H.P. Lovecraft - The Decline of the West

This book began as an expansion of the essay, "H. P. 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 has always been interested in Lovecraft the philosopher, and in my Starmont Reader's Guide to Lovecraft (1982). He attempted a very compressed account of his philosophical views. To treat so complex a thinker as Lovecraft in a few pages was obviously untenable, even though he thinks those few pages at least convey the unity of his thought--perhaps better than this fuller study does. One reviewer, however, was correct in noting that he did not sufficiently integrate Lovecraft's thought and his fiction, and he has now attempted to remedy the failing.