Ask the Author: Matt Ruff
Answered Questions (39)
Matt Ruff
In one of my previous answers, I talked about how it’s natural for readers to feel as though they’ve formed a personal relationship with an author whose work speaks to them. I think a similar phenomenon applies to the works themselves. When someone has reread a favorite novel multiple times, it can come to seem as if it’s *their* story—so it’s no surprise, really, if they get possessive about it. And it’s not just film adaptations that readers sometimes have problems with. They can even turn on the actual author, if a sequel or a series goes in a direction they don’t like. (“How dare you kill off so-and-so!”)
Fortunately for my own sanity, I don’t seem especially prone to this sort of possessiveness, even with regards to my own writing. I expect TV and film adaptations to differ from the source material, and am usually pretty good at judging them on their own merits. In the case of Lovecraft Country, it helps that I think the HBO series is incredibly well done, but even if it weren’t, I think I’d be OK with it—my own version of the story still exists, and always will.
Fortunately for my own sanity, I don’t seem especially prone to this sort of possessiveness, even with regards to my own writing. I expect TV and film adaptations to differ from the source material, and am usually pretty good at judging them on their own merits. In the case of Lovecraft Country, it helps that I think the HBO series is incredibly well done, but even if it weren’t, I think I’d be OK with it—my own version of the story still exists, and always will.
Matt Ruff
I did a lot of historical research, and research into the types of laws and restrictions that African Americans living in the Jim Crow era would have had to deal with. I also read a year’s worth of back issues of the Chicago Defender to get a sense of what news and cultural issues black Chicagoans would have been talking and thinking about in 1954.
If you go to the Lovecraft Country reader’s guide on my website, you can click on the “For further reading” link and it’ll take you to a list of some of my more useful research sources:
http://www.bymattruff.com/lovecraft-c...
I’d particularly recommend James W. Loewen’s book Sundown Towns. Stetson Kennedy’s Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A. is also fascinating to page through: It offers a state-by-state breakdown of Jim Crow era laws covering everything from housing to employment to voting to interracial marriage.
If you go to the Lovecraft Country reader’s guide on my website, you can click on the “For further reading” link and it’ll take you to a list of some of my more useful research sources:
http://www.bymattruff.com/lovecraft-c...
I’d particularly recommend James W. Loewen’s book Sundown Towns. Stetson Kennedy’s Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A. is also fascinating to page through: It offers a state-by-state breakdown of Jim Crow era laws covering everything from housing to employment to voting to interracial marriage.
Matt Ruff
Yes, I am a big time horror fan. I like a wide variety of creepy subgenres and will try almost anything, but my favorite go-to scenario involves a group of people in an isolated location being menaced and picked off one by one (some recent film favorites include The Ritual, The Void, R-Point/Ghosts of War, and the Netflix miniseries Ghoul). Something about the combination of external threat and internal group dynamics under stress just really works for me.
Regarding your theory: I get where you’re coming from, and I’ve heard other people express similar ideas about the potential of horror, but to me it just seems a bit too limiting. To begin with, I feel that what a piece of fiction does has much more to do with the author’s intention than with the particular genre it happens to be classified as. And as for challenging/furthering norms, I don’t think that’s necessarily an either/or choice – the same piece of fiction can do both, and a lot more besides.
For example, with Lovecraft Country, you could certainly say that it challenges the norm of having a white protagonist in a certain type of genre story. But at the same time, it takes a very traditional view of the importance of family and community, and of how a moral universe should work (good people prosper or at least survive to fight another day; bad people get punished). And while the horror elements in the novel often do carry a subtext of social commentary or criticism, I didn’t choose to write a horror novel simply for the subtext, I chose horror because I like scary stories for their own sake. Haunted houses are cool. Dolls that come to life and chase you through a lonely park at night are really cool – even if no norms are challenged in the process.
Regarding your theory: I get where you’re coming from, and I’ve heard other people express similar ideas about the potential of horror, but to me it just seems a bit too limiting. To begin with, I feel that what a piece of fiction does has much more to do with the author’s intention than with the particular genre it happens to be classified as. And as for challenging/furthering norms, I don’t think that’s necessarily an either/or choice – the same piece of fiction can do both, and a lot more besides.
