Countdown to Christmas #5 (December 10th)

Having never read him before, and having never owned one of those nifty Library of America hardcover books, I decided to double up and purchase the Tales by Lovecraft. Now before I lay me down to sleep each evening I take a good few seconds summoning the courage to return to the Wawah, fail, read a comic book or two, and then dive into a short-story or two by Lovie.

Man was weird. And his stories--weirder. Also, a bit of a racist. I read some of his chronology appended in the back of the text and Lovecraft wrote some full blown "White is Best" essays and now I can't help but find hints at this thesis in his stories. I'm trying my hardest to not let this fact overwhelm things, because his work is definitely interesting nonetheless. And without much thought you can see just how influential his 'weird' fiction was for contemporary writers. I throw out the quotes because that word has become a genre somehow, and Lovecraft certainly has something to do with its conception. The problem, of course, is that 'weird' fiction has little in common with itself besides being mildly to shockingly off-putting. Aside from that, and the tendency to be fantastic or science fiction-y, weird fiction is a tag like Emo, one that gets used as a descriptor way too often and without much thought and in the end doesn't describe any one story/song so much as an idea.

Emo = Cthulu? Who knew?
Yikes, bad rhymes make for one uncomfortable exit.