The Mind Parastites
This interesting piece of criticism was taken from 'Strange Words' in the Fantastic Fiction site which is laden with fascinating material.
Colin Wilson, philosophical popularizer and
writer, stumbled across the books of the Lovecraft Cthulu epic at a
friend's house, subsequently using them as a rather negative example in
his book The Strength To Dream. He was challenged by Arkham House's
August Derleth to try his hand at a Lovecraftian tale, the results being
the cheeky modern intellectual attempt of The Mind Parasites [Arkham
House, 1967]. An interesting if rather uneven book, it is a science/horror
story which either (a) addresses the crushing oppression of the romantic
spirit by the modern world or (b) chronicles the whiny angst of the
unappreciated artist types. Beneath a rather straight exposition of the
Lovecraft universe of the Great Old Ones lies a thrashing of the Mozart
vs. Beethoven argument, i.e. what was it that happened at the end of the
eighteenth century that changed everything? Well, the Industrial
Revolution, of course. But Wilson looks for the deeper philosophical and
psychological explanations, using a hurly burly flood of philosophy
factoids which may be an exploration of the existential crisis of modern
man or sappy crypto-romantic revivalism. Whatever. Wilson manages to bring
something about every major psychological and philosophical figure of the
last hundred years into a Cthulu story, which is some kind of
achievement. I was so overwhelmed by the rush of data that I had this
really twisted dream in which my sweetie and I were trading Wittgenstein
and Nietzsche jokes.
It's kind of hard to determine what is serious and what is tongue-in-cheek
in this book. It has a very funny mock old-fashioned narrative style that
suits the material perfectly. At one point the protaganist attempts to
alter his consciousness by staying up late, drinking black coffee and
smoking cigars. This is a mind expansion gambit so archaic as to become
almost post-modern. The Mind Parasites is a classic Lovecraft
groove with intellectual trimmings. Archeologists stumble on an incredibly
ancient cyclopean city in Asia Minor while the protaganist, investigating
the mysterious suicide of a colleague, begins to uncover evidence of
malevolent alien intelligences that live in and off of the human
collective unconsciousness. It seems that the monsters in question invaded
the Unconscious around the time of the French Revolution, and are
responsible for most of the subsequent muddle-headedness and flawed
decisions of the human race. The evidence? The clearly loony writings of
the unfortunate late scientist. If the reader can step back far enough,
this book can be seen as a story of paranoia by contagion. The characters'
gullible acceptance of highly dubious material leads to an examination of
their deeper mental depths and, lo and behold, they find monsters. When I
first read this book some twenty five years ago, even a callow youth such
as I wondered if this was the diary of a delusionary, a tale told by a
lunatic. The fantastic events of the story aren't supported by the
peculiar dream logic one finds in Lovecraft or Van Vogt, but are made up
of only a simple minded acceptance of flawed and ambiguous evidence.
This story totters for two reasons. First, mainstream writers approach
science fiction at their peril. Genre is a bit like playing the violin,
easy to do badly and difficult to do well. Secondly is the weakness shared
by much of the post-Lovecraft Cthulu fiction, that the visionary
imagination, the inherent madness in the original, is lacking. Much as
Philip K. Dick could approach paranoia with a knowing perspective,
Lovecraft was clearly a seriously damaged individual, comfortable with a
peculiar and vivid madness. In his damage was the genius of his stories.
The sane are not meant to tread the paths of madness that Lovecraft knew. The
Mind Parasites is doubly hobbled by being sci-fi by a non-genre writer
and an exploration of an insane universe by a sane individual.
Nonetheless, the book is highly effective in some ways. The transferral of
Lovecraft's monsters to the psyche, Lovecraft in inner space, offers some
profoundly creepy and disturbing insights. At one point, the narrator
offers the analogy of contact with the monsters from the id as being like
sitting comfortably in a warm bath, then feeling something slimy brush
against your leg. In the end, though, this psychological rationalization
of Lovecraft's horrors opens the door to interpreting them as just so much
psychosis, disallowing the suspension of disbelief which is the entry
ticket to the hideous and insane world of the Cthulu mythos.
Wilson has philosophical axes to grind galore. Chiefly, he is
rationalizing the concept of evil, finding it emanating from an alien
source, and giving it a form that can be grappled with. Wilson is clearly
a romantic, trying to explain why bad things happen to keep Man from
becoming the God whose potential lies within. He attempts this with a
facile scientism which screams his Romantic distaste for the modern. And
like Lovecraft, his monsters are perverse reflections of modern urban
life. The cyclopean cities, with their "great angular buildings"
and "inclined planes" could, in other contexts, be the
description of New York or London, with their skyscrapers and vast
motorways. This concept feeds into Lovecraft's madness as he owed the
crushing of his own hopes and dreams more to the Gotham of New York and
its publishing industry than to the crumbling streets of his own New
England towns. Wilson is simply revolted at the modern urban world and its
crushing of the artistic spirit, lacking the personal motivation of
grappling with his own demons. He is a theorist, whereas Lovecraft lived
the life. Wilson is an eighteenth century thinker, who would rather be a
Byron or a Shelley than a Sartre or a Foucault.
Is it a good read? The Lovecraft fan within will snicker at times. The
sci-fi fan will probably throw up hands in despair. The sheer mass of
factoidal material is interesting on its own. It was endlessly amusing to
listen to the narrator explaining how he must teach others the tools of
phenomenology to fight the mind parasites. It is a game try but a doomed
enterprise. It is often difficult to read much of the post-Lovecraft
Cthulu material, as it seems to be almost parody when compared to the
Master. It is a credit to Lovecraft that his disturbing and unique fiction
should engender such imitation so long after his death. The Mind
Parasites takes a stab at approaching the material from a different
direction, but mostly fails. I think I will go now and re-read The
Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, in a darkened room, alone.