Paranoia, Panic, and the Queer Weird

Johnson, Brian

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-95477-6_13

Brian Johnson²

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Abstract

This chapter complicates readings that use Lovecraft’s stories as evidence of “latent homosexuality,” arguing that the queerness of Lovecraft’s fiction, letters, and criticism is more productively explored at the level of his fraught identification with masculinity. Eve Sedgwick’s theorization of homosexual panic reveals how Lovecraft’s identification with elements of Oscar Wilde’s and Sigmund Freud’s aesthetic theories was accompanied by profound ambivalence and a homophobic rejection of the sexual implication of these authors’ works. Lovecraft’s cautionary tale of Decadent indulgence in “The Hound” and his delibidinizing of Freud’s theory of sublimation in Supernatural Horror in Literature are read in light of his letters as anxious responses to the foundational instability or “queerness” of heteronormative masculinity, responses Lovecraft’s authorial persona and aristocratic, Decadent, and materialist aesthetics of the unconscious exacerbated.

I want to thank Adrien Robertson, PhD candidate at Carleton University, for his invaluable research assistance during the writing of this article.

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Notes

1.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Dagon,” in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, ed. S. T. Joshi (Toronto: Penguin, 1999), 5.
2.
William Hughes and Andrew Smith, introduction to Queering the Gothic, eds. William Hughes and Andrew Smith (New York: Manchester University Press, 2009), 1.
3.
Ibid., 2.
4.
George E. Haggerty, Queer Gothic (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 2.
5.
Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, “Queer,” in Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (New York: Longman, 2004), 191.
6.
Ibid., 189.
7.
Hughes and Smith, Queering the Gothic, 2–3.
8.
Bobby Derie, Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2014), Kindle Edition.
9.
S. T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (New York: Necronomicon Press, 1996), 341.
10.
Robert M. Price, “Homosexual Panic in ‘The Outsider,’” Crypt of Cthulhu 8 (1982).
11.
Joel Pace, “Queer Tales? Sexuality, Race, and Architecture in ‘The Thing on the Doorstep,’” Lovecraft Annual 2 (2008).
12.
Derie, Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos, Kindle Edition.
13.
Ibid., Kindle Edition.
14.
Michael O. Varhola, “The Lovecraft That Dare Not Speak Its Name,” d-Infinity, accessed July 15, 2016, http://d-infinity.net/editorial/lovecraft-dare-not-speak-its-name-%E2%80%94-part-4
15.
Andrew Kasch, “Cthulhu (DVD),” Dread Central, accessed July 14, 2016, http://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/11317/cthulhu-dvd/
16.
For a discussion of Lovecraft, see Pace, “Queer Tales?,” 133–35.
17.
Alan Moore and Hannah Means Shannon, “Alan Moore Writes a Gay Jewish Protagonist For Providence to Address Lovecraft’s Prejudices,” Bleeding Cool, accessed July 14, 2016, http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/04/23/alan-moore-writes-a-gay-jewish-protagonist-for-providence-to-address-lovecrafts-prejudices/; Alan Moore and Hannah Means Shannon, “Alan Moore Heralds Providence: ‘It’s Time to Go For a Reappraisal of Lovecraft,’” Bleeding Cool, accessed July 14, 2016, http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/03/05/alan-moore-heralds-providence-time-go-reappraisal-lovecraft/; Alan Moore, “Alan Moore Talks About Providence,” Previews World, accessed July 14, 2016, http://www.previewsworld.com/Home/1/1/71/977?articleID=161192
18.
Price , “Homosexual Panic,” 11–12.
19.
Pace, “Queer Tales?,” 107.
20.
Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 85.
21.
Ibid., 115.
22.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 195.
23.
Bennett and Royle, “Queer,” 191.
24.
Pace attributes this “early liminal space” to the theory that Lovecraft experienced gender confusion as a child, thanks to his mother’s habit of dressing him in gowns and keeping his hair long. “Queer Tales?,” 107–08.
25.
Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet 1–2.
26.
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume 1, trans., Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 43.
27.
Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 9.
28.
Ibid., 85.
29.
Eve Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 91–92.
30.
Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 85.
31.
Lovecraft’s ambivalent homosocial identification with Edgar Allan Poe as a literary precursor is also part of this series and is undoubtedly an important context for Lovecraft’s homophobia. I have treated this relationship elsewhere: Brian Johnson, “‘The Strangeness of My Heritage:’ Lovecraft’s Poe and the Anxiety of Influence,” The Lovecraftian Poe: Essays on Influence, Reception, Interpretation, and Transformation, ed. Sean Moreland (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2017): 1–25.
32.
H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, January 8, 1924, in H. P. Lovecraft Selected Letters I (1911–1924), ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Akham House, 1965), 280.
