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(More customer reviews)S. T. brought me a set of this fabulous two-volume work when he came earlier this month to drive me to Portland for the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and we discuss'd this newly-publish'd version of his biography on my YouTube channel. Those who have the single volume of this work publish'd by Necronomicon Press may wonder if they need, now, to buy this expanded version. I want to encourage people to buy it, naturally, but if you have the single volume version, H. P. LOVECRAFT--A LIFE, that version is substantial; and that single volume edition is still available at the Necronomicon website, so be wary of paying outrageous out-of-print prices for it here and elsewhere.
For this new edition of the book, S. T. Joshi has restored over 150,000 words of text that had to be edited from the single volume edition. However, S. T. spent a lot of time going over the complete text and fine-tuning it, bringing everything up-to-date (there has been much new information regarding Lovecraft's life and works since the single volume edition was first published in 1996), correcting mistakes that oozed their way into the first version, &c. The final chapter of the book, discussing Lovecraft's influence of the weird tale genre after his death, the emergence of Arkham House and the Cthulhu Mythos, &c, has been completely reworked and expanded for the second volume of I AM PROVIDENCE. And this new two-volume edition is illustrated with photographs of Lovecraft, his family & friends. I am nearly finish'd with my first reading of Volume 1, and I know that this is a work to which I will return time and again (I've order'd a second set to keep down here at my work table, for I know that I will constantly return to dipping into the book).
One of the features that I really love about the book is the in-depth study of Lovecraft's life as a weird phantasist, with detailed accounts of his tales and critical discussions of them. I love that kind of thing so much! Many thanks to S. T. Joshi, who has worked so diligently to bring us Lovecraft's Corrected Texts, and now presents us with an honest and intelligent examination of Lovecraft's remarkable life and mind. The plot synopsis provided are detailed and they who have not read HPL's Tales may want to skip over those portions of discussion, brilliant and engaging (and wrong-headed, as in the case of "The Dunwich Horror) as they are.
One of the most refreshing aspects of S. T. Joshi's biography is that it is the only one of which I know where Lovecraft is not presented as some kind of morbid Outsider freak of nature. I have just started reading Donald Tyson's THE DREAM WORLDS OF H. P. LOVECRAFT (a well written and well-researched book), and found this on page 5:
"For one thing, he was odd--not odd in the usual sense, but truly alien from the rest of the human race. ... Lovecraft had no interest in other human beings, and very little use for them." This is not true to the point of absurdity. Joshi's book shews that, for one who suffered such peculiar upbringing, Lovecraft turned out as normal as any regular Joe. He did not spend his life in shadow, shunning daylight and walking the night. He loved warm weather and did much if not most of his writing out of doors in sunlit parks or sitting on boulders along the Seekonk whenever he could. As for not needing or wanting humanity, his steady social life, huge correspondence, and activity in the amateur press (he often attended gatherings outside of Providence) reveal a man who had an intimate relationship, social and intellectual, with other women and men. He was a ordinary guy with an extraordinary imagination. That imagination, and the daily activities of a very human being, are superbly recorded and understood in this magnificent biography, I AM PROVIDENCE.
Especially fascinating is S. T.'s final Chapter 26: "Thou Art Not Gone (1937-2010)", in which the author discusses H. P. Lovecraft's legacy as literary Muse and Icon. This demands, really, a book all its own, and we have a book of that sort, somewhat, in THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS. In this final chapter we have the remarkable story of Arkham House and its founders, of the efforts of HPL's friend Robert H. Barlow, who deliver'd the first of those manuscripts and such that form'd ye nucleus of the Lovecraft Collection at John Hay Library, a collection that includes all of Lovecraft's personal copies of WEIRD TALES. The chapter discusses how August Derleth began to form that which became the Cthulhu Mythos. Joshi is ungenerous to Derleth, who deserves so much credit and gratitude, and who is a far finer writer than many deem him. S. T. discusses how Lovecraft scholarship flourished after Derleth's death, a history with which S. T. was intimately involv'd. He discusses how Lovecraft's delicious influence gave us the gaming from Chaosium and the many (moftly awful) films that have been inspir'd by the Tales. He discusses those of us who, as obsess'd H. P. Lovecraft fanatics, carry on the eldritch aesthetic torch and write our own books of Lovecraftian weird fiction (and I am especially grateful for S. T.'s kind comments on my own efforts). He discusses the trouble caused by questions concerning HPL's divorce with Sonia and its aftermath, a sad story indeed; and of how Samuel Loveman came to hate and dishonor Lovecraft's memory when Lovecraft's publish'd letters reveal'd HPL's grotesque antisemitism. And S. T. reminds us that H. P. Lovecraft is important and must be judged, not by his personal behavior, or his racial attitudes which were so common for his age, but on the merits of his distinctive writings -- letters, fiction, poetry and essays.
There is a strange and uncouth reasoning among various denizens here at Amazon, where those who are so uninform'd are allow'd to declaim their ignorance, that one cannot be friends with an author and still write an honest and objective review of their book. I was astonished, when reading the reviews of Peter Straub's excellent novel, A DARK MATTER, that someone actually stated that the only people who write positive reviews of that wonderful book are friends of the author! This kind of thinking is cliche and false, and to state it is to shew that one is immature. My personal feeling is that when reviewing any book, be it penned by a friend or a stranger, one must be as honest as possible in one's assessment, otherwise why review it at all? I AM PROVIDENCE is a thrilling book for me because I am an OBSESS'D Lovecraft fanatic and because writing Lovecraft weird fiction is my full-time profession. Perhaps it is a flaw to want to know everything about a writer's life, to ache to read their personal correspondence, &c &c. I wish I AM PROVIDENCE had been a work in three volumes, it is so good, so fascinating, so well-informed and intelligent.
