The Hardboiled Detective

I just finished reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. I’ve previously read his The Big Sleep, and several of his novelettes.

Way in the past, I read Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and a few of his Continental Op stories.

My opinion of hardboiled fiction is that I like it and want to read more. In fact, I like it so much I may decide to write some of my own.

There’s a lot of confusion between hardboiled and noir. Some people think the two are the same thing, but they are not. I actually see them as being something of opposites.

Noir is about victims and everyone loses in the end. It’s pretty nihilistic.

Hardboiled is about the detective hero, and in the end he wins. The victory may be small, but he still wins.

In a sense, Noir and Hardboiled are the two sides of existentialist philosophy. The one which says life has no meaning, no purpose, and it’s probably best if we just die. And the other, which says life is meaningless in and of itself, and we have to give it meaning. In other words, we find our own meaning and value in life and that’s what makes it meaningful to us.

Let’s look a little deeper at the characteristics of the hardboiled detective.

The hardboiled detective sub-genre was created by Carrol John Daly in the 1920s, and was refined by Dashiell Hammett. It was raised to the level of fine literature by Raymond Chandler, and given an unparalleled psychological depth by Ross Macdonald.

In the hardboiled world

      • the private investigator is the hero
      • he acts tough, talks tough, and often is tough
      • the PI is a loner
      • he has a code of honor and justice that is moral, if not strictly legal
      • no matter what, the PI won’t give up the case, or betray a client
      • individuals battle a corrupt political organization, or a criminal one — it’s the one agains the many
      • the PI prevails because he’s true to himself and his code
      • he’s a smart-aleck, and talks that way
      • he’s cynical about the world at large
      • even though the PI solved the case, the solution does little to alter the larger picture of political, societal, and human corruption
      • the PI wins a small victory, and that’s all he can hope for, but he was true to himself

I think the hardboiled worldview is very apropos for today. There is so much crap going on in the world that one can easily despair, or become insanely angry.

What the hardboiled detective teaches us is that the world ain’t gonna change — but we can rise a little bit above the dirt, the corruption, the wickedness by being true to ourselves, and by sticking to a standard of right and wrong no matter what.

The personal integrity of the individual honoring his word and sticking to his moral principles — no matter what’s going on around him — is, for me, a source of inspiration. Because, it means, no matter how hopeless things are or seem to be, in a small way I can make a difference.

What I do may not change the world, but it may help someone, it may bring peace of mind, or a bit of fairness to someone else’s life. And, realistically speaking, that is probably all we can ever hope for.

The hardboiled world is dark and grim, and slightly dystopian. It’s a world where the big forces crush the little people. And it’s a world where the PI keeps the hope of fairness, equity, and justice alive.

Every day we read of political corruption, corporate corruption, of society’s indifference, of people making money from destroying the environment, and from using other people.

The hardboiled PI shows us that we, as individuals, can keep the goodness that is in humanity alive.

And I like that.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

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Pierce Mostyn in The Medusa Ritual

Pierce Mostyn, that intrepid foe of the things that go bump in the night, last appeared in Van Dyne’s Vampires, published October of last year.

Next week he will appear in a new adventure, his fifth: The Medusa Ritual.

The germ of the idea for Mostyn’s latest adventure can be found in the Hazel Heald and Lovecraft collaboration “The Man of Stone”. Collaboration, though, is a generous term; for, according to ST Joshi, Heald seems to have contributed virtually no prose to the story — based on textual evidence.

Thus, Heald probably only provided a story idea for Lovecraft to run with. Which he did, and that story then provided me with the idea for The Medusa Ritual. So thank you Hazel for that original idea!

However, while “The Man of Stone” got the wheels turning for The Medusa Ritual, there is nothing of the earlier story in the later one other than people being turned to stone.

While Van Dyne’s Vampires focused on what is essentially a mad scientist and his monsters, in Mostyn’s new adventure we return to the world of cosmic horror. That world where the terror originates from the realization that in the big picture we are completely and totally insignificant. A realization that can easily drive us to despair, madness, or self-destruction.

