Lovecraft Country

 A few months ago I picked up the book, by Matt Ruff, at Buns & Nubile, and picked up the HBO series on DVD – also at Buns & Nubile – a few months after I finished reading it.  Inquiring minds may want to know: is it any good?

 Well, first off:  there’s no Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Deep Ones, Old Ones, or anything else we normally associate with H.P. Lovecraft.  Rather, the angle is this.  Famous horror writer H.P. Lovecraft was a notorious racist.  He didn’t like blacks, Asians, Mexicans, anyone who wasn’t WASP.   He wasn’t burning crosses and marching with the Klan, but his heart was with them.  Of course, all his “OMG, I can’t deal with all the crazy s**t I just witnessed, let me shoot myself!” protagonists were white males….of course.  So that kind of spoils it for some folks. 

 So Ruff set about writing horror stories in which the protagonists are folks whose ancestors came from Africa in chains.  And it seems some white folks, back in Salem times, were not only messing with dark forces and magic, but also fooling around with the slave girls, which resulted in offspring in dark skin yet carrying white blood within.  Not only that, several of the main characters are not only black, but also female, and highly capable females at that.  Howard Phillips would be spinning in his grave up in Providence.  (Montgomery Burns: “Excellent.”)

 Fast forward to the early 1950s in the USA.   It seems that overt and even violent racism doesn’t stop at the Mason-Dixon Line.  In more modern times, both Rodney King and George Floyd suffered violent racism in states, California and Minnesota, which sent troops in dark blue during the Civil War.  And New England, including Rhode Island, also could be just as nasty for blacks as the places further south.  The characters in the book and series are involved, among other things, in producing a guide for their comrades on how to minimize problems which might occur when they traveled.   At one point they visit a diner previously believed to be friendly, but the staff are all white and hostile, and they see the walls are freshly painted white – remember why the White House is that color?  Their own home base was Chicago.

The book itself featured several stories with recurring characters and a larger theme.  The series, only one season (HBO) also did the same.  There’s magic, some substantial gore, and arrogant whites, the Braithwaites, along with rowdy blacks.  The main character, Atticus, served in the US Army in Korea, making intimate acquaintance with a Korean girl with supernatural powers.  She might not even be human.   One of the black women, Ruby, gains access to magic blood which allows her to temporarily assume the form of a white woman.  Oh, the surprising things she learns when given the benefit of lighter skin to experience contemporary society.

 Although the absence of Lovecraft mythos from the whole business was somewhat disappointing, and a segment involving Atticus’ father – played by Mr. Omar from “The Wire” – explores the man’s preference for his own gender in intimacy, overall I found the whole thing enjoyable.  A later episode even goes back to Tulsa in 1921, the famous race riots.  Oh, and none of the blacks shoot themselves to escape impending insanity.  If you can tolerate these issues, you may well enjoy the series.  Do so at your own risk…