Lovecraft & Racism

So there is a new series on HBO called Lovecraft Country based on a novel of the same name by Matt Ruff. It has attracted a great deal of interest because Weird fiction generally, and Lovecraft specifically, has been fashionable the last decade or so.  This interest tends to run in spikes with Lovecraft, but it seems particularly to get traction now because Lovecraft's racist beliefs and writings alongside his general influence on the horror genre makes him a prime target.

Once something is a prestige HBO series, the topics involved are bound to get attention, as happened to Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow when it was a plot point in the first season of HBO's True Detective. Multiple online magazines started dissecting Lovecraft, his themes, and his racism.  Slate, for example, has four different articles on the new series.  None of  them were very insightful, nor were they written by Weird fiction specialists.  

Vox produced "Lovecraftian horror — and the racism at its core — explained", Not as thoughtful as I had hoped when I started to read it, but a decent take nonetheless. It treats fanzines and magazines as if they were the same thing, which is lazy writing (and makes me think perhaps Wikipedia* was the primary source of research for this journalist) and it does give short shift to defenders like S.T. Joshi, I have my own problems with Joshi's work, but he's definitely the world's leading Lovecraft scholar, he is a person of color, and his thoughts on this topic deserve a great deal of consideration.

Joshi's take on Lovecraft's racism appears in the middle of this article (and elsewhere, the man is as prolific as Lovecraft himself). he can also be heard in this podcast and his views specifically about the Lovecraft Country HBO series are discussed here. Joshi is too committed to Lovecraft study for us to take his absolution of Lovecraft's racism completely at face value, but he definitely gets one thing right that the Vox article gets wrong - racism permeates many of his works, but it is not the point of his work. The horror of mankind's utter cosmic inconsequence is the most important theme for Lovecraft.

The fact is, this is a difficult subject. Lovecraft was a racist, plain and simple. Lovecraft wrote thousands of letters to dozens (at least) of correspondents. Many letters espoused racist viewpoints but the man at 16 or 17 was not the same man when he died. Nor had he been totally redeemed. 

Consider Lovecraft himself, he was a man with no power or wealth and no prospects for attaining either.  He was a man who lived such extreme poverty that poor nutrition undoubtedly contributed to his early death, he had a very unhappy life - some bitterness is to be expected, and that it was often misplaced should surprise none of us. Though the banality of it is disappointing in someone so imaginatively gifted otherwise.

He was also a prolific author, who wrote scores of tales over his short lifetime. Some, but certainly not all, of his work is permeated by his racism (especially his earlier works). and it is no simple matter to determine that beyond obvious examples like those mentioned in the article. 

As the Vox article notes, a bust of Lovecraft was originally given to winners of the World Fantasy Award, perhaps because the first award was given at the convention in 1975 held at Providence, Rhode Island and that convention's theme was Lovecraft's circle of fellow writers. I approve of changing the the award myself. I always thought it was in poor taste to make it an individual's bust in the first place, especially when that person is more a horror then a fantasy author, and while influential in the genre, no one could argue he was the most influential fantasy author by a long shot. The Hugo and Nebula awards are far more appropriate - a rocket ship and a transparent block with a glittering nebula respectively. 

Simple hatred for Lovecraft is an easy cop-out, but it is hardly intellectually sound. Neither is claiming he was "of his time" and ignoring or literally white-washing his racism. The proper way to deal with it is to wrestle with it, and thankfully many new writers are. 

Ruthanna Emrys is one new author doing just that, her Innsmouth Legacy series, especially Winter's Tide, the first novel, turns all of Lovecraft on its head, not only addressing his racism, but equally importantly, IMO, challenging his central thesis that atheism is fact, but also existentially terrifying. It's far from a perfect book - her protagonist is a bit too perfect - but her world-building is superb. 

Of course, Matt Ruff's book, and the HBO series, are also doing the same thing as Emrys. I'm looking forward to reading the book (I'm afraid I'm not interested enough in the series to pay for HBO). 

"Cancelling" Lovecraft would be incredibly counter-productive, his work is too foundational. But the entire point of fiction is to engage in it, to challenge and reply to it. Lovecraft isn't an answer, he is a question.

* Yes, I often link to Wikipedia articles. It is often (not always) a decent place to start. Not so much for its content, as for its bibliographies and references.  I never link to a poor Wikipedia page, and i don't use it as a source.  But if its got a solid summary and good references on a subject, then I happily direct folks to that entry. 

This is harder then I had thought!

 I knew that the key to getting my blog to take off would be regular content, but that has been more difficult then I expected to produce. Probably because I've turned each entry into a sort of long-form article.  Which is fine in theory, but in practice it just introduces all of the issues that cause the writer's block I am prone to. I have 11 draft blog entries saved, in vary stages of completeness, for this reason!

I really need to work on interspersing those longer articles with short snippets of thought.  So, this is one of those. 

Some Works of C.S. Lewis

Portions of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #141 (July, 2008).


This past summer I decided to return to C.S. Lewis and examine his writings more closely, especially the fantasy genre books I had not read before or had only read once. C.S. Lewis is best known as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, but that series of very Christian children’s fantasy novels was only a very small part of his literary output. Lewis is also well known as an Oxford don, the central member of the ‘Inklings’ literary society, and a prolific and popular Christian theologian. Lewis has never been my favorite Inkling, and prior to this summer I had mixed feelings about my then favorite book of his,The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. It was an interesting summer as I read several works on the Inklings as well as his own works in order to get a better handle on Lewis, and his place in the fantasy canon.

