Book Review : HP Lovecraft by Michel Houellebecq

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | HP Lovecraft by Michel Houellebecq:

'Perhaps one needs to have suffered a great deal in order to appreciate Lovecraft ... ' Jacques Bergier

Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new, realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don't care to know any more. Humanity, such as it is, inspires only an attenuated curiosity in us. All those prodigiously refined notations, situations, anecdotes ... All they do, once a book has been set aside, is reinforce the slight revulsion that is already adequately nourished by any one of our 'real life' days.

Now, here is Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937): 'I am so beastly tired of mankind and the world that nothing can interest me unless it contains a couple of murders on each page or deals with the horrors unnameable and unaccountable that leer down from the external universes.' We need a supreme antidote against all forms of realism.