For example, with Lovecraft Country, you could certainly say that it challenges the norm of having a white protagonist in a certain type of genre story. But at the same time, it takes a very traditional view of the importance of family and community, and of how a moral universe should work (good people prosper or at least survive to fight another day; bad people get punished). And while the horror elements in the novel often do carry a subtext of social commentary or criticism, I didn’t choose to write a horror novel simply for the subtext, I chose horror because I like scary stories for their own sake. Haunted houses are cool. Dolls that come to life and chase you through a lonely park at night are really cool – even if no norms are challenged in the process.
Matt Ruff
I haven’t read Burroughs’ Mars series in years, so I may be missing some details here, but my basic take on John Carter is that he doesn’t really add up psychologically. He describes himself as an ageless man out of time: “I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty.” This is intriguing but it rules out the most common reason someone would choose to fight for the Confederacy: because they were born and indoctrinated into the culture.
Carter must had some other reason for defending slavery, but I don’t know what it would be. He likes fighting but hates cruelty, especially when it’s directed against the weak or helpless. At the start of Princess, he charges into an Apache encampment on his own to save a friend from being tortured, even though he knows the guy is almost surely dead already. Later, when one of the green Martians holding them captive backhands Dejah Thoris, he leaps to his feet and kills the guy without a thought for his own safety. (Fortunately, the other green Martians are impressed rather than angry.) He’s a fast learner—he picks up the Martian language in no time—and while he’s not above making sweeping generalizations about races of people, he’s perceptive enough to notice when individuals don’t fit the stereotype.
If I take all this at face value, I’d expect this guy to last about ten minutes in the South. He’d see an overseer abusing a slave, leap to the slave’s defense, and then—because he’s not superman on Earth—the other whites would kill him. The reason this doesn’t happen, of course, is that John Carter is saddled with the unexamined prejudices of his creator. Burroughs, who traced his ancestry to colonial Virginia, no doubt had a romanticized view of the Confederacy, and so Carter has it too—even though, realistically, he shouldn’t.
As for how I’d rewrite this, the simplest answer would be to have him switch sides: Make Carter a Union officer instead. That’s the revised version that would probably be closest in tone and spirit to the original Princess of Mars.
Another, maybe more interesting possibility would be to strip Carter of his ageless quality and make him a true son of the South, born and raised in slave-holding Virginia, who fights for the Confederacy because he believes in it. The big question here would be, do you give him a redemption arc, where he regrets his past and tries to make up for it on Mars? I gather you’d vote yes on this, but I’d be tempted to say no and make Carter a Lost Causer, the kind of Southerner whose only regret was that Lee surrendered. I’d drop him into the middle of another civil war on Mars, and have him see that as a chance to get things “right” this time—with disastrous consequences. That’d be a really interesting book to write—to create an honest portrait of what a diehard Confederate supporter was like—but I’m not sure who would want to read it.
Then there’s the wild-card option, which involves flipping the chase sequence that starts off the whole series. Instead of having John Carter get attacked by a band of angry Apaches, you could have an Apache brave, minding his own business, who gets attacked by a band of angry white prospectors. The brave takes shelter in a cave and ends being teleported to Mars... To do this right, the protagonist would need to be a real person, not just a Native American caricature, so it would involve an awful lot of research, but there are plenty of interesting places you could take the story.
Carter must had some other reason for defending slavery, but I don’t know what it would be. He likes fighting but hates cruelty, especially when it’s directed against the weak or helpless. At the start of Princess, he charges into an Apache encampment on his own to save a friend from being tortured, even though he knows the guy is almost surely dead already. Later, when one of the green Martians holding them captive backhands Dejah Thoris, he leaps to his feet and kills the guy without a thought for his own safety. (Fortunately, the other green Martians are impressed rather than angry.) He’s a fast learner—he picks up the Martian language in no time—and while he’s not above making sweeping generalizations about races of people, he’s perceptive enough to notice when individuals don’t fit the stereotype.
