Cthulhu Through a Carrollian Lens:

An Analysis of The Unnamable, The Call of Cthulhu and The Colour Out of Space to

Understand the Lasting Appeal of H. P. Lovecraft

Martijn Loos

SNR: U1234855 ANR: 823043

Supervisor: Dr. R. M. A. Slegers

Second reader: Prof. Dr. M. S. Prange

June 2019

Bachelor Thesis Liberal Arts and Sciences

Humanities: European History and Culture

School of Humanities and Digital Sciences

Tilburg University

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Table of contents

Table of contents 2

Introduction 3

1. Noël Carroll: the appeal of horror and its monsters 6

2. The Unnamable: Lovecraft and Carroll 13

3. Lovecraft, Graham Harman and the gap 18

4. A mountain walked or stumbled: the lingual dimension 24

5. Just a colour out of space: the epistemological dimension 30

Conclusion 36

Bibliography 38

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Introduction

Although critical recognition of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s (1890–1937) horror fiction is on the

rise, he often remains regarded as pulp (Joshi, 1990; Miéville, 2006; Jones, 2010). His prose is

generally seen as verbose and overblown, his plots as simple and his racialism as running

rampant. Yet his popular appeal is undeniable, as evidenced by the millions of copies of his work

in circulation and his work being translated into over fifteen languages (Joshi, 1991). This begs

the question what it is that is appealing in his tales.

Noël Carroll produced a comprehensive cognitive theory on the appeal of horror,

claiming it is curiosity that drives us to expose ourselves to horrifying plots and monsters

(Carroll, 1990; 2003), and that the transgressive nature of monsters – which are the objects of

horror (Carroll, 1990) – makes them simultaneously appealing and horrifying to us (Carroll,

2001; 2003). This approach is useful because it postulates intentionality as central to the appeal

of horror, which allows an exploration of appeal beyond subjective taste. However, when

Lovecraft’s tales and monsters are analyzed through a Carrollian lens, Carroll’s theory starts

showing two shortcomings. Firstly, Lovecraft’s tales deny the reader access to the properties and

nature of the monster, leading to problems in satisfying the curiosity that Carroll posits as central

to the appeal of horror. Secondly, this inaccessibility leads to a problem in categorizing

Lovecraft’s monsters, which in turn undermines Carroll’s theory on what a monster is: a

supernatural, threatening, impure transgression of standing cultural categories (Carroll, 1990;

2001; 2003). Since Lovecraft’s monsters evade all intentionality by virtue of being inaccessible,

they become threats to the very process of categorizing itself. This paper will argue that

Lovecraft’s appeal lies exactly where Carroll’s theory falls short, suggesting an extension to his

theory on the appeal of horror.

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To do so, this paper first analyzes Carroll’s theories and trims them down to the parts that

are applicable to Lovecraft. Then, Lovecraft’s tale The Unnamable (1925) will be used to

demonstrate the two above-mentioned shortcomings of Carroll’s theory. A suggestion to adjust

Carroll’s notion of curiosity driving the appeal of horror will be made, but the inaccessible nature

of Lovecraft’s monsters warrants further analysis. Lovecraft himself was aware of his horror

working on a level different from the usual supernatural fiction, as evidenced by some of his

essays (Lovecraft, 1921; 1927; 1937), but could not identify the exact nature of his own horror

himself.

Graham Harman’s work on Lovecraft (2012) does provide useful insight in identifying

the mechanics along which Lovecraft’s horror works; he identifies a horizontal and a vertical

axis on which Lovecraft denies access to monsters and phenomena. This paper will first show

where Carroll and Harman align: Harman’s horizontal axis, which often works on the basis of

transgressing cultural categories. Where they differ is the vertical axis, which Harman calls the

“allusive” (2012) axis. This paper will interpret this axis as operating along two dimensions: the

lingual and epistemological. This difference will be the starting point for further analysis,

starting with the lingual dimension. It will be demonstrated by using The Call of Cthulhu (1926),

which contains passages that deftly demonstrate Lovecraft cutting off linguistic access to his

monsters and horrific phenomena; which increases their appeal.

The second level on which Lovecraft’s tales work, is the epistemological dimension of

Harman’s vertical axis, which in Lovecraft’s case is the inaccessibility of the nature of his

monsters. This will be analyzed using The Colour Out of Space (1927), in which the nature and

some of the properties of the eponymous colour are both linguistically and epistemologically

inaccessible. Yet it is often seen as one of the most appealing monsters in Lovecraft (Burleson,

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1983; Joshi, 1996; Bleiler & Bleiler, 1998), undermining Carroll’s theory on the appeal of

horror. The colour also provides a prospect of formulating an addition to Carroll’s theory.

At the end, an expansion of Carroll’s cognitive theory for the appeal of horror, especially

its object – the monster – will be proposed. This expansion is two-fold: it consists of a suggestion

to broaden the appeal of horror’s monster to curiosity itself, instead of the satisfying of that

curiosity; and proposing an expansion of Carroll’s definition of monsters. The latter will consist

of the notion that their appeal lies not only in transgressing categories, but also in the threat they

pose to categorizing itself, both linguistically and epistemologically. Finally, it will be suggested

that because Lovecraft’s monsters and horrific phenomena exhibit these properties, partly

circumventing Carroll, his appeal as a horror writer endures.

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1. Noël Carroll: the appeal of horror and its monsters

Noël Carroll tackled the question of the appeal of horror fiction in his landmark Philosophy of

Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (1990). In it, he discusses the paradox of horror,

highlighting the oddity at the heart of horror fiction: why is something that elicits negative

emotions appealing to us? Why is something ordinarily repelling all of a sudden attracting in

horror fiction? He is not the only one who has attempted to answer the question (e.g.

Collingwood, 1968; Gaut, 2003; Hanscomb, 2010), but his take on the question is interesting

because his is a cognitive approach to the emotion of fear: “an account of horror in virtue of the

emotional effects it is designed to cause in audiences” (Carroll, 1990, p. 8). Carroll takes a

systematic approach by first defining horror itself, then its object, and finally its appeal.

Carroll identifies two great demarcators of horror: the emotion it evokes and the

mechanisms that drive the plot (Carroll, 1990). The emotion it evokes is a combination of fear

and revulsion, or what he terms “art-horror”, which is different from “natural horror”. Both are

an emotion, but are respectively the horror one feels when consuming a piece of horror literature,

movie, or fine art; and the horror one feels at heights, or at “What the Nazis did” (Carroll, 1990,

p. 12). Fear and revulsion both necessarily need to be experienced for art-horror to exist, hence it

should be thought of as a “distinctive compound of cognitive/evaluative fear and disgust as far as

Carroll is concerned” (Hills, 2005, p. 15). Art-horror is at the heart of what makes the genre

horror so distinctly horror, but what drives its plot, according to Carroll (1990; 2001; 2003), is

curiosity.

