HP Lovecraft Was A Super Weird Dude, Part One: Childhood Tragedy

Summary

Ridiculous History: "HP Lovecraft Was A Super Weird Dude, Part One: Childhood Tragedy"

Release Date: May 20, 2025
Host: Ben Bullen
Guest: Jonathan Strickland (AKA the Quister)

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Introduction to the Episode

In this compelling episode of Ridiculous History, hosts Ben Bullen and Jonathan Strickland delve into the tumultuous early life of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, one of modern horror fiction's most influential yet controversial figures. The discussion provides a nuanced exploration of Lovecraft's childhood tragedies, familial influences, and the seeds of his later literary genius.

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Early Life and Family Background

Ben Bullen opens the conversation by setting the stage for Lovecraft's upbringing:

"HP Lovecraft, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He is born on August 20, 1890, at his family's house. It's a really nice Victorian home in Providence, Rhode Island." [12:00]

Lovecraft's mother, Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, hailed from a lineage tracing back to early American settlers, instilling in him a deep-seated obsession with history and lineage. His father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft, was a traveling silversmith salesman—an occupation that, while respectable, often kept him away from the family.

Jonathan Strickland adds depth to this background, highlighting the psychological impact of Lovecraft's familial environment:

"The concept of lineage and ancestry and that importance ... instilling within Lovecraft this idea not just of the importance of lineage, but also a sense of entitlement." [13:25]

This sense of entitlement, coupled with the family's eventual financial decline, significantly shaped Lovecraft's worldview and literary themes.

---

Childhood Tragedies and Psychological Struggles

A pivotal moment in Lovecraft's early life was the loss of his father. Ben Bullen recounts:

"His father remains there convalescing or deteriorating for five years before he dies on July 19 and 1898." [16:59]

Initially reported as a nervous breakdown, later research revealed that Lovecraft's father succumbed to syphilis. This revelation underscores the underlying health and psychological struggles that permeated Lovecraft's family life.

Jonathan Strickland connects these early experiences to Lovecraft's later xenophobic and racist tendencies:

"Lovecraft was xenophobic and racist, but we're going to talk more about his life and the sort of things that informed his experience and perhaps shaped his worldview." [10:16]

The duo emphasizes that while Lovecraft's personal tragedies and mental health issues do not excuse his reprehensible views, understanding them provides a clearer picture of the man behind the mythos.

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Influence of Family and Early Education

During his formative years, Lovecraft was primarily raised by his mother, two aunts, and his grandmother. The strict and isolated upbringing contributed to his introverted nature. Ben Bullen observes:

"He is often, as a result, not attending school. He's a very, very intelligent person." [36:50]

Despite his limited formal education due to his nervous breakdown, Lovecraft's intrinsic curiosity drove him to self-educate. He immersed himself in subjects like chemistry and astronomy, producing scientific journals he distributed among friends—an early indicator of his prolific writing tendencies.

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Early Literary Endeavors and Influences

Lovecraft's literary journey began with poetry and essays, some of which contained overtly racist themes. Jonathan Strickland notes:

"He wrote some terribly racist poetry. His first loves, indeed were essays and poetry before he got into fiction." [15:25]

A significant turning point came in 1906 when Lovecraft’s first known work was published in the Providence Sunday Journal. This achievement marked the beginning of his serious foray into writing, despite the personal and familial challenges he faced.

The episode underscores that Lovecraft was not the sole progenitor of "weird fiction." Jonathan Strickland clarifies:

"Weird fiction was already something that was being explored by authors before Lovecraft was even born." [28:17]

This historical context situates Lovecraft within a broader literary movement, acknowledging his contemporaries and predecessors who also contributed to the genre.

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Tragic Financial Decline and Social Isolation

The Lovecraft family's financial downfall was swift and devastating. Ben Bullen explains:

"They went broke. They got into severe financial difficulties such that Lovecraft and his mom have to move out of their posh Victorian home. This is devastating." [44:02]

This economic hardship forced Lovecraft into a hermit-like existence, retreating further into self-imposed solitude. His mother's inability to cope with their changed circumstances fostered an unhealthy and codependent relationship, exacerbating Lovecraft's mental health issues.

Jonathan Strickland adds:

"He's a sickly child ... these illnesses are not strictly or not only of the physical variety." [35:19]

This combination of physical ailments and psychological strains created a perfect storm that influenced Lovecraft's later works, characterized by themes of isolation, madness, and cosmic insignificance.

---

The Catalyst: Lovecraft's Feud with Fred Jackson

A defining moment that catapulted Lovecraft into literary prominence was his vehement critique of Fred Jackson’s love stories. Ben Bullen recounts:

"This is a beef. And this beef launches Lovecraft's career." [53:23]

Lovecraft's scathing, poetic rebuttals to Jackson's writing in the Argosy magazine drew widespread attention, marking his entry into the public literary sphere. This episode highlights how personal vendettas and intellectual battles shaped Lovecraft's path as an author.

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Conclusion and Teaser for Part Two

As the episode wraps up, Ben Bullen and Jonathan Strickland reflect on the intertwined nature of Lovecraft's personal tragedies and his literary output. They hint at delving deeper into Lovecraft's later life, his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos, and his enduring influence on modern horror in the forthcoming second part of the series.

"So, tune in later this week when we follow up with part two of HP Lovecraft being so just so very weird." [58:54]

---

Notable Quotes

• Jonathan Strickland on cosmic horror:

  "The idea being that whatever the narrating protagonist has seen is so beyond human experience and perception that to attempt to contemplate it is to invite madness." [08:11]

• Ben Bullen on self-directed learning:

  "I think it's good for the structure. I think you're on the money." [17:15]

• Jonathan Strickland on Lovecraft's social isolation:

  "He's a sickly child ... these illnesses are not strictly or not only of the physical variety." [35:19]

---

Key Takeaways

• Early Tragedies: Lovecraft's childhood was marred by the loss of his father, financial decline, and an unhealthy relationship with his mother, all of which profoundly impacted his mental health and worldview.

