>Lovecraft was a
>genuinely interesting man, an independent thinker who was on the political
>Right most of his life. I think the supernatural fiction they wrote does
>point to a worldview that rejects the conventional rationalism and
>anthropological optimism of the modern world, and Lovecraft, despite >his
own
>atheism and materialism, was extremely anti-modernist. The best of
Lovecraft
>'s stories, I have argued and continue to believe, can be read as dramas of
>modernity, in which the consequences of modernism - rationalism, optimism -
>work themselves out symbolically in dreadful and horrifying ways. Lovecraft
>is an example of what I have elsewhere called "counter-modernism", the use
>of modernist ideas and forms to challenge the conventional rationalistic
and
>optimistic forms of modernity. James Burnham is a similar figure, and so
are
>T S Eliot, Ezra Pound, and a number of others.
Happy to see someone can get this stuff out of Lovecraft; here I thought I was the only one (not that it's all that hard to see Lovecraft's screed vs. the "modern world" and modernism in general). I wonder if Francis means that "real conservatives" should act in ways counter to Lovecraft's "modern" protagonists: i.e. worship alien gods/powers in a vain effort to get their attention long enough to carry out the worshipper's desires. Hmmmm. That adequately describes all the villains in Lovecraft's stories. They eventually either go insane or are devoured by the forces with which they meddle. Hmmmm. Sounds like capitalism.
Todd (IA Shub-Niggurath!!)