I started by looking at two book putting Lewis in context with the Inklings, the legendary, loose fellowship of writers at Oxford during the 1930s and 1940s who produced some of the most important fiction and non-fiction of the 20th century. Both of the Inklings books centered C.S. Lewis as the center of gravity for the Inklings, and provided a wealth of biographical detail. First, I read a classic of fantasy literature scholarship, The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends by Humphrey Carpenter. Carpenter is bit more reserved and discrete as a biographer then many desire in our current tabloid age, but I believe his biography of J.R.R. Tolkien is still the best there is. This work has been equally free of salacious gossip and nonsense, though unsparing in pointing out the faults of his subjects. He talks a great deal more of Williams and Lewis and the other Inklings then he does Tolkien, which is natural since he has an entire other book on Tolkien.

I then read The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip Zaleski & Carol Zaleski. It was very interesting to get a different take after Humphrey Carpenter's work, it was more detailed all around, and more balanced covering all of the members of the Inklings. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was sad when it ended. I was especially happy at the Owen Barfield & Warnie Lewis coverage, which explained better then other works I've read why they were Inklings and how they fit into the group. I'd like to read works by both of them, but they can be difficult to find. I'm especially keen on Warnie Lewis, who wrote histories.

(My most glaring gap in my Inklings reading is Charles Williams, who is often seen as the most influential after J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. His work is hard to find, I started All Hallow's Eve once in the 1990s but had to return it to the library before I was finished and never got back to it.)

Lewis' best known work, the Chronicles of Narnia certainly had an impact on the fantasy genre, though not so large an impact as his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, or sword & sorcery author Robert E. Howard. The Chronicles are not Lewis’ only contribution to the fantasy genre. He also wrote the ‘Space’ or ‘Ransom’ Trilogy, inspired initially by an agreement with Tolkien that there were not enough space-travel or time-travel stories of the sorts that they liked.  Tolkien’s time travel story was never completed, but Lewis completed his space travel story. And he produced other fantasy fiction through out his life, always heavily influenced by his Christianity and his love of mythology. Beyond his fantasy fiction, Lewis wrote a great deal of poetry, criticism, theological fiction, and popular theology; he was an extremely prolific writer.

The first two books in the 'Ransom' trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and Perelandra (1943) resemble H.G. Well’s The First Men in the Moon and Edgar Rice Burrough’s A Princess of Mars in basic outline, but unlike those worthies they were not a political allegory. Instead, Lewis constructed the stories as theological allegory, in a manner similar to the Chronicles, which he wrote later. The final book in the trilogy, That Hideous Strength, takes place on modern Earth, and is very different in style and motif. Indeed, though it refers to the earlier books the story is self-contained and That Hideous Strength reads quite well as a stand alone novel. This is an odd trilogy, each of the three novels can nearly stand alone, and all three are very different in tone and style from the others. When I first encountered these books I read the first and the last, but never got around to the middle book.

Out of the Silent Planet (1938) is closest in tone and style to the work of Wells, it is nearly a pastiche, but its firm religious foundation and relatively lack of scientific detail keeps it just on the right side of originality. When I first read it I enjoyed it quite a bit, in large part because I was then quite enjoying Victorian science fiction and it scratched that itch. The alien cultures Ransom discovers are to 'perfect' and extremely alien. I can't quite decide if that is a good or a bad thing -- certainly aliens should be alien! But sometimes it seems they exist only to serve as set pieces for Ransom to view, in jokes, or moral lessons rather then as creatures in and of themselves.

I finally read Perelandra, the middle book in his Space trilogy, over the summer. I had avoided it because it didn't catch my interest, essentially, Ransom visits Venus where he meets Venus' Adam and Eve and witness' an alien 'Garden of Eden' tale with a different ending. Frankly, I found Perelandra boring, even a bit dull. There just is very little happening, just endless conversation and what little conflict and action there is stretched out until it becomes repetitive and boring as well. If you don't accept Lewis' basic assumptions on theology, gender, and the nature of man, it can seem rather nonsensical at times as well. Much of the tale is Lewis setting up an obvious straw-man for Ransom to demolish, the theology and philosophy is pretty elementary. But in the end he abandons even that one-sided argument. Lewis resolves the conflict between good and evil which lies at the root of the novel, through pure physical force rather then rationality or spirituality and he fails to make any sort of argument for why this is a satisfactory conclusion. Some people consider this one of his better novels, I believe, but for me it was a big miss.

(As a side note, in his blog James Cambias compared C.S. Lewis' works, especially the 'Ransom' trilogy, to the works of H.P Lovecraft. I thought it was very well written and observed. It has a different spin on Perelandra's ending then my own take and is worth reading.)

Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra have been called ‘Science Fiction’ but they are more properly described as fantasy fiction, since neither novel deals with realistic scientific or technological advancement and human reactions to it. By that standard, That Hideous Strength is quite firmly fantasy as well.  It details a climactic battle between the forces of Good and Evil as they play out in an English university town.  The forces of Evil are represented by the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments or N.I.C.E., an organization ostensibly devoted to removing the impediments of ‘red tape’ and ‘wrong ideas’ from the path of scientific progress.  In reality, the N.I.C.E. is controlled by fallen ‘eldila’ or angels, and devoted to the destruction of humanity (as distinct from the destruction of humans).

The forces of good are lead by Elwin Ransom, the protagonist of the first two novels but here the somewhat distant leader of the community at St. Annes, a small group formed to counter the agenda of the N.I.C.E.  As the members of N.I.C.E. represent the sort of academic and scientific personalities which Lewis believed most reprehensible and susceptible to corruption, those of St. Annes are the sorts he felt represented the very best of Britain and academia.

Interposed between these groups are the protagonists, Mark and Jane Studdock; a young married couple just beginning their academic careers and married life.  Their marriage is troubled in a very English, very quiet way, and the book’s epic struggle mirrors their marriage difficulties.