• Literary Beginnings: Despite significant personal challenges, Lovecraft pursued writing relentlessly, starting with poetry and essays before venturing into fiction.

• Weird Fiction Context: Lovecraft was part of a broader movement of "weird fiction," building upon the works of earlier authors and contributing his unique, cosmic horror elements.

• Catalyst for Fame: His public feud with Fred Jackson through scathing poetry in Argosy served as a pivotal moment in establishing his literary career.

---

This episode of Ridiculous History masterfully intertwines biographical details with literary analysis, offering listeners a thorough understanding of the early forces that shaped H.P. Lovecraft into the enigmatic figure he remains today.

Transcript

[Ben Bullen]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning, tuning in. Let's have a brief conversation with our super producer, Max Williams before we pop the top on this one. Max, how you doing?

[Max Williams]

You know, I'm holding in there. I'm holding in there. Like, you know you're holding in there. I don't know. Words are a little troublesome today, but we will push through.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, we very much. We very much hopefully will. Now, I am Ben Bullen, and my partner in podcast Crime, as well as Max's Noel Brown is on some adventures will be returning soon. And we have in the meantime, been cooking up some ridiculous, some bizarre special historical explorations. For this week, we are going to talk about one of the most important figures in all of modern horror fiction, and we are going to do it in a way, to show you how weird this guy is. Now, when we were cooking up the idea for this episode, part of our continuing series on very weird authors, we looked around and I was thinking, who is the best guy to hang with us on this story? Now, since H.P. lovecraft is long past beyond the mortal veil, we went to our second choice. Let us welcome Jonathan Strickland, AKA the Quister. Back to Ridiculous history. Dude, how are you doing?

[Jonathan Strickland]

Doing pretty good. I'm feeling a bit weird. That's just a shout out to one of my favorite John Candy lines from Little Shop of Horrors. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I'm doing okay. I'm glad that you had me on, because listeners probably don't know this, but I have a fairly weird relationship with the subject matter, with the mythos.

[Ben Bullen]

And actually, when I was researching this episode, I didn't mention it off air. I was saving it for this. When I was researching this episode, one of the first things I do often is go to our alma mater, How Stuff Works. And I want to give credit where it's due. Although we may not focus too much on Cthulhu or the Necronomicon for today's exploration, I immediately had that meme of a guy, like, slowly nodding in affirmation when I pulled up how Cthulhu works or how the Call of Cthulhu Works, how the Necronomicon works, and saw that both of those articles were written by none other than you. And I reread them, and I want you to know they hold up. They're good.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Thank you. Yeah, that was fun to write. I mean, so to kind of give you a quick overview of my own knowledge and experience with Lovecraft. I am the child of authors who have written in many genres, including speculative fiction, and so there's certainly a Lovecraftian influence in some of their works. But it also meant I grew up going to things like science fiction conventions from a very young age. Like this is way before there was a Dragon Con, but I did all these sort of things and had this experience of being around culture that was certainly inspired by Lovecraft, if not outwardly worshiping at the feet of this problematic author, whom we will talk about extensively today. And my father, even as an author, has adapted the works of Lovecraft for audio theater. He has for many, many years participated with a theatrical group here in Atlanta called the Atlanta Radio Theater Company or Artsy, and they've done several adaptations of Lovecraft works, including things like the Call of Cthulhu, the Color out of Space, Shadow Over Innsmouth, done with Horror, Rats in the Walls. Yeah, all of these. And dad would tell you that there are a couple of very difficult things that you need to do if you're adapting the works of Lovecraft, like dialogue. One is trying to downplay the racism quite a bit.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes, okay, I have my priorities wrong. I'm not thinking in the correct order there Foreign you're listening to an iHeart podcast.

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[Ben Bullen]

Any fan of fiction, anybody who is a writer or an author themselves, There are two. There are two extremely interesting or, as our pal Chuck would say, hinky things about the mechanics of Lovecraft. Whom we are. You know, we'll get into it. But the first thing is, even as a kid, it always struck me in multiple Lovecraft stories, you will hear about what we call cosmic horror, the Great Old Ones, the Elder Gods, something. Something so eldritch and incomprehensible that the narrator says, there's no way I could tell you or explain or describe this thing to you. Except for the next two PA where I do so in obsessive detail, right?

[Jonathan Strickland]

The idea being that whatever the narrating protagonist has seen is so beyond human experience and perception that to attempt to contemplate it is to invite madness, which you could argue is either very lazy writing or it's brilliant in the sense of any good writer knows that nothing they write is going to be as effective as the reader's imagination when it comes to conjuring up an idea of what these things might be. But to your point, the other difficulty my dad ran into was that most of these stories are written where you have a protagonist narrator and have almost no dialogue in them. It's almost all like description of what happened and a description of a conversation as opposed to a conversation playing out, which meant my dad had to invent all the conversations in order to which so they truly were adaptations. It was not like just porting. It wasn't an audiobook or anything like that.

[Ben Bullen]

I love that point too, because that is the second point. The trouble with dialogue just from a mechanical perspective, you nailed it with a single voice protagonist or narrator describing A conversation with Lovecraft sneaking in some of his own obsessions and like, oh, Admiral Staplewhite, despite being partially good old Puritan stock, had a bit of a foreign cast in his eyes when he alluded to the incidents in Miskatonic University.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, yeah. And I gotta tell you, when you look in someone's eyes and you see that foreign shining in there, what is he?

