Gavin Callaghan

Gavin Callaghan's Dark Arcadia is a capable and engaging critical treatment of the weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. He brings an interesting combination of methods to this material. Recognizing Lovecraft's professed interest in classical literature, he examines the allusions to antiquity and the possibility of satirical method in HPL's stories. As a complementary tactic, he invokes psychoanalytic appraisals of Lovecraft's authorial motives (strongly indulging Jungian approaches) to account show more for significant tropes in his output.

Although the publisher's jacket copy praises Callaghan for "ignoring secondary accounts and various received truths," he is clearly well-read in the existing body of Lovecraft criticism. While he brings some new ideas to the field, his most significant contradiction of "common knowledge" about HPL and his work is to consider the "cosmicism" of Lovecraft's horror to be ornamental rather than essential. Callaghan asserts that the various instances of cosmic scenarios and phenomena in Lovecraft's stories (actually rather outnumbered by more conventional gothic horror tropes and contexts) are simply grandiose exaggerations of the author's familial mise-en-scène, and vehicles for his ambivalent antagonism toward the cultural decadents of his parents' generation and his own. The "Old" and the "Elder" to which HPL attributes a veneer of deep time were, according to Callaghan, in living memory in the fact of their inspiration. The extra-dimensional hugeness of Lovecraft's monsters simply reflects the subjective enormity of parental figures.

Callaghan also opposes the notion that there was in any sense a "mellowing" or relaxation of Lovecraft's social and cultural conservatism in his later fiction. In the interpretive context Callaghan provides, he makes a persuasive case in this regard. Callaghan's own value-position relative to Lovecraft's ideological stances is not made especially clear. While he does indict HPL for his racism and misogyny, he also repeatedly implies sympathy for Lovecraft's right-wing "acuity" (8). Callaghan notes with evident distaste, for example, the fact of "some branches of the modern Wicca movement finding allies and common cause with environmentalist, feminist, luddite, leftist, gay liberation, and other radical organizations" (207), and he refers to "the insanity of the sexual revolution" (8, 58).

The volume is divided into six loosely-interlinked essays, three longer and more general, and three shorter and of narrower scope. It opens with the long "Dark Arcadia," in which the focus is on Lovecraft's preference for Roman over Greek antiquity, and his satirical intent directed at the decadent culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapters three and six are the other long pieces, and they address the principal psychological materials that Callaghan discerns in the HPL oeuvre: "Behind the Locked Door" is about the paternal image with classical allusion to the myth of Theseus, and "HPL and the Magna Mater" provides an analysis of the Lovecraftian feminine. The smaller essays address Lovecraft's use of apiary imagery, his trope of the "moon-ladder," and an interpretation of the "coda" that concludes "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

Callaghan dedicates a section of his bibliography to an odd assortment of six works on occultism. His insightful remarks on Lovecraft's antagonism for the Theosophical Society show that this reading was not wasted, but he generally hews to popular derision for modern occultists such as Aleister Crowley. (In this contempt, he probably tracks with Lovecraft, who appraised Crowley as a "queer duck.") Callaghan's gloss on the monumental Etidorhpa of John Uri Lloyd is quite superficial, but he deserves a point for mentioning it at all.

Callaghan gives a great deal of attention to a number of Lovecraft's "lesser" stories and collaborations, such as "The Green Meadow," "The Moon-Bog," and "Medusa's Coil," suggesting that in those instances where the writer's technique is less polished, his methods and motives may be more exposed. His insistence on the abiding Puritan character of Lovecraft's orientation, as well as the polemical intent of stories that seem so focused on evocative mood, is tied together quite convincingly with a study of the psychological conditions that could inspire such polemics. The book is, on the whole, a fascinating read for anyone familiar with Lovecraft's work. show less

Fans of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and other weird fiction are living in a golden age of literary criticism of the man’s work. New collections of essays on Lovecraft and his writings have been coming out with regularity for many years. I’ve read a fair amount of what’s out there already, and have noted that a certain kind of staleness has crept into the field. There are certain key scholars, S. T. Joshi probably foremost among them, who are responsible for helping to popularize show more Lovecraft’s work beginning in the 1980s and also lending his fiction a certain amount of respectability. We all know how little respect “genre” fiction is given by the literati, and supernatural horror fiction rarely receives more than a disdainful acknowledgement of its existence by most critics. Lovecraft is different though: he’s undoubtedly had significant influence on pop culture and he even generates a fair amount of literary criticism. But much of the extant analysis of Lovecraft does seem to keep rehashing the same basic themes, essentially treading the same well-trod ground.

