This was a fascinating, illuminating book.
My reaction to reading this book in 2005. It might have made more sense to juxtapose the corresponding chapters of each part, but I finally determined that this would be both methodologically and practically unsound methodologically for reasons explained in the introduction, and practically because it would fail to demonstrate the interconnectedness of Lovecraft's thought and because in Part II I frequently rely upon conceptions expressed throughout the whole of Part I. I deal with four principal facets of Lovecraft's philosophy-metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and politics-in Part I, and those same facets as applied to the fiction in Part II. Does Lovecraft's fiction really depend upon his philosophy? I wrestle with this question further in my introduction, but here I can note that I had great difficulty deciding upon the proper structure for this book. One reviewer, however, was correct in noting that I did not sufficiently integrate Lovecraft's thought and his fiction, and I have now attempted to remedy the failing.I am still not convinced that I have really written one rather than two books here. To treat so complex a thinker as Lovecraft in a few pages was obviously untenable, even though I think those few pages at least convey the unity of his thought-perhaps better than this fuller study does. I have always been interested in Lovecraft the philosopher, and in my Starmont Reader's Guide to Lovecraft (1982) I attempted a very compressed account of his philosophical views. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West," in The Weird Tale, but very quickly became something quite different, to the degree that the two works have little save the title in common. The author writes: This book began as an expansion of my essay, "H.
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