If you’re a fan of HP Lovecraft, as I am, you eventually have to face up to one thing: Lovecraft was a racist. (You also have to face the fact that he’s overwritten, pseudo-British, etc. But that comes later.)
You can’t get away from the racism. It creeps into every single one of Lovecraft’s stories. There are some critics who go so far as to argue that Lovecraft’s racism is what gave rise to his distinctive universe. “Cosmic horror” is really just Lovecraft’s feeling that he was surrounded by degenerate races and miscegenation, translated to a universal reality.
How should you react to this? Most folks point out that Lovecraft was clearly a product of his time and place, and he could not have avoided growing up racist. He was old Yankee stock from Providence, well aware of his family’s lineage and Anglo-Saxon “purity.” His society would have instilled in him a disdain for all those of a “mixed breed.”
I share a view with many of Lovecraft’s biographers: the problem is not that Lovecraft was raised racist and was racist as a young man. The problem is that he never changed his views. Lovecraft was an intellectual man who was very interested in science and who communicated through letters with a wide variety of people. He frequently debated, and frequently gained new knowledge, learned, grew and changed.
But not his racism. That seemed to be one area he would not reconsider. If we define the word “faith” as meaning an idea held even in the face of contradictory evidence, then the superiority of Anglo-Saxons to all other races was part of Lovecraft’s faith. This is disappointing.
On that note, Orson Scott Card has released a short story (you see where this is going, don’t you?). It’s actually an adaption of Hamlet, titled Hamlet’s Father. He’s made some changes. William Alexander at Rain Taxi caused a stir with his review:
Here’s the punch line: Old King Hamlet was an inadequate king because he was gay, an evil person because he was gay, and, ultimately, a demonic and ghostly father of lies who convinces young Hamlet to exact imaginary revenge on innocent people. The old king was actually murdered by Horatio, in revenge for molesting him as a young boy—along with Laertes, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, thereby turning all of them gay. We learn that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are now “as fusty and peculiar as an old married couple. I pity the woman who tries to wed her way into that house.”
Hamlet is damned for all the needless death he inflicts, and Dead Gay Dad will now do gay things to him for the rest of eternity: “Welcome to Hell, my beautiful son. At last we’ll be together as I always longed for us to be.”
… yeah.
If Card were just slipping into his dotage, we’d just smile uncomfortably and look the other way. But as Charlie Jane Anders at io9 points out, Card is still thinking and has some interesting views on energy policy and space travel. Anders wishes that he would spend more time advancing those instead of pounding the anti-gay pulpit.
Card is still thinking, but it’s obvious by now that he’s not going to budge. It’s painful to read his anti-gay declarations, which are a tissue of logical fallacies and tired stereotypes glued together by bile and anger. He has his faith, and it is impervious to evidence and argument. This is sadly disappointing.
I’ve come to call this type of phenomenon ‘Scott Adams Syndrome‘ – the realisation that an author whose work you admire actually holds some pretty messed up beliefs. I named it after Dilbert’s creator because it was the first time that I was thoroughly disillusioned with someone whose creative output I have been a huge fan of for many years. Turns out he’s quite a douchebag, actually.
Good name. I remember when [some city] was going to put on the full Wagner opera and the question was, “can we enjoy the music knowing that Wagner was unremittingly anti-Semetic?” Can you separate the art from the artist? In the case of Card, clearly not. In the case of Adams, I decided his art wasn’t worth it. I still enjoy Wagner.
Where have I been? I’m apparently so out of the loop on this I’m in Jupiter orbit: this is the first I’ve heard of this particular infuriating bull!
Indeed. Card is probably so disappointing to me because of how much his stories could exalt the ideals of peace and understanding, even across seemingly insurmountable barriers to that understanding. The “hierarchy of exclusion” from the Ender sequels still sticks in my mind as a useful classification system and moral thought experiment in dealings with others, especially other species, since it really measures the maturity and empathy of the person applying the scale. It’s a beautiful concept. And then he is determined to turn gay people from utlannings to framlings or worse, demonstrating his own moral maturity on his own scale.