[Ben Bullen]

Anyway, this is our episode on. This may be more than one episode, but this is our explanation.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Here's the too long, didn't listen version. Lovecraft was xenophobic and racist, but we're going to talk more about his life and the sort of things that informed his experience and, and perhaps shaped his worldview. And this does not excuse anything that he wrote about or said in the following years, but perhaps it would give a greater understanding. And also when you start to wrestle with an author's flaws and you're trying to measure that against either your admiration for their work or your admiration for the impact that they have had. Because even if you don't like Lovecraft stories, and there are plenty of reasons not to, chances are you have encountered something that directly or indirectly was the result of Lovecraft's work. Right. Whether it's the Evil Dead series, which clearly draws from Lovecraft, or Stephen King.

[Ben Bullen]

Stephen King, yeah.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Fallout.

[Ben Bullen]

Fallout.

[Jonathan Strickland]

True Detective. Even though you could argue that that's drawing more from Chambers, who is a predecessor to Lovecraft, but Robert W. Chambers.

[Ben Bullen]

The Yellow King.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, the Yellow King clearly has a huge influence, but I would argue that a lot of Lovecraft influence goes into True Detective 2, not just Chambers.

[Ben Bullen]

100%. Yeah. And not just the plagiarism of Thomas Ligotti's work.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah.

[Ben Bullen]

Which story? For another day. And we want to begin today's exploration with immense thanks to the world's foremost scholar on HP Lovecraft, an academic professor named ST Joshi. ST is going to be our go to source for a lot of the biographical info here. And Jonathan Max, in my mind, after we've done this research, I think we can make a compelling argument that a lot of Lovecraft's work, a lot of his canon, is inspired and informed by heartbreaking tragedy in his personal life, by his own mental health struggles, and by several, I'll say it, ridiculous obsessions. So, okay, we'll prove the case. H.P. lovecraft, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He is born on August 20, 1890, and he's born at his family's house. It's a really nice Victorian home in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother, Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, she comes from an old family. She is. I don't know if you want to call her blue blood, but you could trace her ancestry back to the arrival of George Phillips in Massachusetts way back in 1610. So this kind of informs Lovecraft's later obsession with the past. Right. The history and the importance of lineage and bloodline. And his father is a guy named Winfield Scott Lovecraft, who is a traveling silversmith salesman, which used to be a job.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, yeah. You could argue Paul Revere was a traveling silversmith, but it was only because he had to go from point A to point B to warn about the British. But technically, he was a traveling silversmith. No, I think you make some good points already, Ben, about this concept of lineage and ancestry and that importance. And it's instilling within Lovecraft this idea not just of the importance of lineage, but also a sense of entitlement, which I don't think know. I don't know how strong that was for him. A lot of this is like armchair psychology, you know, a century removed. Right. But I feel that there was a sense of an entitlement in that a lot of these families had built up, like, oh, we deserve the things that we have, and when they're taken away, it's an enormous injustice. And as we'll see, like, Lovecraft suffered quite a few massive setbacks in his family. Massive setbacks. And I get the sense that he felt that that was almost a personal injustice visited upon him and his family.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, 100%. Also, one time in. I can't remember what course I was taking, but one time I received an A minus on an otherwise perfect essay about Lovecraft because my thesis statement was, ultimately, he decided no one was white enough. No one's lineage was, you know, the perfect Anglican or Scandinavian stock. I don't think he even cared for Scandinavian people. He just got weird.

[Jonathan Strickland]

He did at one point praise Hitler. He said that the guy was kind of an idiot, but he had some good ideas, so.

[Ben Bullen]

Right. Very Kanye west of him.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, yeah. But one of the earliest setbacks or earliest tragedies to visit upon him was the loss of his father when he was just a wee toddler.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And this is a heartbreaking story. One of the first tragedies he encounters when he's arguably too young to remember much about the experience. His father, as you said, Jonathan, has what contemporary sources describe as a nervous breakdown. Now, that's kind of like saying hysteria at this point in history, because it's a vague term that is used to describe a lot of Unrelated things. His father is taken from Chicago back to Butler Hospital in Providence, and his father remains there convalescing or deteriorating for five years before he dies on July 19 and 1898. So now for young Howard Phillips, his father has been in a very bad way. So bad that, like something that a child should not have to witness. That's where his father's been. He's told his father is paralyzed and comatose during the entirety of these five years, but later research would verify with 90 plus accuracy, 90 plus percent accuracy, the Lovecraft's father actually expired due to a form of syphilis.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah. Yeah. And that won't be the last time that syphilis, or as the English used to like to call it, the French disease, will factor into this. I mean, I figure if we're gonna talk about xenophobia and racism, we might as well just sort of pepper it into the conversation.

[Ben Bullen]

Let's just. Yeah, you know what? I think it's good for the structure. I think you're on the money.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah. I think the French called it the English disease, to be fair. So it's.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, those guys. Classic. Yeah. And look, so his father passes away, his mother is alive, and his guardians then, or like the village that raises him, becomes his mother, his two aunts, and for a time, his grandmother. We may get to that later. But his grandfather is of particular interest to us because he is essentially a character ripped from the pages of an Edward Gorey comic strip. He's a prominent industrialist. His name. I know we both know this, but it's so silly. His name is Whipple Van Buren Phillips.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Oh, good old Whipple.

[Ben Bullen]

Whipple. Who makes that choice?

