100 Years of "The Outsider"

This year is the 100-year anniversary of the composition of "The Outsider" and the 95th anniversary year of its initial publication. H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was of course the author. He wrote "The Outsider" between March and August 1921. He completed his story during the same month in which he turned thirty-one years old. (1)

"The Outsider" was first published in Weird Tales in its issue of April 1926. It has been reprinted again and again in the years since. Some consider it to be Lovecraft's signature story. It headlined The Outsider and Others (1939), the first hardcover collection of Lovecraft's stories. The Outsider and Others was also the first book published by Arkham House of Sauk City, Wisconsin, a firm established specifically for publishing Lovecraft's works. 

There are themes of loneliness, alienation, strangeness, ugliness, and outsidedness in "The Outsider." From the story:

I know that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.

We have probably all felt this way in our lives; Lovecraft's story has great appeal because of that feeling, especially, I think, among teenagers and young adults. Alienation and feelings of outsidedness may in fact be symptomatic of the modern dilemma.

There have of course been other works of twentieth-century alienation. The first that comes to mind is The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942). Feelings of alienation and strangeness are fully human, though, and as old as time: it was Moses who first said, "I have been a  stranger in a strange land." The context and meaning of Moses' words might not be as we would see them today. Yet his statement remains, and it inspired a science fiction author of the twentieth century, Robert A. Heinlein, in the writing of his own novel about feeling as a stranger. (1a) Jim Morrison sang after him: "People are strange/when you're a stranger . . . ."

There is every kind and level of alienation, of feelings of strangeness and outsidedness, from the popular to the philosophical. Marx and Nietzsche also had something to say about alienation. So did Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, which may have been an influence upon Lovecraft in his writing of "The Outsider." I wonder, though: is "The Outsider" a Kaspar Hauser-like story? (2) Maybe in general "The Outsider" has its roots in the nineteenth century, and the story of Kaspar Hauser has a significance that we underestimate. Edgar Allan Poe, perhaps the most powerful influence upon Lovecraft's writing of "The Outsider," was born in the first decade of that century, Lovecraft in the last. So, yes, the roots of the story are literally in the century previous to its composition.

There has been a lot of cancellation in recent years. Margaret Atwood and J.K. Rowling are two in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction who have recently been on the receiving end of efforts at cancellation. They're probably both too big to be cancelled, but then we would have thought the same thing about Beethoven and other Classical composers and Classical music not very long ago. Look what we have now. (3) Powerful people--people who fancy themselves as powerless, as among the oppressed, as victims because believing themselves to be on the lowest rung of the ladder actually places them on the highest--seek to silence outsiders, to silence anyone who disagrees with them, especially to silence women who speak out against their depraved ideologies.

There have been efforts at cancelling H.P. Lovecraft, too, but these seem only halfhearted to me. I have a possible explanation for this: despite any of his perceived offenses, Lovecraft has too much to offer those among us who feel alienated, strange, or on the outside of things; also to materialists, the godless, and unbelievers; to people who hate God because they believe he has failed them; to people who feel that we are mere specks in a great and indifferent Cosmos, that there are great and hostile forces afoot in the universe that would destroy us, that ultimately we ought to be destroyed because we are so loathsome and contemptible. Lovecraft's mother called him ugly. In alienation there is often a sense of self-hatred. A child who is called ugly or stupid or whatever by his mother may also be filled with self-hatred. Those who hate themselves learn to hate humanity, too. They turn their hatred outward because hatred of the self is such an unbearable thing. They often fantasize about destroying humanity. Sometimes they do it, or as much of humanity as they can, like a German pilot flying an airplaneful of people into a mountainside, or an Austrian-German totalitarian monster doing the same thing with his whole nation. Often these men (and women) destroy themselves. You can make a case that Lovecraft destroyed himself, by depriving himself of sustenance. His father should have sustained him. Instead he abandoned his son. His mother should have sustained him. Instead she called him ugly and kept him close, too close for him to have developed in a healthy way. Significantly or not, she died on May 24, 1921, about halfway through her son's composition of "The Outsider." (4, 5)

We can't psychoanalyze Lovecraft, least of all by looking at a work of fiction. Likewise, we can't and shouldn't try to psychoanalyze whole groups of people. People are, after all, individuals and are deserving of compassion as individuals. I'll just say that H.P. Lovecraft's authorship of "The Outsider" and many other stories--his construction of a compelling and to many people such a full and satisfying and comforting fictional universe--may mean that he and they and it will never be cancelled.

Notes
(1) I have just finished (mostly) a series on Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946) who also had some success with a story written when he was thirty-one (or so), the serial "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes," published in the first two issues of Weird Tales, March and April 1923.
(1a) Update (Jan. 4, 2022): The first episode of The Book of Boba Fett, released last month, is also called "Stranger in a Strange Land."
(2) I'm not the first to make this association, although I have made it independently of anyone else (i.e., I thought it up before going to look for the idea in other people's work). Bhob Stewart (1937-2014) made the comparison in an undated essay published on line in 2015.
(3) See, for example, "Then They Came for Beethoven" by Daniel Lelchuk, dated September 19, 2020, on the website Quillette, here. Is Mr. Lelchuk the son of American novelist Alan Lelchuk? I read Alan Lelchuk's novel American Mischief (1973) not many years ago. The name and the book have stuck with me.
(4) Ironically, Lovecraft the inward-outsider seems to have turned more outward after his mother died. Perhaps he was released. If it's not too bizarre to use these two words together, maybe only then did Lovecraft blossom.
(5) For a discussion of Lovecraft, his mother, their relationship, and related topics, see "Mommie Dearest: H.P. Lovecraft's Descent into Maternal Madness" by John A. DeLaughter, dated November 14, 2013, on The Lovecraft Ezine, here.

A final note: Like Narcissus, the narrator of "The Outsider" is undone by a mirror. The Lady in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra is almost undone by the same object. The Evil Queen in the story of Snow White is so undone. To look into a mirror--is this a loss of innocence? A gaining of self-awareness? And does a sense of self-awareness lead into irony? Into alienation?

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley