Lovecraft’s supposed intellectual followers seemed to think there was no contradiction, nay, no contradiction at all in gazing out into the whirling vortex of meaningless pain, agony and suffering and thinking, sure, why not provide access to this experience for the next generation? What is this, Against the World, Against Life, For Children?
Did C is for Cthulhu contain this pearl of wisdom?
“It is good to be a cynic—it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world — we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death — the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.”- H.P. Lovecraft
Sleep tight. kids!
Lovecraftians feted after their little minions, dressed them up like baby eldritch abominations for their fun and amusement, laughed and giggled and wiped the spittle off their worthless little faces while Mommy and Daddy played their meaningless philosophical parlor games.
“It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients—or their lack—and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws. We call a thing ‘good’ because it promotes certain petty human conditions that we happen to like—whereas it is just as sensible to assume that all humanity is a noxious pest and should be eradicated like rats or gnats for the good of the planet or of the universe. There are no absolute values in the whole blind tragedy of mechanistic nature—nothing is good or bad except as judged from an absurdly limited point of view. The only cosmic reality is mindless, undeviating fate—automatic, unmoral, uncalculating inevitability. As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence. That plan is most deserving of praise which most ably fosters the creation of the objects and conditions best adapted to diminish the pain of living for those most sensitive to its depressing ravages. To expect perfect adjustment and happiness is absurdly unscientific and unphilosophical. We can seek only a more or less trivial mitigation of suffering.”- Take a Fucking Guess Who Said This
And Jesus, some of these people. They may have desecrated Lovecraft’s cosmic philosophy, but they apparently took his invented Shoggoth’s decorum and appearance as something to aspire to. These enormous, sickly, fat sloppy elephants that paraded around this convention were befitting of the climax of Imprisoned with the Pharaohs. Hippopotami should not have human hands and carry torches … men should not have the heads of crocodiles … men should also not exist without defined necks and the ability to work a washing machine.
What had he expected? Honestly, he imagined he would meet more souls like himself, sensitive to the majesty of the sublime, struggling with the angst of corporal limitation. Intelligent, searching people drawn to Lovecraft’s life and work. Instead, he found a bunch of slobs and posers and idle dabblers who had taken up their hobbies after being unable to fit in with the mainstream, booted off the tree of respectability and hanging on desperately to whatever low-lying branch would support them. Had these people been born with normal dimensions, they’d be cheerleaders and football players or hipsters.
Worse, hipsterdom already seemed to have infiltrated Lovecraft, a miscegenation more horrifying than anything the great scribe had dreamed up. Lovecraft bars, Lovecraft beers, Lovecraft hoodies and beanies….
Malcolm checked his gear-operated antique watch. He had about ten minutes before the author reading.
“Cool watch man, where’d you get that?” asked a kid in his mid-twenties, decked to the nines in the newest vintage fashions: striped gray suspenders, tie, dark framed glasses and fedora, the result of a chimney sweep and a 1920’s pulp detective barreling into each other at high speed and exploding.
“It’s a family heirloom,” Malcolm responded, in his high, piping voice.
“Sick man, I like it.”
“Thanks.”
Malcolm had some time to kill, so why not have some fun trolling?
“I can’t believe all this stuff. Keth-oo-loo, is it? I love H.P. Lovecraft, but I had no idea he wrote short stories.”
“Really?” the young man looked at him cock-eyed, but beamed with the opportunity to explain something pedantically to someone else at length.
“Yeah. I mean, I know him primarily as an essayist. His thoughts on culture and race are … inspiring, I’d say.”
“Inspiring!?” the man was beginning to fume with the joyous indignation of the SHOCKED and OUTRAGED.
“Yeah. I mean, don’t you agree with him? Otherwise, how could you support his other work? I would argue that supporting a Lovecraft convention is a tacit support of the man’s other, larger views, if you think about it. Cosmic horror, race, religion ….”
“I – I – his views on race are terrible, so outdated, there’s so much more —”
“Anyway-nice-meeting-you-I-have-to-go,” and Malcolm walked out.
Well that was fun. He left the hotel where the convention was being held and found a small coffee shop. He ordered an iced coffee ($4). He took out a wad of singles, pulled four out, and handed them to the barista.
“Woah woah, look at all those singles. Going to hit the clu-ubs.” She elongated “clu-ubs” to make her reference to strip clubs obvious. She was a cute, affable young woman, a bit hipstery looking. Surely she was of the sort to dislike male chauvinism. It befuddled him what life circumstances or perspective would compel her to say something like that. The desire for tips, maybe? The sense that having a consistent moral outlook was outdated, that everything had to be ironic and frivolous?
He mumbled something, left a dollar tip, and left. Above the tip cup was a Cthulhu Plushie, holding a sign: “IA! IA! Cthulhu Fhtagn! Tip or Be Devoured!”
That plushie. His eyes narrowed and everything zoomed in on that plushie. Grumbling sounds, suggesting an encroaching storm on the soundtrack. Low tones of dread. Everything he resented about these people, about this convention, was embodied by that plushie.
He wanted to take that tip back.
