H.P. Lovecraft by Houellebecq
H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (1991)
by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Dorna Khazeni
247 pages - Believer Books

This is a long essay that presents Lovecraft as a sort of hero for those who are disgusted by the world and want to turn away from it; those who believe that life is meaningless and would rather just retreat into their imagination. It's not an academic essay, and though the belligerent and hyperbolic tone of the piece is amusing, it does begin to grate after a while, especially as the author seems to mostly rely on the stories and scanty secondary material that has been translated into French. I also wonder, at times when the author praises Lovecraft's literary and poetic sensibility, if Lovecraft isn't a writer, like Poe, who improves with translation - because even his admirers in the English-speaking world mostly concede that his prose style is creaky and often tends to the unbearably purple.

It was somewhat entertaining while I read it, but I felt disappointed when I realized I was getting to the end and it hadn't really gone anywhere. A far better example of the potential of 'creative literary biography', with plenty of room for personal opinion, is Emmanuel Carrere's book on Philip K. Dick, I Am Alive and You Are Dead. The approximately 100-page essay is padded out by an introduction by Stephen King, and two stories by Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness". The King piece was probably the best thing in here.