
wide facade of Speculative Fiction twist the hedge-mazes of fantasy, brood the
catacombs of horror and gaze the far-seeing floors of science fiction. Among
them, between them, are the closets and crawlspaces of the niche, one of which
-- a relatively bigger one -- is the place of Weird Fiction, a dark storage of
many souvenirs from fantasy, horror and science fiction, though dusted with its
own special charms.
The former subtitle for my new book,
Too Much Dark
Matter, Too Little Gray: A Collection of Weird Fiction was actually, A Collection of
Speculative Fiction.
As one prone to appreciate sprawling ambiguity, to resist specific
categorization, it’s a little ironic that I wanted to specify further. But
there was a reason for that, besides the stodginess of “speculative”, which has
none of the zany, fluid charisma of “weird”.
While using “weird” may sound like a
proud judgment, a literary outcast chest-thumping his identity as such, it’s
more a direct homage to the tradition of Ambrose Bierce, Robert Chambers, H.P.
Lovecraft and many others. Going further, it’s an accurate classification given
my vision of Weird Fiction, a subgenre that, perhaps more consciously than
other fields of speculative fiction, stirs together elements of the
metaphysical, cosmological and horrific to grimly honor the Big Questions,
remind us of our insurmountable ignorance, to pin down our squirming selves
into our rightful position in the child’s seat, to whisper, maybe in some
alien, mud-packed voice, that, hey, the world slippery and you
won’t ever, ever catch it. The world, in short, is weird.
And past all the horror, the
strangeness, that to me is a nourishing thought. Let me explain.
The moment I cemented my decision to
not pursue an M.F.A (or any academic
training) in writing is vivid. While enrolled at Otis College of Art &
Design, I found in my mailbox a little perfect-bound literary booklet featuring
work by the graduate students in fiction. I flipped it open to a random story.
After wading cautiously into the second paragraph of a painful scrutiny of
eyebrow-plucking, I was done. Other entries weren’t much better. Too many of
them seemed concerned with stereotypical, high-literary minutia, unfortunately
the focus and baffling preference of innumerable professors, awards, journals,
and workshops (cough-Iowa-cough).
 |
| My first sale, the storyThe Hand of Spudd in Storyteller Magazine |
Personally, I have little interest
in quaint journalistic accounts of Malaysian transvestite violinists at the
turn of the century (yes, I made that up), or the endless slew of aptly-termed
“McFiction” featuring some cocky narrator coming of age amongst his or her
overfed, dysfunctional family. No, I prefer going head-on at the Big Questions,
going at them, as George Carlin might say, with no less than a sledgehammer.
Give me ballsy confrontations with Life, Death, the Cosmos, with Existence,
with God.
In their noble attempts at social
redemption and inclusion, many contemporary teachers of literature treat
writings in the framework of their political significance. To me, though, such
attempts seem nothing more than new forms of division. It is looking at
the grains and forgetting the shore. Does the world really need a Marxist
reading of Huckleberry
Finn, complete with
ten-dollar jargon? Academics are on the lookout for the “next best thing”, the
new trend in analysis, the new prism through which to see literary works of
yesterday and today. I say: what about our shared heritage? Our shared -- and
uncertain -- future? Not as any one ethnicity, gender, party, or faction, but
as an entire civilization. A species. A collective piece of this vast Universe.
Of course, much of this material is
studied, and much of it is exhaustively considered and written about. Enter
Weird Fiction!
As any fellow devotee will know,
H.P. Lovecraft -- arguably the most esteemed and influential practitioner of
the genre -- cleaned out the catacombs with his pen, defying tropes of ghosts
and vampires and expanding imaginations with interconnected tales of ancient
civilizations antedating our own, of towering alien-gods, of unseen dimensions
and humanity’s sanity-shattering smallness in an inexplicable cosmos. All this
made more impressive by the fact that he wrote in the 1920s, when so much of
that stuff was barely on anyone’s speculative radar, including scientists’. His
unknowns are truly Unknown, and will forever elude explanation.
Certainly Lovecraft’s work has
failings, failings probably more surface-level than those of other lauded
authors. He was well aware of his own wooden dialogue (hence, quotation marks
are scarce in his pages) and his prose sometimes gushes into the purple.
Nevertheless, his voice, with its richly archaic, darkly celebratory cadence,
stands alone, and will survive as long as we’re unsure what lurks “out there”.
 |
| Me suited up, scoping “out there” |
Sadly, Lovecraft, and especially his
“Cthulu” mythos, have become somewhat franchised, relegated to corners of the
market generally aimed at Dungeons
and Dragons fans,
horror enthusiasts, and nihilistic young adults sporting black fingernails and
lipstick. It is a wide “cult following”, but nonetheless a cult following.
Although some scholars have acknowledged his importance, many see him as a
troublesome bridge from Poe to Stephen King. It is this identity that has, I’m
sure, dissuaded many from giving him a serious go. “Lovecraft? Oh, no, I don’t
like that horror stuff.”
But back up. Here we come back to
the question of Weird Fiction itself, because I don’t necessarily consider the
canon, or Lovecraft’s work, “horror”. Certainly there are horrific elements in
his work, and his career does include several standard supernatural yarns. But
in his treatment of cosmic mysteries, and the shadowed realms of prehistory,
his is more a prying curious eye, forcing us to consider those Big Questions,
to ponder notions of, and issues with, the likes of religion, biology,
cosmology, archaeology, and psychology. He sets you on the outside looking in,
a contrast to being in and looking further in to the point of navel-gazing.
This exercise of outside-looking-in, one I believe most writers of fiction
should undertake, helps in a kind of rounding out of thought.
No matter the genre in which one
writes, I believe the best, most poignant stories have at least an undercurrent
of this “larger awareness”, a perception
conveying authority and wisdom. So many stories feel constricted by their own
world, characters or concerns. Yet to read Lovecraft is to confront directly
that raw Unknown that surrounds us, that is us. To get a healthy dose of
perspective: a shambling, roaring, behemoth upswell of perspective.
I mentioned earlier that I think
such a perspective can be ultimately nourishing. In an era of economic,
cultural and political tumult, when millions of Davids the world over shout in
fiery voice against the few far-reaching, corrupt Goliaths, there is morbid
comfort in knowing that, despite whatever the megalomaniacal egos of sadistic
leaders, immoral bankers, or bribe-pocketing politicians might make of
themselves, there are impenetrable forces beyond all of them that will cast
mocking eyes towards their suited-up, gold-rimmed delusions, if they even care
to acknowledge them. Lovecraft, and the general tradition of Weird Fiction,
reminds us just how little power the powerful actually wield. After all,
Goliath was, what, ten feet tall? When the mountain-sized Cthulu rises once
more, those people will be nothing but scrambling ants -- along with the rest
of us.