He sat in the suite for the author reading. He couldn’t recall the author’s name and was unfamiliar with her work, but she was supposedly highly regarded as a fantastic weird fiction prose stylist. He knew what she looked like, however, and saw that she was standing outside the conference suite, talking to a man in a suit. A fan tried to get her attention. Malcolm couldn’t hear what she said to her fan, but she put up her index finger dismissively without looking. The fan got the hint, his enthusiasm a little dampened, but waited dutifully.
There were about fifteen others in the suite. She entered the suite about fifteen minutes after the scheduled time (perhaps a minute for every waiting attendee?), explaining blithely that she had to take care of business with a publicist.
She started up a projector. An illustration of her, wearing a magician’s hat, her fingers up as if she was reading an incantation (or shushing an unworthy fan) with illustrated ghouls and creatures of the night waiting around her with rapt attention.
Mild applause.
“I’m proud to say this story is slated to appear in Del Howison’s Prestige New Horror 19.” (Miraculously, by dint of some cosmic kismet that even the Elder Gods could not fathom (as presumably nepotism is a wholly-human invention) the same roster of authors always managed to produce each year’s best new horror.)1 She paused, expecting applause, received a few beats of silence, then some tepid claps to fill the air. “Mr. Howison, the legendary editor, as you may well know, is the gold standard for quality horror and dark fiction.” Undaunted, she then rattled off all the awards this story had won, many of them given to her by the same authors, committee members and assorted Lovecraft dickriders she’d been hob-nobbing with all weekend.
He doubted he missed much by ignoring her story. For in the corner he recognized one of the authors from yesterday’s panel.
The author bouncing the little baby boy in his lap, the little baby boy rocking a Hello Cthulhu onesie.
The man with the by-all-appearances pleasant, supportive wife by his side throughout the convention, the one who took pictures of her betrothed making mock-horrified faces by all the Lovecrafticana around the convention. The man who had to dip out here and there to answer his important work calls, no doubt from his cutting edge smart phone.
The author that discussed Lovecraft as his greatest inspiration, described how exposure to Lovecraft’s cosmic philosophy exploded the way his brain worked, put everything into a new perspective, how in awe he was of the man and the “undeniable” ramifications of the man’s philosophy.
When Mr. Author-Man’s family gathered around the dinner table, what did they discuss? Did he bounce his baby boy on his knee and feed him his mashed peas and carrots after a hearty round of contemplating the selfishness and futility of reproducing? Did the cosmic insignificance of all known human achievements, virtues and morals mean anything to this charlatan when he planned his little family vacations and doctors’ visits for junior and told his wife he “loved” her?
Was little junior still a special snowflake in an endless scorching universe?
What stories and refrains and inspiring quotes did Mr. Author-Man regale his spawn with before bedtime? Perhaps this little quotable:
“The human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure ‘Victorian fictions’. Only egotism exists.” – If You Can’t Guess Who Said This, Please Kill Yourself
Mr. Author-Man probably liked all the ker-azy monsters in Lovecraft’s stories. He probably got into deep arguments online about the proper classification of Yog-Sothoth. He didn’t yet know it, but he was just a dabbler, Lovecraft as just another form of entertainment, appearing on his shelves alongside Harry Potter, Mad Men and The Sopranos.
Mr. Author-Man was a living disgrace to the glorious man and his glorious philosophy.
He was perfect.
Mr. Author-Man was more than happy to sell Malcolm a copy of his book, just out from Innsmouth-Dagon Rock’em Sock’em Publications.
Thrills! Chills! Horror and Suspense!
The Great Azathoth will soon rise! The minions across the world scream for his arrival! Time is running out!
Only two intrepid PhD students at Miskatonic University have any hope of stopping this Lord Beyond Light. But to do so, they must awaken and partner with mankind’s ultimate rival, Cthulhu!
Mixing action, intrigue and contemporary sexual and gender politics with classic Mythos adventure, and featuring a cast of Lovecraftian all-stars, this story has got it all! So what are you waiting for: heed the call, pick up your silver key, and open the door to cosmic adventure in The Unsung Mysteries at the Center of the Earth!
Author-Man was elated when Malcolm showed up later at his hotel room. Why, they were staying at the same hotel, on the same floor, Malcolm just noticed that’s where Mr. Author-Man was staying. What a coincidence!
Would he sign the book?
Why sure!
The Mythos was all hokum, of course. Yog Sothery, as the great man himself had dismissed it.
But if you were going to find an audience to take your wrath out on, you could do worse than dressing it up in the appropriate accoutrements to punish a charlatan who supposedly had already come to grips with the futility of existence and the amoral nature of the universe.
The purging would begin.
What would Mr. Author-Man say when he woke up?
What could he say when he found the bodies; dead, gibberish signs and words carved into them, the lamps in the bedroom assembled into an arbitrary triangle?
What could he say when he found the bodies; eyelids shewn off, missing fingers, four puncture wounds forming a circle around their belly buttons?
All capricious, signifying nothing.