[Jonathan Strickland]

Mr. Whipple? I mean, okay, that's a reference that none of your listeners are going to know, except for the old timers like me, but. Yeah, so this is where I've been debating on where to put this particular thing because, I mean, it's something that's famous that a lot of people who are aware of Lovecraft outside of just his fiction, they know about this. But it's probably a good place to put it because it was the family. Peter, this is where we have to mention that I think Lovecraft, he was very fond of cats. And he had a cat, a black cat. And I will not say the name of this black cat because it uses a particularly awful racial slur. And a lot of people who talk about Lovecraft mention this cat and mention the fact that he owned this cat and named this cat this. This terrible slur. I would contest that somewhat in that we do not know that it was Lovecraft who named that cat. It may have been, but it may have been one of the members of his family because he was just a child at the time. But I think it's more indicative that the family as a whole had no.

[Ben Bullen]

Compunction.

[Jonathan Strickland]

No compunction to avoid racial slurs, which by the time, at this time are racial slurs. It's not like, oh, it was a different time and people didn't consider it a slur. No, they did. Fully did. But yes, this would be right around that time. In fact, when we get to the point where the grandfather exits the picture, he exits the picture the same year that that cat disappears.

[Ben Bullen]

And we know cats play a big role in a lot of Lovecraftian work, right? Even the parts of the canon or the mythos that he himself generated, which is at this point you could argue a fundamental yet relatively small percentage of the overall mythos.

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[Ben Bullen]

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[Ben Bullen]

Lovecraft is a precocious kid. Very much so, yeah. He's reading at age 3, around age 6 or 7. He is also actively writing stuff Juvenilia, maybe some nonfiction thoughts on science or paraphrasing of Greek and Arabic based works that he had been exposed to earlier. This is a great anecdote. Since we are rightly dunking on some of his evil views. We'll give you one very rare story about this guy being a cute kid. So he reads Arabian Nights when he's around 5 years old and this rocks his world like this smacks his balls off. And he is so into it. You know how when like some kids will watch a movie like Deadpool or Ace Ventura and then that's their personality for the summer.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, no, I'm familiar. I can tell you what mine was when I was.

[Ben Bullen]

What was yours? What was yours?

[Jonathan Strickland]

So I have distinct memories. This does not speak well of me, but I'm going to go ahead and share it anyway because I mean, I'm almost 50. So what the heck. When I was a kid, the game that I would play with my friends was that we would make up stories that exist within the rich mythological world of the Dukes of Hazzard. And my designated role was to play the brave officer of the law, Roscoe P. Coltrane.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, yes, yeah. True Paragod.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, absolutely. I like, you know, an example of what the justice system is. You know what, I wish that that were a joke, but it kind of isn't.

[Ben Bullen]

Anyway, anyway, but that became your personality.

[Jonathan Strickland]

For me for like a summer. Yeah, like that was just like we were. Because that was a very popular show when I was a kid and that was something that. But like, any kid can think about that. Like, for my dad, the book that got him kind of inhabiting imaginary worlds was Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. So same sort of thing. If you had read Treasure island as a kid and that really sparked your imagination, you might invent for yourself a Persona related to pirates.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, Lovecraft role in that world.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Exactly. So Lovecraft invents a Persona inspired by Arabian Nights. And this is one that would actually factor in into his literary works. Many years later, he creates a Persona named Abdul Alhazred. Now, in Lovecraft's later works, that's part of his title. You usually hear it as the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, which again, xenophobia and all that sort of stuff. But his claim to fame within the Lovecraft mythos is this is the author of the infamous Necronomicon.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes, yeah. And he has, through madness and through conspiring and parleying with dark powers beyond the ken of human understanding, he has translated or imparted some very small percentage of knowledge from, from these other planes to the human world. And doing so again, absolutely drives them bonkers. Anybody who reads the book runs the risk of going mad or being waylaid by these evil powers. But the reason we think that Jonathan and Max and I think this is a rare cute story is because you have to picture it in like a ridiculous history, cinematic adaptation of young Lovecraft. It's true, folks. At some point, a five year old genuinely woke up one day in his house and walked around and told everyone he could meet. No, no, I'm not Howie anymore. Call me Abdul Alhazret in Providence, Rhode Island. Providence, Rhode Island.

[Jonathan Strickland]

An important component of taking that picture into account.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Bullen]

He was not a super diverse place. Then like we gets obsessed with Greek mythology and you can see his earliest surviving work, the poem of Ulysses in 1897. It's pretty much paraphrasing stuff he read earlier. And then his first work we know about is actually weird fiction. It's called the Noble Eavesdropper. He may have written it in 1896, but from what I understand, there are no extant copies. So we really don't know. Maybe it was the best thing he ever wrote.

[Jonathan Strickland]

We have references to this lost story, but we don't have the story itself. It's kind of like the Cardenio with William Shakespeare.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, oh, okay. Flexing those English lip muscles.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Listen, I get so few opportunities to do it.

[Ben Bullen]

Well, well done, man. We also know it's strange, this concept of what was called weird fiction at the time, because the. The ideas or stories that had stuff like cosmic horror in it, they already existed at this point.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Often we think of Lovecraft as being the creator of weird fiction, but that is not correct. Honestly, the more you dive into history in general, and Ben, you know this, you've been diving into history for years now, but the more you dive into it, the more you realize, oh, things don't really have a clear cut. Beginning, middle, and end. Usually it's almost always middle. You're almost always middle, and there might appear to be an end, but then maybe a generation later, it resurfaces, that sort of thing. Same thing is true of weird fiction in that while certain formats like the novel were relatively young, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, weird fiction was already something that was being explored by authors before Lovecraft was even born.

[Ben Bullen]

100%, yeah. And really, the idea of genres evolving and that kind of method of categorization, that is still a continuing thing. You know, how do we bucket this creative work? Which leads me to one brief soapbox complaint that has nothing to do with this. With all due respect to the academics and the hungover substitute teachers in the crowd today, I think postmodern literature as a term is kind of dumb.

