![]() Baxter has a low opinion of Lovecraft’s prose style, but any number of critics have thought otherwise. Certainly, the Library of America did not think so when it issued a volume of Lovecraft’s Tales in 2005-a volume that sold 25,000 copies in three months. A remarkably active “shut-in”!īaxter thinks Lovecraft’s literary skills were “minimal,” but this is now a minority view among critics and scholars. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian) to the highbrow poet Hart Crane and his travels during the last decade of his life took him far from his native Providence, Rhode Island-to such places as Quebec, Richmond, Charleston, Key West, New Orleans, and Natchez. He notes that Lovecraft was a “stranger to joy” and that he had “the timid shut-in’s phobia of difference, variety, and diversity.” In fact, Lovecraft found a great many things to enjoy in life (aesthetic expression, astronomy, chemistry, anthropology, travel, cats, colonial architecture) his wide correspondence-four million words of which survive-put him in touch with an extraordinarily diverse band of friends and colleagues, ranging from the rugged frontiersman Robert E. ![]() I do not have the space to correct Baxter’s numerous errors, distortions, and misconceptions about Lovecraft’s life. ![]() It seems as if Baxter has some kind of personal animus against Lovecraft. ![]() Lovecraft, nominally a review of Leslie S. ![]() I was taken aback at the vehemence of Charles Baxter’s screed on the American supernaturalist H.P. ![]()
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