Lovecraft Country is US: Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

 

If you're looking for a response/retelling of a specific H. P. Lovecraft story, I'd recommend The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (which is a direct response to one of Lovecraft's most xenophobic stories, "The Horror at Red Hook"). 

That's not what you get with Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country, but that's okay. 

Ruff presents a series of inter-connected novellas and short stories that are more loosely inspired by Lovecraftian fiction rather than any specific Lovecraft story. And of course on top of the wizards and Lovecraftian horrors, you get the horrors of life for African Americans in the 1950's. I've been meaning to read this for a couple years, but the current HBO adaptation prompted me to pick it up now.

This is an odd sort of book: I liked it a lot, but don't have much to say about it. Or maybe I just have a lot of other stuff going on? (Spoiler alert: Yes, I have a lot of other stuff going on). 

Anyway, I really appreciate any attempts to give creative answers to some of the problematic aspects of Lovecraft (not just the man himself, but his fiction, too), and this is a great example of that. (For other examples, see the aforementioned Victor LaValle novella and an anthology called She Walks in Shadows, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles).

The more straightforward supernatural stuff in Lovecraft (wizards and whatnot as in "The Dunwich Horror") is cool but that was never my favorite part of the Mythos. Yet that's the angle Ruff takes for the most part. I've always thought of Cthulhu and co. as a kind of weird science fiction rather than supernatural horror. The one story in Lovecraft Country that is more explicitly science fictional ("Hippolyta Disturbs the Universe") was my favorite of the bunch. 

But Lovecraft Country also takes off from there to do more of Ruff's own thing, which I appreciate. He's not just rehashing Lovecraft, but offering another example of the type of response to a "problematic fave" that's neither a total rejection ("ignore him!") nor just brushing off the issue (e.g., "separate the art from the artist", "he was a man of his times," etc.). While I am sympathetic with those who want to jettison Lovecraft, I think this way of working through the issue directly is worth exploring. What we shouldn't do is ignore the issue and read Lovecraft as if it isn't there.

One more thing: Reflecting a bit on the title, "Lovecraft Country" isn't just part of Massachusetts or New England, but given the hostility and horror faced by many Black Americans in all parts of the country, Lovecraft Country is the United States of America. Lovecraft Country is US.

Maybe I'll revisit this review after I finish watching the TV adaptation (which so far takes most of the bones of the book, but reanimates them in intriguing ways). In the meantime, check out these awesome resources in the Lovecraft Country syllabi from the Langston League and the podcast Lovecraft Country Radio with Ashley C. Ford and Shannon Houston.

See also my Goodreads review.