Il sogno e l'incubo. Vita e opere di H.P. Lovercraft

by Paul Roland, Alba Bariffi (Translator), Stefano Giorgianni (Editor)

H.P. Lovecraft ha fondato la moderna letteratura dell'orrore, superando i romantici inglesi ed Edgar Allan Poe per dare voce alle più oscure inquietudini del Novecento. Oggetto di culto da decenni, continua a influenzare l'immaginario e la cultura nelle loro più varie manifestazioni - cinema, musica, fumetto, giochi di ruolo. Eppure, come molti precursori, non vide riconosciuto il proprio talento nel corso della sua breve vita, che fu quella di un orgoglioso ma timido intellettuale di provincia, di un aristocratico decaduto e senza mezzi, di un nevrotico pieno di complessi: forse un prezzo obbligato da pagare per chi riuscì, in nome della letteratura, a trarre senza remore dal suo inconscio inquieto le più oscure figure della fantasia, destinate a popolare innumerevoli storie del soprannaturale e della fantascienza. Quest'agile biografia è destinata sia ai cultori del mito di Cthulhu sia ai semplici curiosi dell'eccentrica figura di Lovecraft. Attingendo al suo cospicuo epistolario, ne traccia un avvincente profilo senza trascurarne l'opera e il pensiero, il cui materialismo nichilista non può che essere una costante provocazione per il disincantato lettore di oggi.

Genres: Lovecraftian, Biography, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published July 8, 2014

About the author

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Roland

Reviews

[Amy H. Sturgis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book deserves a 4.5 rating, in my opinion.

It's high time readers had access to a contemporary, balanced, and well-written popular biography of H.P. Lovecraft. I say "popular" biography to distinguish it from scholarly undertakings filled with dense footnotes. Don't get me wrong: I'm an academic myself, and I love meaty footnotes. That said, it's easy to understand why S.T. Joshi's epic two-volume I Am Providence, or his truncated H.P. Lovecraft: A Life (which still weighs in at 700+ pages), might dissuade the interested layperson from diving into the story of Lovecraft's life. Previous offerings by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp, for example, while historically important, are far from balanced, not to mention some four decades old.

Fortunately, Paul Roland has stepped into the role of popular biographer with both engaging style and clear purpose. He's produced a compulsively readable and insightful work that draws on Lovecraft's published writings and unpublished letters, as well as a variety of other sources, to provide a three-dimensional picture (neither overly critical nor overly apologetic) of both the man and the circumstances that produced his writings. Roland sets Lovecraft's stories into their contexts in terms of Lovecraft's life and inspirations, and he also does an excellent job of suggesting why and showing how his writing had and continues to have such a lasting impact on readers and popular culture (widely defined).

The first nine chapters (196 pages) comprises the biography proper. The second portion of the book (chapter ten and the afterword, 25 pages) considers his lasting legacy in such fields as film adaptations and documentaries, comics, music, gaming, and influence on other authors. The book ends with a brief bibliography and three useful appendices (13 pages): 1) "The History of the Necronomicon" by Lovecraft, 2) "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction" by Lovecraft, and 3) "Howard Phillips Lovecraft as His Wife Remembers Him" by Lovecraft's once-wife, Sonia Davis. Two sections of illustrations - rare photographs, drawings, and documents - round out this compelling work.

I'm not usually one to mention a book's layout unless a large number of typos distracts me from the text, but this is an unusually beautifully crafted paperback, from its lovely cover design to the attractive opening pages of each chapter. Clearly it was lovingly constructed with attention to detail.

This biography is an achievement, and my quibbles (Roland's practice of amateur psychology, the lack of certain content I would have liked to see added) are few and minor compared to my enjoyment and appreciation of it. I noted one error that other Lovecraftians no doubt will find jarring: Roland refers to author, biographer, critic, and well-known genre persona Lin (Linwood Vrooman) Carter as "she" rather than "he." I expect this will be changed in later editions.

All in all, I am grateful to Roland and to Plexus Publishing for such an able and engaging biography. I won't hesitate to recommend it to my students, colleagues, and friends. Well done.

[Leonardo Di Giorgio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi domando: e se a 7 anni invece di scoprire Poe avessi scoperto Lovecraft? Okay, sicuramente la mia sanità mentale ne avrebbe notevolmente risentito. Non che Poe sia una passeggiata rilassante per un bambino, ma appena si inizia a leggere Lovecraft ci si ritrova ad affrontare un punto di non ritorno. Come può guardare la realtà sotto gli stessi occhi uno che ha letto Lovecraft? Beh, se l'avessi letto da bambino forse ora sarei un pazzo, o un genio. Il confine è labile.