S. T.'s obsession with Grandpa has reached a new height in that he has now written A COMPLETE NOVEL concerning Lovecraft's "unknown years" when he was a young man. I have had the privilege to read this fascinating and eccentric work in MS and I found it mesmerizing, intelligent, and very imaginative. Although it is highly biographical in nature, it is in fact a novel of the supernatural in very concrete Lovecraftian terms. The novel will hopefully find a publisher here and abroad.
I've just read a review of the book by my buddy Peter Cannon, and he has brought up the matter of Joshi's intrusions: "As a Lovecraft fan and scholar myself, I'm happy to have all the extra information, even on the relative merits of his juvenilia. Joshi writes in an engaging, accessible style, much as if he were delivering a lecture to a room full of, well, fellow Lovecraftians. We don't mind---indeed, many of us welcome--the biographer's 'frequent personal asides,' to quote the PW [Publisher's Weekly] review in the Oct. 18 issue. I happen to agree with Joshi's assessment of THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH ('For my part, I think it is an entirely charming but relatively insubstantial work'), but what are those who aren't Joshi fans to make of such authorial intrusions? Futhermore, it's hard to imagine a general reader who's interested in learning more about Lovecraft's racing through this twin tome's more than 1,000 pages of text, notes, and bibliography. Might there be hope for yet another incarnation, or rather two? First, I would like to see a leaner, less academic life with the 'I's removed. Second, I wish Joshi would write an account of his scholarly adventures, Lovecraftian and otherwise, with himself front and center."
We already have, of course, the first volume on Peter's wish-list, with the book entitled A DREAMER & A VISIONARY: H. P. LOVECRAFT IN HIS TIME, which is exactly what some people seem to wish for, a scaled-down rendition of S. T.'s H. P. LOVECRAFT: A LIFE. The book is available here at Amazon. I AM PROVIDENCE is a monumental work, one that I have now read many times and to which I will return for the rest of my life. Every page of the book is about H. P. Lovecraft, despite what some dishonest critics would have one believe, such as saying there are but 300 pages of Lovecraft's story enmeshed in additional pages where the biographer intrudes. This is a lie as is obvious when one turns to any page in the biography. I find it a flawless work. It is S. T.'s obsession to have AS MUCH INFORMATION CONCERNING LOVECRAFT in print as possible, and thus we have all of the essays in five volumes, all of the poetry, and soon all of the extant correspondence. S. T. wants all of this in book form so that the next major Lovecraftian scholar will have it at hand when she begins the next generation's study of this Immortal, H. P. LOVECRAFT.
Click Here to see more reviews about: I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2 VOLUMES)
S. T. Joshi s award-winning biography H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996) provided the most detailed portrait of the life, work, and thought of the dreamer from Providence ever published. But that edition was in fact abridged from Joshi s original manuscript, and this expanded and updated edition restores the 150,000 words that Joshi omitted and, in addition, updates the texts with new findings. Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born to a well-to-do family in Providence, Rhode Island. As a child, he revealed remarkable precocity in his early interests in literature and science. Ill-health dogged him in youth, rendering school attendance sporadic; and in 1908 he experienced a nervous breakdown that rendered him a virtual recluse for several years. In 1914 he discovered the world of amateur journalism and began slowly emerging from his hermitry. He wrote tremendous amounts of essays, poetry, and other work; in 1917, under the encouragement from W. Paul Cook and others, he resumed the writing of horror fiction, and his career as a dream-weaver began anew.In 1921 Lovecraft met his future wife, Sonia H. Greene, at an amateur journalism convention. It was at this time that he began expanding his horizons, both geographical and intellectual: he traveled widely, from New England to New York to Cleveland; and he absorbed such literary and intellectual influences as Lord Dunsany, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Machen. In 1924 he and Sonia decided to marry, and Lovecraft moved to New York to pursue his literary fortune. But, as the first volume of this biography concludes, his metropolitan adventure would be bittersweet at best.As the second volume of S. T. Joshi s comprehensive biography of H. P. Lovecraft begins, we find Lovecraft dwelling in misery in a one-room apartment in Brooklyn Heights: his wife, Sonia, has had to move to the Midwest for work, and he must rely on the companionship of the Kalem Club, the informal band of friends in the New York area. In 1926, in part through the intervention of his close friend Frank Belknap Long, Lovecraft finally decided to return to his native Providence, Rhode Island, effectively ending his marriage. That return spurred the greatest spurt of literary creativity he would ever experience: in less than a year, such works as "The Call of Cthulhu," The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Colour out of Space would emerge from his pen, establishing Lovecraft as the leading weird fictionist of his generation.In spite of his increasing poverty, antiquarian travel occupied much of Lovecraft s time, and he gained an impressive knowledge of such oases of antiquity as Charleston, Quebec, St. Augustine, and Richmond. These voyages both renewed his connection with the past and infused his literary work, as such later tales as The Whisperer in Darkness and The Shadow over Innsmouth drew ever more profoundly upon his far-flung travels.Intellectually, Lovecraft evolved as well. Recent developments in science confirmed his materialism and his atheism, and the onset of the Great Depression gradually caused him to reassess his political and economic theory; he emerged as a moderate socialist and advocate of the New Deal. Late in life he became a giant in the world of fantasy fandom a development that foreshadowed his worldwide fame in the decades following his early death.
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