HP Lovecraft: the writer out of time

In Against the World, Against Life, his biography of the writer, the French novelist Michel Houellebecq ascribes Lovecraft’s racism to his relatively wealthy New England upbringing suddenly bumping up against two years of rougher living in multicultural New York. But fellow writer Nicole Cushingrefuses to accept the oft-trotted out excuse that Lovecraft, born in 1890, was merely “a man of his time”. She says Lovecraft seems “obsessed with the theme of white supremacy, taking opportunities to shoehorn it into stories even when it’s totally unnecessary”.