33.
S. T. Joshi, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2010), 427.
34.
Pace, “Queer Tales?,” 114.
35.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Nietzsche and Realism,” in Collected Essays Volume 5: Philosophy, Autobiography & Miscellany, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus, 2006), 70.
36.
H. P. Lovecraft, “The Professional Incubus,” in Collected Essays Volume 2: Literary Criticism, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus, 2004), 76.
37.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Nietzsche and Realism,” in Collected Essays Volume 5: Philosophy, Autobiography & Miscellany, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus, 2006), 70–71.
38.
Sedgwick, Between Men, 92–94.
39.
Joshi, I Am Providence, 470–71.
40.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Lord Dunsany and His Work,” in Collected Essays Volume 2: Literary Criticism, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus, 2004), 60–61.
41.
Joshi, I Am Providence, 472.
42.
Ibid., 473–74.
43.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, January 20, 1927, in Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth: 1926–1931 (New York: Hippocampus, 2013), 64–65.
44.
S. T. Joshi, Explanatory Note to “The Hound,” in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Penguin 1999), 378.
45.
H. P. Lovecraft, “The Hound,” in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, ed. S. T. Joshi (Toronto: Penguin, 1999), 81–82.
46.
S. T. Joshi, Explanatory Note to “The Hound,” in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Penguin 1999), 378.
47.
H. P. Lovecraft, “The Hound,” 86.
48.
Ibid., 83.
49.
Ibid., 82–83.
50.
Ibid., 83.
51.
Ibid., 83.
52.
Ibid., 84.
53.
Ibid., 84.
54.
Ibid., 86.
55.
Ibid., 85.
56.
Ibid., 85.
57.
Ibid., 83.
58.
H. P. Lovecraft to Anne Tillery Renshaw, June 1, 1921, in H. P. Lovecraft Selected Letters I (1911–1924), ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Akham House, 1965), 134.
59.
H. P. Lovecraft, “The Hound,” 88.
60.
Ibid., 87.
61.
George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890–1940 (New York: Basic, 1994), 14–16.
62.
Eric Haralson, Henry James and Queer Modernity (New York: Cambridge, 2003), 7.
63.
S. T. Joshi, Explanatory Note to “The Hound,” 381.
64.
Sigmund Freud, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood,” in The Uncanny, trans., David McLintock (New York: Penguin, 2003), 60.
65.
Ibid., 74.
66.
About Lovecraft’s reading of Freud, Joshi notes, “it is not clear what work of Freud’s (if any) Lovecraft had actually read; it is, in fact, more likely that he had read various accounts of it in books or magazines.” See Joshi, I Am Providence, 469.
67.
H. P. Lovecraft, “The Hound,” 88.
68.
H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, June 19, 1931, in H. P. Lovecraft Selected Letters IV (1932–1934), ed. August Derleth and James Turner (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Akham House, 1976), 234–35.
69.
H. P. Lovecraft. “The Defense Reopens!,” in Collected Essays Volume 5: Philosophy, Autobiography & Miscellany, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus, 2006), 52.
70.
H. P. Lovecraft to Robert Barlow, 1935, in O Fortunate Floridian: H.P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R.H. Barlow, ed. S.T. Joshi & David E. Schultz (Tampa, FL: University of Tampa Press, 2007), 246–48.
71.
Ibid., 648.
72.
H. P. Lovecraft. “The Defense Reopens!,” in Collected Essays Volume 5: Philosophy, Autobiography & Miscellany, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus, 2006), 52.
73.
Joshi, I Am Providence, 470.
74.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” in Collected Essays Volume 2: Literary Criticism, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus, 2004), 82.
75.
Ibid., 83.
76.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” in Eldritch Tales (London: Gollancz, 2011), 50.
77.
Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” 84.
78.
Joshi, I Am Providence, 469.
79.
Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” 83.
80.
Sigmund Freud, “The Creative Writer and Daydreaming,” in The Uncanny, trans., David McLintock (New York: Penguin, 2003), 30.
81.
Ibid., 30.
82.
Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” 84.
83.
Freud, “The Creative Writer and Daydreaming,” 30.
84.
Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” 82–84.
85.
Ibid., 119.
86.
H. P. Lovecraft. “The Defense Remains Open!,” in Collected Essays Volume 5: Philosophy, Autobiography & Miscellany, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus, 2006), 53.

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English Language and Literature, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Brian Johnson

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University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Sean Moreland

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Johnson, B. (2018). Paranoia, Panic, and the Queer Weird. In: Moreland, S. (eds) New Directions in Supernatural Horror Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95477-6_13

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95477-6_13
Published: 09 September 2018
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