It may seem a strange thing to talk about realism in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Truth be told, it is a strange thing to talk about realism in fiction in general. Fiction by its very nature is made up. This is why I have always been skeptical of the virtue of strict realism in fiction. So-called realistic stories involve made up events and made up characters. Jay Gatsby or Elizabeth Bennett do not any more exist than Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth.

However, the techniques of realism can be used to enhance a story. The best of realistic fiction does this. Often so does fantastic fiction. Lovecraft often used them.

This is not as true of his earlier Lord Dunsany inspired fiction, but is particularly relevant to his later horror fiction. In the latter, Lovecraft uses realistic details in his stories to ground them despite dealing with supernatural themes.

In his October 17, 1930 letter to Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft says, “My own rule is that a story cannot produce terror unless it is devised with the care and verisimilitude of an actual hoax.” This is certainly true of his best stories. Take “The Colour Out of Space” for example. The beginning of the story describes with great detail the landscape of hills west of Arkham. While this might be tedious to someone looking for fast action, it is necessary in this particular story as Lovecraft slowly and deliberately builds an atmosphere of terror. If he had outright described the horror at the beginning of the story it would have fallen flat. Instead, Lovecraft establishes setting, mood, and hints at the terror to come.

The viewpoint character is an unnamed surveyor. As I pointed out in my post Testaments of Horror, first person narration gives the impression that what is being relayed are real events. The story, in fact, reads as a surveyor’s report. What happens is told quite dispassionately. Lovecraft describes the setting of the story in realistic detail, yet at the same time, he builds on these details to portray wondrous and horrifying events. The strange mutations brought by the meteor are contrasted with the more normal landscape details. This creates a sense of eeriness that is rather subtle.

Later in the same letter to Smith, Lovecraft says, “When a story fails to emphasize, by contrast with reality, the utter strangeness & abnormality of the wonders it depicts, it likewise fails to make those wonders seem like anything more than aimless puerility.”

He then goes on to tell Smith, “My conception of phantasy, as a general art form, is an extension rather than a negation of reality.” Lovecraft achieves this in his best stories. By using realistic details, we are lulled into accepting the extraordinary. I believe that if, for example, one would just read the climax of “Call of Cthulhu” it might not be as powerful or even somewhat ridiculous. However, the story begins with the mundane and slowly transitions to the extraordinary. While the story begins with Lovecraft’s famous quote about “the most merciful thing in the world is the human mind’s inability to correlate all its contents,” it does not explain right away what causes the narrator to believe that. The narrator instead talks about the death of his scholar uncle and how he was charged with organizing his uncle’s papers. This, while not an everyday occurrence, is in no way unusual. In fact, for some people, it is probably even relatable. The first indication of the extraordinary is a strange bas-relief discovered among the papers of the deceased. We are then led along a gradual shift from the real to the fantastic. If “Call” began with the discovery of R’lyeh and Cthulhu’s tomb, it would be a very different story: one that might not be bad, but would definitely not be quite as powerful.

Similarly, in “The Whisperer in Darkness,” the story begins with flooding in Vermont. I can not be sure, but I believe this was a real event. If not it certainly is something that could have happened. While a strictly realistic story would perhaps merely describe the flood, Lovecraft uses this as a jumping off point. Strange corpses are found. A scholar at Miskatonic University receives a letter that may be real or fake. Soon he goes to Vermont to investigate. The tension builds from there. Once again, Lovecraft uses realistic details to ground the extraordinary.

Lovecraft’s fiction then can contrasted with his friend Clark Ashton Smith’s, whose work at times seems to be a negation of reality. I do not mean this as a criticism of Smith whose work I consider exemplary. I merely mean they went about it different ways. Smith created entire imaginary realms like Hyperborea or Zothique while Lovecraft set his stories in the contemporary world. This is, of course, an oversimplification. Lovercraft’s early Dreamland stories are arguably a negation of reality and Smith wrote stories set in the contemporary world like “Genius Loci.” However it is, more or less, true of the stories they are best known for. They both created fictional parts of the real world. Lovecraft gave us Arkham and Smith Averoigne. It is worth noting that Lovecraft’s fictional towns are based on the New England area he lived in and loved so much. Smith, to the best of my knowledge, never even visited France.

By setting many of his stories in his contemporary New England, Lovecraft created a realistic backdrop for his tales of horror. It’s true that Arkham does not exist, but it was heavily based on the very real Salem. This fictional New England is based on a real New England (William Faulkner did something similar with his stories set in Yoknapatawpha County). It is in this bit of world-building that makes the stories believable. I think most of Lovecraft’s readers have a picture of Arkham or Innsmouth in their minds. Those towns do not actually exist, but when we read the story we feel that they do.

To sum up, in many of Lovecraft’s best stories he uses the techniques of realism, but gradually transitions to the fantastic. The realism comes in through the settings of the story: his description of places and the fact they were based on areas he knew rather well. As such, his stories, no matter how extraordinary, are strangely believable. It should also be taken that realism instead of being the goal of fiction is merely a device to create certain effects in a story.