DBWI Lovecraft and Sonia don't reconsile

In 1924 HP Lovecraft married a jewish woman named Sonia Green.

The two of them went through a rough patch, she lost her business and became really sick, for awhile the two of them thought about separating, but the two of them stuck together through that hard time and she was able to convince him to take up the position of editor at weird stories.

While this position didn't pay much money, and Lovecraft hated Chicago the money gave him some stability and allowed him time to write some of his best works in relative comfort, as well as shape the world of horror, science fiction, and mystery in America.

Sonia is widely considered to be a good influence on her husband helping him overcome his racist tendenices, helping him in social situations, and keeping him on an even keel, but what if they had broken up what would the world of literature look like today?
 
In 1924 HP Lovecraft married a jewish woman named Sonia Green.

The two of them went through a rough patch, she lost her business and became really sick, for awhile the two of them thought about separating, but the two of them stuck together through that hard time and she was able to convince him to take up the position of editor at weird stories.

While this position didn't pay much money, and Lovecraft hated Chicago the money gave him some stability and allowed him time to write some of his best works in relative comfort, as well as shape the world of horror, science fiction, and mystery in America.

Sonia is widely considered to be a good influence on her husband helping him overcome his racist tendenices, helping him in social situations, and keeping him on an even keel, but what if they had broken up what would the world of literature look like today?
I can't imagine this world. Pop culture has been so influenced by his brand of romance novel where the only thing that makes sense is the loved one.
His vision of the world in general was bleak, a senseless chaos where everything and everyone you knew was against you, not out of malice but passivity, that you as an individual didn't matter. It was only saved by his relationships, with the lesson being it's the only thing making life worth anything
 
There goes modern horror as we know it. His romances were much the same cosmic horror theme with more of a human connection. The touchstone archetype was very influential, the idea that that you two are the only things that keep each other sane in an otherwise bleak and indifferent cosmos, and it translates seamlessly into science fiction.

Having said that, there were big differences in his later work, and not just style. Characterisation was very different, his later leads were much more traditionally Byronic than they were in his earlier work.

Some people say he later came to see America as a touchstone writ large. Half way between a refuge from a world gone mad and a grand project to that end.

"If you want to live in this country, you have to help build it, whether you were born here or not."

He never actually said that, first known instance if that phrase was from a 1960s comic book adaptation of his final, semi published work. He knew he was dying, so he published it serially rather than as a one volume novel in order to get as much done as possible. In fact the phrase doesn't even appear in the notes he left behind.

As to the rumours that he was a repressed bisexual, we'll probably never know for sure, but that doesn't stop almost every homage from having a bi hero or heroine.
 
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"If you want to live in this country, you have to help build it, whether you were born here or not."
Then of course, there was the type of country he wanted to build. His advocated proposal of using mentally challenged people for labour intensive works like fruit picking is considered unsavoury today.
There was a defense of what he considered old value, just somewhat inclusive in his definition of whiteness.

I know the culture war put him as a center, with some taking his heroes/heroin as symbols of sexual revolution, relying on the orgiac scenes of the ritual in some novels like "The Chasm Below" or "What Lies Beyond", but let's not forget that the man advocated less savoury positions too
 
Lovecraft was a close friend of Robert E. Howard, the father sword and sorcery, and reportedly helped him to overcome his own mental instability issues, so perhaps the effects of Lovecraft not reconciling with Sonia could have extended to that genre as well
 
Lovecraft was a close friend of Robert E. Howard, the father sword and sorcery, and reportedly helped him to overcome his own mental instability issues, so perhaps the effects of Lovecraft not reconciling with Sonia could have extended to that genre as well

That's also true, and Howard himself was a racist who later came to temper his views, partly due to being exposed to Lovecraft's early racism.
 
The role that few people talked about with Lovecraft working at Weird Tales is his job helping new writers getting their early stories into printable form.
He had co wrote a number of stories before he came to Weird Tales but many of the younger writers he came in contact with at the magazine, had more talent and learn from Lovecraft.
If you look at the authors who were the main writers of Weird Tales in the 50's and 60's, you see that at least a third work with Lovecraft in the late 30's and early 40's on their early writing.
 
The role that few people talked about with Lovecraft working at Weird Tales is his job helping new writers getting their early stories into printable form.
He had co wrote a number of stories before he came to Weird Tales but many of the younger writers he came in contact with at the magazine, had more talent and learn from Lovecraft.
If you look at the authors who were the main writers of Weird Tales in the 50's and 60's, you see that at least a third work with Lovecraft in the late 30's and early 40's on their early writing.

For all of Lovecrafts personal problems and there were many he was willing to help out young authors.
 
Maybe Lovecraft becomes known more as an influence to other OTL lesser known greats like Stephen King and Clive Barker. I doubt Wladziu Valentino would ever become "The American Vampire" for Lovecraft-inspired films much as Christopher Lee was for UK's Hammer films. What would Stalin watch if not, "At the Mountains of Madness"? And if not for Arthur Lovecraft when would CRISPR or Type Zero/Universally Accepted Organs be developed...?
 
Maybe Lovecraft becomes known more as an influence to other OTL lesser known greats like Stephen King and Clive Barker. I doubt Wladziu Valentino would ever become "The American Vampire" for Lovecraft-inspired films much as Christopher Lee was for UK's Hammer films. What would Stalin watch if not, "At the Mountains of Madness"? And if not for Arthur Lovecraft when would CRISPR or Type Zero/Universally Accepted Organs be developed...?

Completely forgot about Arthur, all their other kids followed in the general direction of their father's footsteps and went into the arts.

Wasn't Lilah Lovecraft one Hollywood's first (publicly acknowledged) female scriptwriters?
 
And who could forget Doctor Seuss' homage to the call of Cthullhu? Lovecraft himself apparently saw the funny side but advised against publishing because his lawyers wouldn't, that's why it didn't see the light of day until a few years ago.
 
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Completely forgot about Arthur, all their other kids followed in the general direction of their father's footsteps and went into the arts.

Wasn't Lilah Lovecraft one Hollywood's first (publicly acknowledged) female scriptwriters?

You are correct, my apologies, being biomedical the irony recalls the Confederate general and his Californian nephew who broke so much ground on genetics in the early part of last century. Lovecraft's six children boosted ot obly his onw stability but Morgan made him a fierce advocate of mental health policy while his daughter's marriage and later divorce made him advocate for California divorce laws to be almost as lax as those in Nevada
 
My knee-jerk thought on this was failed artist in the 1920s goes into politics and when the depression hits his party rises to power and shapes the state into one of his own imagining.
 
My knee-jerk thought on this was failed artist in the 1920s goes into politics and when the depression hits his party rises to power and shapes the state into one of his own imagining.

Why are you comparing H.P. Lovecraft to Aleksandr Gerasimov? Granted they are both moody and might be called 'emo' in modern parlance but Gerasimov was the *very* unexpected compromise candidate after Stalin's death who 'turned the Picasso into a Warhol' and may have helped facilitate the fall of the USSR in 1997.
 
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