[Jonathan Strickland]

I agree. I took a course in postmodern literature, and the thing I took away from it is, oh, this is what we call stuff that we can't easily classify into some other bucket.

[Ben Bullen]

Exactly. Just call it miscellaneous. Modern miscellaneous.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Anyway, it's why I'm glad you use the term, or we both use the term speculative fict. Because that's something that is such a broad category. You could argue it has very little utility because it doesn't give you enough information about what bucket this story falls into. But it's very useful because the weird fiction genre has elements of science fiction. It has elements of Horror, it has elements of psychological thriller in it. There are a lot of different components that go in together to make weird fiction. And typically you're talking about things that are matters that are much, much larger than humans can comprehend. Right?

[Ben Bullen]

Yes. Yeah, I think that's a great defining characteristic or axiom for what we call speculative or weird fiction. And you can see a bevy of tremendous, fantastic authors who later take up that mantle in no small way informed by the works of Lovecraft. We're talking folks like Laird Baron, we're talking folks like, you know, Robert E. Robert E. Howard.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Robert Bloch.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. You know, oh, Nathaniel Ballingrad is a guy I've been really into. You gotta check him out.

[Jonathan Strickland]

So tons of folks, some of whom actually corresponded with and collaborated with Lovecraft.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes. Many of whom. And I think that was one of the most progressive aspects of the way that they went about constructing this universe. All of those people that you and I just named Jonathan, they owe a debt to Lovecraft for sure. But they also, in doing so, owe a huge and often unacknowledged debt to Howard's very strange grandfather, who would grab this little kid. And this is, by the way, in the era where breaching was still a thing. Check out our bothersome episode on that. He would get young Howard when it was like grandpa time, and instead of telling him fun, merry stories of Jack and the Beanstalk or nursery rhymes or grim adaptations or anything, he would tell him very disturbing, strange, gothic informed stories that were probably not appropriate for a child.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah. Keeping in mind that his grandfather would have been probably a contemporary of Edgar Allan Poe at that point.

[Ben Bullen]

Right, good point.

[Jonathan Strickland]

So you think about Poe and Poe's works and the kind of gothic influence that Poe had. That's sort of what I imagine is him coming up with ghost stories and things of that nature that really tap into that dark, aesthetic laden genre of gothic horror. This is where we really talk about the Edward Gorey influence, which is funny because, side note, Edward Gorey illustrated one of the books my dad wrote, so.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, cool.

[Jonathan Strickland]

It was one of the. Yeah. One of the later ones of Gorey's career. But yeah, it's kind of just fun to think about that because I've also had that experience. Right. As a kid. I grew up hearing my dad tell all these kind of crazy stories, things that wouldn't make it, I guess, all the trimmings, the stuff that hit the cutter floor that didn't make it into his literary career. I got the benefit of getting to hear those.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes. Yeah, you were the test audience.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Right, yeah.

[Ben Bullen]

So it's like some dark version of a known comic surprising people at the Comedy Cellar.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Right, right.

[Ben Bullen]

All right. I don't know if this will make it in the set, but here's five minutes.

[Jonathan Strickland]

I'm gonna work out some material here and see how much of this bombs. Yeah.

[Ben Bullen]

Don't tell your mom.

[Jonathan Strickland]

No.

[Ben Bullen]

So this is. Yeah, this is. You know, we're mentioning the Edward Gorey stuff, and that's a really cool fact that I just learned about you and your dad. But the reason we feel this is so gory esque is because at this point, Lovecraft has all the things of a typical pseudo Victorian gory character. You know, a gashly crumb tiny. He is not just isolated from other people in a very weird mansion. He doesn't just have creepy, somewhat Addams family esque relatives in charge of his upbringing. He also has a range of Victorian maladies, many of which we would call psychological.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, yeah. He's somewhat of a sickly child. I'm thinking, like he would have fit right in with the Secret Garden. But these illnesses are not strictly. Or not only of the physical variety. As you mentioned, he appeared to exhibit some psychological issues as well. Things that we wouldn't have a grander understanding of for many years. So, you know, you have the. The double negative impact. Not double negative in the sense of ain't. No. But double negative in the sense of two negative things hitting him at the same time. One, he's the. He's the product of a storied family line where typically that's something you just don't talk about. Right. If your relatives are a little bit funny, then you don't talk about that.

[Ben Bullen]

Very gray gardens.

[Jonathan Strickland]

But secondly, you also have a lack of understanding in general of psychological issues in the human mind. So there's very little recourse you can seek to actually help you. And so this kid has some major strikes against him from the get go.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. He's often, as a result, not attending school. He's a very, very intelligent person. No one is disputing that. But his grades and his records don't often indicate his intellectual potential.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Right. Individually, he goes and seeks out lots of information about subjects that really interest him. So he does study things like the sciences, particularly chemistry and astronomy. So it's not as if he's going forward ignorant of these things. He is seeking that information out because he found it fascinating on a personal level. So it wasn't necessarily due to the schools he was attending as a small child. It was more his innate curiosity that was fueling this.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, yeah. And we, you know, you, Max and I being House of Works folks, we love that. We love self directed learning.

[Jonathan Strickland]

I mean that was, that was kind of like the mission statement for the entire website was that it was all about curiosity 100%.

[Ben Bullen]

And that's a lesson that I think holds true. I don't think it's not my opinion it holds true. In the modern day, one of the best things you can do is be curious. Now there are some diminishing returns past certain thresholds. We've all been there. And maybe that's kind of a parable too that reflects later Lovecraft's work.

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[Ben Bullen]

Amy Robach and TJ Holmes here, Diddy's former protege, television personality platinum selling artist Danity King. Alum Aubrey o' Day joins us to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation.

