Lovecraft Baby

H.P. Lovecraft is a difficult author to write about right now for a variety of reasons.  For one, his work was relatively obscure for quite some years outside of pulp circles and he has only recently garnered major critical attention.  But this attention has brought other, less savory elements to light, leading to number two: his work is incredibly racist and xenophobic.  This isn't the focal point of the majority of it, but it is an undercurrent through most of his works (https://lithub.com/we-cant-ignore-h-p-lovecrafts-white-supremacy/ is a great take on this particular topic).  Third, and not insignificantly, he was not a great writer.  He was imaginative, certainly, but he had a lot of difficulties getting his visions onto the page.  His writing is so heavy and repetitive that it is nearly impenetrable at times.
I am not interested in defending Lovecraft's legacy (or arguing against it for that matter), but I have two observations about his work that I think are significant.  One is a mainstay in his writing that, I think, is redeeming in his writing in some measure.  The other is something that makes me like his writing even less.  All of this came about during my latest reading of his work, a collection titled The Call of the Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories.
A lot of Lovecraft's stories are about isolation and trauma.  He writes many stories about a lone survivor who witnessed something that they are unable to assimilate into their normal frame of reference.  These witnesses are likely to have been present as violence was visited upon a friend or partner.  These witnesses often have difficulty reconciling their experiences with what they know of the world.  Knowledge of a certain kind sets them apart from others, and they often are distraught that others will now understand what they have experienced.  I actually find this element of Lovecraft's work to be sympathetic.  He understands the terror of isolation.  The trauma that his characters experience marks them in a way that we now understand trauma to mark certain people.
The other side of this is that knowledge is generally a bad thing for Lovecraft.  His characters go insane from their knowledge.  They kill themselves because they learn of things that others do not know and they make great attempts to hide knowledge themselves.  The whole mythos of Cthulhu rests upon the idea that knowledge of the the ancient alien race is enough to drive one insane.
One of the reasons that I like science fiction is that most of it wants to push the boundaries of what we know.  It can help us to look into ourselves to ask what is possible.  It can also look at the world around us and ask why it is this way.  Lovecraft isn't a sci-fi writer per se, but his weird fiction shares some elements with sci-fi that I came to it with some expectation of a similar ethos.  It wasn't there.  This collection of short fiction sought to teach me that the world around me was dangerous even to want to know about.  It tried to teach me that going to new places and exploring new ideas is dangerous.
I gave Lovecraft a few chances and I'm done.  He doesn't fill the bill for me because he wants to keep me fearful and small.  He can keep to his own small world with his likewise small-minded folks.  I want bigger ideas.
And better writing.

Here is a song by a band I really like about Lovecraft.  I do like this song (which is way creepier than anything Lovecraft wrote):
Lovecraft Baby