This weekend in Toledo I also read "H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life." I had not read any other Michel Houellebecq, though I know how to spell his last name. People find his other books cold and weird. I just loved, L-U-V-ed, this Lovecraft book. I feel a little shame at liking Lovecraft as much as I do, which isn't a huge whole lot but is enough. To compound my shame, I think he's one of the writers that I started to read because Harlan Ellison told me to when I was 14. Borges, Lovecraft, Lem. I genuinely like these writers and I'm happy I picked them up before I had too much to worry about pridewise. I think anyone who finishes and enjoys The K*** R***er has a lot more to be embarrassed about.

This book's explanation of Lovecraft's racism made a lot of sense to me. Lovecraft was a genteel racist, the upper-middle-class New England type that I know, until he moved to New York and lived in poverty. His dealings there with immigrants and lower-class people inspired him to create his stories' creepy races of half-human half-monsters. And, says Houellebecq, all he and his protagonists could do was wait to be inevitably beaten by this stronger race. It definitely is an old-New-England type of feeling. Fear of the vigorous Italian, who is destined to overrun your old town. I'm sure my nat. fath. looks at his daughters married to Poles and Irishmen and sees his great legacy laid to waste in a similar manner.