[Aubrey O'Day]

Aubrey Oday is sitting next to us. Here you are. As we sit here, right up the street from where the trial is taking place. Some people saw that you were going to be in New York and they immediately started jumping to conclusions. So can you clear that up? First of all, are you here to testify in the Diddy trial? Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise based on her firsthand knowledge from her days on making the band. As she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be opposite of the glitz and glamour.

[Ben Bullen]

It wasn't all bad, but I don't know that any of the good was real. I went through things there. Listen to Amy and TJ presents Aubrey O' Day covering the Diddy trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Daniel]

Hey everyone, we want to tell you about our podcast.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I think our universe is absolutely extraordinary.

[Daniel]

Hello, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites along with nature's other creepy crawlies. And there's just endless things about this universe that I find fascinating.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

All right, well, basically, basically we're both nerds. We love learning about this extraordinary universe and we love sharing what we've learned. So that's what we're gonna do.

[Daniel]

And on our podcast, Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is all about the mind blowing discoveries we've made about this crazy beautiful cosmos.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

From the tiniest particles to the biggest blue whales.

[Daniel]

Each Tuesday and Thursday we take an hour long dive into some science topic, during which time I try to suppress my biologist training and keep the poop jokes to a minimum.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

Learn all about our amazing and beautiful universe on Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bullen]

His life gets a little bit better when he makes it to high school. Place called Hope Street.

[Jonathan Strickland]

High School, the. The fundamental opposite for most people. Right, Right. Most people would be like, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a television series that was built on the premise that high school and that the entire series, or at least the first half of that series, was based on that premise and exploring that in a very literal sense. And it's funny to me, of course it would be Lovecraft who would find the opposite is true, that hey, things got better in high school.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, right. Wow. Being a freshman is awesome. He gets several long lasting friendships from his time in high school. And he also starts exploring the world of communication and publishing with all this knowledge he's stored up in his, I'll say it, creepy little head. His first printed work appears so early and thanks to St. Joosse for doing the research work here. It's published in the Providence Sunday Journal in 1906 and pretty much immediately after that he starts writing for other local papers. He does columns on astronomy, he local human interest stories, and he does something that personally impressed me because I've done something similar when I was a maladjusted younger person. He makes his own scientific journals, you could call them, and he distributes them like mixtapes or Zines to his friends. So imagine we're in high school with this guy, you know what I mean? We want to go play whatever sport they're playing, stickball or something. And he's like, no, first, please read my scientific journal. We're like, well, dude, is that handwritten?

[Jonathan Strickland]

I've written a treatise on this one chemical reaction that I observed the other day. It's so compelling.

[Ben Bullen]

He seems like a lot of fun at parties. Right. And we're dunking out him out of affection. But we can say at this point, yes, he's eccentric. He's a little scamp. Right. He's maybe a bit of a milquetoast, bit of a wallflower, but he seems well set to pursue a path toward wholesome nerdity. I don't know if that's a word. But then, Jonathan, everything goes wrong. There's more tragedy ahead. And this is where stuff really goes south for Lovecraft.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah. So it does involve a little bit of backtracking to talk about the tragedies that befell because the first, like we just mentioned, his first work being published in 1906. Well, two years previous, 1904. That's when his grandfather passes and his beloved racist cat disappears.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes, yes, that is. Yeah. And I'm glad you point that out. His beloved racist cat disappears.

[Jonathan Strickland]

To be fair, I don't know that the cat was racist.

[Ben Bullen]

We don't know if the cat was racist. Yes. But we do know the name of.

[Jonathan Strickland]

The cat was very, very racist.

[Ben Bullen]

And the environment that approved of that.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Name, also extremely, undeniably racist.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes, and unrepentantly so.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yes, proudly, one might say proudly, audaciously, because Lovecraft did make mention by name of this cat multiple times once he became an established author. So it's not like he was shying away from it.

[Ben Bullen]

And he also wrote some terribly racist poetry. His first loves, indeed were essays and poetry before he got into fiction. Look. And it's quite possible that we would have never heard of Lovecraft as an author. After the death of his grandfather and the mismanagement of his family fortune, their nest egg, they went broke. They got into severe financial difficulties such that Lovecraft and his mom have to move out of their posh Victorian home. They lose the house. This is devastating. And now we're in just a much less well appointed domicile. This depresses Lovecraft so much so that a lot of scholars believe he was contemplating serious self harm. And in 1908, right as he's set to graduate Hope High School, he has a Nervous breakdown, which means he leaves school without his diploma. The dominoes fall. But this means he also fails to enter Brown University, which he had always just assumed that he would enter.

[Jonathan Strickland]

And he likely would have been able to had he not had his breakdown. Also, you might think already we're talking nervous breakdown. That may bring up echoes of the past due to the passing of his father. And as we will see, the mental health issues were not solely relegated to his father and to himself. You could say that I'm reminded of a silly line in Arsenic and Old Lace where something along the line insanity doesn't run in my family, it positively gallops.