I can at least calm my concerns about Lovecraft somewhat with the thought that he probably hadn’t known any black people (or any other non-Caucasian race) well enough to properly challenge his preconceptions. He lived in a very white part of the world most of his life, and most of his fellow authors and correspondents were no doubt also white (and white men, at that). But his other prejudices and conservative views could be relaxed enough to support the New Deal and other social justice endeavors, or love and marry a successful Jewish woman, even if the marriage didn’t last and living in NYC swiftly exacerbated his paranoia towards all the strangers and “others” around him.
I think when it came to people, Lovecraft had to be challenged personally to adjust (and apparently L. Sprague de Camp believed as much, claiming in a biography that Lovecraft had rather late in life finally started to relax his views as he started dealing with more people of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities). But Card? He’s been challenged. He’s had evidence all around, opportunity to meet and deal with all kinds of people out of his cultural bubble that Lovecraft never really had. And he hasn’t budged.
I can pity and feel sympathy for Lovecraft for his misfortunes and ultimate lack of opportunities, especially since much of his adult life was marked by steadily increasing poverty and declining health. Card, meanwhile, has done very well for himself and lives much better than almost any random person you could point to in the US these days. I can’t pity him for his views.
To be fair, Lovecraft did overcome his racism enough to marry a Jew.
I can’t deny that Lovecraft was a racist bastard, but when you look at his later years, most of it seem a knee jerk reaction to his own failure and self loathing – not that it makes it right, but kinda makes him pathetic and deserving pity. At least he never acted violently on those ideas.
Well, I’ve always assumed that lovercraft had some kind of mental problem to start with, and also i did not detect racism in many of his works (although the italian traduction may have softened certain references).
I’m now going to buy all of the Card novels I want to read secondhand (ABE Books.) That way he gets no royalties.
PZ covered this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/09/07/oh-man-orson-scott-card-is-such-a-warped-little-man/
Required comment: a lot of great minds had also shitty ideas, religion included.
Intelligence, creativity, integrity and coherence do not come necessarily together.
This is something I came across years ago when an English lit teacher of mine impressed upon us to be wary of author biases. One of the questions on every book review we had to do was “What biases does the author present?” No writing is free of agenda or personal beliefs. =)
Yeah, that’s just like Michael Crichton and… Oh wait, my bad! He had stupid beliefs and totally misrepresented the scientific method AND he was a shitty writer. Sorry. Carry on.
:(
you ruined it.
I find that I have to compartmentalize my brain while reading some authors, Lovecraft, Howard and Christie come to mind. I can enjoy the story with one part of my mind, while noticing and being sad about the racism with a separate part. I think it help somewhat that I rarely get interested in authors, or other celebrities, as people, I just enjoy their works.
Orson Scott Card, the good Mormon. He must be going for the next wizarding level, or whatever they call it.
You seemed to also miss Card’s racism, which peeks through in his Ender’s Shadow series. This seems ironic given the Ender’s Game series was essentially about the dangers of prejudice when facing a race you don’t fully understand.
My growing dislike for Orson Scott Card started with him speaking at my high school graduation. I’d actually seen him earlier at a book signing, and he seemed a pretty good speaker then, but at my graduation he gave a rambling, nigh incoherent speech for about 45 minutes while we baked in the sun. And the whole point was pretty much that you can only succeed when your young, and after that its a long, steady decline. I was really disappointed by it, but considering how Card’s writing, and the acclaim it generates, has degraded over the years, it was at least relevant to his own situation.
I also wish he could know how many gay students were listening that day, and how many of them are happily married now.
I got to hang out with Charlie Jane at worldcon this year. I love the io9 gang.
But, yeah, that new Hamlet thing is so over the top that it blows my mind.