He’d felt bad about it, actually. Maybe he should just kill the pretentious authors themselves next time: Author-Man’s wife and child were just along for the ride, innocent victims. But killing the family proved the point, right? Life and death are meaningless, right, so what does it matter? Eh, he would save the family and just kill the authors in the future, logical consistency and point-making be damned.
What grievance could Mr. Author-Man really have? Would he cry and wail despite “knowing” that he and his beloveds were no more important than the various pests and rodents humankind snuffed out without a second moment’s thought?
It’s not as cute to talk about the uncaring universe when it comes home.
The uncaring universe appears a lot different when it comes home.
* * *
1 And yes I used parentheses inside of parentheses. Why not send me a hundred messages about it? Quick, maybe I misspelled Fhatgn, too, better go check, got to focus on the important stuff, you know? What feeling eclipses the pleasure of superiority in knowing another made a mistake?
Oh Abel, Oh Absalom
Vernon Camacho is a thirty-six year old Puerto Rican man who grew up in the Woodside Houses housing project in (no surprise here) Woodside, Queens. Someone who didn’t know any better wouldn’t think that being a Puerto Rican in Woodside was such a big deal. Shit, walk down Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside and you’ll see all types of Latin American establishments, from Colombian to Ecuadorian to Brazilian. But those restaurants on Roosevelt Avenue are South American, with vastly different attitudes and cultures than Puerto Rico. Most of the South American expats in the neighborhood are the working poor, emphasis on both working and poor, and mainly just keep to themselves.
But Vernon, being a Puerto Rican, always felt some kinship to the stronger Puerto Rican culture across the East River, in East Harlem. That’s not how he’d phrase it, exactly. That’s how his parents had always phrased it. He’d like to disagree, but he really couldn’t. He never liked Woodside, and as a kid he’d leave it as often as he could, instead finding comfort in the streets of East Harlem, festooned as they were with the colorful iconography praising a culture he knew nothing about and that meant nothing to him. More than once, he’d mistaken the Puerto Rican flag for an advertisement for Pepsi.
Partly based on his resentment of Woodside, and partly because he just enjoyed being a wiseass, he used to always insist that, in reality, he didn’t live in Woodside. See, Woodside technically began east of 51st street, and his family lived in the western house of the project, on 49th street. So technically, he lived in Astoria. That didn’t mean much for his purposes — shit, Astoria, with its Greek and Middle Eastern eateries and burgeoning yuppie population, had far less street credibility than Woodside. But even though his parents no doubt found his hair-splitting neighborhood distinctions obnoxious, they beamed at what it presaged: an attention to detail, Vernon’s critical mind. A mind, they felt, that could enable young Vernon to accomplish more than they’d ever accomplished.
Plus, Vernon was light-skinned. That Catalonian blood rose up and hid all that dark, like thick cream on a Greek frappe. That was a joke that Vernon’s father, Hector, always wanted to tell him – he’d like it, his father thought, because he always tells people he lives in Astoria. But Vernon’s father was bad with words – both English and Spanish – so he didn’t talk much to Vernon. Still, he always went out of his way to buy his son frappes, lighting up inside thinking about young Vernon, he of fair skin and that stubborn spirit and sharp mind, like the lawyers on television. Young Vernon would accomplish anything, if only he wanted to, if only he set his mind to it.
>< >< ><
Vernon Camacho, 36, waited in line with his plastic food plate, just like all the other
inmates, to get his mac-and-cheese. Vernon was in prison, with two more months until his release, assuming he was released early for good behavior.
Vernon was serving a three-to-six-year conditional sentence for armed robbery.
>< >< ><
Vernon’s father had died about four months earlier, from a heart attack. A massive heart attack, the doctors had said, as if that made any difference. Vernon’s mother, Angelina, had since gone down to Puerto Rico. With her husband dead and her only child in prison, there wasn’t much reason for her to stick around New York, especially not now, not in November, when the dying trees only made the gray skies that much harder to avoid.
As his release date got closer and closer, Vernon thought more and more of El Barrio, that bastard neighborhood of East Harlem. There was a mural on East 117th Street and Third Avenue that had all this Puerto Rican shit: tropical setting, quotes from people he didn’t recognize, et cetera. The thing he always liked about that mural was the chicken with the guitar. It looked funny, how dedicated that cartoon chicken was to playing his cartoon guitar, all the serious-looking Puerto Rican scholars and celebrities in the mural completely ignoring the fact that, right next to them, a bright yellow cartoon chicken was shredding on the guitar. As he got older and his parents got more and more worried about him, he’d tell them how he liked seeing that chicken, and they’d loosen up a bit and think, oh, he’s not a gangster, he’s not a thug, what kind of thug would find a yellow cartoon chicken endearing?
East Harlem should be in jail, not me, Vernon thought. Yeah, it made no sense. But at his sentencing he wanted to tell the judge the truth: look, I’m here for the wrong reason. I wanted people to like me. I’ve got psychological problems. I’m depressed. It’s East Harlem’s fault. Where are they? They. The people of East Harlem. They never visited him: shit, most of them are gone, somehow gentrified-out by the Mexicans, of all people.
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