Gavin Callaghan’s H. P. LOVECRAFT'S DARK ARCADIA: THE SATIRE, SYMBOLOGY AND CONTRADICTION adopts a very different approach. DARK ARCADIA is a collection of six interconnected essays, three long ones – on Lovecraft’s use of Roman and Greek symbology and themes; the image of the father and paternal figures; and the mother and feminine figures – and three shorter ones focusing on narrower topics: images of bees and apiaries; the concept of the “moon-ladder”; and the coda in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and Lovecraft’s beloved cousin Phillips Gamwell. There’s a great deal more covered here than that thin list would imply, as these essays are pretty far-ranging. I also certainly appreciate Callaghan looking at some of Lovecraft’s more obscure works that rarely receive any analysis, including "The Green Meadow," "Medusa's Coil,” and "The Moon-Bog."

So, in the growing field of Lovecraft studies, what exactly does Callaghan contribute? First, Callaghan explores the many classical allusions to Greco-Roman myths found in Lovecraft’s work. That is valuable and mostly hasn’t been done before. Callaghan also seeks to explore the satirical possibilities of Lovecraft’s work. That too is a welcome study, since most of the scholars examining Lovecraft take it all just a little too seriously at times, even though I’m not entirely convinced of Callaghan’s arguments here. Perhaps most important for Callaghan is the tool of literary psychoanalysis (mostly Jungian here) to explore Lovecraft’s development as a way to examine the tropes he uses and keeps returning to in his fiction. I’ve always been more than a little skeptical about using psychoanalysis to examine authors and – even worse – fictional characters, but Callaghan at least offers some interesting speculation here. I think that one of Callaghan’s most valuable contributions, though, is his attempt to overturn the conventional wisdom that has come to dominate Lovecraftian scholarship (the “Joshian” school of thought) that emphasizes the cosmicism found in Lovecraft. It’s hard to avoid that: Lovecraft does, after all, often write about a fundamentally uncaring universe and incomprehensibly powerful alien beings who take no more notice of human affairs than we would notice a single small ant colony in the jungles of Borneo. But Callaghan argues that the cosmicism everyone points out in Lovecraft is almost incidental. What we see of cosmic elements are, to Callaghan, Lovecraft’s efforts to work through his troubled past and psyche, mostly revolving around his feelings toward his parents. What remains of Lovecraft’s fiction, Callaghan suggests, is mostly a set of far more conventional, almost gothic horror tropes and scenarios in new guises. We keep returning to Lovecraft’s cosmicism because, Callaghan suggests, everyone “knows” that that’s what Lovecraft was all about, so that’s what we all think. But this very well may be simply the popular consensus found in secondary sources, rather than what a truly fresh reading of Lovecraft’s original work might uncover. Callaghan argues that if we really think about it, the horrors in Lovecraft’s work are actually pretty familiar tropes for his time: miscegenation, bestiality, sadism, cannibalism, infanticide, necrophilia, incest, paganism, witchcraft, vampirism, and lycanthropy (these terms applied broadly). Again, I don’t know that I’m entirely convinced by that argument, but I’m very glad that Callaghan has made it. This is a work of Lovecraftian literary criticism that can’t be ignored; it can be dissected, poured over, and argued against, but it can’t simply be dismissed, and that’s a valuable contribution indeed.

I know that many Lovecraftian scholars and analysts are virtually obsessed with Lovecraft’s racism (I mention this because it’s become one of my pet peeves). You can’t find an analytical piece on the man’s writing from the last ten or fifteen years that doesn’t devote a lengthy section to the subject; it has become de rigeur. Lovecraft was a white New Englander born in 1890. Of course he was a racist by twenty-first century standards. (So was Abraham Lincoln, for that matter.) Lovecraft’s era was a time in which Irish and Italian immigrants to the United States were only grudgingly accepted as “white” by most – but still not all – Americans. Lovecraft’s “xenophobia” and disdain for non-white ethnicities and races, which does occasionally pop up in some of his fiction output, is neither unsurprising nor interesting to me. I would vastly prefer that much more interesting themes about Lovecraft;’s writing be explored, but your reaction will likely vary. In any case, if you want more of that sort of thing, there’s some of that here, but it doesn’t overwhelm and distract.

DARK ARCADIA is not without its flaws and it’s certainly not for all readers. If you’re mostly a casual fan of Lovecraft and Cthulhu, avoid DARK ARCADIA (and literary criticism in general). If you’re not particularly familiar with Lovecraft’s work, this isn’t a good place to start. If you’re at all interested in exploring some of Lovecraft’s work on a deeper level, however, you should check out DARK ARCADIA. You might not come away agreeing with Gavin Callaghan, but you won’t regret hearing him out.