If I take all this at face value, I’d expect this guy to last about ten minutes in the South. He’d see an overseer abusing a slave, leap to the slave’s defense, and then—because he’s not superman on Earth—the other whites would kill him. The reason this doesn’t happen, of course, is that John Carter is saddled with the unexamined prejudices of his creator. Burroughs, who traced his ancestry to colonial Virginia, no doubt had a romanticized view of the Confederacy, and so Carter has it too—even though, realistically, he shouldn’t.
As for how I’d rewrite this, the simplest answer would be to have him switch sides: Make Carter a Union officer instead. That’s the revised version that would probably be closest in tone and spirit to the original Princess of Mars.
Another, maybe more interesting possibility would be to strip Carter of his ageless quality and make him a true son of the South, born and raised in slave-holding Virginia, who fights for the Confederacy because he believes in it. The big question here would be, do you give him a redemption arc, where he regrets his past and tries to make up for it on Mars? I gather you’d vote yes on this, but I’d be tempted to say no and make Carter a Lost Causer, the kind of Southerner whose only regret was that Lee surrendered. I’d drop him into the middle of another civil war on Mars, and have him see that as a chance to get things “right” this time—with disastrous consequences. That’d be a really interesting book to write—to create an honest portrait of what a diehard Confederate supporter was like—but I’m not sure who would want to read it.
Then there’s the wild-card option, which involves flipping the chase sequence that starts off the whole series. Instead of having John Carter get attacked by a band of angry Apaches, you could have an Apache brave, minding his own business, who gets attacked by a band of angry white prospectors. The brave takes shelter in a cave and ends being teleported to Mars... To do this right, the protagonist would need to be a real person, not just a Native American caricature, so it would involve an awful lot of research, but there are plenty of interesting places you could take the story.
Matt Ruff
Yes, there are a number of good white people mentioned in the novel, but none of them are folks I would be eager to trade places with.
The most obvious is David Landsdowne, the white lawyer Atticus and Montrose meet in “The Narrow House” chapter. He is based on a real person, David Lansden, a white lawyer in Cairo, Illinois who worked with the NAACP on various civil rights cases and became a pariah as a result. Garbage was dumped on his lawn and rocks were thrown through his windows, and his next-door neighbor really did put up a sign – a flashing neon arrow – so that vandals would know which house to target. When Langston Hughes stopped in Cairo to pay Lansden a visit, Lansden came running outside holding a baseball bat – he’d learned the hard way that when a car he didn’t recognize stopped in front of his house, it meant trouble. I don’t know what ultimately became of Lansden, but if he remained in Cairo, it’s entirely possible he spent the rest of his life with a bullseye on his chest.
The second example is Lucius Berry, the white man who freed George’s ancestors. After the other white Berrys died in a cholera epidemic, he not only freed his slaves, but sold off the rest of his inheritance to provide them with land and a new start. While there are historical examples of slave owners doing this, they are understandably rare – simply freeing your slaves was a huge financial sacrifice, and the idea of paying them restitution would have struck most people raised in a slave-holding community as insane. Not only would you end up poor, but you’d alienate yourself from your white neighbors and possibly become a target.
The third example is Lydia, the former owner of the Simmonsville Dinette. Although the novel doesn’t explicitly say this, I always assumed she was a white woman, because a black woman would never have been allowed to open a diner in Simmonsville in the first place. Likewise, I never decided exactly what happened to her, but the best case is that she fled town after her diner was set on fire. Worst case, she’s buried somewhere out in the fields.
The point I’m trying to underscore here is that sticking your neck out to oppose racism – or any other system of oppression – is dangerous, costly, and sometimes deadly, which is why most people don’t do it. Of course, most people don’t join the Klan, either, and it may seem unfair that Lovecraft Country puts so much attention on the kind of people who do. But the reason for that is not that I want to trash white folks. It’s that I’m writing from the perspective of black protagonists.
If you’re black in a racially segregated society, you’ll naturally tend to focus on two types of white people: those who are actively threatening you, and those who are willing to put themselves at risk to help you. White people who are “nice” in the more conventional sense, but who don’t do anything to meaningfully challenge the status quo, just aren’t going to matter that much to you. And you’re not going to go out of your way to try to make them feel good about themselves, because your praise is reserved, quite reasonably, for the David Lansdens of the world.