E che il confine sia labile ce lo conferma proprio la vita di Lovecraft. Uno scellerato, un razzista, un misantropo, uno con la spocchia lunga tanto quanto in tentacoli di Chtulhu. Ma aveva anche dei difetti.

A parte gli scherzi, Paul Roland scrive una buona biografia, coinvolgente e senza reverenzialità di sorta. Un ottimo primo approccio all'autore di Providence. Si ripercorre la storia della sua vita e anche quella dei suoi racconti più importanti, attraverso analisi generiche ma efficaci. C'è anche la poetica di questo grande autore e l'influenza che ha avuto sul panorama contemporaneo e non. Una biografia ben calibrata e mai ripetitiva che ci dà un primo affaccio riuscito e ci svela una porta che forse sarebbe meglio non varcare.

Ottime le fonti a fine libro e anche l'ipotetica biblioteca di Lovecraft: quegli scrittori che l'autore di Providence ha inserito nel suo olimpo.

[Gilda Felt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Curious is a word and a half for the life of Lovecraft. And this book covers it all, from his ideal childhood, to his awkward adolescence, to his troubled adulthood. The reader is given an interesting and highly readable inside look into Lovecraft’s life.

And I appreciated how Lovecraft’s stories were integrated into the biography. There is a synopsis for each, the story fitted into the time and place of its writing, what success each had, as well as the inspiration that help create it.

As much as Lovecraft fairly worshipped Edgar Allen Poe, his own writings would influence the generations of readers and writers who would come after. Though Lovecraft had little success during his lifetime, his work has lived on. It’s been awhile since I’ve read any of his work. I think it’s time to pull out my copy of his stories and let myself be pulled back into the highly imaginative, yet deeply unsettling, world of H. P. Lovecraft.

[Scandal Wonder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ottima biografia scritta in modo intrigante e che rivela i diversi lati contraddittori della persona dietro l'autore. Ho apprezzato i riferimenti ai testi e le immagini delle copertine di Weird Tales.

[John Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, so I finished "The Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft. Although it was a hard read, I loved how Paul Roland showed the human side of Lovecraft. As I read "The Dream World of H.P. Lovecraft", Donald Tyson kept the image of Lovecraft larger than life along with his work. Tyson did a awesome job with the book in keeping the air of mystery of Lovecraft alive. Roland broke down why Lovecraft wrote the way he did and why he was the way he was. I highly recommend this book. I really opened my eyes to not only Lovecraft but other artists as well.

[Marco Spelgatti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il piacere di questo libro viene più dal soggetto che non dal modo in cui viene trattato. Il mix di informazioni e citazioni, l'intrecciarsi di vita privata ed opere non aggiunge molto di nuovo. E ci sono alcuni passaggi forzati, non suffragati nella teoria da fatti concreti per stessa ammissione dell'autore. Ma si legge bene, è veloce. E forse la cosa più bella è la parte conclusiva, con la citazione degli autori apprezzati da Lovecraft. E' da dieci minuti che penso a cosa dire di più puntuale, ma quando metà del tempo un autore lo passa a parlare di cose note, un po' mi passa la poesia.

[Sue Watson]

Fantastic bio for a fantastic fantasy Weird fiction hero, pity he didn't get all his recognition in his own lifetime. This has inspired me to look for some of his followers art/music/Graphic Novels and Novels, well the ones I didn't already know of anyway. And to read some of his more obscure series too. A great man who ahead of his time overcame some very current difficulties too. Bravo!

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The Curious Case Of H.P. Lovecraft’ is both a biography and a literary analysis of the famous horror writer and his works. The facts of his life are shown and so are the plots of the stories, complete with commentary on the language used, the human characters and the non-human creatures. Writer Paul Roland also gives some idea of a tale’s success, both commercially and as art. Poor old H.P. had little commercial success in his lifetime but is well regarded as an artist posthumously.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on 20th August 1890 into a reasonably wealthy family in Providence, Rhode Island, on the east coast of the United States. A spoilt childhood meant that he grew up believing he was entitled to the leisurely life of a gentleman. Unfortunately, his father died young and bad investments were made with the family fortune, which came from his mother’s side anyway. It dwindled slowly enough that he could just about survive on it and his meagre literary earnings helped a little. Luckily, he didn’t drink alcohol or take drugs and ate hardly anything.

His mother was of a nervous disposition and mollycoddled him. At the same time, she convinced him he was ugly. Lovecraft was very intelligent but inclined to be solitary as he found the raucous behaviour of other children strange. He read voraciously in his grandfather’s extensive library and learned to love Greek legends, ‘The Arabian Nights’ and the works of Lord Dunsany. He spent a lot of time on the Poe. Arthur Machen and M.R. James were significant influences. Perhaps it was his tastes in literature that led to his wild dreams of ‘night gaunts’ with flapping black wings that carried him over ancient, deserted cities abandoned by old gods or maybe he would have had them anyway. At any rate, he was not your average Joe.

