The Lovecraftian Poe: Essays on Influence, Reception, Interpretation and Transformation ed. by Sean Moreland

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Lovecraftian Poe: Essays on Influence, Reception, Interpretation and Transformation ed. by Sean Moreland Kyle Brett sean moreland, ed. The Lovecraftian Poe: Essays on Influence, Reception, Interpretation and Transformation. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2017. Pp. 276. Sean Moreland's latest collection on H. P. Lovecraft enters into the squall of recent conversations and publications about the Rhode Island native and weird fiction writer. And yet, despite the magnitude and the diverse composition of such recent collections of scholarly work, The Lovecraftian Poe attempts to redirect our attention back to a seemingly dry reservoir: the authorial tie between Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. In doing so, the voices in the collection from Lovecraftian familiars—like S. T. Joshi, Jefferey Andrew Weinstock, and Caitlin Kiernan—reopen not only the self-proclaimed authorial genealogy that Lovecraft traced, but also the impact that such a linkage has had on contemporary readers of both Gothic and weird fiction writers. Within this collection, Moreland challenges his readers to observe how Lovecraft's declaration of fealty to the strange nineteenth-century writer "has, for better and for worse, indelibly shaped Poe's place in American—and international—literature and popular culture" (xvii). In this way, Lovecraft, through his endorsement and posthumous popularity, ensures that modern readers and critics view Poe through a Lovecraftian lens. Moreland's collection systematically and chronologically tests this connection through mostly close readings of Lovecraft's and Poe's writing. Where Moreland's collection shines, however, is in its rather diverse collection of theoretical explorations into such a literary genealogy. From Bachelard's space theory, Toni Morrison's race/whiteness studies, posthuman animal studies, to new media studies, the collection covers a broad amount of ground. As a result, the collection appeals to both new and established critics that find themselves trying to find a place within a given set of literature. While covering the traditional stories that synch up between the two writers, Moreland's collection also injects novelty into the discussion by including essays on Lovecraft's verse in relationship to Poe's (beyond merely citing their terribleness as other examinations have done), and in the final essays moves to incorporate contemporary horror film and weird fiction writers into the overarching theme of continuing influence. The Lovecraftian Poe, [End Page 114] then, takes its own thematic thesis to task, tracing the effects of Lovecraft's complex identification with Poe outside of the recluse's letters, prose, and verse, and into the present moment. Moreland, no stranger to the weird or the Lovecraftian, breaks up the collection into three parts: essays on the relationship between Lovecraft and Poe in their fictional works, the relationship within their poetry, and finally a relationship of the authors as mediated by contemporary works in film and fiction. It is in the latter part where the collection is its most unstable, but the final essays do well at highlighting effects on the reception of both Poe and Lovecraft through current writers and filmmakers. Bookending the collection are two popular names within Lovecraftian and weird fiction circles: S. T. Joshi and Caitlin Kiernan. The preface and the afterward demonstrate an evolution that traces the collection's contents—the movement from historical analysis (Joshi) to the present-day realities of Lovecraftian influence on writers in the field (Kiernan). With Joshi's preface, we get a rather condensed biographical and historical overview to the H.P.L./Poe literary genealogy. While some readers may want a bit more from Joshi's critical knowledge, this opening of the collection does well to introduce a newcomer to the rather dense historical and critical field. The first few of The Lovecraftian Poe's essays give a concise overview of not only Lovecraft's missive on supernatural fiction, in which he devotes an absurd amount of space to Poe, but also the nuanced tension such a literary obsession had on the reclusive and maturing writer. It is in these first essays that the collection finds its stride, especially with essays like Weinstock's "Tekeli-li!: Poe, Lovecraft, and the Suspicion of Sameness" that shed a more productive light on the racial tensions that many critics point at and dismiss within both writers...