It’s something I struggle with. Some bad news comes out about some public persona doing something shitty and they get cancelled. But sometimes I really struggle with giving up the things they’ve made because I like them. There are also occasions where the person has been accused of something and it doesn’t seem true to me, or I think they’re genuinely sorry and have been punished enough, and the context isn’t being considered.
What do you think? Who do you feel conflicted about enjoying?
H.P. Lovecraft
I kind of think that Lovecraft was doing about the least-worst thing he could with his absolutely massive trove of neuroses and phobias, which definitely included racism and xenophobia.
He was convinced that the universe was chaotic and horrifying and that the only thing we could hold on to for stability was racial purity, and that’s pretty fucked up, but he turned those feelings into spooky stories about interdimensional space monsters, which is certainly a lot better than writing political tracts or trying to convince everyone that the Armenians are actually to blame for all of our problems.
Therapy would have been even better, but writing spooky stories was better than some of the very real alternatives that other people were exploring in the 19-teens and twenties.
Lovecraft was my first experience with seperating the artist and the work. Since then, I’ve had to deal with it frequently but eventually you get used to it.
Those books are wild.
Turns out that the author that popularized the horror of the alien and unknown was a racist and xenophobic putz. Who would have guessed?