[Ben Bullen]

I remember that one. Yes, and there's some disturbing sand to that. After this great failure in the world of the Ivory Tower, Lovecraft is going into self imposed solitude. You could say he's a hermit. You could say in Japan they have the thing called hikikomori, which is people simply lock themselves into a very limited space and check out from the world. And he already had this tendency a lot of lonely children do, to lose oneself in, in film and fiction and works of fancy. At this point he isn't really doing much with his life. He is again, as he said, he is intensely curious. He is a self taught person. So he's still pursuing his astronomical interest, which sometimes border on obsessive. He's still writing poetry. And during this time, as you, you so astutely alluded, Jonathan, during this time he and his mom locked in a much smaller place, him not really talking to a lot of other people, they develop what is often portrayed as an unhealthily close relationship. His mom still very much is distraught with the manner of her husband's death and losing her spouse. And she has what various scholars will call a pathological and, and dangerous love hate relationship with her son. And we've seen it. Sometimes you see somebody and their parents and you're like, you guys got a little. One of you should move.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, interesting little side note here. This is a bit of a tangent and I apologize, but I am wont to do such things. One of the authors who would eventually correspond with Lovecraft, as we'll mention, Lovecraft was crazy about correspondence. I think he, it was estimated that he wrote more than 100,000 letters in his lifetime. One of those correspondents was Robert Bloch, who was a teenager when he first reached out to Lovecraft. And this is when Lovecraft is an established author. So this is further along in our timeline, but the reason I bring this up is Robert Bloch, you may Be familiar with that name. That is the man who wrote the novel Psycho, which obviously then became adapted into a film by Alfred Hitchcock and became famous. Really. It made Robert Bloch go from a notable author to a famous author. And Wildeblock never, ever mentioned anything about Lovecraft as an inspiration at all for any elements of Psycho. I think if you start reading about this kind of thing and you realize that Bloch and Lovecraft had a collaborative relationship and knew each other pretty well when Bloch was a young man, I think it's easy to draw some lines that may or may not be valid, but draw some lines between Lovecraft's experience and some of the story elements that you find in Psycho.

[Ben Bullen]

That's fascinating. I haven't thought about that. I don't think it's a tangent. You know what? I would place it as circumstantial and compelling.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Speculative is perhaps the best kindest word we can use.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, but I wouldn't say speculative fiction, just speculate. It's interesting too, because that is, you'll hear us refer to this fairly often peppered through our exploration here. There are a lot of authors yet to come, most of whom will readily acknowledge the impact of Lovecraft's work on them. But then there are several who will shy away from that despite compelling speculation.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Right, right. And to be clear, Bloch and Lovecraft, there's an undeniable connection because they incorporated elements of one another's work into their works. That's something else we'll chat about a little bit later on. But yes, Whether or not Lovecraft's experience with his own mother had anything to do with informing the writing of Psycho, it could be that Bloch was completely unaware of that element of Lovecrest past. Yeah, I don't know.

[Ben Bullen]

I don't know. I think you're making a really good case here. And then that leads us to our next question. So at this point, this guy's life is going ridiculously bad. Right. He is a hermit. His closest friend and greatest enemy is his biological mother.

[Jonathan Strickland]

He has no real world skills with which he can use to attain a living. Like he came from a pampered background that was focused on more academia than any practical skills you might use if you need to make ends meet.

[Ben Bullen]

Right? Right. He has a patrician's philosophy and a peasant's pocketbook. And that's not a ideal situation, especially if you are forced to find a job and you realize, oh, I can't mend shoes, I can't make barrels, I can't do the other. What I assume are most popular industries of that time. Shoes and barrels. That was it.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Working in a cannery.

[Ben Bullen]

In a cannery, yes. Being a Kenneman. So here's the deal. It could have. If history went just a little bit differently, we may well live in a world without Lovecraft. He may have just lingered, languished, died in obscurity. But he read a. He was a voracious reader then, as always. And he read a series of love stories by a pulp author named Fred Jackson. And they pissed him off so much.

[Jonathan Strickland]

He'S like, screw this ridiculous sappy love stuff. This isn't even worth putting pen to paper. You should be ashamed of yourself. Hey, hey. The Argosy, the publication that published these. You should be ashamed for carrying this tripe in your rag of a publication. And I am so angry. I'm going to do what countless YouTube commenters will do in the future. I'm going to write a nasty response to it. Except Lovecraft, being well educated and extremely well read, was able to put it into biting and sharp terms that your typical YouTube comment tends to lack.

[Ben Bullen]

And he did it in verse just to put a little style on it. And he wrote a series of these things. His letter obviously is great for the Argosy, right? This is cool because they publish it.

[Jonathan Strickland]

It's not just. Otherwise we would never even know about this, right?

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, they publish it. And Jackson's defenders just like a YouTube comment page. I love that comparison. Jackson's defenders come out of the woodwork, you know, why are you talking about my boy like this? And Lovecraft responds with yet more poison pen style verses. There's a heated debate that's selling copies left and right for the Argosy. People are picking it up to read the columns. Like, what are these? I don't know if we need to beat me here, Max, but what are these assholes saying about each other this time?

[Jonathan Strickland]

Yeah, it's essentially the early 20th century version of a diss track.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes. Yeah. And I think that is a very good comparison. This is a beef. And this beef launches Lovecraft's career. It's only because he got so pissed at these love stories. People are reading this. As we said, it's popular. One guy reading this is dude named Edward F. Das D a a s. He is the president of an outfit called United Amateur Press association or oopa. They are just like dropping a glass in a Greek restaurant.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Oh yeah, I was thinking of Gogo Bardello's kind of. Kind of exclamations. And whenever the song gets a Little quiet Whoopa. Yeah, it's interesting because this is an organization designed for amateur writers. Right. It's not like this isn't like a professional organization. Quite the opposite. It's to encourage amateur writers to pursue the craft and to perhaps make that transition from amateur to professional by publishing their own zines. Which is again, something that we see today. Now we see it where people are going through Amazon to self publish and just to bypass the entire publication industry out there, which has its ups and downs. Right. There's good and bad of that. Literally anyone can become a published author. One of the people on this podcast is a published author. I'm not saying that he didn't earn it. I'm just saying.

[Ben Bullen]

Did you hear that, Max? Anyway, we are looking forward to the next volume of of Max's comprehensive critical discourse on Star Trek.

