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[Cheese]

Reading Call of Cthulhu on wikisource, it's pretty awesome but Lovecraft seems to be a bit.. racist. Was he particularly racist or was it just acceptable at the time and all that?

[Lord Shonus]

Lovecraft was more classist than racist. There's some racial undertones to a lot of his works, but it is difficult to say wether they were deliberately placed there, simply came out as part of his worldview, or are there because it was such a prevalent attitude of the time.

[Vector]

Was he particularly racist or was it just acceptable at the time and all that?

I've heard that he's kind of known for being both extremely racist and extremely sexist, even for the time.  Some stuff is worse than others, of course.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Lovecraft was....interesting. He sometimes sounded antisemetic in his works, but he married a Jewish woman. No, I don't understand it either.

[Lord Shonus]

I have yet to find any remarks contemporary of his that confirm the common image of him as extradiarily racist or antisemetic. There's a lot to suggest he was disgusted by the poor.

[Mindmaker]

Reading Call of Cthulhu on wikisource, it's pretty awesome but Lovecraft seems to be a bit.. racist. Was he particularly racist or was it just acceptable at the time and all that?

Hmm, the only short story so far where I've seen some racism was The Rats in the Wall, where the narrators cat has a bit of an odd name.
However that might have been a common and accepted expression back then.

Oh and I'm about to start Call of Cthulhu as well.
Let me know what you think of it.

That far I've enjoyed all of his short stories. Thanks to my vivid imagination they all send a chill down my spine.

[warhammer651]

HP was a little racist, but so was pretty much everyone else at the time so nothing strange there.


Fun Fact: One of his lesser known stories was essentially Harry Houdini Fan Fiction! I'll find the name in a bit.

[bitterhorn]

I'm just about the biggest HPL fan in the world, but I think it's absolutely absurd to downplay how repulsively, virulently racist the man was.  It's true that he becomes less so late in life, but if you read anything he wrote around the time he lived in New York City, it's a little bit exceptional even for a man of his time...

ETA:  (check out "He" or "The Horror at Red Hook," for example)

[Cheese]

Reading Call of Cthulhu on wikisource, it's pretty awesome but Lovecraft seems to be a bit.. racist. Was he particularly racist or was it just acceptable at the time and all that?

Hmm, the only short story so far where I've seen some racism was The Rats in the Wall, where the narrators cat has a bit of an odd name.
However that might have been common and accepted expression back then.

Oh and I'm about to start Call of Cthulhu as well.
Let me know what you think of it.

That far I've enjoyed all of his short stories. Thanks to my vivid imagination they all send a chill down my spine.

Reading off computer screens hurts my eyes.

As for the racism in CoC;

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

      Examined at headquarters after a trip of intense strain and weariness, the prisoners all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattos, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a colouring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult. But before many questions were asked, it became manifest that something far deeper and older than negro fetishism was involved. Degraded and ignorant as they were, the creatures held with surprising consistency to the central idea of their loathsome faith.

It's not really a spoiler, but it's in spoiler tags in case you don't want to read it.

[Mindmaker]

Reading off computer screens hurts my eyes.

You could get this.
It's a really neat collection.

[warhammer651]

I'm just about the biggest HPL fan in the world, but I think it's absolutely absurd to downplay how repulsively, virulently racist the man was.  It's true that he becomes less so late in life, but if you read anything he wrote around the time he lived in New York City, it's a little bit exceptional even for a man of his time...

ETA:  (check out "He" or "The Horror at Red Hook," for example)

Fair enough.

Also, that story he wrote about Houdini was called "Under The Pyramids" and was based on a story H.H. liked to tell about himself that was complete bullscat anyways.

[Cheese]

Reading off computer screens hurts my eyes.

You could get this.
It's a really neat collection.

OR the shiny leather one. It'd be nice if they listed the books included, so you know which collections to get.

[bitterhorn]

Lovecraft was....interesting. He sometimes sounded antisemetic in his works, but he married a Jewish woman. No, I don't understand it either.

I think it's worth noting that, once they were living together and not just basically Romantic Penpals, the marriage only lasted a couple of years before dissolving.

I know Sonia Greene wrote an autobiography, but I haven't read it.  I wonder if she sheds any light on what this was like... I definitely know a lot of bigoted folks even today are perfectly capable of justifying to themselves that a few people of other cultures/ethnicities they personally know and respect must be "exceptions that prove the rule," though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Lovecraft was....interesting. He sometimes sounded antisemetic in his works, but he married a Jewish woman. No, I don't understand it either.

I think it's worth noting that, once they were living together and not just basically Romantic Penpals, the marriage only lasted a couple of years before dissolving.

That doesn't necessarily mean Lovecraft was antisemitic, though. He was quite clearly not a very happy person overall. The guy ended up dying in poverty, never knowing he'd become famous.

[Mindmaker]

It'd be nice if they listed the books included, so you know which collections to get.

Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre

Spoiler: "Contents" (click to show/hide)

# The Rats in the Walls
# The Picture in the House
# The Outsider
# Pickman’s Model
# In the Vault
# The Silver Key
# The Music of Erich Zann
# The Call of Cthulhu
# The Dunwich Horror
# The Whisperer in Darkness
# The Colour Out of Space
# The Haunter of the Dark
# The Thing on the Doorstep
# The Shadow Over Innsmouth
# The Dreams in the Witch-House
# The Shadow Out of Time