The Ballad of Black Tom

I wasn't crazy about this one and I can't exactly put my finger on why. At this point I'm no stranger to the ~150-to-200-ish page horror novella, but this story just couldn't pull me in. 1920's Harlem is an interesting era, I didn't find either of the two protagonists outright unlikable, and the prose and dialogue were fine. I guess there was just nothing here that I hadn't already seen before? My only substantive complaint was that the main protagonist kind of goes through a pretty drastic character change (going so far as to change his name) "off-screen" as it were, and I kind of wish we were privy to a little more of what led to that. I know I often complain about horror books showing too much of their hand, but I feel like this one leaned too far the other way.

Maybe I would've enjoyed this one more if I hadn't already read so much other historical cosmic horror that dealt with race relations in America, but as far as that incredibly niche subgenre goes, this isn't the worst.

This novella is a companion piece to H. P. Lovecraft's "The Horror at Red Hook." While the original story focused on a New York detective named Malone and his investigation of the rich, aging occultist Robert Suydam, this book introduces a new character named Charles Thomas Tester to the mix. "The Horror at Red Hook" is one of the more racist Lovecraft stories—full of "swarthy" types of various ethnicities up to no good—and Victor LaValle counters this by centering the African American perspective. The result is sort of an inversion of the original tale, elevating racism as one of the multiple horrors in the story and turning the original protagonist into one of the villains.

The writing was generally fine, but the story was a bit sleight. "The Horror at Red Hook" isn't particularly interesting as Lovecraftian source material, so it's a little baffling why it was chosen as a story. The above-average racism is basically the only element recommending it for use in a progressive reaction to Lovecraft. And while Cthulhu doesn't play a role in "The Horror at Red Hook," he's been shoe-horned in here. His inclusion seems more like fan-service, or something especially blatant to clue in those unfamiliar with Lovecraft's work of the connection. It just seemed a little extraneous to me.

"The Ballad of Black Tom" interweaves interestingly with "The Horror at Red Hook," providing a more intimate view of events elided in the original story, but it's also lacks subtlety in places. The racist abuse faced by Charles Tester is horrific, but it also felt that the story lacked the page count to handle his descent into villainy in a realistic manner. I see it singled out for praise in other reviews, but the “Every time I was around them, they acted like I was a monster. So I said goddamnit, I’ll be the worst monster you ever saw!” line is so cheesy and on-the-nose.

Overall I liked this story and thought the confrontation of racism in Lovecraft's work was interesting, but I can't help feel there was a missed opportunity. By all means, confront retrograde elements in Lovecraft's work, but "The Horror at Red Hook" is one of the lesser works in the canon. Deconstructions tend to work best when they target a great piece of art, not one that even die-hard Lovecraft fans are lukewarm on.

I haven’t read The Horror at Red Hook but I’m very familiar with Lovecraftian tropes and I’m fully aware of what a racist bigot H.P. Lovecraft was.

So... this book gave me particular pleasure knowing that Lovecraft would have HATED it.

This is a novel of the Black Lives Matter movement set in a Lovecraftian Cthulhu horror world and it fucking works. I mean it really works. It’s a mythical, enigmatic, eldritch tale told from the perspective of a black man in the 20s where every injustice he faces is acknowledged and he is the hero.

I don’t want to say too much more because I’ll spoil it, but I really loved this story. And I loved imagining that bigot Lovecraft’s face upon reading his imagined world imagined in this way.

I fully recognise Lovecraft’s influence on the horror genre, but I believe that we have advanced far beyond him and his unconscionable views.

We are in a time of reckoning right now over how to separate problematic artists from the valuable art they have made, and The Ballad of Black Tom is one of the better examples of using transformation to rehab a problematic work into something informative and worthwhile and not shitty.

Cthulhu is an important part of the horror canon, but Lovecraft doesn’t have to be.