Smiling Lovecraft

[Prof.Witchheimer]

Never seen him smiling 

HPL and William J. Dowdell in front of the Hotel Brunswick, Boston. July 5, 1921

[YIU]

It's unbelievable...it must be a retouched picture on Photoshop 

[Eisenfaust]

He looks like he's suppressing a laugh because one of them just farted.

[palaeomerus]

Lovecraft definitely had some personal problems and was a near shut in at certain points in his life, but he was known as a fairly playful, sarcastic, guy who did not personally believe in the occult, and who enjoyed being corny and silly outside of his fiction writing and editing. He intended his stories to read a little bit purple and over the top. He considered that part of the charm of weird fiction. He liked jokes. He wasn't a some dour, frightened man who thought something was watching him from the shadows and whispering to him. He viewed his work as Grand Guignol, a means of shocking people and entertaining them. He often mentioned his penpals and fellow writers in his stories in rather silly ways. For instance, he mentioned an Atlantean sage named Klarkash Ton who wrote the oldest known works on Tsothaggua because his real life friend, Clarke Ashton Smith, had created that character/entity for his own stories.

As I said before he did have problems. He had a couple of nervous breakdowns. He did feel alienated at times. He did more or less run away from a marriage that fell on had times financially. He was kind of racially prejudiced in that he was nervous around so called immigrant families and disliked living in new York because he felt they were keeping him from landing a real job. He disliked Jazz and like H. G. Wells feared mankind was on the verge of a catastrophic last war following the awfulness of WW1. When he returned to new England he talked about feeling like New York had been some kind of strange dream in another body and now that he was home he felt he was back in his life and his body. Some people think this had a lot to do with his story " The Shadow Out of Time". He was sickly. He had some facial tics.

He wasn't really a freak show or a lost soul or a madman. He tended to idealize the mid to late 1700's as the best age of man and rather disliked the Victorian (stupid)style that was going out and the Modernist/urban industrialist style(wild, frantic, inhumane) that was coming in. But he didn't believe in star monsters. He just thought they were neat to read and write about.

[Uncle Mike]

Cool! Never seen this photo before. Nice to see H.P.L. 1) outside, 2) with someone else and 3) smiling.

[DoctorPete]

He knows what will happen when the Old Ones return....and thinks it's funny.  

[No Such Agency]

Huh, that's neat.  Great post. 

I think he looks a bit like a younger, thinner Stephen Fry in this pic.

[supervike]

HPL's buddy reminds me of Kiefer Sutherland in DARK CITY.

[syrinx0]

That is a different picture for HPL.  A few more like it here:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/life/gallery.asp#9

[Commander Vyper]

Never seen him smiling 

HPL and William J. Dowdell in front of the Hotel Brunswick, Boston. July 5, 1921

Oh Renfield? Shoudln't you be out bug hunting for the master?

 

[Prof.Witchheimer]

Nice to see H.P.L. 1) outside,

now one really outside

Photograph is of HPL on the shore in Magnolia, MA from August, 1922.

[chicklewis]

Wow, I REALLY love that photo ! 

Thanks for posting it.