Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown Page #4

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I personally believed that it was the result of his discovery that

his lack of knowledge or lack of proficient in mathematics

prevented him from pursuing a career as astronomer

in the summer of 1908, he simply left school and never returned

Lovecraft's reclusion would last from 1908 until 1917

judging from his letters, this break-down

had all the remarks of a deep depression

I shall know human society that had givenmyself too much but a failure in life

to be seen socially by those who had known me as a youth

they foolishly expected great things of me

Lovecraft himself was a pretty crazy person, he was kind of nuts, wondering around

I don't, I don't mean, I think "eccentric" is a better word

even for his time, he must have been not only a recluse but an oddity

he would go out occasionally apparently, and people saw him walking down the street in a raincoat

with the flapps up to his collar and

and looking straight ahead not try to make eye contact with anybody

one activity that endured through this period was his reading

this exposed Lovecraft to the amateur pulp magazines

that would one day be the ablert of his own work

I think amateur journalism saved Lovecraft both as a writer

and as a human being

there was Lovecraft in 1913, 1914 basically rotting away, he clearly didn't know what to do with himself

and then all of a sudden here was this small world of amateur journalism where there are other

people like him

trying to be writers but not writing for money

and I think for that moment, that was important to Lovecraft

because amateur journalism was a kind of school for writers

Lovecraft went on to publish his own amateur magazine "The Conservative"

in its pages he exhibited a strong passion for the beliefs he formed during his isolation

including a pronouncedxenophobia

the most alarming tendency observable in this age

is a growing disregard for the established forces of law and order

weather or not stimulated by the noxious example of the almost subhuman Russian rabble

the less intelligent element throughout the world

seems animated by a singular viciousness

every artist with every work of art is a product of his or her time

and he reflected that a lot of very American feelings

the feelings he had intellectually with beliefs in racism and so on

are reprehensible they were then as they are now, and yet in a sense

you can't expect the guy to leap out of his skin at modernsensibilities

he has this really, this really archaicbudging idea that

for society to be stable then it had to be homogeneous

he just didn't like to see the culture he knew go down to drain which he felt would happen

just by erosion as more and more immigrants came

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