[Max Williams]

Also, if you guys don't mind, I would like to jump in real quick with a completely off topic tangent.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Sure.

[Max Williams]

Prepare yourself. It's going to be about football. Okay, so I'm a University of Michigan fan. There is a running back and then a running back coach in Michigan history by the name of Fred Jackson. He's beloved. He's supposed to be a great guy. And he's also known for just being hyperbolic all the time. Like he compared like all of his running back recruits to Mike Hart, who was like the all time leading rusher at Michigan. He's like, yeah, he's Mike Hart, but fast. But that is not the story I want to tell right now. I want to tell the story about there's a running back by the name of Drake Johnson who goes in the store, goes into like the office of Fred Jackson. And Fred Jackson just, I guess he has a lot of drinks. So I'm quoting this off of MGO blog, my favorite Michigan blog. Just going to read a little bit of it and I'm going to see if you guys enjoy it and then I'll shut up so you guys can talk about Lovecraft a little more.

[Ben Bullen]

Bonus points though, if you can somehow segue it back to Lovecraft. I want to see your conversational parkour.

[Max Williams]

All right, so I'm going to read the quote here. I'm sitting in his office and there was a fridge right over there and he's like, you hungry? Johnson said, I'm like, no, man, I'm not hungry. So he's like, okay, I want to go. I'm going to go grab myself a Coke. So grab himself a Coke and sits down. He takes two sips and he's like, hey, Drake, you want something to drink? And I'm like, no, I'm good. He's like, I think I'm going to get myself an orange juice. I'm like, dude, you have a Coke just in front of you. He says, it's fine. So I'm sitting there and maybe two minutes later he's like, I think I'm going to get myself a drink. And I'm like, coach, you already have two drinks in front of you, man. Your thirst can be quenched by what is in front of you. He's like. He says, I'm just gonna grab myself some water. You want some water? I'm like, no, I have my Gatorade in my hand. It's fine. That's. That, that's the whole story.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Oh my God.

[Max Williams]

I mean, but like, you know, Fred Jackson is just trying to quench the thirst that, that, that Lovecraft, who. I still can't believe that's actually his real name. I assume that was like a made up one that thirst, but that Lovecraft had. But it's a different type of thirst. Lovecraft's thirst was for revenge and anger at the inferior Fred Jackson.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Right. Well, well done.

[Ben Bullen]

I am so impressed.

[Jonathan Strickland]

And he has the name Lovecraft, so he should know what a good romantic story should, how that should be written. And clearly this inferior Fred Jackson had no concept of that. But this president of this amateur writers organization extends a hand to young Lovecraft who desperately needs a hand extended to him at this point in his life to join wopa.

[Ben Bullen]

Wopa. Yeah. And Lovecraft takes him up on it because his social dance card is not super crowded. He does this in 1914. He will later go on to become the president of OPA as well as the official editor. Hold the phone. Look up into the night, not just at the stars, but the darkness between the stars. Which tells us the time is right for us to end part one of our exploration on how HP Lovecraft was just so, so weird. Thanks again to our super, Mr. Max Williams, to our composer Alex Williams. I did a lot of the research for this episode and thanks to AJ Bahamas Jacobs, of course. Jonathan, thank you for hanging out with us, man. It's been a blast. You were yourself the whole time and Max and I and Noel as well, vicariously. We really appreciate that.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Absolutely. I appreciate being invited on. I feel like you and I have a lot to say about this. Not just because we already have done that and we're retroactively going back to record this outro. And I feel 97% sure that I will remain myself for the entirety of part two.

[Ben Bullen]

Well, you know, man, this is going to be a trust fall for me and I'm sure nothing will go wrong. So tune in later this week when we follow up up with part two of HP Lovecraft being so just so very weird, as my pal Noel always likes to say. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

Listen to your favorite shows.

[Holly Fry]

Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremarke, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrers. Known as the Wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s, her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app alert, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Daniel]

After a crime.

[Ben Bullen]

You read the headlines, but do you know the story? At the time that I called the police, he knew I had called him and left the house with a firearm.

[Jonathan Strickland]

And was texting me that he was.

[Ben Bullen]

Going to use it. I'm Hannah Smith. And I'm Pasha Eaton.

[Daniel]

We host the Knife, a podcast from the Exactly Right Network that cuts to the heart of the story.

[Ben Bullen]

Through in depth interviews and candid conversations.

[Daniel]

We'Ll bring you firsthand accounts of people.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Living through the ripple effects of crime.

[Ben Bullen]

Most of us don't know the legal process and because they always tell you this word, closure, I really wish people.

[Holly Fry]

Would stop using that word because there is no such thing as closure.

[Ben Bullen]

These are the scars that are left behind. These are the voices you have haven't heard. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to the knife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Daniel]

We love learning about this extraordinary universe.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

And we love sharing what we've learned.

[Daniel]

And on our podcast, Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, that's what we're gonna do.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I think our universe is absolutely extraordinary.

[Daniel]

I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites and there's just endless things about this universe that I find FAS fascinating.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

Basically, we're both nerds.

[Daniel]

Each Tuesday and Thursday we take an hour long dive into some science topics.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

Learn all about our amazing and beautiful universe on Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary universe every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bullen]

Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Being able to, you know, we're the.

[Ben Bullen]

Providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves a rap away. You gotta pray for yourself as well as for everybody else.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

But never forget yourself.

[Ben Bullen]

Self love made me a better dad.

[Kelly Wienersmith]

Because I realized my worth.

[Jonathan Strickland]

Never stop being a dad.

[Ben Bullen]

That's dedication. Find out [e-mail] brought to you by the U.S. department of Health and Human.

[Jonathan Strickland]

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[Ben Bullen]

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