Nietzsche’s answer to achieving this awareness and its accompanying despair, was for the person to become a creative individual. To become as a god, in other words, for gods create; and in creating, the individual can thereby bring meaning to his or her otherwise meaningless life.

Nietzsche’s answer was essentially an existential one. We are in command of our fate. Counter the meaninglessness of existence by creating your own meaning.

Lovecraft, on the other hand, retreated into antiquarianism, and racial and cultural identity. The old days are good. The old ways are known and comfortable. My own kind are known to me. The foreigner is unknown, a mystery, and therefore suspect.

In Lovecraft’s fiction we see his philosophy play out in his vision of our world having been invaded by alien monster beings who have no regard for us. In strange, swarthy, and dark foreigners who do the bidding of these monsters. And in the insignificance of us Westerners and our science in the face of these ancient beings and their magical rituals. HPL’s conclusion is that it’s best if we don’t know too much of what is really out there, or know any of it at all.

When I come away from reading Lovecraft, I have the feeling that ignorance is bliss. In being ignorant, I can live my life in the delusion that this is a world of meaning and purpose. That I have essential meaning and purpose.

In “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, the narrator comes face to face with the horror of the curtain being pulled aside to reveal what truly is. He has looked into the abyss. In the end, when he realizes that he too will eventually join those monstrous denizens of the deep, rather than end his life, he resigns himself to his fate. For Lovecraft, once we know the truth, we either surrender to it, or go mad, or destroy ourselves. There is no Nietzschian optimism in Lovecraft.

Pierce Mostyn, knowing the truth, doesn’t go mad or destroy himself, but he is weighed down by the understanding that in the end all of his actions are futile. He resorts to duty to keep on going. Much like the ancient Roman Stoics. Duty gives him purpose and meaning in what is an otherwise meaningless and chaotic universe.

Now all of the above is a heck of a lot of philosophy. But don’t worry. It’s all in the background. The Medusa Ritual is not a philosophical treatise. It’s a tale of cosmic horror with plenty of action, adventure, monsters, and daring do. Just what we want to read. Right?

And it will be available, Amazon willing, on July 29th for your reading pleasure.

Comments are always welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

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Nietzsche, Lovecraft, and Cosmic Horror

Nietzsche and Lovecraft. Supposedly both were nihilists. But were they? Let’s take a brief look at both, in the light of cosmic horror.

Cosmic Horror

What do we mean by cosmic horror? Cosmic horror is the horror subgenre that focuses on the fear we feel when we are confronted by phenomena that is beyond our ability to comprehend.

Lovecraft wrote that the only thing saving us from death or insanity was our inability to correlate all known facts into a cohesive and understandable whole.

Nietzsche wrote about being nauseated by the truth after peering into the abyss.

Cosmic horror chills us, at least good cosmic horror does, when the story forces us to come to grips with our insignificance in the universe. Cosmic horror is the abyss which nauseates us with the truth. Cosmic horror is the bringing together of knowledge that should drive us insane.

Lovecraft

HP Lovecraft was 10 years old when Friedrich Nietzsche died at the age of 55, and as far as we know he did not read Nietzsche.

Lovecraft was not a philosopher, per se. Although he did spend much time thinking about realities, science, and religion. Through his fiction he worked out a philosophy of sorts, which is embodied in his creation of cosmic horror as presented in his Cthulhu Mythos.

For Lovecraft, the species homo sapiens is not at the apex of anything. In a very real sense, human beings are merely a form of advanced simian on a tiny planet, orbiting a pretty insignificant star in one of many thousands of galaxies in the vast universe.

Compared to the cosmos we are nothing.

Lovecraft would undoubtedly have agreed with Silenus’s answer to Midas’s question. What is the best thing for humankind? To not to be born. And once born, the best for us is to die soon.