Since horror fictions “with great frequency, revolve around proving, disclosing,

discovering, and conforming the existence of something that is impossible” (Carroll, 2003, p.

278), curiosity is central in driving the plot of horror forward. Curiosity is a driving force of

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almost all narrative genres however, for in a way it propels all plot, but horror is unique in this

vis-à-vis other genres in one aspect:

All narratives might be thought to involve the desire to know – the desire to know at least

the outcome of the interaction of the forces made salient in the plot. However, the horror

fiction is a special variation on this general narrative motivation, because it has at the

center of it something which is given as in principle unknowable – something which, ex

hypothesi, cannot, given the structure of our conceptual scheme, exist and that cannot

have the properties it has. (Carroll, 2003, p. 281)

So, what is it that is “at the center” of horror which is “unknowable”? Horror’s defining addition

to any story, of course, the object of art-horror: the monster (Carroll, 1990; 2001). The monster

warrants an in-depth analysis for obvious reasons, which shall be done in a bit; but first back to

curiosity and its place in Lovecraft’s tales.

As evidenced by the block quote above, the way in which horror appeals to our curiosity

is two-sided: we are curious both about the unfolding plot and about the monster. Or, as Carroll

states: “it would be a mistake to think that this curiosity is solely a function of plotting […] for

the objects of art-horror in and of themselves [monsters] engender curiosity as well.” (Carroll,

2003, p. 286). Hence, we now have a tentative definition of horror fiction: a piece of fiction

which evokes an emotion – art-horror, consisting of fear and revulsion – and is driven by

curiosity, both towards its plot and its object, the monster. As such, according to Carroll,

curiosity should take a central place in both Lovecraft’s plots and monsters.

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Many of Lovecraft’s tales have a similar, simple plot structure (Joshi, 1996): the tale is

told as a flashback, presented as a journal or witness account. The narrator comes across a

particular vaguely evil location, person, being or object, and gradually finds out more about that

location, person, being or object, ignoring all warnings of its evilness or harmfulness. The

evidence piles up, and the narrator remains unaware or ignorant, despite the reader having

already figured it out. By the time the great reveal of why the location, person, being or object is

vaguely evil comes, there is hardly any suspense left. It turns out there was a malicious force,

most often a monster in the broadest sense of the term, at work – supposedly evoking art-horror –

but for the (modern) reader this is hardly a surprise. Hence in Lovecraft, the art-horror is mild at

best, and non-existent at worst. Or, as Lovecraft’s fellow writer and critic deftly encapsulated

Lovecraft’s plots in 1972: “His plotting is frequently mechanical, and his major stylistic device,

which becomes tiresome, is the simple trick of withholding the final revelation until the terminal

sentence--and then printing it in italics, presumably for maximum shock value.” (Carter, 1972, p.

XIII). So, the appeal of Lovecraft is most likely not due the curiosity the reader feels towards

uncovering the plot. Curiosity towards the monster however, remains as a possible explanation

for Lovecraft’s appeal in Carrollian terms.

The monster elicits curiosity both because it is most often unknown at the start of the tale,

and because its properties are a mystery: “Horror stories, in a significant number of cases, are

dramas of proving the existence of the monster and disclosing (most often gradually) the origin,

identity, purposes and powers of the monster.” (Carroll, 2003, p.279). If the curiosity driving the

appeal of a horror story is as much, if not more, about the monster as it is about the plot, then

Lovecraft’s appeal is understandable as long as his monsters are worthy of our curiosity, despite

his bad plots. The next question then revolves around what a monster exactly is.

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The monster, the object of art-horror, has to possess two necessary properties for it to be

a monster. It is 1) “any being not believed to exist now according to contemporary science”

(Carroll, 1990, p. 27), and 2) it has to evoke art-horror; fear and revulsion. The former it evokes

by virtue of being “threatening” (p. 27), the latter by virtue of being “impure” (p. 28). Close

reading of this reveals several things about Carroll’s monster. First of all, it is supernatural; it is

outside of the bounds of “contemporary science”. This part of his definition has proven to be the

most controversial (e. g. Russell, 1998; Freeland, 1999; Yanal, 2003), for it disqualifies for

example Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) or the eponymous rabid dog in King’s

Cujo (1981) as monsters to Carroll. Carroll later distanced himself from the claim that a being

has to be supernatural to qualify as a monster (Carroll, 2015), but it matters little in regards to

Lovecraft, for all of his monsters are indeed outside of the realm contemporary science (Joshi,

1990). The second thing to note about this definition is that a monster is a “being”, which –

despite being a horribly vague term – is pragmatically inclusive of the likes of haunted houses or

murderous cars, as in King’s Christine (1983).

Thirdly, the monster being necessitated to evoke art-horror to be a monster at all, is

perhaps the most defining part of Carroll’s monster definition. He recaps this requirement more

succinctly in Beyond Aesthetics (2001): “a monster [is] designed to arouse emotions of fear in

the audience by virtue of its harmfulness, and that of revulsion in virtue of its impurity.” (Carroll,

2001, p. 245). The condition to be harmful is logical: it disqualifies Chewbacca from Star Wars

(1977) from being a monster, despite him being supernatural and possibly quite “impure”. This

condition to be impure refers to the monster evoking revulsion because it violates or transgresses

standing cultural categories (Carroll, 1990). This notion will be vital to analyzing Lovecraft

through a Carrollian lens, and will be returned to in-depth shortly.

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The allure of a cognitive approach to the paradox of horror is that it proposes

intentionality of art-horror. Cognitive theories of emotions claim that one has certain evaluations

or judgements of a particular object first, which then cause physiological changes in the body,

leading to experiencing the emotion (Lazarus, 1991). Hence in a cognitive theory of emotion,

one must have appropriate thoughts about an object before being able to experience the emotion

– there is a clear causation. In the case of art-horror in Lovecraft, an example taken from The

Dunwich Horror (1929) would be 1) seeing Wilbur Whateley’s decaying, tentacled, leathery

corpse, 2) cognitively deciding that tentacles and leather do not belong on a human corpse, and

3) experiencing feelings of disgust and revulsion: “One of three [witnesses of the corpse]– it is

not certain which – shrieked aloud at what sprawled before them […] Professor Rice [one of the

three] declared that he wholly lost consciousness for an instant, though he did not stumble or

fall.” (Necronomicon, p. 279). By positing intentionality as core mechanism of experiencing art-

horror, and hence the appeal of horror, Carroll succeeds in proposing a theory that circumvents

subjective judgement as basis for appeal. This makes his theory far more useful for analysis and

comparison of different authors.

