The Case of Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Is it daytime or nighttime? Is this New York, or somewhere else? Let us assume it is a New York apartment, haunted by something that lives there. Or does something live there? What is it? Lovecraft? That´s not even certain. Is it something alive? It moves at least, therefore it is alive. But only just. No, this thing is not Lovecraft, it is not even his reincarnation; it is a transmutation, or, if you prefer, a psychic transmutation. The central character, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1890. A depressed writer, neither filmed not recorded. All that remains of him are one or two photographs religiously hoarded by his admirers, interminable volumes of his correspondence and the enormous output of his writings, in the purest and simplest gothic renaissance style. It is in the tales told him by his grandfather that he finds his inspiration for the fantastic and forms his loathing of realism. His hurtful childhood distances him from his schoolmates. He grows up, but badly (his own mother is obsessed by his ugliness). But destiny leads him to New York and suddenly happiness seems to drive out the fears and hates harbored within him. Lively fellow creatures surround him, and then he finds love, or something that passes for love. But his emergence of happiness and normality is soon cut short. A cloak of darkness is drawn around him and lays him low. His fear of strangers and of the city, suddenly transformed into a latter day Babylon, ends up destroying him. He returns to Providence, falls ill, and it is then that he writes his best stories. It is there that he dies, alone and uncomplaining, lamented only by a handful of unknown letter-writers and his few friends.