The book moves smoothly from academic politics to modern social behavioral modification and onto to modern Arthurian mythology in a manner common in many ‘modern’ or ‘urban’ fantasies today, such as The Dresden Files or the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe.  This was extremely uncommon when Lewis wrote the book, in 1943, but demonstrates the influence of the ‘spiritual thrillers’ and epic Arthurian poetry of Charles Williams, another of the Inklings. In fact in Merlin: The Prophet and his History Geoffrey Ashe identifies Charles Williams' Arthurian poetry and Lewis' That Hideous Strength as the beginnings of the 'New Matter of Britain' aka the 'historical Arthur' movement which is so common in modern Arthurian tales. (pages 204-207)

Lewis somewhat daringly set That Hideous Strength in the vague ‘near-future’ after World War II (it was written before the war had ended and published in 1945).  Indeed, one character remarks, “it’s almost as if we’d lost the war.” as the machinations of N.I.C.E. take on a tangible form and people are turned from their homes in the name of ‘progress’ (a scene similar in effect, if different in style, from Tolkien’s longer ‘The Scouring of the Shire.’)  The story is a harbinger of the immediate post-war literature centered on the theme of a dystopian future, such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Lewis’ prose is clear, poetic, and filled with learned allusions, as it is in all his works.  He alludes to questions of violence, sexuality, and perversion with a polite sense of decorum that modern American readers, accustomed to vulgarity and profanity, might find quaint or simply over-look. The book is, in essence, a well written, fictional example of the argument he makes in his theological/philosophical work of the same period, The Abolition of Man.  Readers who enjoy his Narnia work will find a distinct lack of humor and fun in this book, but those who found the first two ‘Ransom’ novels too exotic will find the more familiar post-war English setting far simpler to comprehend.

As I continued my exploration of Lewis' writings last summer, I turned to the Chronicles of Narnia works that could not remember, either because I had never read them, or only read them once and then forgotten them. As with many popular authors who revisit a popular setting and characters rather beginning with a firm plan, there is some debate over which order to read the Narnia books in. (J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is an exception).  For Narnia, the question is, order of publication or chronological order.  I tend to prefer chronological order for most such questions, but it certainly is  question open to debate, you can find an excellent discussion of the question here.

What interests me, is that the four Narnia books which I needed to reread were the four in the middle for both reading orders, though I chose to read them in chronologically: The Horse and His Boy (1954), Prince Caspian (1951), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), and The Silver Chair (1953). I recall very clearly why those two were left behind. I was starting to find the series tedious, and I wanted to skip to the parts that most interested me. So, I had read the beginning, The Magician's Nephew (1955), which I still recall as a pretty good book that I rather enjoyed, as good in different ways as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). And I had read the end, The Last Battle (1956), which I did not enjoy very much, finding it more then a little blunt and clumsy.  Of course, what those three books shared was a focus on the 'deep magic', I found it handled well in the former two, an poorly in the latter.

So, I turned to the four books I had skipped before, starting with The Horse and his Boy. The work is clearly a bildungsroman, and very enjoyable if a bit short. It's weakness is the obvious deus ex machina which are not only apparent throughout the tale but then hammered into the protagonist as well, leaving no room for doubt (and without doubt there is no faith, in my opinion).

I moved on to Prince Caspian, which got off to a good start, but quickly began to feel rushed and formulaic. This work highlighted, for me, why Tolkien disliked the Narnia books. Lewis spends no time thinking about his world building, nor does he spend time developing his characters or plot lines. Prince Caspian himself is just getting interesting when we essentially abandon him and start all over. And Lewis missed a real opportunity to deal with the disparate view points of the resistance groups, dismissing the hags and ogres in a handful of pages.

I was even more disappointed in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I love sea voyage tales so i was most look forward to this of the four. But though the novel contains a few interesting set pieces, too often the issue or difficulty is simply resolved by Aslan intervening in some manner. Even Reepicheep, the most fully devloped and interesting character, was grating by the end. When I compare this to The Odyssey, the sort of voyage tale Lewis was clearly trying to emulate, I'm dumbfounded, and the writing felt very rushed. A lost opportunity, really.

At last I read The Silver Chair. It was much better then the previous two, being more firmly an adventure story and less of a lesson plan. It benefited from better developed villains with comprehensible goals who were not simply defeated by Aslan fixing everything. Though the ending was lame sadly, but the Narnia portions of the work were quite good. I had to check my Appendix N listing from the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide, to confirm Lewis wasn't in there, because the scenes with the giants of Harfang, the Green Witch's underground kingdom, and the Marsh-wiggle all very reminiscent of various early AD&D adventures.

Having now fully examined Narnia, I'm afraid my opinion of it didn't improve much, Lewis' allegories are simply too blunt and obvious throughout, his theology too dogmatic, to allow the series to really impress. His world building is especially clumsy, which is sad, because there are many aspects (the beavers, the marsh-wiggles, & Reepicheep, for just three examples) that hint at the deeper, more complete work it could have been. It's telling, to my mind, that it is so popular with the fundamentalist Christian set. Despite Lewis' own history as an atheist and debater, these works do not encourage thought but obedience -- it is hard to imagine C.S. Lewis growing up to be the man he became if he had been reading the Narnia books as a child.

I capped of my summer of studying Lewis by reading Till We Have Faces (1956), Lewis' last novel, which retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche. From its excellent start it felt different from his other works, reminding me more then a little in its opening pages of Mary Renault's books (I especially love her Theseus books). That is high praise indeed, and since Lewis was notoriously susceptible to literary influences (That Hideous Strength was heavily influenced by the 'spiritual thrillers' of Charles Williams), I wondered if the resemblance was coincidence.

Of course, a little research revealed that though Lewis knew of Renault (one of Tolkien's Oxford students) and recommended The King Must Die (1958) to Roger Lancelyn Green in a 1958 letter (the year that novel was published) Till We Have Faces was published in 1956, the same year that Renault published the first of her historical novels. So the similar tones must be due to similar source material... and it makes sense that two former Oxford students retelling a Greek myth would produce work similar in tone!

I particularly loved this novel, it is work filled with doubt, but firmly looking at the 'deep magic.'  What is remarkable is that Lewis, who is not known for feminist thinking and is often accused of misogynistic tendencies, produces a thoroughly feminist protagonist from the sisters, who are the antagonists of the original myth. His protagonist and narrator, Orual, is the most developed and complex character I have found in his works. Intelligent, dutiful, powerful, yet blinkered, and convinced of her own ugliness. Many say it is Lewis' best work, and I certainly agree. This work is a masterpiece.

Unfortunately, Lewis’ reputation as a Christian apologist and The Chronicles of Narnia’s status as children’s literature sometimes wards off adult readers.  If you enjoy complex, well-written contemporary fantasy, and especially if you are interested in different take on the genre compared to today’s oft-used tropes, give his books, especially That Hideous Strength and Til We Have Faces a read.

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

Blogging the Nations at War II

Continuing my efforts to blog, chapter  by chapter,  The Nations at War: A Current History by Willis John Abbot, one of the first books to spark my love of history.

I used this image in my classes to show differences in how combat is portrayed.
Note how the Germans are a mass of menacing grey in the distance, only the
Canadians, heroic and resolute, are individuals on this modern battlefield. Also,
one of the few credited art works in this book, it was painted by W. B. Wollen. p32.

Right away it is obvious that graphic images in this work may not match the text surrounding them.  The opening page of the chapter faces a full page art piece depicting the Battle of Ypres, which will not be discussed in the text until Chapter III.

Each chapter begins with a small picture by its first letter,
often these show anachronistic images of soldiers,
as this image from Chapter II shows "A French Cuirassier", p33.

Each chapter opens with a heading listing the topics it will cover, in this case: THE INVASION OF BELGIUM - DASH UPON PARIS - PLAN OF GERMAN
CAMPAIGN - HEROISM OF BELGIANS - MARVELOUS EFFICIENCY OF GERMANS - FALL OF NAMUR - SIR JOHN FRENCH's RETREAT - GERMAN DEFEAT AT THE MARNE - PARIS SAVED.

Original caption: "The map shows approximately the extent of the
German advance to September 6, 1914. The heavy lines
with arrow-tips show in a general way the main
German advance; the heavily dotted lines, routes of
parallel, but lesser columns. All the territory between
the line touching Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and Amiens
and the main line was filled with German troops.
Raiding parties also reached Ostend and Boulogne." p35.

The chapter opens by excoriating the Germans for the invasion of neutral Belgium & Luxemburg, quoting a speech by the German Chancellor: "We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law! . . . We were compelled to override the just protest of the Luxemburg and Belgian governments. The wrong—I speak openly—that we are committing we will endeavor to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is threatened, as we are threatened and is fighting for his highest possessions, can have only one thought—how he is to hack his way through." (page 33). It is remarkable how anti-German the book already was in 1915, let alone by 1917 after the United States had entered the war.

The book lays it on pretty thick regarding Belgium, claiming that it "suffered as no
nation has in modern times" and that "No other such record of national self-sacrifice is recorded in history", both dubious claims even in late 1914. (p37)

The German army is described as hyper-efficient throughout the work, "No army of all history ever took the field so splendidly
equipped with new and terrible engines of war as the armies of Germany, and particularly the Army of the Meuse in this

This drawing of a "Uhlan patrol surprised by Belgian armored car"
 wasn't good history but it captivated me as a child, and I still find
it fascinating. I was shocked to discover this was somewhat real!
The Belgians were the first to use armored cars in combat when
they converted civilian vehicles into the Minerva Armored Car and
employed them in 1914! 

campaign. Aeroplanes and dirigibles spied out the way, reported the positions of the enemy, the artillery the range. Motor cars carried soldiers swiftly from point to point and hurried light guns into action; heavily armored, they had their place on the line of battle, and marked with the Red Cross they carried the wounded to places of safety. Rapid-fire guns poured out streams of bullets like water from a hose, and were so compactly built that one could be packed on a horse, or carried on two motorcycles. Siege guns with a range of ten miles, of a calibre and weight never before thought capable of passage along country roads, were dragged by traction engines or by their own motors at a rate of eight miles an hour—guns that twenty years ago would have been useless in any field because of their immobility." (p34)

Many images in the chapter seem to have been chosen to represent this ideal of 'modern' war, but they look quaint and old-fashioned to our eyes. The vast majority of the forces on all sides were infantry, most transported remained drawn by horses, and the major difference between this battlefield and those of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 seems to be the vast number of troops involved.

Original Caption: "An Impromptu Registration. Refugees from Antwerp writing their names and addresses on a fence to let their friends know their whereabouts." (p41)

Most of the images in this chapter continue the theme of training and mobilization from Chapter I, and there are a lot of images of men marching (probably one of the easier images for photojournalists of the day to obtain.).

Other images highlight the refugees fleeing the Germn invasion, as well as some images of the defense of Belgium and France.