A woman married him. I put it that way because he was not especially interested in ladies and she chased him, all the way to the altar in the end. Sonia Haft-Greene (1883-1972) was successful in the fashion industry, earning $10,000 dollars a year and was happy to keep Lovecraft in the style to which he was accustomed or better, while his talent flourished. Sonia loved him and believed he was a genius who would one day be recognised. She loved him even though she was a Jew and he was openly anti-Semitic. A remarkable woman and very attractive, too, by all accounts. Unfortunately, she fell on hard times and he could not get a job. When she had to move to Chicago to work, he stayed in New York for a while but soon enough moved back to Providence to live with his aunts. The separation became permanent. He didn’t seem to mind much. A strange character, possibly manic-depressive and almost certainly autistic. Yet he was a good friend to many, generous with his time and talent and even with his limited funds. He was also a gifted writer, as the many extracts herein demonstrate. I was pleased to read that my favourite Lovecraft story, ‘The Colour Out Of Space’, was also his favourite Lovecraft story. Clearly, he had good taste.

This is a wonderful book. The writing is informative and elegant and it’s obvious that Paul Roland is a huge fan. The appendices are nearly as good as the main text and include Lovecraft’s thoughts on how to write weird fiction and an essay about her time with him by his wife, Sonia. There is also an excellent section on Lovecraft adaptations in film, games and graphic novels with the best of each genre recommended by Roland. Chasing them all up might get expensive but I certainly intend to check out some. That said, the original stories are the best of Lovecraft and happily, I have them all.

When I finished this biography, I started reading one about Heinlein, a competent, confident successful man of his time, at the top of his chosen field of fiction for decades. One can hardly imagine two personalities more different than Heinlein and Lovecraft but I suspect that in a hundred years time Robert A. will be largely forgotten and H.P. will still be in print. Hell, he might even be on the school curriculum.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/

[Ralph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This well-researched book examines the life of renowned fantasy and science fiction writer HP Lovecraft (1890-1937), but it also looks at the influence Lovecraft had on the people around him, the fantasy and horror fiction of the time, and the many ways Lovecraft still affects fiction, film, music and society, an influence that seems to grow exponentially, against all common sense and in spite of hateful and harsh criticism. It is not the first biography of Lovecraft, but is one of the few mass market editions which is accessible to general readers or those new to Lovecraft while still addressing complex issues in his life and work.

In providing a general overview of Lovecraft’s life, “The Curious Case of HP Lovecraft” succeeds quite well, drawing from historical documents, pamphlets and tributes published by members of Lovecraft’s circle of friends and correspondents, private memoirs and oral remembrances by Lovecraft’s wife and friends, and the voluminous quantity of letters (many thousands of them, some 20-50 pages long) written by Lovecraft. In addition, with the advantage of hindsight and knowledge of modern psychiatric theories and principles, Roland is able to examine and sometimes suggest reasons for Lovecraft’s many odd actions and personality quirks. When he reviews Lovecraft’s fiction and poetry in the timeline of Lovecraft’s life, he draws parallels between the writer’s life and his work, often suggesting that had it not been for Lovecraft’s many neuroses, phobias and prejudices (Lovecraft often admitted in his letters that he was a mess) his most effective and well regarded stories might never have been written.

Early on in this biography Roland draws parallels between Lovecraft and various literary characters. No doubt, Lovecraft would have been amused by such comparisons, though perhaps not by the characters chosen, for Lovecraft often imagined himself in various roles which could only have existed in fiction. While all of us engage in such whimsy from time to time, Lovecraft actually played it out in the real world, especially in his letters, where he often adopted the persona of an old man, a foppish gent, or a cultured recluse of the Eighteenth Century.

In looking at the world as Lovecraft has influenced it, Roland goes far afield, which is not surprising because of the variety and range of the people who have at one time or another fallen under Lovecraft’s spell. There are, of course, the genres of horror, fantasy and science fiction, which Lovecraft completely reimagined and rewrote. He succeeded where Edgar Allen Poe failed, in tying together horror and science fiction, supplanting a god-driven universe of good vs. evil with an indifferent cosmos of unknowable vastness, inhabited by cosmic beings who thought of us as cattle, if they bothered to think of us at all. It was a literary revolution that few noted at the time, but which has since grown to shape most writers, artists and film-makers to some degree or another.

