“Lovecraft’s modern critics share an annoying trait of not having read much Lovecraft.”
That is a fair criticism, but as the footnote mentions, it is strange to associate it with Ruthanna Emrys. She has run the blogpost series “Reading the weird” for over a decade; originally, it was all about Lovecraft. For instance, here is the review of The Outsider and At The Mountain Of Madness. Lovecraft was a prolific writer, so it makes sense that Emrys’ criticism does not apply to everything he wrote, like in the case of The Outsider; I believe that there might be even a review or two in which the section “The Degenerate Dutch” (about what’s racist in the story) is empty. In At The Mountain Of Madness though, her review is consistent with her general analysis. We might disagree with her analysis, but we cannot attribute her view of the author to “not having read much Lovecraft”.
I have read some of Emrys’ writing since this post, which has substantially lowered my opinion of her reading comprehension skills, and I think I was too charitable towards her originally.
“Lovecraft’s modern critics share an annoying trait of not having read much Lovecraft.”
That is a fair criticism, but as the footnote mentions, it is strange to associate it with Ruthanna Emrys. She has run the blogpost series “Reading the weird” for over a decade; originally, it was all about Lovecraft. For instance, here is the review of The Outsider and At The Mountain Of Madness. Lovecraft was a prolific writer, so it makes sense that Emrys’ criticism does not apply to everything he wrote, like in the case of The Outsider; I believe that there might be even a review or two in which the section “The Degenerate Dutch” (about what’s racist in the story) is empty. In At The Mountain Of Madness though, her review is consistent with her general analysis. We might disagree with her analysis, but we cannot attribute her view of the author to “not having read much Lovecraft”.
I have read some of Emrys’ writing since this post, which has substantially lowered my opinion of her reading comprehension skills, and I think I was too charitable towards her originally.