Descriptions continue of the German actions in Belgium, especially, "War has never been

more remorseless. In every town and village prominent men were seized as hostages and were relentlessly put to death if any citizen, maddened by the destruction of his property or insults offered to his womenkind, dared to attack the aggressors. The story of German atrocities in Belgium is not to be told here." (p42)

"All  that was left from the disaster. This dog cart and its 
contents were all that a once prosperous family saved from 
ruin." (p40) The images of dog carts really shocked me as a kid.
 The idea of dogs as draft animals was so foreign, outside of sleds!

Nonetheless, he includes a lengthy description the German taking of Louvain, Belgium by American writer  Richard Harding Davis, culminating in this chilling description: "Outside the station in the

public square the people of Louvain passed in an unending procession, women bareheaded, weeping, men carrying the children asleep on their shoulders, all hemmed in by the shadowy army of gray wolves. Once they were halted, and among them were marched a line of men. They well knew their fellow townsmen. These were on the way to be shot. And better to point the moral an officer halted

"On the road to safety. The dog is much used as a draught animal in 
Belgium, and many refugees were fortunate enough to get dog carts 
in which to escape." (p48)

both processions and, climbing to a cart, explained why the men were to die. He warned others not
to bring down upon themselves a like vengeance.
               As those being led to spend the night in the fields looked across to those marked for death they saw old friends, neighbors of long standing, men of their own household. The officer bellowing at them from the cart was illuminated by the headlights of an automobile. He looked like an actor held in a spotlight on a darkened stage.

"These are the real dogs of war. The Belgians use them to draw 

batteries  of Lewis guns." (p61) I would love to have this 

as a miniature for World War I Belgian forces!

               It was all like a scene upon the stage, so unreal, so inhuman, you felt it could not be true; that the curtain of fire, purring and crackling and sending up sparks to meet the kind, calm stars, was only a painted backdrop; that the reports of rifles from the dark rooms came from blank cartridges; and that these trembling shopkeepers and peasants ringed in bayonets would not in a few minutes really die, but that they themselves and their homes would be restored to their wives and children." (p46)

"Photograph taken amid bursting shells. This picture was taken under fire. The soldiers in the trenches were Belgians. (p50) I doubt this is truly under fire, as the soldiers all clearly staring at the camera, but it might be just before some action.

The chapter describes the German offensive falling short just outside Paris, but does praise the German commander for the disciplined retreat after the Marne, "In ultimate history it is not improbable that the fame of Von Kluck will rest quite as securely on his successful retreat from the Marne as upon his almost unopposed march upon Pans. The former was by far the more difficult test of his generalship. Caught between the hammer and anvil, outnumbered, with the morale of his army sorely suffering by the sudden transition from enthusiastic advance to precipitate retreat, he yet saved his army from the destruction which for a time seemed imminent."

"Desperate stand of British artillery against odds. During the Battle of Mons a German battery of ten guns surprised 
Battery L, Royal Horse Artillery, and killed most of its horses and men before it could get into action." (p59)
I believe this refers to the Affair of Néry, though it is a rather fanciful description of that fight, which was larger then described.

The chapter ends with a chronology of the period covered, from the start of the German invasion in early August through to French recapture of Rheims on 14 September. I loved these chronologies as a kid, because the chapters and pictures tended to flit about, and it was difficult, even with the maps, to always be clear on what was happening. Chronologies are a map of time, they made it so much easier to follow the tale, and I'm certain their inclusions in this book really inspired my love of chronologies, even today. Indeed, establishing a solid chronology is still one of my first steps when I set out to write a historical work.

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

Blogging the Nations at War I

Blogging the Nations at War

The Nations at War: A Current History by Willis John Abbot
(New York, Leslie-Judge Co., 1917)

When I was seven years old I discovered a 'history book' that my mother owned,  The Nations at War: A Current History by Willis John Abbot. It wasn't an actual history work, but rather the work of a journalist, Willis Abbot, who wrote many popular history works, much the same way Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather might today. He was an engaging author, and his works were profusely illustrated, especially The Nations at War, which had an interesting mix of photographs, commercial illustrations, and paintings gracing its pages. I wish that the artists had been credited for their work, but I can think of no way to discover who they were today.

I've remained fascinated with this work for decades, because it was the closest thing to a 'primary source' that 7 year old me had yet seen.  Abbot published a revised edition of the work in 1914 (maybe a typo in the catalog?), 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1918, providing a glimpse of the war through American eyes. The change in tone  as the United States shifted from somewhat disinterested observer to eventual combatant was obvious throughout. So, I've decided to 'blog' the book, go through it chapter by chapter and share some of the images and passages that really impacted me as a child, or that I find particularly interesting from a historical or cultural standpoint today.

The book itself is readily available for purchase at many used book sites, and you can also find lots of pdfs on line. I use this pdf of the 1917 edition, which matches the edition I grew up with and which I still have (though I did have it rebound). I found it through the Open Library catalog entry on the Internet Archive site.

So, right off the bat, the cover is striking!  It really emphasizes that this war felt like a continuation of the 19th century to those observing it, not the opening salvo of the 20th century. It was a real mystery to me as a kid, because I could only identify a few of the obvious states indicated, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, ect.  Most of the nations used flags that I just was not familiar with. I can do a little better now.

The design shows the four Central Powers at the bottom, and the Allied Powers along the sides and the top. The Central Powers are arranged in a circle in the center bottom of the design, starting clockwise from the top: Imperial Germany, Bulgaria, The Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.  The Allied Powers were more difficult, also going clockwise, starting from the bottom left, we have Montenegro, Japan, Russia, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, and Serbia. an eclectic set of choices, since several Allied Powers, like Greece, were left out.  The United States entered the war years after they had designed the covered, of course. :)

One of the few color images in the book,
a striking, and picturesque photograph. Page 29.

