Lovecraft’s algebraic trauma

Mar 10, 2009 10:36 PM
Joshi’s thesis
by doctorzamalek

To expand on Joshi’s reading of Lovecraft’s mental illness from age 18-23… He quite plausibly reads it as resulting from an algebraic trauma. Lovecraft seemed to be edging toward a professional astronomy career, but realized that he just didn’t have the mathematical skill for it, and this crippled his self-confidence to the point of non-functionality (it didn’t help that his widowed mother was slowly losing her mind and telling everyone her son was horribly ugly, or that the family finances went in the gutter after HPL’s likable grandfather died).

Joshi sets the table for this thesis by printing several of Lovecraft’s report cards, on which his troubles with algebra are clearly visible. He also cites a later explicit remark by Lovecraft more or less admitting that the algebra troubles caused his mental problems a that age. (True, people say all sorts of things about their lives and motives, and those have to be balanced against sometimes contradictory statements, but this one seems legitimate.) Also, as Joshi openly observes, thanks to Einstein astronomy was in the process of transforming itself into astrophysics, and was becoming a big mess of equations rather than just the “stamp collecting” of cataloguing stars and nebulae.

However, I also suspect a sexual component in Lovecraft’s breakdown. His expressions of complete disinterest in the subject strike me as slightly forced, and it also seems to me that anyone who writes as lushly as Lovecraft is most likely equipped with a fairly active libido, dammed and stunted though it may have been by events or by family structure.

And yes, I am aware that Houellebecq’s fine book observes that there is no reference to erotism or financial standing of any of Lovecraft’s characters. (The latter is a slight exaggeration– the narrator of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” makes it quite clear that he’s broke, and the ticket salesman who tells him about the bus “seemed sympathetic toward [the narrator’s] efforts at economy.”)