Thinking in categories – in this case, ‘regular human corpses’ and ‘leathery corpses with

tentacles’ – is at the heart of the cognitive theory of emotion, a notion which Carroll adopts and

expands into explaining why monsters are so horrifying, yet at the same time appealing:

Monsters […] are repelling because they violate standing categories. But for the self-

same reason, they are also compelling of our attention. They are attractive, in the sense

that they elicit interest, and they are the cause of, for many, irresistible attention, again,

just because they violate standing categories. They are curiosities. They can rivet

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attention and thrill for the self-same reason that they disturb, distress and disgust.

(Carroll, 2003, p. 286)

As Wilbur Whateley’s corpse demonstrates, objects transgressing categories are cognitively

dissonant – a quality that horror monsters happily (ab)use. Carroll claims that this transgressive

nature, or “impurity”, is at the core of what is or is not revulsive, and hence it lies at the core of

being a monster: “the objects of art-horror [monsters] are essentially categorical violations”

(Carroll, 2003, p. 289).

The next step is to analyze exactly what it is that makes an object transgressive of

categories. Carroll bases this notion on the theories of anthropologist Mary Douglas, who

claimed that something transgresses standing cultural categories when it is interstitial,

contradictory, incomplete or formless (Douglas, 1966). In all these cases, a culturally decided

conceptual scheme is violated, defied or transgressed because an object exhibiting one or more

of these traits per definition defies categorization. And hence Wilbur Whateley’s corpse,

exhibiting traits of multiple conceptual categories – human, anthropoid, octopus, reptile – is

revulsive. When it is revealed later in the story that he is the offspring of a human mother and

Yog-Sothoth, an alien entity, Whateley transgresses even more categories and becomes all the

more impure as a result. Carroll’s scheme initially seems to hold up in relation to Lovecraft’s

monsters.

Hence the importance of Carroll’s theory in regard to the appeal of Lovecraft consists

two aspects. Firstly, the appeal of Lovecraft cannot originate from curiosity towards his plots, for

they are too simple and evoke little to no art-horror. Hence his monsters remain to explain his

appeal. The appeal of the monsters, the second aspect, lies in 1) curiosity about its nature and

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consequently uncovering that nature, and 2) the nature of the monster itself, which is inherently

transgressive of standing schemes of cultural categorization. These are claims that can be tested

using Lovecraft’s tales, to see if Carroll can explain his appeal.

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2. The Unnamable: Lovecraft and Carroll

The very short story The Unnamable (1925), written in 1923, is the tale of Carter – often

identified with the semi-autobiographical recurring Lovecraft protagonist Randolph Carter (Joshi

& Schultz, 2013) – and his friend Joel Manton. The friends are “sitting on a dilapidated

seventeenth-century tomb in the late afternoon of an autumn day at the old buying ground in

Arkham, and speculating about the unnamable.” (Necronomicon, p. 128). Strange preference for

lounging sites aside, their conversation about the eponymous unnamable is a defense of Carter’s

– and hence Lovecraft’s own – fiction, for his tales are often criticized for their nebulous horrors:

Besides, he [Manton] added, my constant talk about ‘unnamable’ and ‘unmentionable’

things was a very puerile device, quite in keeping with my lowly standing as an author. I

was too fond of ending my stories with sights or sounds which paralysed my heroes’

faculties and left them without courage, words or associations to tell what they had

experienced. (Necronomicon, p. 128).

This conversation lasts for a while, with Manton opposing Carter’s idea that such an unnamable

entity can exist. Carter regales the tale of such an entity, which roamed the very grounds the

friends are presently residing. As the tale closes, they are attacked by the entity, and they wake

up the next day in St. Mary’s hospital, with inexplicable wounds. The tale ends with a flustered

Manton affirming the entity was indeed unnamable: a typical Lovecraftian deflated ending.

Applying Carroll’s theories on the notion of an unnamable entity is problematic. Firstly,

because if the horror tale revolves around “disclosing (most often gradually) the origin, identity,

purposes and powers of the monster.” (Carroll, 2003, p. 279), the process is explicitly cut short

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by an “unnamable” and “unmentionable” monster. The unnamable is per definition at least

linguistically unidentifiable. If it is unmentionable, very little, if anything at all, can be disclosed

about it. If Lovecraft’s protagonists cannot put into “words or associations” (Necronomicon, p.

128) what they experienced, the curiosity that drives the appeal of a monster is curtailed. The

unnamable, during its very short appearance in the story, is only described as “some unseen

entity of titanic size but undetermined nature” (p. 132); that is where its properties and identity

stop. The importance of this passage is that it also posits the unnamable’s nature as

undetermined, which raises the question – after already having been established the unnamable

as linguistically unidentifiable – whether it can be accessed at all.

Secondly, according to Carroll, the appeal of a monster lies in its transgressive nature, in

that it violates standing conceptual schemes (Carroll, 2001). Manton’s closing remarks try to

elucidate the nature of the monster:

After the doctors and nurses had left, I [Carter] whispered an awe struck question:

‘Good God, Manton, but what was it? Those scars – was it like that?’

And I was too dazed to exult when he whispered back a thing I had half expected—

‘No – it wasn’t that way at all. It was everywhere – a gelatin – a slime; a vapor; – yet it

had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. There were eyes – and a

blemish. It was the pit – the maelstrom – the ultimate abomination. Carter, it was the

unnamable! (Necronomicon, p. 133).

Superficially, some qualities of the unnamable are in line with Carroll’s thinking: a gelatin and

slime are classic examples of the formless objects Mary Douglas writes about (1966), and the

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wounds on Carter and Manton are in the form of hooves and horns, reminiscent of a portrayal of

the Devil. The combination of a vast array of different qualities – slime, vapor, blemish, pit, and

maelstrom, to name a few – is exactly what is meant by Douglas’ and Carroll’s interstitial

objects, in the same way a werewolf is interstitial by virtue of “straddling the categories of wolf

and man” (Carroll, 2001, p. 246). Carroll already flirted with the unknowable when he described

a monster as “something which is given as in principle unknowable – something which, ex

hypothesi, cannot, given the structure of our conceptual scheme, exist and that cannot have the

properties it has.” (Carroll, 2003, p. 281).

However, standing conceptual schemes can only be violated if the potentially offending

object can be accessed: a cognitive theory of horror functions only when intentionality can be

achieved, when something can be evaluated, as explained in chapter 1. For something’s

properties to be evaluated as impossible, these properties need to be intentionally accessed. For

an object to be interstitial, contradictory, incomplete or formless, it needs be identified as one or

multiple of these first – hence accessibility is key. If the unnamable is “a thousand shapes of

horror beyond all memory”, it is not accessible. If its observers lack the “words […] or

associations to tell what they had experienced”, it cannot violate any categories because it is

unable to be ascribed anything at all in the first place. If the monster is “a vaporous terror

constitute in all loathsome truth the exquisitely, the shriekingly unnamable?” (Necronomicon, p.

132) it is truly nothing beyond what its name purports it to be. The unnamable is not only a threat

to conceptual categories by danger of transgressing them, but it goes beyond that; it is a threat to

the process of categorizing itself.

