Aegis 2012
98
Book Review >>> Chris Thayer
“I Am Providence”: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2010. 1,148 pp.
I Am Providence, S. T. Joshi’s latest offering on American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, could be considered his masterwork. While the text itself suffers from a number of significant shortcomings, it offers the summation of everything Joshi has done for, and to, Lovecraft. This text draws heavily from a wide variety of Joshi’s older works—not only is it an updated and expanded version of his 2004 H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, it clearly incorporates material from his philosophical-political H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West, his literary-analysis-oriented Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, and even somewhat from the front matter presented before each story in the fiction collection H. P. Lovecraft: The Fiction, which S. T. Joshi edited. There are even minor insertions from a number of his approximately seventy-five other books (mostly edited/compiled editions, though some are pure analysis) and over 150 articles/reviews relating in some way to Lovecraft or scholarship thereof. The work truly serves best as a concise introduction to Joshi’s contributions to the field of Lovecraft—though, for a work weighing in at two volumes (over a thousand pages between them), ‘concise’ is clearly a relative matter. H. P. Lovecraft, the book’s subject matter, was an early 20th century American horror writer. He is best known for his concept of “cosmic regionalism,” connecting the expanse of space and the atmosphere of New England to complementarily engender horror, and his pioneering the field of “science horror,” advocating a hyper-realistic style in horror fiction, contrasting known science with plausible extraterrestrial ‘monsters’ (such as the widely popular, octopus-headed Cthulhu) in order to convey his vision of the godless, uncaring expanse of the universe and humanity’s comparative irrelevance. I Am Providence traces his life story, from his 1890 birth in a declining aristocratic family in Providence, Rhode Island, to his nearpenniless 1937 death (of intestinal cancer), and includes discussions of almost all of his short stories, in chronological order. The title originates in a quote from one of Lovecraft’s letters (which are estimated to number near the hundreds of thousands), expressing his connection to Providence, RI, and his joy in returning there after living unhappily for several years in New York City, and is also Lovecraft’s epitaph. While Joshi’s sources are inarguable and his gravitas as a (perhaps the) definitive voice on Lovecraft lends authority to the ‘story’ being told, the text itself suffers from a number of serious problems—all of which end up affecting readability and audience. One major hurdle is simply its length. Any two-volume biography is going to be somewhat daunting to the average reader, and this instance is no exception. Even more so, Joshi seems to have added material without actually adding anything new or worthwhile. More material does not always a better biography make, and the additions rather hurt I Am Providence. Furthermore,