Wow, what a long face! Did Lovecraft have Marfan syndrome, or just a Hapsburg in the woodpile?
Crossposting part of a comment I made at Camels With Hammers:
For the last 30 or so years, I’ve had pleasant, patient, non-rancorous, gentle, respectful, nudging discussions about gay rights with people who held different views.
I consider those 30 years of discussions as being with people who HONESTLY never gave it the appropriate consideration. It’s like talking to someone in the year 1970 and patiently explaining to them about computers. You gotta go slow, because this may be the first time they’re hearing the information.
At this point, here in 2011, I’m sorry, but TIME IS UP. You’ve had time to hear all of the points about gay rights. You’ve *heard* them.
You know, sometimes people are just bigots.
Just as it would be *unacceptable* for someone to spout racially segregationist talk today. At some point in the past on the issue of racial segregation, you could find someone whom you could sway with a gentle argument to pay attention to their better angels… But at some point all we were left with were people WITHOUT better angels.
At *some point* we crossed that line in history, and if you spout racial garbage at me, we are not friends and will *never* be friends again.
We either have reached or are about to reach that point with gay rights.
I support this gay wright.
(if you are not gay, then disregard my joke ^^ )
I never really dug Card.
I am more of an Octavia Butler fan, she was a writer EVERYONE should read.
I just discovered Mr. Card in 2006. I was 26. It took me that long because I was raised LDS, and my parents had (once upon a time in Germany) been in the same ward as Mr. Card’s sister-in-law, Laura Card, and had been good friends with Sister Card. So when my parents realized I had some talent at writing and was interested in making it my career, they began pressuring me to read Orson Scott Card’s work. My dad would talk about contacting Brother Card so I could ask for advice, etc. etc. The very idea hugely embarrassed me — contacting a renowned, famous author with a distant, tenuous connection and acting like he owes you something?
As a result, I refused to read Mr. Card’s work, let alone write any sort of fan letters, throughout my childhood and teen years. By the time I left my parents house, my avoidance of Mr. Card’s work was ingrained and automatic. It wasn’t until I was 26 that an acquaintance recommended Ender’s Game to me with such glowing praise that I decided to give the man a chance.
I read Ender’s Game and adored it. I quickly gobbled up the rest of the series, and was about to start on the Alvin the Maker series when it happened. I googled, “Orson Scott Card.
I don’t really know why I did. I am of the personal opinion that the less I know about an artists personal beliefs/ quirks, the more I enjoy their art. For instance, I use to quite enjoy the film, “Braveheart,” despite the historical inaccuracies. But then Mr. Gibson went and exploded in such a public manner that even someone like me, who avoids gossip rags and tabloids, couldn’t help but notice that he’s a bit of a racist, sexist, bigoted jerk. This awareness tainted all his past movies, and I find myself avoiding his work now; unable to enjoy it knowing that I’m contributing to the fame and wealth of someone I despise.
Anyway, same thing happened with Orson Scott Card. I remember the sick, horrified feeling I had as I read his blog. At that time, I was not yet an atheist, nor even 100% convinced the LDS church was false — but I was an LGBT ally, and the views Mr. Card publicly espoused were so nauseating I couldn’t understand how there was no outcry or uproar against him. I immediately donated the books I’d already purchased of his (I generally avoid second-hand bookstores, as they don’t/ can’t recompense the authors, but in this case I figured it’s better to have his books sold 2nd-hand than 1st-hand). I haven’t bought any of his works since, and whenever I talk to fellow bibliophiles, I make sure they know that by buying Mr. Card’s work, they’re contributing financially to anti-LGBT causes, as well as contributing to the LDS church (through tithing).
The man is a huge disappointment to me.
I loved Ender’s Game so much that it’s been that much more disappointing to see how the series has progressed. Instead of the stories and characters carrying the story, Card has an agenda (or several agendas). His work is lesser for it.