Re: CHAT: Sax Rohmer

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

"I'm quite sure that Lovecraft was not really influence by Sax Rohmer -
he arrived at his racial prejudices, according to S.T. Joshi's biography,
just by being born in the time, place and surroundings he was."
        Admittably, Lovecraft's prejudices were far from abnormal for that day and
age.  However, I was specifically thinking about Lovecraft's prose "on the
East."  The "deathless Chinamen with faces of wax" who inhabit the "plateau
of Leng" sound as if they belong to the same fraternity which produced the
insidious Doctor.

        (BTW, I'm sure that someone here has some idea where Lovecraft's fragments
of languages originated - but I don't have the foggiest.  At least, when
Clark Ashton Smith produced the language spoken in Zothique he had the
decency to tell us what the sources of his constructed language were!
Anyone know where Lovecraft got those snippets of text?  Mangled Greek or
Syriac?  Were they a priori creations?)

        That these two conceptions of the East might have been produced
analogously, fed by the common prejudices of the age, is probably certain.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if Lovecraft read Rohmer; the literary
world (especially their brand of lurid, serial literature) wasn't *that*
large, Rohmer was widely read in the States (certainly widely read enough
for Hollywood to produce a film based upon his character Fu Manchu, starring
Boris Karloff, of course) and they seem to target similar audiences.

"Every (I almost wrote 'almost every', but that wouldn't have been accurate)
scene in Sax Rohmer is a cliche and can be found in other bits of low-brow
literature."
    Such as, IMHO, Lovecraft, but, ah, what cliches!  You mention Wodehouse,
who has been accused of the same crimes against literature, but few would
consider Wodehouse "low-brow."  Insubstantial, possibly, but low-brow?  And
Rohmer's "Chinamen" are so far removed from our reality that it would seem
that they inhabit a different sort of plane, that of mythical creatures like
unicorns and Tolkein's elves.  I can't be positive that Rohmer wasn't
consciously milking the stereotypes of his time for all they were worth when
composing his mystery novels - and I never would suggest that he believed
anything that he wrote.  It all seems so tongue-in-cheek (but, perhaps, that
is a modern perspective).

"Wodehouse makes a lot of fun of that kind of stuff in
'Something Fresh', as does Dorothy L. Sayers in 'Murder must advertise'."
   And they're not the only ones who made fun of Sax Rohmer.  I must say,
though, I consider myself something of a "newt," (I've even visited Sir
PGW's grave in Long Island) but I'm unfamiliar with the work of Dorothy L.
Sayers.

-Chollie
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