I also really like Lovecraft, but I am not sure how much his racism subsided so much shrank back from its pathological levels that occurred while living in the integrated slums of New York. The letters are particularly damning. There are a number of letters that express admiration for Hitler in the '30's. Also, his socialism tended to be a conservative paternalistic version of it. Joshi's biography is particularly good on this. Also, I would recommend Mieville's Perdido Street Station, which borrows from Lovecraft, but really flips it on its head for an anti-racist, post-colonial politic. (He also has a really nice analysis of Mountains of Madness in the Penguin edition.)
Robert Wood
> Chris Doss wrote:
>> Man do I love Lovecraft.
>>
>> The racism really is jarring to the modern ear,
>> however, perhaps even by the standards of the time.
>>
>
> I like him, too (as you already know), loved him as a
> teen, only sort of struck me how racist a lot of his
> stuff could be (especially his personal
> correspondence) when I got older and looked at it all
> anew, through more politicized eyes. According to L.
> Sprague de Camp's biography -- of which I have a
> signed copy! -- Lovecraft went sort of the opposite
> trajectory most folks go as they age.
>
> That is, instead of getting more racist and
> conservative, he became less so as he grew older.
> Folks often point out he married an openly, proudly
> Jewish woman, despite personal anti-Semitic
> correspondence earlier on. And though when younger he
> had eccentric ideas that the US should have never
> revolted against England, that there should be a
> monarchy in power with aristocrats like himself in
> attendance (as he lived in poverty on cans of beans
> per day), etc., by the time of his death he was a
> devout supporter of FDR's New Deal, the National
> Recovery Act, the Works Project Administration, and,
> de Camp predicts, was gravitating more & more towards
> socialism.
>
> Although his fairly early-ish death (at the age of 44
> or so, right?) cut it all off.
>
> About the fear of all of the stuff in his works (fish,
> architecture, etc.) -- well, horror writers make the
> ordinary into fearful, terrible things, right? It's
> horror, after all.
>
> -B.