Book Notes- Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Finished 2/5/2020

A stunning book that links together two prominent phenomena of the 20th century–pulp horror/science fiction, and American Jim Crow White Supremacy. Atticus Turner is a Black veteran and sci-fi fan who moves back to Chicago after getting out the Service. When he discovers that his father George is missing and has been taken to an obscure village in western Massachsuetts, he, his uncle Montrose (publisher of a tourist guidebook telling African-Americans where to travel safely), and his friend Letitia embark on a journey that shows them both supernatural and racial horror.

Some thoughts:

Despite his presence in the title, Lovecraft and his mythologies take up very little space in this book, appearing as the author of fiction beloved by Atticus in the first chapter (and loathed by his father). This differentiates the book from other Lovecraft homages, which revel in the author’s open-source mythos but do not reassemble or comment on it in any grander way.

The title derives from a term coined by Lovecraft fans and scholars in the 1970s, who referred to the author’s pseudonomizing of prominent New England towns in his fiction. Salem became Arkham, Newburyport became Innsmouth, Marblehead became Kingsport, etc…Thus, Lovecraft Country is playing with geography, and the alternative ways we can imagine places and populate them. This parallels the Green Book, which articulates an alternative map of America.

The Green book, published by Atticus' uncle Montrose, is likewise a fictional book with a real referent, the Negro Motorist Green Book, which provided African-American tourists with a map of places where they could safely travel and receive services without the indignity or violence of Jim Crow. Montrose and his family verify such locations by travelling, which forces them to serve as test subjects for the relative safety and danger of places, and also provides a framework for several of the chapters

Thus, the book entwines Lovecraft’s virulent racism with his literary influence on fantastic fiction. Each chapter focuses on a member of this Chicago African-American family, and places them in story-settings that draw from the classics of horror and weird canons. There is a Lovecraftian piece of cosmic horror, a haunted house story, a science fiction story, Jekyll-ish body-horror, and other similarly pulpy or Victorian settings. At the same, by foregrounding the African-American experience at navigating and avoiding the boot of White Supremacy, these familiar literary settings become unfamiliar and shocking:

• Ruby drinks a potion that turns her into a White woman, but also discovers that the priveleges she accrues change her behavior, and bring out aspects of her selfishness and entitlement.
• Montrose tries to track down the current owner of a dead wizard’s notebooks, only to discover that he was killed forbeing married to a Black woman during a racial pogrom in Tulsa in 1921.
• Letitia gets an opportunity to buy a house, but is forced to deal with segregated housing policy and practice of a legal and supernatural nature.

The book has an overarching plot, but is organized around these “monster-of-the-week” chapters. This was risky maneuver, but it ultimately pays off with a rich exploration of various aspects of the racism experienced by African-Americans in the middle 20th century, as well as a satisfying, if open-ended, conclusion.

There have been lots of great re-workings of Lovecraft lately that have focused on racism (I’m thinking especially of Victor Lavalle’s masterful “The Ballad of Black Tom"). This was among the best I’ve ever seen, taking Lovecraft’s simultaneous problems and vast influence as a starting point, rather than an endpoint, and using them to tell a story about the horrors of American racism. Really brilliant stuff.