For Lovecraft, at least as seen in his fiction, there is no real hope for us. We are, as it were, going into battle armed with pea shooters, when our enemy has machine guns and rocket launchers.

We are hopelessly outclassed by the universe. And the universe will ultimately win. I think that is the message of “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.

I think Lovecraft was essentially a nihilist. Life is meaningless and we have no intrinsic purpose.

Nietzsche

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche lays the ground work of his philosophy, which all of his subsequent books build on and expand.

Nietzsche, by means of the myth of Midas and Silenus, posits the essential meaninglessness of the human species. He goes on to tell us that when we actually comprehend Silenus’s message, when we look into the abyss, have our dark night of the soul, we come away nauseated — nauseated because we’ve believed a lie and now know the truth.

However, he does not leave us in despair. He reminds us that we are creators and it is through art — our creativity — that we find meaning in life. We are our saviors. The god out there is dead. What is alive and well is the god within us. Or perhaps better stated, the god that we are — because gods are creators, and we are creators.

What we see in Nietzsche is proto-existentialism. Nietzsche was not a nihilist. His is not a philosophy of despair. It is a philosophy of hope and life for modern humans.

Conclusion

Cosmic horror would never have come from the pen of Friedrich Nietzsche. Because for him there was always hope.

The closest Lovecraft comes to a sense of hope is in the conclusion of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” where the narrator embraces his future as one of the monstrous denizens of the deep.

For Lovecraft, our only hope is to join that which will destroy us. And that is true horror.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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HP Lovecraft and Pierce Mostyn – Part 2

Cosmic, or Lovecraftian, Horror

Cosmic horror is largely, if not solely, the creation of HP Lovecraft. Of whom Stephen King said he “has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”

There are certain themes that differentiate Lovecraft’s brand of horror from other horror subgenres. Let’s take a look at some of the key themes.

Humans Are Insignificant

It’s a big universe out there. And we don’t know even a fraction of it.  As Lovecraft commented often (and I’m paraphrasing), we are an insignificant species on a fly speck. And if there are in fact multiverses, then that fly speck just became innumerable times smaller.

Philosophically, Lovecraft was basically a mechanistic materialist. We exist, but that doesn’t mean we’re more important than anything else. In fact, the universe is indifferent to us. We aren’t objectively special. For Lovecraft, we definitely weren’t made in God’s image. There’s no God, for starters. Rather, he was inspired by the atheistic Epicureans and the theory of evolution.

Therefore, in the typical cosmic horror story there is little focus on characterization. The main character is usually the story’s narrator. We get to know something of him, although sometimes he’s an unreliable narrator.

The focus of the story is on the gradual revelation of that which is hiding behind the narrator’s (and our) illusion of reality. That which is greater than us and views us as we view ants on the sidewalk.

The Great Old Ones, at least for Lovecraft, didn’t actually exist. They were literary devices to convey our position in the vastness of the universe and that the universe doesn’t give a fig about us.

The Heroes Are Loners

The hero of the cosmic horror tale has affinities with the punk hero. He is socially isolated, and therefore frequently a loner. Occasionally an outcast. He is often reclusive, and possesses a scholarly bent.

This puts the cosmic horror hero in the unique position of being able to peel back the veneer of what we think is reality to see the real reality behind it. Often at the expense of his sanity.

Pessimism, or Indifference

Lovecraft insisted later in life that his philosophy was not pessimistic, but rather led one to indifference. A fine line there. Basically, though, there is nothing in the universe that cares about us or values us. We humans are alone on a tiny speck of dust. We are dwarfed by the vastness of space. The very vastnesses of which Whitman sang so positively and eloquently about. For Lovecraft, there is nothing positive about them.

In this, Lovecraft was very much in line with the ancient Greek Epicurean philosophy. The universe was simply chaos. It provides us nothing. We must focus on ourselves and find pleasure and happiness in intellectual pursuits away from the madding crowd.