Hence, when stating “That is, the objects of art-horror are essentially categorical

violations” (Carroll, 2003, p. 289), Carroll gets ahead of himself: there are also objects of art-

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horror that are threats to categorizing itself. It is true that certain parts of the unnamable are

indeed transgressive of categories, but simultaneously a very large part of its nature can simply

not be accessed. It seems that Carroll failed to see an earlier step in the process: access. What

remains to be seen is whether this threat to categorizing by way of inaccessibility is working on

the level of language or knowledge; is a Lovecraftian monster – such as the unnamable –

inaccessible because it is unnamable, or is it inaccessible beyond even that, and is it truly

unknowable? The latter includes the former per definition, but not the other way around. The

Unnamable, by virtue of its name, most certainly belongs to the former, but “beyond all

memory” seems to hint at a deeper level of inaccessibility.

The Unnamable presents us with an appealing story that, when analyzed through a

Carrollian lens qualifies as horror: curiosity (what is the unnamable?) is its central driving force,

and its monster is 1) supernatural; contemporary science cannot explain its nature, 2) threatening;

Carter and Manton both end up in the hospital, and 3) impure; it is a partly interstitial being,

because it transgresses categories, such as being simultaneously “a slime; a vapor”. Yet The

Unnamable also presents two major problems to Carroll’s theory. Firstly, it makes full disclosure

of the monster’s nature and properties per definition impossible because the unnamable is

inaccessible, which undermines the reader’s curiosity towards uncovering its nature. Secondly,

The Unnamable also presents us with a monster that partly defies Carroll’s notion of what a

monster is, because it cannot transgress conceptual categories if it is partly inaccessible by

evading intentionality. This leaves us with leaves two options: 1) The Unnamable is not a

Carrollian horror story and the unnamable is not a monster, or 2) Carroll’s theories need to be

rejected or expanded. The first option seems unlikely: The Unnamable and its eponymous entity

evoke feelings of fear and revulsion; Carroll’s carefully defined art-horror. Furthermore, the

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story has always been, and continues to be, read and anthologized in horror collections. Perhaps

it is exactly Lovecraft’s defying of Carroll’s ideas on horror – which suggests Lovecraft’s horror,

and especially his monsters, are different from the usual – that makes his tales so appealing.

Adjusting and adding to Carroll’s theories is more feasible than outright rejecting them

for they certainly appear to be pointing in the right direction. It appears that, as The Unnamable

shows, Carroll stopped just short of postulating a more comprehensive theory. The first problem

that The Unnamable presents to Carrollian theory, the fact that it undermines curiosity towards

the monster, is the easiest to salvage. The fact that the unnamable is never fully disclosed by

virtue of being inaccessible, does not necessarily mean that the reader’s curiosity towards the

nature of the entity stops; this part of Carroll’s theory can be easily salvaged by adding that it is

the curiosity in itself that drives the appeal of horror, not the longing for closure about that same

nature of the entity. The perpetual appeal of open endings to narratives, from the Bible’s Parable

of the barren fig tree (Luke 13:6-9) to Anton Chekov’s The Lady with a Dog (1899),

demonstrates this point. Carroll’s inability to account for the appeal of Lovecraft’s monsters, the

unnamable in this case, by virtue of the threat it poses to categorizing before it can transgress any

category, warrants a more extensive analysis than a small addendum.

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3. Lovecraft, Graham Harman and the gap

The threat to categories posed by the unnamable is foremost a lingual mechanism – it is the

naming that fails, by which a monster becomes inaccessible. This process is discussed by

philosopher Graham Harman: “Normally we feel no gap at all between the world and our

descriptions of it. But Lovecraft unlocks a world dominated by such a gap.” (Harman, 2012, p.

27). Although whether or not we feel such a gap in daily life is debatable, the notion of Lovecraft

purposefully creating a “gap” in his stories is a leverageable idea. Harman’s gap is a form of

inaccessibility – an undermining of the reader’s access to nature, to reality. It is exactly in this

gap where Carroll’s theory on the appeal of horror fall short, and therefore this gap may be

exactly where Lovecraft’s appeal lies. Hence it appears to be a fruitful line of inquiry.

Lovecraft’s evoking of that gap indeed appears to be a conscious effort: “It is man's

relations to the cosmos – to the unknown – which alone arouses in me the spark of creative

imagination.” (In Defence of Dagon, pa. 21). The last part seems indicative of Harman’s gap; if

the “unknown” is the gap “between the world and our descriptions of it” (Harman, 2012, p. 27),

then Lovecraft’s aim is to write about man’s relation to it. The question then remains how

Lovecraft hopes to narrate “man’s relations to […] the unknown”. Lovecraft’s helpfully titled

Notes on Writing Weird Fiction (1937) at first appears to shed a light on this:

Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to overcome, and this can be

accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the

story except touching on the one given marvel. This marvel must be treated very

impressively and deliberately […] else it will seem flat and unconvincing. (Notes on

Writing Weird Fiction, pa. 8).

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“Inconceivable events and conditions” is very reminiscent of Carroll’s “horror fiction […] has at

the center of it something which is given as in principle unknowable…” (2003, p. 281), so

Lovecraft’s and Carroll’s respective conceptions of what a horror story is appear to have

similarities. Lovecraft also seems aware that parts of his fiction – such as the unnamable – are

“inconceivable”, which seems to align with Harman’s “gap”. Hence Lovecraft, Carroll and

Harman seem to be conceptually related; but in their particulars they differ. Lovecraft himself is

hardly elucidating when it comes to explaining how to achieve portraying “a world dominated by

such a gap”; the unnamable being “treated very impressively and deliberately” barely tells us

anything about way in which the gap actually works or is achieved. The only thing Lovecraft

makes clear is that in his eyes, it is a lingual or narrative mechanism.

The closest Lovecraft gets to explaining how his fiction yields Harman’s gap – and hence

a threat to Carrollian categorizing – is when he describes his own writing in a 1933 letter to E.

Hoffmann Price: “[My writing is] a struggle to crystallise certain moods too ethereal and

indefinite for description.” (Selected Letters IV, p. 319). What is important in this passage is that

he now clearly points at language: it is about “description”, now literally echoing Graham

Harman: “[a gap] between the world and our descriptions of it” (Harman, 2012, p. 27). So, where

Carroll’s theories on the appeal of horror and the nature of monsters fall flat, is in a gap between

the world – a certain reality – and its description; a lingual process which hinders accessibility.

The irony of Lovecraft barely being able to describe this gap through language is not lost – it is

perhaps better to return to Harman to see how he analyzes this.

In Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (2012), Harman analyzes Lovecraft in the

light of speculative realism, a loosely defined metaphysical stance that positions itself against

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German idealism (Mackay, 2007). Leaving speculative realism for what it is, Weird Realism

provides two very interesting propositions relevant to this paper: 1) Harman offers an analysis of

some of Lovecraft’s methods used to create the gap, and 2) he claims that Lovecraft’s tales are

appealing for philosophical reasons. Or, as Ezra Claverie explains in a review of Weird Realism:

“Harman’s central claim is that Lovecraft’s narrators anticipate the epistemology of Harman’s

brand of Speculative Realism, and that this epistemology – rather than Lovecraft’s semi-coherent

‘mythos’ of alien deities and arcane books - makes Lovecraft’s fiction most distinctive.”

(Claverie, 2015, p. 261). Whether or not Lovecraft anticipated Harman’s metaphysics is not

relevant to this paper; whether any epistemology portrayed in his tales, and how – if at all – that

accounts for his appeal, is.

Harman analyzes the gap between reality and the (lack of) power of description, and

identifies two axes along which this gap functions (Harman, 2012). The horizontal axis is a

description of a weird phenomenon – in our case, Carroll’s monster – which is so bloated that it

confounds reality: “language is overloaded by a gluttonous excess of surfaces and aspects of the

thing.” (Harman, 2012, p. 25). He references the corpse of Wilbur Whateley in The Dunwich

Horror (1929), the same corpse referenced in chapter 1 of this paper – the body with tentacles,

leathery scales, coarse black fur and sucker mouths protruding from its stomach – to demonstrate

the horizontal axis. His point is that in such an excessively vivid description of uncountable piled

up weird descriptions of properties, language takes on an estranging aspect: “an absurd number

of concrete features which are nearly impossible to unify into a single entity” (Harman, 2012, pp.

111-112). Note how this horizontal axis works purely through language.

Of course, Graham Harman’s horizontal axis and Noël Carroll’s categorical violations are

closely related. Whateley’s corpse is, as Mary Douglas so neatly theorized, interstitial,

21

contradictory, incomplete or formless – if not all of these things at the same time. Harman’s

“language being overloaded” (Harman, 2012, p. 25) is a method by which Carrollian monster

can be constructed, which “are essentially categorical violations” (Carroll, 2003, p. 289).

Whateley’s corpse shows makes a fine example of this mechanism. Likewise, the unnamable

being “everywhere – a gelatin – a slime; a vapor” (Necronomicon, p. 133) is Harman’s

horizontal axis at work; it is also Carroll’s categorical transgression, making the unnamable

impure and revulsive. Hence the shortcoming of Carroll’s theories in relation to Lovecraft’s

tales, as identified in chapter 2, cannot be explained by Harman’s horizontal axis – it is time to

explore the vertical.

The vertical or “allusive” (Harman, 2012, p. 24) axis of the gap between the world and

our description of it, is the inability to precisely access a monster: “[…] the gap he [Lovecraft]

produces between an ungraspable thing and the vaguely relevant descriptions that the narrator is

able to attempt.” (p. 24). It is exactly “allusive” that describes this axis best: it is only by allusion

and analogy that one can get even close to the monster. This is the axis demonstrated when

Manton utters “Carter, it was the unnamable!” (Necronomicon, p. 133), the very same axis at

work when Whateley’s corpse is typified as “It would be trite and not wholly accurate to say that

no human pen could describe it” (p. 279), and hence the axis Carroll’s theory cannot account for,

the axis beyond the transgression of categories; the threat to categorizing itself, by virtue of

inaccessibility.

Although Harman does not explicitly delve deeper into this issue himself, it is important

to note that the vertical axis works on two dimensions. Looking at Harman’s description again,

the vertical axis is the gap “between an ungraspable thing and the vaguely relevant descriptions

that the narrator is able to attempt.” (Harman, 2012, p. 24), which postulates that 1) the thing –

22

the object of art-horror; the monster – itself is “ungraspable”, and that 2) the description of it

fails; it is only “vaguely relevant”. Therefore, the vertical axis, the threat to categories

themselves, has respectively an epistemological and a lingual dimension. In Harman’s eyes, the

question on the nature of the unnamable formulated in chapter 2 is answered with a double

positive: the unnamable is both ungraspable in and of itself, and it cannot be described. The

subject perceiving the unnamable fails to access the unnamable’s nature and properties, nor can

it convey this through language. Both knowledge and language fail.

Ezra Claverie not only lucidly encapsulates how these mechanisms, explained above, are

put to work in a standard Lovecraft tale, but also suggests that these mechanisms may contribute

to his appeal:

Critics who have dismissed Lovecraft as a mere over-writer miss a key feature of his

style: even within the fiction, words fail. Lovecraft’s first-person narrators offer far-

fetched analogies [vertical axis] and catalogues of maximalist detail [horizontal axis;

Carrollian transgression of categories], yet descriptions inevitably fall short of conveying

the horror and Otherness of the object [“certain moods too ethereal and indefinite for

description”]. Protagonists narrate the inadequacy of their own accounts, explicitly

‘suspending’ their own descriptions through qualifications or admissions of failure. It was

horrible in ways A, B, C, and D, recounts the Lovecraftian narrator, but none of these

details can convey [lingual dimension of the vertical axis] the unutterable X

[epistemological dimension of the vertical axis] of the Thing [the Lovecraftian monster or

phenomenon]. (Claverie, 2015, p. 262).

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Harman and Claverie succeed in coherently explaining what Lovecraft struggled to clarify when

he said “[My writing is] a struggle to crystallise certain moods too ethereal and indefinite for

description.” (Selected Letters IV, p. 319).

Identifying the mechanisms which are unaccounted for in Carroll’s theory on the appeal

of monsters gives us a way of trying to understand Lovecraft’s appeal. If it is the inaccessibility

of a monster or phenomenon, caused by Harman’s vertical axis along a lingual and an

epistemological dimension, is “a key feature of his style” (Claverie, 2015, p. 262), it could mean

that that is where Lovecraft’s appeal lies. Hence a further analysis of these mechanisms is in

order, specifically the part of it where Harman stops short: the distinction between a lingual and

an epistemological dimension of his vertical axis. We will now turn to the infamous The Call of

Cthulhu (1928), written in 1926, to investigate this lingual dimension.

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4. A mountain walked or stumbled: the lingual dimension

The Call of Cthulhu (1928) is presented as a journal of the discoveries made by Francis Wayland

Thurston, who slowly pieced together disparate occult happenings to uncover the accidental

release of Cthulhu; a vast, malevolent, alien entity imprisoned under the Pacific Ocean for

“vigintillions of years” (Necronomicon, p. 224). The seemingly disassociated happenings are

presented in three chapters. In the first chapter, Thurston is bequeathed a bas-relief, sculpted in a

fever by a young New England artist, Henry Anthony Wilcox. The sculpture depicts Cthulhu,

and despite its “general outline” being “most shockingly frightful” (p. 204), Thurston pays it

little further attention.

