"there was taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which shewed only in the eyes."
It is with a certain degree of pleasure that, in view of Mr. Lovecrafts odious attitude towards people, and in view, of certain recent political events, I compare him to Mr. Amos Tutuola. Now, one would not want to give cause for worry: Mr. Tutuola is neither barbarous nor strange. He has been laurel-crowned by both Mr. Alan Moore & Dylan Thomas: his culture, the Yoruba, have contributed several (as usual, rather overlooked) things of interest to the Western culture of which they, too, are a part, in fields such as religion, the plastic arts (their erotic bronze statuary was a strong inspiration for Picasso), & English letters. Like Mr. Lovecraft, he has been unfairly treated (over and above the usual injustices done to those of his background). accused of improper use of words (in both his & Mr. Lovecraft cases, a rather weird criticism-perhaps even eldritch), of being embarrassingly primitive (those who put little effort, yet great importance into the act of reading have, again, "found" the same traits in a certain ailurophile), of plagiarism (one is reminded of the otherwise sensible Senor Borges describing Mr. Lovecraft as a "parody of Poe") in spite of his transmutation of "traditional" material through a supernaturally bizarre vision : Fritz Leiber once wrote that Mr. Lovecraft discarded outmoded elements of horror-tales, such as vampires & werewolves: in spite of the Lovecraftian monsters of "The Shunned House", "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", "The Colour out of Space", etc being, actually, exactly that. He even wrote about faeries in "The Whisperer In Darkness"-not that the Mi-Go are "just" faeries, or "just" Abominable Snowmen, for that matter. Likewise, American critics have been quite fascinated at Mr. Tutola blithly incorporating such things as television & guns in what they consider "traditional Nigerian fairy tales". But the Yoruba & the Yankee had simply discovred what ought to be self-evident: that the proper use of tradition is that of a fundament to build on, rather than pitfully cling to, or wastefully discard (which would rather logically leave one hanging in an empty void-as very nicely illustrated by the airy words that is post-modernist literature). Unfortunately, the electrically strange beings of Mr. Tutuola (such as the "Abominable Squatting Wild Man of the Jungle" with his explosive stomach, or "The Red Creature Town of Red Deads") have lead to an equally outlandish fate for their creators literary afterlife: they have been to easy to "understand". Those analyzing him have talked much about his works being like the Bible, the experience of dreaming, the Legend of the True Grail, & other "primitive" narrative experiences: the absurdity of such a categorization, in all of these cases (why should someones dreams be any less civilized than the rest of him?) has, evidently but still surprisingly, not been self-evident. Saying that a writer is "African" is not of much more use than saying his last name starts with an L: it is perhaps the most diverse continent on this planet, also when it comes to levels of development. Nevertheless, where Mr. Lovecraft has been used by satanic rock bands & avant-garde nihilists, Mr Tutuola has been relegated to being a harmless token multicultural artifact, much as a decorative Oggun fetish mask or warped black sword from the lands that invented murder by iron. One can but hope that now the Dark Pharaoh has finally come out of the lands of Aegypt, swarthy, slender, & sinister, speaking much of the sciences - of electricity & psychology - (President-elect Obama having made unprecedented use of the internet: how very Nyarlathotepan) all His prophets will be remembered.