The introduction is well written and arresting, it begins "FOR YEARS wise men had said that there could be no general European war..." and goes on to explain how international finance, public opinion, international socialism, and the destructiveness of military weapons all were said to prevent a general war, and that all failed.  "One by one the forces which the world had relied upon to avert the calamity of a general war were swept away. The ties of finance, of commerce, of mutual interest, of common humanity, even of a common religion were broken."  It then goes on to make a strong case for a 'league of nations' to prevent such wars in the future, responding to George Washington's statement that, "It is our policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world" with "the world has changed since Washington's day. The old isolation of the United States is ended. Oceans have become highways instead of barriers. The interests of all nations are inextricably interwoven." It feels like this could have been written in 2016 instead of 1916.

The first chapter covers the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, as well as the diplomacy leading up to the war and the relative strengths of the combatants. There is a distinct anti-German bias throughout the book, "The assassination, Austro-Hungary's offended sovereignty, were but pretexts for the which the ruling powers of Germany were determined to force."

Vividly highlighting the anti-German bias of the book, on pages 16-17 Abbot claims that "Almost had the German Emperor paralleled in this twentieth century the situation created nearly two hundred years earlier by his famous progenitor Frederick the Great" and goes on to repeat a famous passage on Frederick:

"On the head of Frederic is all the blood which was shed in a war which raged during many years and in every quarter of the globe, the blood of the column of Fontenoy, the blood of the mountaineers who were slaughtered at Culloden. The evils produced by his wickedness were felt in lands where the name of Prussia was unknown; and, in order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America." (from Thomas B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays,  Volume 2)

The coverage of the assassination is more accurate then one might have expected, with very little of conspiracy theory, Abbott acknowledges the Serbs did it and explains why. Still, the book pretty firmly places the blame on the Germans, though it acknowledges the impact of competing Russian ambitions. But France and Great Britain both get treated fairly gently.  Britain is praised for defending Belgian neutrality and though the French desire to avenge the Franco-Prussian War and Alsace-Lorraine are mentioned, they get relatively short shrift.

A pair of maps illustrating Abbot's argument that German and Russian ambitions were in direct competition. pp 8-9

 I do not consider myself an expert on the causes of World War I, nor am I comfortable assigning blame beyond that I consider direct and incontrovertible - the Serbian terrorists who assassinated the Archduke certainly were primarily to blame, and they achieved their goal, Yugoslavia. Which puts the lie to that oft repeated shibboleth that 'terrorism has never succeeded' because it certainly has.

This photo is one of the reasons I wanted to join
the Boy Scouts as a kid. p18.

If you are interested in a more modern take on the origins of World War I, there is still a decent amount of debate on the causes, many historians assign more of the blame to Germany but not all of them. Look at Holger Herwig and Richard F. Hamilton in The Origins of World War I (2003) and Christopher M. Clark in (2012) The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012) for somewhat contrasting views.  Barbara W. Tuchman's popular history, The Guns of August (1962), argues for bungling and miscommunication leading to the war.

I always felt sorry for the horses. p19

There is a great deal of discussion comparing the strength of the various nations in 1914, but of course it is a journalist's account during the middle of the conflict.  Many of the pictures in this first chapter introduce the royal leaders, Kaiser Willhelm II, Emperor Francis Joseph, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Czar Nicholas and King George V.  The relative unimportance of these men to decision making during the war is obviously not apparent to the public during the conflict.

Other images really captured my imagination or helped
me get a handle on some of the less glamourous aspects of warfare.  One image, showing British officers drafting horses for the war effort, stuck in my head and always popped to mind as I began to study military history, and thus logistics, seriously in graduate school. So did many images of trains and marshaling yards in the books, and its description of the complicated process of mobilizing mass armies for warfare. The first images highlighting the horrors of war appeared in the first chapter as well.  Not yet photographs, but shocking drawings nonetheless.

I felt even more sorry for the horses after looking at this page. p 23.

I believe that is supposed
to be a Taube. p24.

It had a diagram! p25

Other images grabbed my technical imagination. The Lewis Gun looked like something straight out of Jules Verne, but it was a real, functioning weapon.  The aircraft depicted in this work were even more fantastic looking, even in this first chapter, whether they were the target of a Lewis Gun or just a tail peaking out of a truck transport.

And what kid would not find disappearing gun turrets fascinating?

Pure imagination fuel! p25.

But this last image really highlighted, for me, the oddness of 1914, and so i close out this first Blogging the Nations at War entry with it.  The Belgian infantry and their formation simply look like they are straight out of another time, and not really ready, brave as they might be, to face the storm of steel and fire that the 20th century is sending their way.

Top hats and bayonet swords... my son is trying to get into historical reenacting.
I kind of want to do an impression of Belgian infantry 1914.  There cannot be many who reenact them! p19

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

Elric & Corum, Eternal Champions

An earlier version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #118 (August, 2006).

Michael Moorcock is best known for his albino warrior-mage prince, Elric of Melniboné. A mystical anti-hero with a powerful sword and a bizarre appearance, Elric was very much the Drizzt Do-Urden of the Seventies. Of course, Moorcock’s influence on fantasy goes far beyond the creation of one albino brooder. He began editing and writing fantasy and science fiction while still in his teens, and eventually became the editor of New Worlds, a British magazine very similar originally to America’s Astounding Science Fiction or the earlier Weird Tales. As the editor, Moorcock was a founding father of the ‘New Wave’ movement, a movement dedicated to introducing politics and leftist social theory to science fiction while creating controversial, literary works.