That is, until he hears of Inspector Legrasse in the second chapter, who uncovered a

horrible cult in the Louisiana bayou in 1907, bringing an idol of the cult back to civilization. This

idol is of course oddly reminiscent of the bas-relief, and Thurston starts to wonder if there is any

truth to the ravings of the cult members arrested by Legrasse.

This is confirmed in the third chapter, in which Thurston uncovers the journal of Gustaf

Johansen, a Norwegian sailor whose crew accidentally released Cthulhu from his tomb city of

Ry’leh in the Pacific Ocean: “The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to

do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident.” (Necronomicon, p. 224). The

journal reveals that after releasing Cthulhu, a frantic escape from Ry’leh follows, while Cthulhu

chases the surviving sailors into the sea. Most of the sailors die, while Johansen tries to get away

on their yacht. Cthulhu pursues them into the sea, where Johansen daringly turns the yacht

around and rams the great creature’s head. Cthulhu’s head pops like “an exploding bladder”

(Necronomicon, p. 224), although it immediately starts regenerating. Nevertheless, Cthulhu is

temporarily defeated and Johansen makes his escape, only to be murdered by Cult members on

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his return to Oslo. After uncovering all this, Thurston too fears for his life: “I know too much,

and the cult still lives.” (p. 225). The story being subtitled as “Found Among the Papers of the

Late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston” (p. 201) reveals his fate.

Two parts of the tale in particular hold significance in regard to the lingual dimension of

the vertical axis of Lovecraft’s gap, in which access to Cthulhu – a monster, the object of art-

horror in the tale – is undermined by lingual means, and which could provide an insight into

Lovecraft’s appeal. The first part is the dream that inspires Wilcox to sculpt the bas-relief;

dreams caused by psychic communication from Cthulhu, for they cease after Johansen rams

Cthulhu’s head. The second part is Johansen’s iconic description of Great Cthulhu itself.

Wilcox believes himself to be “psychically hypersensitive” (Necronomicon, p. 205), and

after an earthquake which stirs Cthulhu awake in Ry’leh, Wilcox has a dream about “great

Cyclopean cities of Titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and

sinister with latent horror” (p. 205), clearly indicative of Ry’leh. The most relevant part of this

dream however, is not what Wilcox sees, but what hears, psychic communication from Cthulhu:

“and from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a

chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he [Wilcox]

attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, ‘Cthulhu fhtagn.’”

(Necronomicon, p. 205).

After waking up from this dream, Wilcox starts and finishes the bas-relief without pause in a

fevered frenzy.

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The “voice that was not a voice” (Necronomicon, p. 205) is Cthulhu itself, and the

“unpronounceable jumble of letters” it ‘speaks’ – “Cthulhu fhtagn”, which translates to “Cthulhu

dreams” or “Cthulhu waits” – is meant to be unpronounceable (Joshi & Schultz, 2003). After all,

Cthulhu is not of this world, and hence “the word [Cthulhu] is supposed to represent a fumbling

human attempt to catch the phonetics of an absolutely non-human word […] hence [it] could

never be uttered perfectly by human throats” (Selected Letters V, p. 10). That explains the “voice

that was not a voice” – for a human, who only knows human voices, it is not a voice. The

physiological difference in throats leads to a literally unutterable word or sentence, and hence

Wilcox can only “attempt” to articulate something which is, for all intents and purposes,

“unpronounceable”. This is a device that Lovecraft uses to achieve a gap between reality and our

description of it, along the lingual dimension of the vertical axis. The difference between

Cthulhu and the unnamable is that Cthulhu’s unnamableness is actually explained: a

physiological difference. But the difference in throats is not the only device that Lovecraft

employs.

When Wilcox elaborates more about his dream, he returns to the voice that was not a

voice, this time describing it as “a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in

enigmatical sense-impacts uninscribable save as gibberish.” (Necronomicon, p. 206). Two

devices operating in sentence are identifiable, and they both serve to make Cthulhu inaccessible

to intentionality through lingual ways, hence demonstrating the lingual dimension of the vertical

axis of Lovecraft’s gap. The first is Lovecraft’s usage of “or” to sort of merge two seemingly

non-overlapping terms to create a new, third, implied concept of what he actually means to say.

A “voice or intelligence” which “shouts” is unconceivable: it is either an intelligence that uses its

voice to shout, or it is a voice that shouts, but the “or” forces the reader to come up with a new

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concept, a voice or intelligence that is capable of doing these things. What is “shouting” is

neither a voice nor an intelligence, but something in between; the “or” does not indicate a choice

between the surrounding nouns, but it indicates that both words are inadequate to describe the

phenomenon which they are trying to describe. This is an often-used device in Lovecraft

(Harman, 2012), but it should be noted that this Lovecraftian disjunction works on both the

lingual and epistemological dimensions of the vertical axis: lingual in the way it is brought into

effect, epistemological because its effect is inconceivable. This device will return twice more in

this paper: its lingual aspect will be further explored later in this chapter when Cthulhu is

described, and its epistemological aspect will be in chapter 5.

The second device Lovecraft is paradox, which is employed in such a way that it

becomes a threat to Carrollian categorizing. The voice that is not a voice is “uninscribable save

as gibberish”, yet Wilcox reveals that it is very much inscribable – “Cthulhu fhtagn” is what

Wilcox carves, or inscribes, into the bottom of the bas relief – and that this is no gibberish at all:

it is perfectly translatable into a sensible English sentence; “Cthulhu dreams” or “Cthulhu waits”.

(Necronomicon, pp. 204-206). Hence “Cthulhu fhtagn” is not uninscribable, nor is it gibberish,

but Lovecraft claims it is; the very process by which this is claimed – writing it down in a tale –

simultaneously proving the opposite. This sort of paradox works to estrange language from

reality, it works to widen “the gap between the world and our descriptions of it” (Harman, 2012,

p. 27). It prevents access to the nature of the voice that is not a voice – is it uninscribable and

gibberish, or is it not? – along the lingual, both in effect and in form, dimension of the vertical

axis.

Later in the tale, when Great Cthulhu himself finally shows his tentacled face, he is

described in a single sentnce: “Everyone was listening, and everyone was listening still when It

28

lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through

the black doorway” (Necronomicon, p. 223). This description is still perfectly adequate for a

Carrollian monster – Cthulhu is still accessible, both lingually and epistemologically – and no

gap is created. Carroll’s theory still holds up at this point, but when Lovecraft starts revealing

more details, Carroll’s theory quickly loses potency: “The Thing cannot be described – there is

no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions

of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God!” (p. 223).

