Episode 1: I Know that Light is Not for Me

“Brilliance never saved anyone from bigotry” writes Victor LaValle, in his forward to The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham. LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom, is one of a growing number of writers working to reconcile the Cosmicism of Lovecraft’s fiction with the racism of Lovecraft’s worldview.

For such a phenomenon to even exist says as much for the strength of HPL’s imagination as it does for the weakness of his character. It would also come as a great surprise to the man himself, should his spectre somehow crawl back from the starless sepulchral void just in time for All Hallows Eve, because he thought himself a failure when he died from stomach cancer at age 46. Today, the Cosmic Horror that Lovecraft popularized (though did not invent— Algernon Blackwood was there first) informs stories told by an increasingly diverse range of creators across every medium.

Tonight, The Triumph of Death Radio Hour presents The Outsider, possibly HPL’s most analyzed tale, though he didn't think much of it himself (he later called it “comic in the bombastic pomposity of [its] language”).

He was wrong, of course. As he was on so many topics.

Hosted by The Fundertaker

Music by Gothic Husband

22 minutes.

Note: the “Nepenthe” mentioned in the story refers to a legendary amnesiac drug appearing in some translations of The Odyssey.