The Great Old Ones of Lovecraft’s invention aren’t so much malignant or malevolent as that they just don’t give a fig about us. We are inconsequential to them.

However, to us their indifference might seem to be malevolent or evil. But in reality, like us, they just are. They’re doing their thing. If we suffer as a result, well, do we care about the ants we step on?

Therefore the hero in the cosmic horror tale is often incapable of doing much to thwart the cosmic forces ranged against him. The best he can do is warn us of the truth that is out there.

The Veneer of Reality

We live in a dream state, as it were. Lovecraft was fascinated by dream worlds. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath he postulates a parallel world only attainable by means of dreams.

Because we are in a dream, as it were, what we see and think to be reality isn’t in fact reality at all. It’s Dorothy in Oz. Only we see a nice old man until Toto pulls back the curtain and reveals the monster at the controls.

The real reality is too horrible for us to comprehend. In our dream state we believe we have value — when in reality we have no value at all. We have no significance in the universe. And by extension nothing else has any significance either.

That is the true terror of cosmic horror: the revelation and realization that we are living a lie. It is the literary portrayal of the Nietzschian coming to awareness of who and what we really are.

That realization is also the basis for the “leap of faith” to find meaning for our existence. Epicurus sought meaning in intellectual pleasure. Nietzsche sought meaning in the pursuit of art; that is, creativity. The Existentialists made that leap to whatever might have meaning for them as individuals. And argued that we do the same.

Not unlike the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius’s statement that “life is opinion”. That is, life is what we think it is. Although, for the Roman emperor, the statement was more an affirmation of the contemporary saying, It’s all in your ‘tude. Because Stoicism is inherently a much more positive philosophy.

Fear Of The Other

We have an innate fear of that which is not like us. This goes back to the very beginnings of the human species when we existed in family units and tribes. Anything that was not us, was to be viewed with suspicion — if not outright fear.

Lovecraft is frequently criticized today for being xenophobic and racist. By today’s standards he was — but in his own era I’m not so sure he was any different than most of his peers. There is a danger in judging the past by other than it’s own standards.

Even today, Western views of what constitutes xenophobia and racism are not universally shared. Which means the question must be asked, what makes Western views any more valid than any other views? That, though, is another discussion.

One thing is for sure — the xenophobia and racism we see in Lovecraft’s stories feeds on our own innate and latent fear of those people and things that are different from us and of our fear of the unknown in general. They feed on our own tribal mentality. The primeval us-them dynamic. The dynamic that made us who we are today: too often judgmental, critical, and suspicious. We and our opinions are good. Everyone else and there opinions are bad.

Throughout most of our history as a species, the tribal mentality allowed us to survive. The problem being that as we developed civilization, many of those survival traits became a hindrance to our working together in a genteel environment. Hence the creation of religious moral codes and cultural mores and folkways to control those “undesirable” traits.

As Will Durant noted, “Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, as hatred becomes respectable in war. Brutality and greed where once necessary in the struggle for existence, and are now ridiculous atavisms; men’s sins are not the result of his fall; they are the relics of his rise.” Do note that every vice may become respectable again. Something to think about.

In Lovecraft’s worldview, the Other consists of all the impersonal cosmic forces that exist. In his fiction, he personified these impersonal forces as The Great Old Ones. Inter- or Other-dimensional beings who have moved into our territory.

Just as we give little thought to mosquitoes, or gnats, or ants, so The Great Old Ones give little, if any, thought to us. To repeat, they aren’t so much malevolent, as they are indifferent to our existence and survival. Just as we are indifferent to the survival of mosquitoes, gnats, or ants.

Lovecraft is simply positing that cosmically speaking — we aren’t necessarily at the top of the food chain. Something to think about as we venture into outer space. Which was cleverly addressed in The Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”.

In light of the above, the Pierce Mostyn adventures may not be pure examples of cosmic horror. But we’ll look at that next week.

Comments are always welcome! And until next week, happy reading!

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