The most obvious is David Landsdowne, the white lawyer Atticus and Montrose meet in “The Narrow House” chapter. He is based on a real person, David Lansden, a white lawyer in Cairo, Illinois who worked with the NAACP on various civil rights cases and became a pariah as a result. Garbage was dumped on his lawn and rocks were thrown through his windows, and his next-door neighbor really did put up a sign – a flashing neon arrow – so that vandals would know which house to target. When Langston Hughes stopped in Cairo to pay Lansden a visit, Lansden came running outside holding a baseball bat – he’d learned the hard way that when a car he didn’t recognize stopped in front of his house, it meant trouble. I don’t know what ultimately became of Lansden, but if he remained in Cairo, it’s entirely possible he spent the rest of his life with a bullseye on his chest.
The second example is Lucius Berry, the white man who freed George’s ancestors. After the other white Berrys died in a cholera epidemic, he not only freed his slaves, but sold off the rest of his inheritance to provide them with land and a new start. While there are historical examples of slave owners doing this, they are understandably rare – simply freeing your slaves was a huge financial sacrifice, and the idea of paying them restitution would have struck most people raised in a slave-holding community as insane. Not only would you end up poor, but you’d alienate yourself from your white neighbors and possibly become a target.
The third example is Lydia, the former owner of the Simmonsville Dinette. Although the novel doesn’t explicitly say this, I always assumed she was a white woman, because a black woman would never have been allowed to open a diner in Simmonsville in the first place. Likewise, I never decided exactly what happened to her, but the best case is that she fled town after her diner was set on fire. Worst case, she’s buried somewhere out in the fields.
The point I’m trying to underscore here is that sticking your neck out to oppose racism – or any other system of oppression – is dangerous, costly, and sometimes deadly, which is why most people don’t do it. Of course, most people don’t join the Klan, either, and it may seem unfair that Lovecraft Country puts so much attention on the kind of people who do. But the reason for that is not that I want to trash white folks. It’s that I’m writing from the perspective of black protagonists.
If you’re black in a racially segregated society, you’ll naturally tend to focus on two types of white people: those who are actively threatening you, and those who are willing to put themselves at risk to help you. White people who are “nice” in the more conventional sense, but who don’t do anything to meaningfully challenge the status quo, just aren’t going to matter that much to you. And you’re not going to go out of your way to try to make them feel good about themselves, because your praise is reserved, quite reasonably, for the David Lansdens of the world.
Matt Ruff
I just wrote a blog post about “what to read after you’ve read Lovecraft Country” that goes into some detail on this subject:
http://www.bymattruff.com/2020/09/20/...
The short version is that I think The Mirage is the closest match in terms of both style and content, followed (in different ways) by 88 Names and Set This House in Order, while Bad Monkeys, SG&E, and Fool on the Hill are farther out on the Matt Ruff spectrum.
http://www.bymattruff.com/2020/09/20/...
The short version is that I think The Mirage is the closest match in terms of both style and content, followed (in different ways) by 88 Names and Set This House in Order, while Bad Monkeys, SG&E, and Fool on the Hill are farther out on the Matt Ruff spectrum.
Matt Ruff
I should start by saying that I have a high tolerance for violence in fiction. I love a good bloody fight, and will laugh out loud at the sort of over-the-top brutality you often see in genre stories, because I know it’s make-believe. When it comes to historical dramas, I’m a bit more particular – while I think it’s important to tell the truth about what, for example, slaves went through, I don’t enjoy watching helpless people get abused and degraded for the length of an entire movie. I tend to prefer stories that focus on the way people cope with dire circumstances rather than emphasizing their suffering.
Lovecraft Country is, very deliberately, a hybrid work. I try to be realistic about the violence – and the threat of violence – that black people in America have historically had to deal with, but I also use the more fantastic genre violence for cathartic purposes. So the firemen who chase Atticus, George, and Letitia out of town at gunpoint end up magically wrecked at the roadside; racist lawmen who in real life would go unpunished get eaten by a monster; and the white boys who break into the Winthrop House face the wrath of a ghost. This blend of reality and fantasy works for me, though I understand it won't be to everyone’s taste.
