![]() ![]() If it was just the racism he would already have been forgotten by now. That sense of creeping dread – he was able to tap into a more universal human fear of difference and the unknown than the specific one he was thinking about. You don’t have to be white supremacist to get it. Much of the novel develops in this spacenot quite Lovecraft but close enough. ![]() “There will always be this big asterisk next to his name now. Although Ruff gestures to that time by placing Montrose and George in Tulsa during the 1921 massacre, setting his novel at the onset of the civil rights movement unmoors Lovecraft’s horror fiction from the horror of Lovecraft’s time. ![]() However, Ruff does not believe Lovecraft is in danger of being “cancelled”. Since then, Lovecraft’s views on race have become central to the debate about his writing. In 2016, the year Lovecraft Country was published, his likeness was finally removed from the World Fantasy Award trophy following an outcry from writers of colour. But the conversation around his legacy has now changed. Lovecraft’s racism was waved away for decades. “But I have to say, in almost any year in America something is going to happen that would have made it timely.” “I mean yeah… which is unfortunate,” says Ruff. Lovecraft Country arrives at a timely moment, as the push to vote out of office the most racially divisive American president in recent history gathers momentum and Black Lives Matter protests continue. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |