New Work on Lovecraft's Atheism Forthcoming

Alex Smith's blog "Re-Imagine Ritual" mentions a fascinating new H.P. Lovecraft book coming later this year. Against Religion, compiled with the help of S.T. Joshi, Christopher Hitchens, and Smith himself, will examine the the philosophical H.P. Lovecraft in a more sobering way than the usual literary analyses of the ideas in his stories. The book will reportedly focus on Lovecraft's words of unbelief and his lifetime existence as an atheist in the early 20th century. For Lovecraft, a man with both feet planted squarely in scientific materialism's court, it couldn't have been easy. The fervent disbelief in anything like a God or cosmic intelligence is featured in numerous letters and essays issuing from the pen of the Providence writer through his life. Curiously, this is one of Lovecraft's facets that ought to gain more attention, since it seems so at odds with his ability to create great weird literature. It seems that the scientific and atheist Lovecraft excelled at painting stark visions of things that were so far fetched to his own mind. At the same time, his atheistic beliefs surely influenced the wider theme of Cosmicism that runs through his best tales.

As with most scholarly Lovecraft works, S.T. Joshi is just the person to tackle the assembly of this record of the author's atheist side. Besides weird literature, Joshi also has a history of dealing with other atheist works. He previously edited two other hefty collections about atheism, Atheism: A Reader and the more recent Icons of Unbelief: Atheists, Agnostics, and Secularists. So, expectations should be high for the new book on Lovecraft's atheism, a work that joyfully combines two scholarly areas Joshi has turned his talent to.

-Grim Blogger