The TV show leans even more heavily into this strategy. The bad-guy body count is higher, and the “punishments” tend to be more graphic. In the novel, for instance, the boys who break into the Winthrop House all survive, though they’ll have nightmares forever; the TV show kills them and stashes their corpses in the sub-basement. Again, I’m fine with this, but your mileage may vary.
Lovecraft Country is, very deliberately, a hybrid work. I try to be realistic about the violence – and the threat of violence – that black people in America have historically had to deal with, but I also use the more fantastic genre violence for cathartic purposes. So the firemen who chase Atticus, George, and Letitia out of town at gunpoint end up magically wrecked at the roadside; racist lawmen who in real life would go unpunished get eaten by a monster; and the white boys who break into the Winthrop House face the wrath of a ghost. This blend of reality and fantasy works for me, though I understand it won't be to everyone’s taste.
The TV show leans even more heavily into this strategy. The bad-guy body count is higher, and the “punishments” tend to be more graphic. In the novel, for instance, the boys who break into the Winthrop House all survive, though they’ll have nightmares forever; the TV show kills them and stashes their corpses in the sub-basement. Again, I’m fine with this, but your mileage may vary.
Matt Ruff
I honestly don’t think this way. I remain very happy with my novel, and don’t feel like there was anything missing from it or anything that required improvement. Misha’s version of the story is its own thing, and I see it as complementary to my version rather than being in competition with it.
What fascinates me most about the TV show is the translation of the story to a visual medium. There are things you can do in a novel that just wouldn’t work on screen, so you have to come up with different ways to communicate the same information. I suppose if there is one thing I’m jealous of, it’s the ability of TV and film to convey in a single image what would take paragraphs of description in a novel.
What fascinates me most about the TV show is the translation of the story to a visual medium. There are things you can do in a novel that just wouldn’t work on screen, so you have to come up with different ways to communicate the same information. I suppose if there is one thing I’m jealous of, it’s the ability of TV and film to convey in a single image what would take paragraphs of description in a novel.
Matt Ruff
Sewer, Gas & Electric actually was adapted – as a German-language radio play – by the public broadcasting company Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln. This was back in the year 2000. Since I don’t speak German, I can’t judge how good or faithful an adaptation it was – nor do I know whether there’s any way to listen to it now – but I think it’s very cool that it existed.
More recently, but still a few years ago, I did have a conversation with a TV producer who was interested in adapting Sewer, Gas as a limited series. Nothing further came of that, but in the wake of the Lovecraft Country series, who knows? It could still happen.
More recently, but still a few years ago, I did have a conversation with a TV producer who was interested in adapting Sewer, Gas as a limited series. Nothing further came of that, but in the wake of the Lovecraft Country series, who knows? It could still happen.
Matt Ruff
I see each book as taking place in its own separate reality.
I get the appeal of having an author’s entire body of work share the same fictional universe, but unless you plan it out very carefully, I think you’re bound to run into continuity problems or conflicts in tone. I’d have a hard time reconciling the goofy sci-fi future of Sewer, Gas & Electric with the more sober storytelling in Set This House in Order, and the thought of Lovecraft Country’s Order of the Ancient Dawn butting heads with the Troop from Bad Monkeys makes my eyes cross. Usually I’m a fan of culture clashes, but in this case, it’d feel too much like a gimmick. Better to leave each novel in its own world.
I get the appeal of having an author’s entire body of work share the same fictional universe, but unless you plan it out very carefully, I think you’re bound to run into continuity problems or conflicts in tone. I’d have a hard time reconciling the goofy sci-fi future of Sewer, Gas & Electric with the more sober storytelling in Set This House in Order, and the thought of Lovecraft Country’s Order of the Ancient Dawn butting heads with the Troop from Bad Monkeys makes my eyes cross. Usually I’m a fan of culture clashes, but in this case, it’d feel too much like a gimmick. Better to leave each novel in its own world.
Matt Ruff
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)
Matt Ruff
I didn’t write any of the screenplays for the show. If I had, I think I’d have felt completely out of my depth, because I have no experience in TV writing. And adapting my own work would have added an additional level of difficulty, because I’m so used to thinking of Lovecraft Country in terms of the conventions of print, whereas the visual medium of TV and film is a different creative dialect. If I ever were going to try to write a screenplay, I think I’d want to do a completely original story.
With Lovecraft Country, I was happy to hand the story off to Misha Green and her writers room. I trusted them to do a great job with it, and I feel like that trust has been rewarded. And while I know it’s hard for some novelists to let go creatively, my personal take is that my version of Lovecraft Country already exists and will always be there, safe on my bookshelf, regardless of where the HBO series goes.
With Lovecraft Country, I was happy to hand the story off to Misha Green and her writers room. I trusted them to do a great job with it, and I feel like that trust has been rewarded. And while I know it’s hard for some novelists to let go creatively, my personal take is that my version of Lovecraft Country already exists and will always be there, safe on my bookshelf, regardless of where the HBO series goes.
Matt Ruff
Realistically, I didn’t think I’d have a choice – the odds against getting a TV show made at all are so great, I’d have been grateful to any network willing to take the story on.
But if you’re asking, what would my dream choice have been, then yes, I’d have picked HBO. They’re the gold standard of “prestige” cable networks, with lots of acclaimed shows (including many I personally love). They’re not afraid to take risks on potentially controversial material. They’ve got access to a lot of talent: Michael K. Williams has said in interviews that he thinks of himself as part of the HBO family, and his previous appearances on The Wire and Boardwalk Empire are part of the reason he ended up playing Montrose (another dream choice that I still can’t believe came true). And finally, HBO has deep pockets: I don’t know the details of Lovecraft Country’s budget, but I’m guessing that it’s bigger than it would be if the show were on any other network.
And yes, I do think the show has broad appeal, though it’s obviously not for everybody. Until I saw all the tweets from people afraid to watch the show after dark, I hadn’t realized what a big sticking point traditional horror is for some folks.
But if you’re asking, what would my dream choice have been, then yes, I’d have picked HBO. They’re the gold standard of “prestige” cable networks, with lots of acclaimed shows (including many I personally love). They’re not afraid to take risks on potentially controversial material. They’ve got access to a lot of talent: Michael K. Williams has said in interviews that he thinks of himself as part of the HBO family, and his previous appearances on The Wire and Boardwalk Empire are part of the reason he ended up playing Montrose (another dream choice that I still can’t believe came true). And finally, HBO has deep pockets: I don’t know the details of Lovecraft Country’s budget, but I’m guessing that it’s bigger than it would be if the show were on any other network.
And yes, I do think the show has broad appeal, though it’s obviously not for everybody. Until I saw all the tweets from people afraid to watch the show after dark, I hadn’t realized what a big sticking point traditional horror is for some folks.
Matt Ruff
My novel Bad Monkeys is currently under option to Universal Studios, with Margot Robbie attached to star. The project is still officially “in development” – not yet in production – and of course the COVID pandemic has completely disrupted the film industry in Hollywood, but I’m optimistic that we will eventually see the movie.
As for Set This House in Order, it has been optioned by composer Nico Muhly for development as an *opera.* COVID has been even more disruptive to the live music business, but the idea of a Matt Ruff-inspired opera is so cool that I am happy to be patient.
None of my other novels is currently under option, but if I were placing bets, I’d say that Fool on the Hill will almost certainly become a film at some point – the only question is whether I’ll still be around to see it. My most recent novel, 88 Names, is very filmable, and would work as either a movie or a TV series – or both. The novel I’d most like to see adapted is The Mirage – its subject matter is less radioactive now than when it was published, and I’d guess that it’s the book most likely to benefit from Lovecraft Country’s success. Sewer, Gas & Electric is kind of the odd man out here – although it already has been adapted once, as a German radio play, it’s probably my most difficult book to imagine as a movie or TV series. But “difficult” doesn’t mean impossible, and a director smart enough to figure out how to do it would likely produce something very interesting.
As for Set This House in Order, it has been optioned by composer Nico Muhly for development as an *opera.* COVID has been even more disruptive to the live music business, but the idea of a Matt Ruff-inspired opera is so cool that I am happy to be patient.
None of my other novels is currently under option, but if I were placing bets, I’d say that Fool on the Hill will almost certainly become a film at some point – the only question is whether I’ll still be around to see it. My most recent novel, 88 Names, is very filmable, and would work as either a movie or a TV series – or both. The novel I’d most like to see adapted is The Mirage – its subject matter is less radioactive now than when it was published, and I’d guess that it’s the book most likely to benefit from Lovecraft Country’s success. Sewer, Gas & Electric is kind of the odd man out here – although it already has been adapted once, as a German radio play, it’s probably my most difficult book to imagine as a movie or TV series. But “difficult” doesn’t mean impossible, and a director smart enough to figure out how to do it would likely produce something very interesting.
Matt Ruff
Artists are human beings, and human beings have flaws – sometimes serious ones. I might feel disappointed to learn something awful about a person whose work I admire, but I don’t usually struggle with it, because I don’t see any contradiction in a talented person being wicked or a wicked person being talented, and I don’t think there’s anything inherently immoral about appreciating a work of art created by a bad person. The only case where this would become a significant issue for me is if I were contemplating a friendship or a business relationship with such a person.
Part of what makes this tricky is that when a piece of art moves you, it’s natural to feel as if you *have* entered into a personal relationship with the artist. Shirley Jackson died before I was born, but after so many hours spent reading and rereading her books, she seems like an old friend, the kind of friend you sit up all night talking with. And if you discover that someone you think of in this way has some grievous flaw or has committed a terrible crime, it’s natural to feel betrayed and perhaps even implicated: “Oh my God, what does it say about me that I was friends with this person?” Well, you *weren’t* friends with them; you fantasized a friendship. The struggle here isn’t between art and artist, but between fantasy and reality. My solution for this is to try to stay clear-eyed about the fact that any feelings of intimacy I have towards a stranger are an illusion – a pleasant illusion, but one that shouldn’t be leaned on too heavily.
In Lovecraft’s case, it’s not hard for me to stay clear-eyed. By the time I was mature enough to appreciate his fiction, his racism was also readily apparent to me. Bigotry in fiction isn’t, of itself, a deal-breaker for me; my reaction to it on the page isn’t so much “This is evil” as “This is stupid and boring,” and so the question becomes, is there enough other stuff in the story that’s clever and interesting to be worth putting up with the nonsense. With Lovecraft, the answer – for me – is usually yes. And because I’m also fascinated by the psychology of storytelling – why artists make the choices that they do – knowing what Lovecraft was like in real life, flaws and all, actually enhances the reading experience for me, rather than detracting from it.
Part of what makes this tricky is that when a piece of art moves you, it’s natural to feel as if you *have* entered into a personal relationship with the artist. Shirley Jackson died before I was born, but after so many hours spent reading and rereading her books, she seems like an old friend, the kind of friend you sit up all night talking with. And if you discover that someone you think of in this way has some grievous flaw or has committed a terrible crime, it’s natural to feel betrayed and perhaps even implicated: “Oh my God, what does it say about me that I was friends with this person?” Well, you *weren’t* friends with them; you fantasized a friendship. The struggle here isn’t between art and artist, but between fantasy and reality. My solution for this is to try to stay clear-eyed about the fact that any feelings of intimacy I have towards a stranger are an illusion – a pleasant illusion, but one that shouldn’t be leaned on too heavily.
In Lovecraft’s case, it’s not hard for me to stay clear-eyed. By the time I was mature enough to appreciate his fiction, his racism was also readily apparent to me. Bigotry in fiction isn’t, of itself, a deal-breaker for me; my reaction to it on the page isn’t so much “This is evil” as “This is stupid and boring,” and so the question becomes, is there enough other stuff in the story that’s clever and interesting to be worth putting up with the nonsense. With Lovecraft, the answer – for me – is usually yes. And because I’m also fascinated by the psychology of storytelling – why artists make the choices that they do – knowing what Lovecraft was like in real life, flaws and all, actually enhances the reading experience for me, rather than detracting from it.