Roland also looks at the non-literary effects Lovecraft has had on people’s lives and actions, which takes forms that even Lovecraft could not have imagined. Once, back in the Seventies, I was browsing in a bookstore in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, when I saw a copy of “The Satanic Bible.” I was quite surprised when I flipped it open and found numerous spells for summoning the monster-gods of Lovecraft’s fiction. Likewise, in my library there is a book titled “The Magician’s Companion,” a full section of which is dedicated to Lovecraft, not as writer, but as prophet and priest, chronicler of the “true” Cthulhu Mythos. Roland also mentions the writings of influential British occultist and ceremonial magician Kenneth Grant, who spliced Lovecraft’s fiction onto the arcane thelemic teachings of Aleister Crowley, once known as the “most evil man in the world.” And there are gamers who find a thrill in playing Chaosium’s RPG “Call of Cthulhu” in open landscapes, under the starry sky, daring the Old Ones or Elder Gods to appear.

Roland also looks at such usually neglected Lovecraftian influences as comic books and music. In the decline of the super hero genre, many comic publishers have looked to Lovecraft for both stories and inspiration. The entire “Alien” comics franchise (apart from the film franchise) is based upon Lovecraft’s visions of cosmic horror, and, as Roland points out, recognized that link in an issue where the Aliens were reimagined through the prism of Lovecraft’s vision. As a musician himself, Roland provides a unique insight into all of the musical artists who have latched onto Lovecraft and his fiction in one way or another, or who, in one particular case, became possessed by all things Lovecraftian.

Lovecraft’s life continues to fascinate those who love him, those who hate him, and those who want to ride to fame (or infamy) upon his wide shoulders by becoming vociferous critics. Though not well known in his time, he is now celebrated (and sometimes cursed) worldwide. Though his stories and poems were not collected into book form during his lifetime, they have not been out of print since 1939. Though he knew only a handful of people in the amateur journalism movement and some writers who wrote for the pulps or aspired to, his influence extended out of literature’s ghetto and into the mainstream, affecting other important writers and film-makers, who affect even more people, like ripples spreading endlessly. Other pulp writers, and most of the “important” writers of the Twenties and Thirties are forgotten or have no effect upon today, but, as Roland points out, Lovecraft thrives now more than ever before, and there seems no lessening of that growing influence.

I’ve read many books about Lovecraft and his work, read all Lovecraft’s tales and many of the derivative stories, read his collected letters, and subscribed to (and at times contributed to) the various small press journals devoted to Lovecraft. At various times, such as when I wrote the first Lovecraft/Sherlock Holmes crossover, I have immersed myself in Lovecraft’s life, his views and his stories. Even so, I found new “food for thought” in Paul Roland’s excellent book. I found it to be authoritative and accurate, insightful and exhaustive within the limits of a mass market book. In the places where Roland speculates about Lovecraft’s attitudes, prejudices, or mental processes, I did not always agree, but there was nothing presented which I would dismiss out of hand, since all evaluations conducted in retrospect are to some degree speculative. This is an excellent and important book. Anyone who wants to understand the enigma named Lovecraft, or at least gain added insights, should find a place for this book in his library.

[Fede La Lettrice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Biografia lineare e semplice di questo scrittore ossessionato dalle parole scritte forse come fuga dalle sue paure, forse come esorcismo alla follia, forse perché affetto da ipergrafia; uomo misantropo e supponente, introverso e incoerente, razzista e paradossale; autore visionario, innovatore, severamente autocritico e inventore dell'horror moderno.

Il sogno e l'incubo. Vita e opere di H. P. Lovecraft
Paul Roland
Traduzione: Alba Bariffi
Editore: Tsunami edizioni
Pag: 221
Voto: 3/5

[Lorenzo Benatti · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stelle per l'edizione italiana e per il lavoro che Alcatraz continua a fare per diffondere cultura sul genere dell'horror. Detto questo, la biografia in sé è abbastanza insipida e costruita attraverso un riassunto dei principali racconti di Lovecraft. Non di certo una lettura indispensabile, nemmeno se siete - come me - fan del Maestro...

[Joe Kilmartin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice light scholarly biography and overview of Lovecraft, his writing, his influence, and more. Doesn't shy away from his problematic nature and more odious opinions. Excellent appendices including Sonia Greene's essay on her marriage and the private life of HPL.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

hahahahha monstros

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ottima biografia, concisa ma esauriente, che ripercorre la vita di Lovecraft attraverso stralci di lettere e passi tratti dalle sue intramontabili opere. Consigliato.

[Federica Lup · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 ½

[Eric David Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much more accessible bio than S. T. Joshi's huge "I am Providence". The choice depends on the depth of the reader's interest: genre scholars should go for Joshi's thorough, definitive work. But for casual readers, Roland does an entertaining job while focusing on the essential.