Review copyright © 2014 J. Andrew Byers show less

H.P. Lovecraft has developed a massive following starting in the very years after his death in 1937. Both his stories of cosmic horror and his peculiar, almost mythicaly bizarre biography have created a character honored in books, games, and ironic tee shirts. However, as Callaghan states in the first essay of this new book, much of the fandom -- and indeed the literary criticism -- surrounding Lovecraft's work is derivative more from peoples interpretations of his imagery rather than the show more texts themselves. In H.P. Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia, Callaghan intends to read deeply into Lovecraft's writings to illuminate his original, central themes.

To start with, Lovecraft was a racist, misogynistic, bigoted bastard. Any fan who is honest with the history must acknowledge this. Callagahn does some interesting gymnastics to avoid stating this truth directly, but it does sit at the center of his analysis. Each of the six essays in this collection focus on a different overarching theme of Lovecraft's corpus, starting with his inversion and perversion of the classical Arcadia, then working through the Theseus myth, the tie of earthly and celestial corruption, and finally ending on the dark feminine content of his mythos. It is very quickly asserted that the majority of Lovecraft's stories are not nearly as cosmic as is usually suggested, but instead reside in the realm of sadism, vampirism, witchcraft, miscegenation, infanticide, cannibalism, and a host of other perversions that were the staple of horror writing at the time (a handy chart is included to lay out exactly where each significant story falls in the spectrum). Secondly, the author states that, as a staunch Latinist, Lovecraft wrote most of his stories as satires in the Roman style, with the majority being in opposition of the pastoral decadence perceived in the literati of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries such as Oscar Wilde. The remnants were either pure works-for-hire, anti-immigration tracts, or ruminations on how much Lovecraft both loved and was stifled by his mother.

This is well and good, but much of Callaghan's style either shows a great lack of self-awareness or a sort of tacit agreement with Lovecraft's views. The most obvious and jarring example being at the end of the first essay when it was stated that Lovecraft's stories warning of sensual corruption and interbred bacchanals was prescient of the rise of the "seminal influence of black culture on popular music, dance, and sports; the ineluctable growth and influence of feminism and gay liberation..." (57) A clever author would have inverted Lovecraft's predictions; Callaghan sounds like he agrees that the world has really gone down the tube since they let women out of the kitchen.

All of this sounds quite harsh, which is not necessarily fair. This reviewer has been a long-term fan of Lovecraft's stories, and more specifically, the mythos that has grown out of them. This book has helped better elucidate the motivation behind the stories, allowing the reader to come to terms with the sad and wicked truth behind them. is still a great and affecting horror story, but it needs to be acknowledged that at its core it is a warning about letting African American slaves get too much power, lest they corrupt the whole (white) society. H.P. Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia is a big, didactic tumble, enlightening and funny in ways both good and bad. Those with an interest in weird fiction should notice it not necessarily for its quality, but for reminding them that they must consider the backward themes running through the genre's foundation texts. show less

Gavin Callaghan's _H.P. Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia_ presents the reader with well researched findings on the major themes found in Lovecraft's weird fiction and attempts to understand from where those themes originated. Rather refreshingly, Callaghan does not shy away from Lovecraft's many faults. The man was sexist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, racist, and elitist. Callaghan demonstrates how biographers tend to play down these significant faults in Lovecraft's personality, and have developed a myth show more of Lovecraft simply not being that bad. As it turns out, he was significantly worse and, contrary to popular legend, become even more so over time.

_H.P. Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia_ takes the form of several essays, all by Callaghan, that discuss different aspects of Lovecraft's writing. For instance, Callaghan discusses at length the Greek and Roman influences on Lovecraft's early, pre-weird fiction, writing, and what Callaghan sees as an inversion of the idyllic themes present therein, with fauns becoming satyrs and verdant forests becoming too full with foreboding life. Callaghan also takes on the themes of gigantism and the role of what he sees a parental figures throughout Lovecraft's work.

The depth into which Callaghan explores these major themes is impressive, though not exhaustive. However, the depth to which he plunges in order to interpret them is significantly more shallow. In this, Callaghan shows a predisposition towards Freudian analysis; all of his major sources for psychological interpretation of Lovecraft's works are Freudian. This being the case, we see various mother and father issues, issues about sex, with especial necrophilial directions, overcompensations, and so forth, all throughout Lovecraft's work. Or so Callaghan asserts. This interpretive drift gives the impression that Lovecraft actually put all of these things in his writing, something Callaghan asserts but never demonstrates. Anyone at all familiar with Freudian analysis is also aware how easy it is to read into something when it simply isn't there. Or, as Freud himself famously said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I heartily recommend this book for a better understanding of Lovecraft himself, as well as the themes present in his writing. However, the psychoanalyzing interpretations are generally best to be taken with a grain or two of salt. show less