Moorcock’s fantasy writing had a deep impact on early role-playing. Elric’s sword, Stormbringer, was infamous for being the perhaps the single most powerful magic item in the original Deities & Demigods, its legend grew when later printings of that book removed the Melnibonean and Cthulhu mythos for legal reasons. Moorcock’s concept of a ‘Multiverse’ of different planes was obviously influential in early AD&D concepts of the planes, especially early concepts such as the ‘wheel’ diagram in the back of the 1st edition AD&D Player’s Handbook. [edit: Listen to Moorcock himself talk about his concept of the Multiverse and the Eternal Champion, and why he prefers fantasy to science fiction, here.]

Arioch! Arioch! Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!

Perhaps his most important contribution to role-playing, however, is the idea of Law and Chaos as primary ethical identities. In Moorcock’s stories Good and Evil essentially do not exist, rather there is only Law and Chaos. The Eternal Champion, the protagonists (in varied forms) of all Moorcock’s writings, is torn between these two primordial forces as he tries to force balance between the two. Elric of Melniboné is the best known version of the Eternal Champions, but Moorcock has explored the idea thoroughly with other versions.

Elric of Melniboné's tales first appeared in the 1960s in Science Fantasy, a British genre magazine, in a series of novelettes and novellas.  Later, Moorcock collected, expanded, and reedited the tales into the six works that introduced Elric to American fandom in the 1970s: Elric of Melniboné, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate,The Weird of the White Wolf, The Sleeping Sorceress, The Bane of the Black Sword, and Stormbringer.  These six tales presented a relatively coherent, contained story. Elric was both pastiche and rejection of Howard's Conan, where Conan was strong, healthy, and barbaric, Elric was weak, sickly, and civilized.  Conan was a warrior whose virtue was proven by his physical prowess while Elric was a wizard who denied having virtue at all. Teen-age Sword & Sorcery fans loved Elric, however, more easily identifying with the angst-driven anti-hero, perhaps, then the alpha-male Conan. In the 1980s, Ace Books reprinted the series with evocative covers by Robert Gould. As myriad young AD&D players discovered Elric through the 1st edition Dungeon Master Guide's famous Appendix N or the 1st printing of Deities & Demigods and swarmed mall bookstores looking for Elric works, the stylized covers further cemented Elric's status with fantasy fandom.

Moorcock later returned to his most popular character with a series of novels,  The Fortress of the Pearl (1989), The Revenge of the Rose (1991), The Dreamthief's Daughter (2001), The Skrayling Tree (2003), and The White Wolf's Son (2005).  These novels focused generally on Elric and the Eternal Champion concept, often having a distinctly different feel then his earlier Elric works.

Elric is the last emperor of Melniboné, a sickly albino who rules an ancient empire in its final decadent days long after its glories have passed, as the human Young Kingdoms surge forward to take its place.  Melnibonéans are immoral, devoted to the gods of Chaos and strong in magic, defended by their alliance with ancient dragons. Elric's cousin, Yrkoon, a 'proper' Melnibonéan sought to over throw him, a conflict characterized by Elric's own ambivalence, poor decisions, and the acquisition of the legendary Chaos swords, Stormbringer and Mournblade (wielded, briefly, by his cousin Yyrkoon against him). Elric is aided intermittently in the quest by Arioch, one of the Chaos lords, who is clearly no one that should be trusted.  But he allows Elric to gain Stormbringer, and Stormbringer saddles Elric with a curse, the blade devours the souls of its victims and feeds that power to Elric, allowing him to forgo the sorcerous drugs he normally requires to maintain his strength. But the perverse blade seems to prefer to devour Elric's friends and lovers whenever possible this becomes the central theme of the series and is amply described in the novels and short stories. 

The sword, which is a metaphor for addiction. The symbiosis between man and sword is the most distinctive and iconic aspect of the Elric tales, it is later sung of in the Blue Öyster Cult song, "Black Blade." 

It had been a few decades since I read the Elric books, and I am afraid they remained as angsty and juvenile as I remembered. I prefer the middle four original novels, as their episodic nature hearkens back to the Sword and Sorcery tales Moorcock was deconstructing. Moorcock's world-building is too weak to provide a proper foundation for the society of Melniboné itself and the first novel especially suffers greatly as a result.  Nonetheless, the series contains some excellent concepts and scenes scattered throughout.

Moorcock is also known as the author of 'Epic Pooh', a 1978 review essay on the field of epic fantasy which famously compared C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien's work to A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh tales.  As a critical essay of fantasy literature the article is rather basic and marred by Moorcock's personal biases, especially his views of Great Britain as an imperial power. In light of the essay, it is easy to see how he intends decadent, corrupt Melniboné as criticism of his native Great Britain - an island empire albeit one where superior magic replaces superior technology as it conquers and exploits more primitive continental nations. Despite his later reaction to Tolkien and Lewis, however, the essay "The Secret Life of Elric of Melniboné" makes it clear that Poul Anderson and R.E. Howard are Elric's direct inspirations.

Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei is the Eternal Champion in two of Moorcock’s trilogies, though these short novels can also be found compiled into very readable omnibus editions. The Knight of Swords (1971), The Queen of Swords (1971), and The King of Swords (1971) were released individually and in two collections as The Swords Trilogy and Corum: The Coming of Chaos. The Bull and the Spear (1973), The Oak and the Ram (1973), and The Sword and the Stallion (1974) have been released in two collections as well, The Chronicles of Corum and The Prince with the Silver Hand.

"'If they valued what they stole, if they knew what they were destroying,' says the old Vadhagh in the story, The Only Autumn Flower, 'Then I would be consoled.'"  

