Though you mentioned that both Stephen King and Peter Straub have both minimized any influence Lovecraft may have had on them, you neglected to touch on Mike Mignola's pulp comic "Hellboy." In "Hellboy," the ageless space creature that is the central villain as well as some of the tentacled creatures that Hellboy battles are clearly inspired by Lovecraft. Even Stephen King owes more to Lovecraft than he admits: In "Desperation," the ancient creature uncovered at the bottom of a mine is strongly reminiscent of Lovecraft.

-- Gautham Thomas

Laura Miller completely misses the point when it comes to Lovecraft. His critics revert to the same old Freudian bromides and armchair moralizing when addressing his work, but completely overlook what his fiction is about. Writing in a century where a world of perceived order and comforting old ways had given way to social chaos and mass destruction, and armed with the amateur astronomer's assurance that human life is essentially insignificant, Lovecraft created a much more honest art than many of the more celebrated writers of his time. Lovecraft wrote about monstrous, impersonal forces that were tearing apart the world he once took for granted. Watching his family fall apart because of disease and mental illness and seeing the genteel environment he knew was being bulldozed by modern, predatory capitalism, Lovecraft responded with what was for a man of his background primal screams. Don't forget that in socioeconomic terms, Lovecraft was nearly a Marxist. The fish-human hybrids in "Shadow Over Innsmouth" and the Chthulu cultists became monsters out of greed. Lovecraft did subscribe to some odious Eugenic ideas, but don't forget that he married a Jew, and was quite comfortable in the decidedly non-Anglo-Saxon pulp millieu of his time.

Better than any other writer of our own sorry-ass times, he also put the numinous, elemental power of nightmare on paper. To read his best stories is to enter his dreaming mind. Of course his stories are often disjointed and inconclusive -- so are dreams.

-- Chris Knowles

I was deeply disappointed by Laura Millers "Master of Disgust." While of course she is free to hate or love H. P. Lovecraft at will, her denunciation of Lovecraft's literary accomplishment seems based largely on misunderstanding and misrepresentation. First the misrepresentation: Miller rightly berated Lovecraft for his overuse of adjectives in creating his horrific effects, but without telling readers that the selections she quoted from "The Lurking Fear" were from some of Lovecrafts earliest fiction. Because it clearly undercuts her thesis, Miller ignored the Library of America volume's chronological arrangement of Lovecraft's work, which clearly demonstrates the progression of his writing from empurpled prose to a sleeker, though still complex, style in later tales. Like any writer, Lovecraft grew as an artist over time, and it is unfair to judge his style by "The Lurking Fear," which was purposely written as an overwrought pulp serial. As a Lovecraft fan, I neither "chortle" nor "quote [it] with glee."

But worse is the misunderstanding. Miller tells us that no one finds Lovecraft "scary," and this is one of many reasons his works fail to become literature. But it is a mistake to judge any horror story independently of the time and place where it was written. Bram Stokers "Dracula" is also less-than-frightening in light of todays explicit, carnal horrors. "Dracula," too, provides a still better example of how horror reflects its time and place: The 1931 movie version starring Bela Lugosi frightened its original audience into spasms of horror. Today, no one would call it scary, especially after the Pez dispensers, breakfast cereals, and other paraphernalia it directly or indirectly spawned. Im sure that Stephen King would be the first to agree that King's own works would hardly hold up as pure terror 80 years from now. Horror is very much part of its moment.

Where Lovecraft succeeded brilliantly was in his use of ideas. Though Ms. Miller belittled Lovecraft's alternative mythology (and many titles she attributes to many of Lovecraft's alien-gods are not his own), his stories mythologize the new materialism that evolution and relativity had created. Lovecraft's work captured a particular moment of uncertainty between the two World Wars. Miller and Stephen King may be disappointed that Lovecraft did not focus on, or recognize, the primacy of sexual impulses and organs, but he painted on a larger canvas. Lovecraft purposely created a remote fiction that played out on a cosmic scale and dealt with the purposeless and meaninglessness of a universe that created suffering and pain.

Does this make him literature? Im not sure, but I know he is much more relevant and important than his critics pretend. In my forthcoming book, "The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture," I explore the profound effect Lovecrafts work has had on science, pop culture and even the cloning/stem cell debate. Few authors have had such influence almost 70 years after their deaths.

-- Jason Colavito

Only readers who have been so spoiled by the exaggerated and pompously overblown horror tales of writers like King and Koontz and Barker could ever claim that Lovecraft was other than a major figure in the progression of weird fiction. King himself has said that "I think it is beyond doubt that H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." Lovecraft was a master of the horror best left unknown, the terrors that dwell in the dark.

While admittedly "The Call of Cthulu" won't ever inspire more of a chill than R.L. Stine, stories like "The Rats in the Walls," "Cool Air," or "The Haunter of the Dark" exemplify the vague, persistent horrors of the unknown. No one would call Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" a frightening tale, but the lurking menace of impending doom is enough to create a dreadful suspense that is the basis for the gnawing well of horror fiction, which is exactly the response that many an early horror writer aspired to.

Further, though he is often criticized for his prejudices, let it also be fairly stated the Lovecraft had an intense fear and hatred of sea life, which prompted many of his stories --"Dagon," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" -- aside from any worries he bore about his fellow humans. It is easy to look back and condemn his ideas from the vantage of a century, but it's not so easy to outrace his literary shadow.

-- Marleigh Riggins

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