Acolytes of Cthulhu

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Lovecraft, since his death in 1937, has rapidly been becoming a cult. He already had his circle of disciples who collaborated with him and imitated him.

Edmund Wilson, “Tales of the Marvellous and the Ridiculous”

November 24, 1945

THE BIG CLUE IS THAT H. P. LOVE CRAFT USED TO SIGN HIMSELF sometimes as “Grandpa Cthulhu” or simply as “Cthulhu.” Thus the acolytes of Cthulhu are the acolytes of Lovecraft himself. The Cthulhu cult is the literary cult of Lovecraft. In this fact I believe we have a large part of the explanation for the power with which Lovecraft’s writings grasp many of his readers and captures their imaginations, never to let go. All fiction, as Michael Riffaterre notes (Fictional Truth) gains depth and resonance, manages in short to “ring true” to its readers only insofar as the author has built in the sounding board of a subtext, some apparently prior reality against which story images and developments will seem to ring solid. A fiction built on sand will sound tinny, hollow, when tapped by the reader. A classic example might be the Old Testament proof texts adduced by the Gospel of Matthew in order to demonstrate that various events in the life of Jesus fulfilled prophecy. The supposed events require some sort of a credibility boost, since they depict a man being conceived by the divine spirit in a virgin’s womb, miraculously healing the sick, etc., not exactly items that easily pass the test of most readers’ criteria of plausibility. But once Matthew narrates them, then provides an apparently matching proof text from ancient scripture, you think the miracles may be true after all. They all of a sudden appear to match ancient prophecy.

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