Matt Ruff
While I am considering the possibility of a Lovecraft Country sequel (see previous question), I don’t currently have any interest in writing sequels to any of my other novels, and I doubt that will change. I understand the desire to go back and revisit old imaginary friends and see what they are up to now, but in general I feel that good sequels require a better justification than nostalgia. In the case of Fool on the Hill, there’s also the fact that at age 54, I’m a very different person than I was when I was in college, and an attempt to recreate the youthful spirit that animated that novel and made it so special to people would probably end in disappointment. Better to leave it be.
Matt Ruff
I’m generally not a sequel guy, but Lovecraft Country may prove to be an exception. The story remains very much alive in my imagination, and I feel like I have more to say with these characters. My main hesitation is that if I did open up the story again, I’d have a *lot* more to say – it wouldn’t be just one more book, in other words, but two or even three. Given how slowly I write, that’s a big commitment.
That being said, I’ve been responding to this question in this exact same way for the past couple years, and the fact that I’m still entertaining the possibility of a sequel tells me that I need to at least take a run at it, and either get the idea out of my system or commit wholeheartedly to it. So stay tuned, and hopefully in the not-too-distant future I’ll have a more definitive answer.
That being said, I’ve been responding to this question in this exact same way for the past couple years, and the fact that I’m still entertaining the possibility of a sequel tells me that I need to at least take a run at it, and either get the idea out of my system or commit wholeheartedly to it. So stay tuned, and hopefully in the not-too-distant future I’ll have a more definitive answer.
Matt Ruff
I did read a lot of fiction series as a kid, but the ones I recall most fondly were single-author collections focused on a recurring group of characters, and those were usually detective/boy’s adventure type stuff: The Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, The Three Investigators, the Alvin Fernald books, and my favorite series of all time, The Mad Scientists’ Club by Bertrand R. Brinley. I read and enjoyed horror anthologies as well, but because the quality of the stories varied so widely, I’d typically remember the handful of tales that I liked while forgetting the name of the book I read them in (if the cover art was especially gruesome, I might remember that too, which could be useful when I wanted to go back and find a particular story again).
My favorite source of horror as a kid was “non-fiction” collections of stories about hauntings and other paranormal occurrences. Here, the quality of the writing didn’t matter – the fun came from imagining that the Bermuda Triangle, Gef the Talking Mongoose, the Moving Coffins of Barbados, et. al. were *real,* and if you had the guts to visit the haunted house in Amityville or go camping in Bigfoot’s woods, you might actually see something. Even now that I’m old and skeptical, I still love reading those types of stories and playing the “what if” game.
My favorite source of horror as a kid was “non-fiction” collections of stories about hauntings and other paranormal occurrences. Here, the quality of the writing didn’t matter – the fun came from imagining that the Bermuda Triangle, Gef the Talking Mongoose, the Moving Coffins of Barbados, et. al. were *real,* and if you had the guts to visit the haunted house in Amityville or go camping in Bigfoot’s woods, you might actually see something. Even now that I’m old and skeptical, I still love reading those types of stories and playing the “what if” game.
Matt Ruff
No, I didn’t have anything to do with the Lovecraft Country audiobook. And as far as I know, the screenwriters were working from the print version of the novel.
Matt Ruff
I wasn’t involved in the script writing or the production of the series, and I’ve only seen the first few episodes, but so far I’m extremely happy with what Misha Green and the rest of the team have accomplished. The show seems faithful to the spirit of the novel, without getting hung up on the details – I think it’s great that they’re using the book as a framework and then building even more wild stuff onto it.
The idea of turning the novel into a two-hour movie never came up. I can’t imagine how that could work, unless you were just going to take the title of the book and graft on a new story. It was always a given that it would be a series, the only question was how many episodes.
The idea of turning the novel into a two-hour movie never came up. I can’t imagine how that could work, unless you were just going to take the title of the book and graft on a new story. It was always a given that it would be a series, the only question was how many episodes.
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