I came upon Lovecraft at the age of thirteen. I was at the time dwelling in the Waste Land of Muncie, Indiana, and by fanatical reading was frantically trying to escape the blight of intellectual stultification so prevalent in the Bible Belt. Most of my fare was detective and horror tales. Browsing through the shelves of the Muncie Public Library, I came across the Arkham House At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels. The title alone would have intrigued me, and I did not let myself be put off by Coye's amateurish cover illustration. But strange to say, when I actually began reading the title story (still my favourite among Lovecraft's works), I did not like it!---or rather, I sensed that it was all "over my head", and I found myself unable to follow Lovecraft’s rich and convoluted style. (I was a very stupid thirteen.) I thus put the volume away (I distinctly recall stopping on p. 53), intending to probe Lovecraft (of whom I had never heard before) at some later time. That time came roughly in the spring of 1972---I was nearly fourteen. This time I began (more sensibly) with The Dunwich Horror and Others (Arkham House), and---after being disappointed with the tameness of the first two stories ("In the Vault" and "Pickman's Model")---I thereupon read "The Rats in the Walls” (ugh!), "The Outsider” (whose conclusion I came a hair's-breadth away from guessing), and all the others. I was a Lovecraftian for life.

Elsewhere I have spoken of my nascent attempts at fiction-writing during this period. Although I very quickly became influenced by Lovecraft in my fiction-writing, I wrote comparatively few "Cthulhu Mythos" tales---"The Recurring Doom" (1974) is my longest and last. Ironically, however, I so fell under Lovecraft’s sway that I produced many unconscious plagiarisms of HPL’s tales---and unfortunately I chose his poorest tales to plagiarize. I distinctly recall writing imitations of "The Hound", "Herbert West---Reanimator", "The Statement of Randolph Carter", and the like---all with a complete unawareness of the source of my inspiration. But I soon stopped writing fiction and became devoted to the study of Lovecraft’s life and work---from 1975 on this became my prime goal in life. It was DeCamp's biography of Lovecraft---discovered at my public library in April 1975---which impelled me to attempt the criticism of Lovecraft, for I was not merely fascinated with Lovecraft’s life, but saw that there was much to be done in the study of his work and thought. (I am even now overwhelmed at the thought of how much there is to do in this regard---given time, I could produce a dozen Ph.D. dissertations on Lovecraft without ever leaving my study.)

It was through the DeCamp biography, too, that I began to notice rather uneasily how similar to my own were Lovecraft's tastes and attitudes. Here are only a few of the points where HPL and I see eye to eye:

1. We are both Anglophiles.

2. We adore ancient culture (particularly Rome).

3. We loathe the Dark Ages.

4. We are fond of the Enlightenment (although HPL is more lukewarm about the philosophes---particularly Voltaire, once my idol---than I, and looks instead to the English.

5. We both adore cats.

6. We both enjoy coffee with much sugar (although I am disappointed to say that HPL was not fond of tea, which I prefer to coffee).

7. We were both in our youth shy, reclusive, nervous, and uneasy around strangers.

8. We are both tied to the familiar and dislike the strange and new.

9. We are both (for all practical purposes) atheists (although I detest religion more than he).

But this is becoming comical; it might be easier to enumerate the points where I differ from Lovecraft:

1. I (almost shamefacedly) know Greek better than HPL (also know Italian and German, which HPL never knew; HPL's Spanish, however rudimentary, is probably better than mine).

2. I like classical music; HPL did not.

3. I have no especial hostility to foreigners---since I am one myself. (But I have become so much the "good European" of Nietzsche that I feel no allegiance to my own country. I am tempted almost to agree with HPL when he said, "The more I think about India the more I want to vomit.")

There are probably other minor differences, but I can't recall them now. In essence, my outlook and HPL's are the same: his philosophy is mine, his eccentricities and predilections are mine, etc., etc. , etc. I must, however, assert that I in truth had many of these attitudes and predilections (however nascent they may have been) before ever encountering them in Lovecraft. I have taken up many of his beliefs not because I want to be more like him, but because I am convinced that his beliefs are sensible ones worth taking up.

There was a time, however, when I was approaching fanaticism in this regard: I wanted to read nothing but the books he read, go nowhere but where he went, and do nothing but what he did. Even now I not only try to imitate his style (even in nonfiction), but have also adopted his eccentricities of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Some of my correspondents now say that even my handwriting looks like HPL's . . . "I am it and it is I. . . ." I am still almost ashamed that I shall attain a Ph.D. when HPL never got a high-school diploma; and I can see HPL in Hades shrugging his shoulders in disgust when I listen for hours on end to Vivaldi or Handel. . . . Indeed, I am now becoming irritated that HPL did not share some of my attitudes: why did he not keep his nose to the grindstone and learn Greek? Why did he not give music a chance? (Here's another coincidence: both he and I started violin lessons at the age of seven, and both of us quit---although he after two years and I after eleven---because we could not endure practicing. Of course, the strangest and most unnerving coincidence is that Lovecraft's mother and my mother share the same birthday. . . . Make of that what you will.) Conversely, I am ashamed that I do not pursue the sciences as he did. I also find myself becoming uncontrollably angry and offended when someone makes a snide reference to HPL.

My whole intellectual life has been shaped by Lovecraft. I would never have learnt Latin had I not wondered why HPL was fond of it; nearly all I know about colonial American history I know from Lovecraft; I discovered Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, and even the Presocratics through Lovecraft. I am now convinced that HPL's letters are his greatest work, and someday I shall publish his Collected Correspondence---if I don't go blind editing his Collected Works.

Of late I have Increasingly abandoned Lovecraft for the pursuit of classical and musicological studies---although even now every moment spent away from Lovecraft makes me feel guilty. But I have now returned in full measure to Lovecraftian studies, and I daresay I shall never abandon the field, however little time I will have for it in the future.

Do I regret having fallen so much under the sway of Lovecraft, and not allowing my "own" character to evolve? Not much, since without Lovecraft S. T. Joshi would be the most abysmal little wretch imaginable. It is only when I am studying Lovecraft that I feel justified in amending one of his many resounding utterances and saying, "Life is not a hideous thing."