Lovecraft’s trusty trick first used in The Unnamable (1925) is the first device employed

here: Cthulhu simply “cannot be described”. As discussed in chapter 2, this cuts off lingual

access to the nature of the monster, hence denying disclosure of its properties, undermining

curiosity and intentionality. “There is no language” works to achieve exactly the same thing. In

stark contrast is “such eldritch contradiction of matter, force, and cosmic order”, which is a

classical Douglasian categorical violation: it is a contradiction of the highest order and therefore

a Carrollian monster by virtue of transgressing standing cultural categories. At the end of

Lovecraft’s description however, he again flips this on its head: “a mountain walked or

stumbled”. This is another example of a Lovecraftian disjunction: Cthulhu does not walk, nor

does it stumble, it does something in between, something which is not lingually describable by

either term. Contrary to “voice or intelligence” however, “walked or stumbled” is not

unconceivable – hence it works exclusively along the lingual dimension of the vertical axis, not

the epistemological.

Cthulhu is a classical Lovecraftian monster, which ticks all the boxes of an appealing

monster, both Carrollian and not. It is threatening (it kills at least three of Johansen’s colleagues),

it is impure (parts of it violate categories, for example by being a contradiction and interstitial –

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“If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus,

a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing.”

(Necronomicon, p. 204)), and it is quite obviously supernatural; yet at the same time it is

inaccessible by virtue of being indescribable and lingually inaccessible, undermining curiosity

towards its properties and nature, and threatening attempts to categorize it by avoiding

intentionality. That is an impressive list of qualities, all of which help to explain Cthulhu’s

lasting appeal and iconic status. However, there is still one box that Cthulhu does not tick: he is

still conceivable. Cthulhu does not explicitly create a gap along the epistemological dimension of

the vertical axis; he is still knowable. But some things in Lovecraft are not.

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5. Just a colour out of space: the epistemological dimension

The Colour Out of Space (1927), written in the same year as it was published, tells the story of

the Gardner family in retrospect; pieced together years later by the narrator, a government

surveyor using the account of an eye-witness, the old Ammi Pierce. Pierce tells of a meteorite

crashing on the Gardner property 45 years ago, containing “a large coloured globule”

(Necronomicon, p. 171), which defies all attempts to classify or analyze it. The meteorite soon

shrinks and disappears, just as the specimens taken from it seemingly destroy themselves.

The following season, it quickly becomes clear that although the meteorite is gone, its

effects are not: the Gardner’s crops grow freakishly large but “not a single jot was fit to eat”

(Necronomicon, p. 172), and the trees start to glow faintly in the dark. The Gardner patriarch,

Nahum, suspects that the meteorite has poisoned the soil; little does he know the colour it

contained has actually taken up residence in his well. The following year, the infestation spreads

to the farm animals, ultimately turning crop and animal alike “grey and brittle” (p. 177), before

disintegrating into a grayish powder. The Gardners too slowly lose their sanity, starting with

Nahum’s wife, who he promptly locks in the attic. By July “she had ceased to speak and crawled

on all fours, and before that month was over Nahum got the mad notion that she was slightly

lumniferous in the dark” (p. 176). Pierce is the only contact they still have with the outside

world, although he himself dreads visiting the Gardner property.

After not having heard from the Gardners for two weeks, Pierce nevertheless gathers his

courage and visits the property. He discovers an ailing, grey and brittle Nahum on his couch,

raving feverishly about a “colour”. Pierce visits the attic, puts Nahum’s wife – warped beyond all

recognition – out of her misery, witnesses a strange colour observing him through an attic

window, and goes back down to see Nahum die. He flees the house, terrified of the colour, only

31

to return with more men. These men witness the colour rise from the Gardner’s well and shoot

into the sky, although Pierce swears he saw a fraction of it return to the well. The property is

leveled, Pierce is forever mentally scarred, and in the present time the government surveyor

resigns from his job, utterly convinced something – but what? – is still in the well.

The atmospheric tale was one of Lovecraft’s own favorites (Burleson 1990; Joshi 1996)

and is still considered one of his best works (Burleson, 1983; Joshi, 1996; Bleiler & Bleiler,

1998). Joshi’s praise revolves around Lovecraft depicting the colour as something completely

different from humanity and human experience, noting how the colour raises questions on

morality, responsibility and evil: “we can no more attribute any human volition to it [the colour]

than we would to some acid if we placed our hand in it.” (Joshi, 1996, p. 176). This is a

compelling notion to analyze through a Carrollian lens, because it raises questions on whether or

not the monster – the colour, if it can be called a monster in the first place, which will be

returned to later – is accessible, and hence if it functions along the epistemological dimension of

the vertical axis. But before we turn to the colour itself, The Colour Out of Space also sports

another use of Lovecraftian disjunction; this is notable because it works along the

epistemological dimension, instead of along the lingual dimension as seen with the disjunctions

used in The Call of Cthulhu.

The second Gardner to fall to the madness after his mother is Nahum’s son Thaddeus,

after seeing something in the well:

Thaddeus went mad after a visit to the well. He had gone with a pail and had come back

empty-handed, shrieking and waving his arms, and sometimes lapsing into an inane titter

or whisper about ‘the moving colours down there’.” (Necronomicon, p. 177).

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The disjunction here – “an inane titter or whisper” – is fundamentally different from “voice or

intelligence” or “walked or stumbled” because unlike these former two, tittering and whispering

are mutually exclusive; a titter being shrill and audible, but a whisper being anything but either

of these things. The “or” makes it clear that Thaddeus is not alternating between a titter and a

whisper, but instead is producing a sound that is a little bit of both – which is impossible. Unlike

“walked or stumbled”, which was estranging linguistically, but still conceivable, tittering and

whispering at the same time is inconceivable – it goes against our understanding of reality.

Hence it creates a gap by allusion, Harman’s vertical axis, but instead of only words failing to

describe it, it is also a phenomenon that is in itself inconceivable: knowledge fails, and it deftly

demonstrates the epistemological dimension of the vertical axis.

The colour itself is also inaccessible for intentionality, by way of the epistemological

dimension of the vertical axis. Whereas Cthulhu – despite his non-Carrollian lingual threat – was

still conceivable, the colour is not. It is not that the characters in The Colour Out of Space do not

try to understand it; Nahum summons three professors from Miskatonic University to analyze the

meteorite, but they “were forced to concede they could not place it. It was nothing of this earth,

but a piece of the great outside; and as such dowered with outside properties and obedient to

outside laws.” (Necronomicon, p. 172). One of the very few things they are able to acknowledge

is that “The colour, which resembled some of the bands in the meteor’s strange spectrum, was

almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it a colour at all.” (p.

171). It being impossible to describe save by analogy places it firmly on Harman’s vertical, or

“allusive” (Harman, 2012, p. 24) axis. It is clear it is indescribable; hence it works along the

lingual dimension of the vertical axis. But is it accessible beyond that, is it understandable at all?

