Lucas Blogs About Lovecraft Country

Minimizing the screen reflection on the glossy cover was Ruff.

 So, what's this book's deal?

You're serious? It was recently adapted as an HBO series.

Lucas, you don't even have basic cable, let alone HBO.

Right you are, Hypothetical Reader. Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff is a novel, kind of, that uses the tropes of pulp literature to explore issues relating to racism (both on an individual and systemic level) in America and in the kinds of literature that inspired it.

How can something be "kind of" a novel.

Well, it's really more a collection of inter-connected short stories that coalesce into a larger narrative. But I'm splitting hairs. It's a novel, it's just got a more specific form. But let's talk about that later. It's 1954, and Atticus Turner, a Black Korean War veteran is on his way to Chicago to visit his father, Montrose. However, when he arrives he finds out that Montrose isn't there and has left behind a note for Atticus to meet him in Ardham, MA. So, he heads off with his uncle George, publisher of the Green Book-like Safe Negro Travel Guide and his friend Letitia Dandridge, after several run-ins with unfriendly law enforcement officers, they arrive in Ardham village where Atticus finds himself a pawn in a power struggle between the various lodges of the Sons of Adam (like if the Freemasons could do magic). As the novel progresses, the characters are able to return to Chicago, but the internecine conflict within the Sons of Adam soon follow them there, ensnaring Letitia's sister, Ruby, and George's wife, Hippolyta, and their son, Horace. There's a haunted mansion with a giant orrery depicting a (presumably) far off star system, a heist to steal a magician's secret book from a pocket dimension hidden in a history museum, and, of course, a possessed doll.

Ya gotta have possessed dolls!

Ya just gotta. But for serious, it's a good book. It's easy to imagine a version of this story from the point of view of the villains, Caleb Braithwhite and Captain Lancaster (both of whom are white), as they vie for supremacy over other sorcerers. Braithwhite wants to modernize sorcery and make it into something more closely resembling hard science, while Lancaster merely sees it as a means of personal advancement. And in the era of the pulps their mistreatment and manipulation of Black people probably wouldn't even register or would be cast as paternalistic, or best case scenario, the an author might try to include positive portrayals of Black characters that would have aged poorly (look, I know I'm generalizing here).

I think I see where you're going, in a lot of  (especially older) genre fiction, there's a tendency for people who aren't white to be portrayed as racist stereotypes or to be absent entirely.

Yeah, the way I described Lovecraft Country to a co-worker was to say that it's like an older pulp story from the point of view of a Black side character. In constructing the story this way, Ruff is able to explore how Braithwhite and Lancaster wreak havoc on the lives of the Black protagonists. Lancaster is the more obviously sinister, a bigot and a police captain, he views the main characters as barely human and that they should count themselves lucky in those instances when he lets them go about their lives unmolested. Braithwhite meanwhile, sees himself as more modern and while exhibiting no obvious personal prejudice against Black people, doesn't see any problem with inserting himself into the lives of Atticus and his friends and family and using them as pawns in his power struggle. It's just as insidious, and the novel doesn't pretend that Braithwhite's indifference is any better than Lancaster's hostili—

Hold on a second, you realize that you've just spent two paragraphs of your blog about a book that features multiple Black protagonists talking about two white guys.

I think maybe you're being a little uncharitable. But I do see your point. We'll move on. So, one of the benefits of structuring the novel as a series of short stories is that Ruff is able to explore different pulp and tailor each adventure to suit both a particular character and to explore different ways in which racism affects their lives. It also helps break the book into manageable chunks.

So, like, if — hypothetically speaking — someone were reading this book during their breaks at work, it would be a pretty solid choice?

Yes it would, hypothetically, of course.

Wait, if you're on break why would we have to pretend that it's a hypothetical?

Moving on. This also means that if you're not into a particular story like, for example, the story about how Letitia deals with the ghost of a sorcerer in the the haunted mansion, then you're not too far away from a potentially more interesting story.

Not a fan of haunted house stories?

Not really. But one thing I did like in this particular haunted house story is that the ghost is less of a threat than the teenagers trying to drive Letitia out of the largely white neighborhood that she's moved into. That's actually a running theme in the novel. Take for example, the story of Hippolyta exploring a mysterious observatory which turns out to have a doorway to a distant planet where she finds the last surviving servant of, well, the ghost from Letitia's haunted mansion, who'd been stranded there as punishment. And while she helps Hippolyta escape, she chooses to remain because there isn't anything left for her on Earth. Sure, she's stuck on a bizarre planet with a pretty crummy food replicator (well, it isn't called a replicator, but it's basically a replicator), but at least she doesn't have to put up with the constant reminders that she lives in a society that considers her less valuable because of the color of her skin. And, it's confirmed that she has a point when Hippolyta returns to find the police searching her parked car and needs to make a daring escape. That does lead to me to a criticism I have of the book.

Do tell.

Well, it's not quite fair since the novel is playing off of pulp fiction tropes, but sometimes the characters' heroics and derring-do threaten to undercut the seriousness of the social commentary. Like in the first story, there's a very tense encounter between Atticus and an Indiana State Trooper who not so subtly threatens him. But later on in the same story, Atticus, George, and Letitia are on the run from hostile firefighters in Massachusetts and one of them is leaning out of the car and firing a gun at them. I'm not saying it's too far-fetched to happen, but for some reason leaning a little too hard on the action-adventure aspects of the story makes it feel a bit less serious.

Do you think that's because the author is white?

Oh, we're just jumping into that discussion?

Well, I don't see any reason to avoid the subject.

Well, I can't speak to the verisimilitude of Ruff's portrayal of racism in 1950s America. Obviously, Ruff doesn't have first hand experience living as a Black person in America. But generally, Ruff seems to have a grasp of how bigotry poisons a society. Particularly in the ways that there isn't really an effective shield against it, it doesn't matter if you're a veteran like Atticus, a professional like George and Montrose's friends from the Prince Hall Freemason lodge, or a child like Horace, bigots will treat you as disposable. So it's not so much that the adventure elements undercut the message, they just sometimes feel out of place, even in a novel that has a story about a bunch of middle-aged men staging a heist in a pocket dimension hidden in a museum.

Okay, but it's still a recommendation?

Yeah, I still recommend it. It's thought-provoking, often tense and exciting, and sometimes even funny. Like I said, it's a good book. And honestly, because it's more like a short story collection, there are a lot of things that I wish I'd talked about. But I think we've pretty much got it covered.

Wait, there's one more question I have.

Which is?

Why's it called Lovecraft Country, sure they go to New England, but it doesn't sound very Lovecraftian.

Well, I mean there's the obvious connection of H.P. Lovecraft being an influential horror writer and a racist shitstain, something that is mentioned in the novel. But, for all that I've never found Lovecraft's writing interesting or scary, I have an idea. So Lovecraftian horror usual involves a character who peeks beyond the veil of reality and encounters some ancient tentacled horror that is so incomprehensible that the mere sight drives them mad and that the best case scenario is that these eldritch abominations will ignore us as insignificant?

For argument's sake, sure.

Well, couldn't we say that about systemic racism. Like it's the horror resting below the surface of polite society that people who aren't affected by it don't notice and if you're the one targeted by it sometimes the best you can hope for is that you'll just be allowed to live your life.

That might be a stretch, after all, people can and have taken direct action to oppose racism.

Yeah, I guess it is a bit of a stretch. But anyway, Lovecraft Country is still a good read.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, Harper Perennial trade paperback edition, 2017, 372, pairs well with questionable food machine recipes

Links:

Here's the author's website, if you're into that kinda thing.