You know, for all its faults (and it has many), I've always enjoyed de Camp's biography, nor have I found it to be as censorious of HPL as most seem to. Yes, it presents him as a person who had his share of quirks, oddities, and prickliness, but it also makes it clear that he was a kindly man who often went out of his way to help others, who gave of himself to a ridiculous extent at times, and who (despite some things which would grate on a modern sensibility) was a genuinely good human being. I think de Camp himself summed it up well when he said:
Despite his oddities, those who knew him loved him and were fascinated by him. He always tried to do the right thing. He kept learning and improving all his life; and that, it seems to me, is the best use to which a mind can be put.
-- Lovecraft: A Biography, p. 448
I think that, with all the factual errors and odd judgments of his biography, the main problem with de Camp's book is that it is a popular, rather scholarly, biography... and such just couldn't do someone like HPL justice; he was too complex and unusual a person for that. Still, the structure is rather good; there are some wonderful passages in the book; and it
did attempt to present him as a three-dimensional human being, as opposed to the sorts of myths and misinformation such as seem to inform the post above.
And on some of the comments in that post: while Wilum has answered them quite well, I'd like to add my own thoughts.
As a personal bias, of course, there is nothing inherently wrong in disliking what Lovecraft (or any other writer) wrote. That is a matter of personal taste. But when you add statements like
I think the man had great problems. Literature was a way out, a way to get rid of his demons
then you lay yourself open to charges of (at very least) a shallow approach to the subject, relying on popular misinformation rather than fact, and in fact flying in the face of the evidence. The statements above reflect a view which long held due to poor access to information and a tendency to armchair psychoanalyze based on the man's writings (thank you, Ted White, Colin Wilson,
et al.) and make dogmatic statements based on ignorance and bias rather than reasoned critical judgment.
Did the man have his "problems"? Certainly. Some of them (such as his views on "race") grate on our modern sensibilities (much less so on those of his contemporaries). Some would seem funny or pathetic to many (his views on sex, alcohol, etc.), but again, that is largely personal bias rather than reasoned judgment. (Not that his views on sex were genuinely healthy -- but then, so very few
are.) Yet most such quirks were quite minor in comparison to his strengths: He was an extremely intelligent man; prodigiously well-read in a number of fields; was often painfully honest about his own shortcomings and faults; and was, as noted, a kind, generous, and very warm human being (with, by the bye, a truly wonderful sense of humor and sparkling -- if often dry -- wit).
As for literature being "a way out" or a way to "get rid of his demons"... the first is completely off-beam, given his entire approach to literature and to life, while the second is refuted by an attentive reading of the literature itself, let alone the secondary material such as his essays, letters, etc. Lovecraft was by no means an "eccentric recluse", as so many lazy commentators have tended to propound. That view is completely exploded by even a casual view of the number of personal memoirs of people who met him, a glance at his travelogues, or a perusal of even a minor selection of his letters. He was far from one who did not engage in life, for all his dislike of various phases of it. He was always up-to-date on the major (and many of the minor) aspects of the political scene (the father of a boyhood friend -- who was himself a politician -- recalled that, even as a youth, he tended to know more about the bills in front of the Rhode Island legislature than most of the members of that body themselves); he quite easily, despite his shyness, made acquaintances with people of all walks of life, and valued their friendship; he was extremely knowledgeable, especially for a layman, on various aspects of history; he was from his early years fascinated with the sciences and strove to keep abreast of the latest developments there; he was aware (though he did not always approve) of the various movements in the arts of his day, as well as in times past; he constantly debated points of philosophy, sexuality, aesthetics, science, supernaturalism, religion, social institutions, etc., etc., etc., with a wide variety of types of individuals... in brief, in many ways he lived more fully than many who were more physically active, because he lived the life of the mind, engaging with all the levels of life and trying to understand and come to grips with them to the best of his abilities.
As for him using the literature to exorcise his demons... the cases where this is generally the case tend to show it rather baldly; and their productions as a result tend to (however powerful on an emotional level) lack depth, and certainly lack the layers of experience and philosophical and linguistic texturing present in Lovecraft's work. (I am thinking here, in particular, of such writers as F. Marion Crawford, Clive Barker, Stephen King, etc.) While he only wrote about ideas which "clamored to be expressed", the fact is that, as he himself noted, Lovecraft was even more sensitive to beauty than to horror or weirdness, but he felt that others had said all he could say on that subject and therefore (almost by default) wrote tales of the latter... even though beauty also played a much larger role in his life than perhaps anything else. And that beauty is reflected in much of his writing: take a look at any number of his stories, and you'll find a passionate interest in natural beauty, history, beauty of thought and expression, the worth of art, etc. Even when the weird predominates, it is always mingled with awe as well as terror, a sense of expansion and awareness of the vastness of things rather than (or supplementing) a contraction to an almost annihilatingly small point. He also brings in numerous philosophical thoughts to his writing: about determinism versus free will; about science versus faith; about art versus hack work; about the "machine-age" versus a more agrarian society; about the shallowness of the modern approach versus the richer, more deliberate approach of some eras of the past; even about a possible utopian political system which would benefit the species by encouraging a growth and development of its finest qualities. Now, that doesn't sound much like someone who is using his art to deal with his demons, but rather someone who is using his art as a vehicle to express his thoghts on an enormous range of topics.
There is also the fact that Lovecraft has constantly grown in critical estimation both here and abroad, as well as his growth in popular acclaim. He has also influenced a surprising array of writers, from Robert Bloch to Wilum to Caitlin R. Kiernan to James Blish to Fritz Leiber to Poppy Z. Brite to Stanley G. Weinbaum to Clark Ashton Smith to Robert E. Howard to Colin Wilson to Joanna Russ to Harlan Ellison to... Well, you get the point. All of these
facts rather militate against your position of what constitutes his "greatest merit".
Again, a dislike of Lovecraft or his writing is perfectly fine. But claims such as that above simply don't hold water when examined, I'm afraid....