Corum is a member of the Vadhagh, an ancient race of elf-like beings that barely notices its own destruction at the hands of the Gods of Chaos and their agents, the Mabden (humans). Though they nurse a hatred for the similar Nhadragh, the Vadhagh spend their time in philosophical and artistic pursuits, isolated from one another and unaware as one by one their widely separated homes are destroyed. An urbane, educated, wry hero, Corum is a far cry from Elric, though equally given to brooding. He is the last of his race, and thinks in many ways more like the Mabden than the Vadhagh. Like Elric, he suffers tragedy, in his case a maiming at the hands of Mabden torturers. This allows him to use two great magical artifacts, the Eye of Rhynn and the Hand of Kwll. Possibly the original templates for the Hand and Eye of Vecna of AD&D fame, these artifacts provide him great power at a great cost.

The first trilogy depicts Corum’s attempts to revenge the destruction of his people, and to free the Fifteen Planes from the gods of Chaos, including a grotesque avatar of Elric’s patron deity, Arioch. The second trilogy, set long after the first, is heavily influenced by Celtic mythology. Corum witnesses the slow transformation of his world into Earth, or at least an alternate Earth, and readers see that his story, and the history of his race, is the original inspiration for the legendary sidhe. This transformation is framed within a struggle against the Fhoi Myore, the Cold Gods, who represent the ancient Celtic myths of the Fomorians.

(This blog includes an excellent description of the first Corum trilogy and the world it is within.)

Both heroes represent the same message: a theological attack on the possibility of gods and a narrative argument for radical atheism. Moorcock’s writing is mannered, erudite, and self-conscious; he fits firmly within the world of the radical social movements of the Sixties when the personal was political and the political was theological. Law appears somewhat less reprehensible than Chaos in his milieu, but rebellion is his preferred dogma. His clear prose is heavily influenced by poetry and his descriptions of the other-worldly are vivid and surrealistic.

The mood of the Corum stories is often as melancholic as Moorcock’s other works, and yet Corum is granted long periods of true happiness. This serves to make his later losses more poignant, and allows a glimmer of warmth and light into Moorcock’s otherwise bleak, beautiful multiverse. This can reinforce the theme of corruption, as Corum’s sorrows are caused by nature and his greatest foes are no more than various aware agents of impersonal universal forces. Corum’s natural immortality ultimately causes him as much sorrow as his unnatural maiming. The conclusion is also a beginning, and less nihilistic than most of Moorcock’s other writings.

Still, it is telling that Moorcock returned to write more and more on Elric, yet seldom revisited Corum.

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

Thoughts on The Good Place

The Last Judgment (Michelangelo, 1536–1541)

I recently read a couple decent but contrasting reviews of The Good Place, one on Slate ("The Good Place Went Out on Its Own Terms") and the other on The Mockingbird ("The Despairing Place"). The conclusions were predictable (predictability is going to be a running theme here). Secular, humanist Slate loved it, religious, humanist Mockingbird disliked it. It was interesting that both loved the show over all, and that both loved the penultimate episode.

Anyway, considering these reviews caused me to start typing a Facebook post, and when that post reached 6 paragraphs I realized this was a good writing exercise, and that it should be a blog entry.  (one problem with my blog has been that I keep relegating it to 'finished' pieces or topics that I have little emotional investment in. I need to start taking some bigger swings on this thing).

Back on topic... I know opinions like this are why many people find me insufferable but really, from the beginning there was no other way for The Good Place to end. Either the theologians or the philosophers were bound to be disappointed in the ending. A sitcom with this premise cannot have a satisfying ending, because it is asking questions that we, as a species, have never found satisfying answers for.  That's why I never really watched it, though it seemed tailor made for me.

Now, that doesn't mean I agree with the author of "The Despairing Place". The tone of a theological review of a show about philosophy on a theological website could be predicted as easily as the possible finales for The Good Place.

Which, again, is the point.  Neither philosophy nor theology have given us flawless answers to why we are here, where it all comes from, or what comes next, or even if there is a next. No, atheists haven't answered those either, they just gave up asking the questions, the quitters. 😉 The article is correct, despite the flights of special effects whimsy the show was never able to transcend the limits of our imaginations.  Heaven & Hell simply looked, and acted, like fun house mirror images of material reality. Understandable, as it's all we have as a conceptual framework.

But these places are meaningless unless they transcend material existence.  I'm not certain it is truly possible for us to imagine beyond reality. Heck, we have a hard time imagining 'places' within reality that are not 3 dimensional. Was The Good Place functionally different from cinematic depictions of cyberspace, such as The Matrix or Ready Player One? We've been trying to imagine these different places in reality a long time, try reading Abbot's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) sometime and then consider if the tale, in your mind's eye, really is 2 dimensional. Heck, not even The Simpson's 3-D Halloween episode could really extend our abilities to perceive meaningfully beyond our material framework. Or Homer's material framework, anyway.

And we don't do much better on the questions themselves, ignoring the conceptual framework. No matter how often we try, our answers always come back to oblivion or some sort of god. Even when we try to imagine 'scientific' answers it invariably leads to the same places. I put quotes around 'scientific' because science itself doesn't have anything to do with the big questions asked by philosophy or theology, it's just our best intellectual tool for understanding material existence itself, and therefore is pretty worthless when we try to leave reality behind. But regardless, boiling away the decorations on the many different answers we've tried to come up with for these big questions it is always there is nothing, or there is 'god'. And we end up right back where we started asking the questions.

It was brave of a sitcom to try to answers these questions, I suppose. And like all good art, the show taught us plenty about humans, our ethics, our strengths, and our weaknesses.  Even the handful of episodes I watched over the years showed it was funny and clever with a great cast. Great art, in my view, always says something truthful about humanity. The Good Place did that, even if it never answered the bigger questions that premise promised answers to.

Now, time to sleep, wondering how embaressed I'll be by this blog post in the morning... 😀

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.