A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft & Robert E. Howard, Vol 2: 1933-36

The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft & Robert E. Howard #2

by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, S.T. Joshi (Editor)

In the second volume of the letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the two authors continue their wide-ranging discussion of such central issues as the relative value of barbarism and civilization, the virtues of the frontier and of settled city life, and other related issues. Lovecraft regales Howard with his extensive travels up and down the eastern seaboard, including trips to Quebec, Florida, and obscure corners of New England, while Howard writes engagingly of his own travels through the lonely stretches of Texas. Each has great praise for the other's writings in Weird Tales and elsewhere, and each conducts searching discussions of literature, philosophy, politics, and economics in the wake of the depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt's election. World affairs, including the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, also engage their attention.
All letters are exhaustively annotated by the editors, and the volume concludes with an extensive bibliography of both writers as well as the publication of a few letters to Lovecraft from Robert E. Howard's father, Dr. I. M. Howard, in the wake of his son's tragic and unexpected suicide.

Genres: Lovecraftian, Horror

502 pages, Hardcover

First published January 30, 2009

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia

Reviews

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two volumes covering nearly a thousand pages of correspondence written from 1930 until Howard's suicide in 1936. The letters contain the authors' thoughts on topics ranging from personal issues and the woes of trying to survive as a "weird fiction" writer in the 30s to contemporary world politics, history, race relations, immigration and the economy. Much of it is just as readable as their main works and read like excerpts from those, and getting to know the authors on a more personal level goes a long way towards explaining their literary style, to the point where I'd say the letters are essential to understanding why they wrote the way they did. The early letters are definitely the more readable ones though, as they eventually become embroiled in a discussion over barbarism vs. civilization which starts out interesting enough but eventually starts to resemble an internet forum debate that has gone on too long, with the inevitable hairsplitting, straw men and recycling of arguments. Especially Lovecraft seems to lose his writer's discipline when he's agitated and goes into long wall-of-text rants that are tiresome to read. Skim those parts however and it should be an engaging read for anyone interested in either of the authors.

Finally it should be noted that several of Lovecraft's letters to Howard were lost, so that approximately 60-70% of the pages here are taken up by Howard and context can occasionally be lost as you don't always know what Howard is replying to.

[Dylan Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second volume of letters exchanged between two giants of fiction H.P Lovecraft and Robert E Howard. The letters give a fantastic insight into the two writers who lived vastly different lives. This edition includes the letters Lovecraft and I. M Howard. Roberts Father exchanged after his sons unexpected passing.

[Ben Duerksen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second volume of an insightful window into the minds of two of the greatest American pulp fiction and weird tales writers of the early 20th century. It’s clear that by this point in their correspondence that the debates between the two men had started wearing on them; seemingly to me, more so for Howard who became extremely defensive in his responses. Gone was the somewhat deferential attitude he showed in earlier letters, replaced by quite aggressive and confrontational language from both authors.

Their contentions mainly involved their continued debates on the mental vs physicality, merits of barbarism vs civilization, and points on modern government and society, with each using the backdrop of their own personal experiences (the TX ‘frontier’, and old settled New England) to inform their opinions. It was clear to both, as they both remarked, that neither was going to change their opinion, and yet in letter after letter they talk past each other in vast monologues even after having declared the disagreements put to rest. Other inclusions, as in prior letters, involved trips each took or stories each had heard they thought may have interested the other.

This volume includes significantly less anti-immigrant or overtly racist material, and I think some people have taken that to signify a tempering of those positions by one or both authors. I frankly doubt it- the conversations had simply moved on from talks of heredity and migration where such views were more central and likely to surface. You still see those characteristics peak their heads above the surface here and their in the discussions from this volume on cultural superiority, human values, etc. That said, Howard presents an odd dichotomy of those views in the first volume, while presenting some opinions on, essentially, equality of cultures and people despite differing levels of development and location that don’t reconcile particularly well with those other beliefs. Rather than that being representative of a rethinking of his views, I think it more likely Howard wasn’t being introspective enough in the totality of his life’s beliefs (or at the very least the contents of the discussions in these letters) to recognize the incompatibility.

Overall a great publication as a documentary source.

[Matthew Cirilli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone looking to study Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft really needs to own this. Their correspondence is voluminous and invaluable.