33

The dying Nahum has had by far the most first-hand experience with the colour and it

effects, but when Pierce asks “What was it Nahum – what was it?”, Nahum “crackles out a final

answer”: “Nothin’ . . . nothin’ . . . the colour . . .” (Necronomicon, p. 181). He admits he “dun’t

know what it wants. . .”, that “it come from some place whar things ain’t as they is here. . . one

o’ them professors said so. . . he was right. . .”, before poignantly concluding it was “jest a

colour. . .” (p. 181). The last part, it being “just a colour”, combines with what the professors

concluded: the fact that it was only a color by analogy. That means that it is essentially ‘just

something which is only accessible by analogy’; hence its true nature is hidden: it is

epistemologically obscured.

The same professors, in addition to coining “colour by analogy”, also conclude that they

“had indeed seen with waking eyes that cryptic vestige of the fathomless gulfs outside; that lone,

weird message from other universes and other realities of matter, force, and entity.”

(Necronomicon, p. 172). The last part is thought-provoking: the colour is of another “reality” and

“entity”, raising questions on what that means, how that relates to questions of being

understandable or knowable, and whether or not it can be the subject of human intentionality.

Sadly, Lovecraft does not elaborate on these notions of reality and entity, so these questions

remain unanswered due to lack of context – all that is certain is that these qualities do not

transgress standing cultural boundaries, but that they lay completely outside of them, which

presents a problem to Douglasian categorizing.

Leaving this diversion for what it is, the government surveyor summarizes all of the

epistemological problems the colour poses near the end of the story, monologuing to the reader

on its possible nature, or lack thereof:

34

What it is, only God knows. In terms of matter I suppose the thing Ammi [Pierce]

described would be called a gas, but this gas obeyed laws that are not of our cosmos. This

was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes and photographic plates

of our observatories. This was no breath from the skies whose motions and dimensions

our astronomers measure or deem too vast to measure. It was just a colour out of space—

a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it;

from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-

cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes. (Necronomicon, p.188).

The sheer incomprehensibility of the colour is stressed, as it is impossible to grasp, understand,

or attribute any meaning to: it is “beyond all Nature as we know it”. It “stuns the brain and

numbs us” when we try to comprehend the gap the colour creates between reality – its evident

presence – and our understanding of that reality. It is interesting to note that the narrator states

the colour is from “beyond all Nature as we know it”, leaving open the possibility that one day,

we might know. But, until that time, “it was just a colour out of space”.

The colour is a prime example of Lovecraft’s ability to create a something that goes

above and beyond Carroll’s theories, leading to it being greatly appealing and curiosity-inducing.

But is it still a monster then? The colour is supernatural (it is stated multiple times it exists

beyond our current scientific understanding), it is threatening (it kills off the Gardners and untold

crops and livestock), and it is in some ways impure (it exhibits interstitial and formless properties

in the narrator’s conclusion: it “would be called a gas” and comes from “unformed realms”); yet

at the same time it defies Carroll. Firstly, it cuts off curiosity in Carrollian terms, that is, by

letting the story be about a gradual disclosure of its properties: it is inaccessible to human

35

intentionality. Furthermore, it creates a gap between reality and our descriptions of it, Harman’s

vertical access, both along the lingual dimension (it is a color “only by analogy”) but also along

the epistemological dimension (“it was just a colour out of space”), which leads to some parts of

it being uncategorizable, undermining not only Carrollian curiosity but also accessibility. Hence,

despite transgressing some standing cultural categories, it poses a threat to the rest: the vast

majority of its properties are inaccessible, and hence it defies categorization. Or, as the narrator

concludes: “I do not know – that is all.” (Necronomicon, p. 188).

It could be that the colour is not a monster; that would explain why Carroll’s theory on

the nature of monsters cannot wholly account for it. The same goes for Cthulhu – being lingually

inaccessible and therefore a threat to categorizing – but simultaneously popular reception has

made it clear that Great Cthulhu is a monster. The unnamable, Cthulhu and the colour are all

ticking off Carroll’s conditions, but there seems to be something more to them, leaving Carroll’s

theory on the appeal of horror wanting. It seems that Carroll’s theory needs an addition,

identified in this paper: the vertical axis of Harman, expanded into the more specific lingual and

epistemological dimensions. The fact that this mechanism is sparsely used in most horror,

accounts for Lovecraft’s lasting appeal.

36

Conclusion

Carroll’s cognitive theory on the appeal of horror (1990; 2001; 2003) is dependent on

intentionality, both in regard to curiosity towards the plot and object of horror, and in regard to

categorizing a monster for to be impure. Lovecraft’s monsters – in this case, the unnamable,

Cthulhu and the colour out of space – adhere to parts of Carroll’s theory in that they are each

supernatural, threatening and impure, but they also show where Carroll’s theory fall short, by

virtue of being partly inaccessible.

Graham Harman’s notion of the gap created by Lovecraft between reality and our

descriptions of it (2012) is useful for it provides a method to investigate the mechanisms that

cause Carroll’s theory to fall short. The horizontal axis that Harman identifies aligns with

Carroll, providing yet another indication that Carroll’s theory should not flat out be rejected, but

that it needs an expansion. Harman’s vertical axis is adequate in identifying the mechanisms

which provide the inaccessibility of Lovecraft’s monsters, but his analysis stops short of

analyzing the exact dimensions along which the vertical axis works. This paper proposes those

dimensions are the lingual and epistemological dimensions, demonstrated by respectively The

Call of Cthulhu (1928) and The Colour Out of Space (1927) by way of the devices Lovecraft

uses in them.

These mechanisms should be added to Carroll’s theory if it is to explain the appeal of

Lovecraft’s horror. As such, the theory should be expanded on two points: 1) it is not the

curiosity towards the disclosure of a monster’s properties and nature that drives its appeal, but it

is the curiosity in itself, and 2) transgressing categories is not the only way in which a monster

can be impure, but a monster threatening categorizing itself is sufficient for it to evoke art-

horror.

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By expanding Carroll’s theory as such, it remains suitable to explain Lovecraft’s lasting

appeal. The more interesting notion however, is the question whether Lovecraft warranting an

expansion of Carroll in the first place is the driving force of his appeal; it implies that because his

fiction is different from ‘usual’ Carrollian horror, his tales are distinctly appealing. That would

explain why despite his writing style being obtuse, his plots being dull and the curiosity towards

his monsters being curtailed, his appeal lasts; because of the inaccessibility of his monsters and

phenomena along the lingual and epistemological dimensions. Whether or not this assessment of

Lovecraft will amass a larger following will only show in time; if not, he will remain assigned to

pulp.

38

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Lovecraft, H. P. (1937). Notes on Writing Weird Fiction. Amateur Correspondent, 2, No. 1, pp.

7-10. Retrieved from: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/nwwf.aspx

Lovecraft, H. P. (1976). Selected Letters IV: 1932-1934. (A. Derleth & J. Turner, Eds.) Sauk

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