Sometimes it feels like “The Colour out of Space” that Lovecraft described in his 1927 tale is White. Or at least Whiteness. Unspeakable but pervasive, hideously potent, and full of madness, Whiteness seems to come from on high and destroys the other colors of the world. It certainly wasn’t what Lovecraft meant, since we know full well that Lovecraft was a White supremacist, but that’s the thing about stories. They tell us what we don’t even know, and when we don’t listen, someone else does.
That someone, in this case, is Matt Ruff.
Running with the idea that the thing we don’t name or speak about, Whiteness, is something like a cult and something like the magic of a terrible god, Ruff turns Lovecraft on his racist head. He turns the subtext into text, and then gets down to criticising it.
If you want to see a cult, look at the police departments of certain towns, their sheriffs and deputies willing to sacrifice Black people to their White ideals. (Also, “the South will rise again”? How much more Cthulhu-like can you get?) If “The Shadow over Innsmouth” is about the horrors of race-mixing, then “The Narrow House” is its critique, a story about the horrors perpetuated upon those who dared to love and wed outside their race. If “The Call of Cthulhu” features a caricature of Voodoo/Vodou and a terrifying cult statue, then “Horace and the Devil Doll” deals with how caricatures can torment and harm Black people.
These stories are a catalog—extensive, but not exhaustive—of the insults, indignities, and violence faced by Black people in America. Though it’s set in the 50’s, Jim Crow America, it’s obvious how little some things have changed.
Though it starts in the Jim Crow South, and specifically with Atticus getting the hell away from the South, Ruff doesn’t let the rest of the country off the hook. New Englanders can be a bit smug about not being Southerners, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t (aren’t) also shitty racists. Same goes for Chicago, where Atticus is returning after his time in the military. He plans to stay there, but when he arrives, he finds that his home is not what he expected. His uncle is still running a travel agency specifically to guide Black travelers safely across the country, but his father is nowhere to be found. He’s set off on a journey after meeting a White stranger, not a very safe thing to do at all.
Atticus and his father have an uneasy relationship, one marred by abuse. Montrose Turner is a hard man, but life has been hard to him. His trauma stems from the Tulsa Massacre in which he witnessed unbearable violence without ever seeing justice. But Atticus doesn’t know that. All he knows is that Montrose is irritatingly obsessed with family history, including the history he goes chasing down in Massachusetts. And family is a central pillar of this book, which could just as well have been called Lovecraft Lineage.
So Atticus follows, along with his uncle George and his childhood friend Letitia. And before long, they find horrors. They’re harassed, threatened, and nearly killed—by White people. By the time they get to Ardham (not Arkham, but close), Massachusetts, haunting shadows and eerily silent villagers are a welcome surprise.
At first.
Of course it all goes sideways. New, different racists appear with new powers. Horrible things happen. A few allies present themselves, though, and the ending comes more swiftly than I would have expected.
I was expecting a single narrative, but this is more like a series of interconnected short stories and novellas, each corresponding loosely to Lovecraftian stories or concepts, tied together primarily by a group of characters who know one another. It makes sense, since Lovecraft was primarily a short story writer. It also gives us a lot of ways to understand the themes: how America looked from different levels of wealth, from different ages, as male and female, and so on. Blackness isn’t a monolith, and Ruff doesn’t let it feel that way.
In aggregate, it also brings up another of Lovecraft’s themes, which is isolation. Lovecraft’s characters, if they travel with groups, swiftly become the lone survivors. Other characters begin alone and discover no friends along the way. Their tales are often told in diaries or letters, a tenuous form of human contact that keeps other people at a literal and metaphorical remove.
In Lovecraft Country, people talk to each other. And goddamn it’s refreshing to have everyone just put their cards on the table. There’s a point at which Horace, who is only nine years old, tells his story to a bunch of adults and they all believe him. They help and protect him, so much so that his tale of horror becomes a thrilling adventure the next time he tells it. It made me tear up. Not only does Ruff eschew the Lovecraftian isolation, his characters love and support each other.
That does, though, beg the question of what constitutes the description “Lovecraftian.” I think we can all agree that no sub/genre worth a damn has to include anything even remotely close to racism. Fuck that. But is isolation a necessary part of the classification?
I would argue no, since I think Cosmic Horror is really what Lovecraft is all about. If you disagree, well, I’m willing to be persuaded. I would also say that there is one very isolated character, the ambiguous Caleb Braithwhite. (I mean, not that ambiguous. “White” is in his name.)
Caleb shows up again and again, a figure that Ruff is really clever in keeping around. Caleb isn’t obviously racist. He doesn’t go around spitting slurs or using violence. In fact, he makes sure to treat everyone, Black or White, with courtesy, and he makes several significant gifts that help Atticus and his family, both magical and not. He treats the Black people he meets well, but that doesn’t mean he treats them fairly. Now sure, he uses everyone. He’s a selfish asshole. That in itself isn’t racist. But when he’s willing to use others’ racism to achieve his own ends—like when he works with racist cops in “Abdullah’s Book”—because it’s easier for him, or when he manipulates people based on race—like in “Jekyll in Hyde Park”—that’s racist. And it’s a subtler, more insidious racism that’s just as worthy of calling out as the overt bigotry other characters display. Caleb’s racism keeps him isolated when he could otherwise have true allies. It’s a different expression of the madness Lovecraft was so fond of inflicting on his characters.
As for Atticus, George, Letitia, Hippolyta, and everyone else, I would put forth that even if the characters form a community, they are still isolated and vulnerable within the larger context of the US. The sense of smallness in a vast, indifferent world is still palpable. Community just mitigates some of the bleakness.
And maybe that’s not Lovecraftian, either. HP had a pretty dim view of the universe and everything in it. Bleakness, in other words, was pretty essential. But I don’t care. Lovecraft already had everyone go mad and die hopeless. I’m glad we get to see something new with lots of new characters who rewrite the ending we’ve been primed to expect.
The end of the overarching narrative of Lovecraft Country is pitch-perfect: a little funny, in a bleak way, and sad, and full of anger, and still hopeful. A White man threatens Atticus along the side of a road, just like in the beginning of the novel. But here, Atticus is with his family, friends, and allies. And the White man threatening him? Well, it’s nothing any of them haven’t seen before. For Atticus, Letitia, Montrose, and everyone else, whether it’s extradimensional horrors or just regular White horrors, they know they can defeat it.
Lovecraft Country is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Soon to be a new HBO® series from J.J. Abrams (executive producer of Westworld), Misha Green (creator of Underground), and Jordan Peele (director of Get Out and Us), this brilliant and imaginative novel by critically acclaimed author Matt Ruff makes visceral the terrors of Jim Crow America, melding historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror.
Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, 22-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.
A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of two black families, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.
