{"id":16759,"date":"2008-12-24T09:19:17","date_gmt":"2008-12-24T14:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=16759"},"modified":"2014-12-10T19:47:57","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T00:47:57","slug":"the-puerile-artificial-demands-of-an-ignorant-herd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/24\/the-puerile-artificial-demands-of-an-ignorant-herd\/","title":{"rendered":"The Puerile & Artificial Demands of an Ignorant Herd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though I wouldn’t have gotten along with H.P. Lovecraft on a personal level—his feelings about racial purity and his fear of non-Aryan immigrants have creeped me out ever since I read the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft <\/a> in the ’70s—as I move deeper into the first volume of Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth<\/i><\/a>, I find more and more points on which we agree, at least as far as writing is concerned.<\/p>\n

Here he is on May 16, 1927, addressing the choices we all have to make to put food on our tables and keep roofs over our heads:<\/p>\n

An author really ought to be financially independent, so that he need neither cater to the commercial field in his writing, nor expend his time & energy on other pursuits. However, of the two evils, catering & outside work, the latter is by far the lesser evil. That at least does not impair the artistic sincerity of the small amount of writing one does<\/i> do. I have more respect for an honest plumber or truck-driver who writes to please himself in his spare time, than for a literary hack who extinguishes his own personality in a service acquiescence to the puerile & artificial demands of an ignorant herd.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We’re in agreement there. One reason I’ve always held day jobs was to prevent economic issues from influencing my artistic decisions.<\/p>\n

Lovecraft continues in a similar vein on May 22, 1927:<\/p>\n

The best policy for an author is to forget the fashion altogether & write what is in him.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So far, so good. <\/p>\n

We part company, however, on October 14, 1927, when Lovecraft advises Derleth not to be worried about a fallow period:<\/p>\n

The best way to produce fine work is not to give a hang whether you write or not. Then, spontaneously, you will occasionally sit down & reel off something of poignant merit—because it will represent the natural crystallisation of a store of authentic images which actually demanded expression.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m afraid I can’t approach my writing as lackadaisically as that. I have to keep the gears of my writing machine oiled by plugging away every day, so that when the great idea occurs, I’m not rusty. If I wait for inspiration to hit, I won’t be up to its challenges when it occurs.<\/p>\n

Continuing kudos to editors David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi for assembling this collection. Order your own copy today!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though I wouldn’t have gotten along with H.P. Lovecraft on a personal level—his feelings about racial purity and his fear of non-Aryan immigrants have creeped me out ever since I read the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft in the ’70s—as I move deeper into the first volume of Essential Solitude: The Letters of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[118],"class_list":["post-16759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-h-p-lovecraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16759"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16762,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759\/revisions\/16762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}