H. P. Lovecraft

Michel Houellebecq discovered the tales of Howard Phillips Lovecraft at the age of sixteen and often returned to the great texts of the master of cosmic terror. What did Lovecraft have to provoke such fascination in someone seemingly so alien to the Cthulhu myths? The answer to this question guides a prescient essay in which Houellebecq's vision of the craft of writing illuminates both the American author's work and his own work. For the author of The Elementary Particles, Lovecraft's force of attraction lies in his ability to constitute a permanent opposition, an amendment to the totality of life in all its facets. As Stephen King, a staunch admirer of Lovecraft and author of the foreword to this essay, points out: "All literature, but particularly the literature of the strange and the fantastic, is a cave in which readers and writers alike hide from life. [...] It is only in those caves, in those sheltered places, that we lick our wounds and prepare for the next battle in the real world". Howard Phillips Lovecraft fulfilled that role.