Issues that HP Lovecraft was good at: Making a mythos. Constructing ambiance.
Issues that HP Lovecraft was dangerous at: Writing dialog. Creating compelling characters. Not being a racist.
As a fan of horror basically, I can’t fake that Lovecraft isn’t an important touchstone. However the man’s blatant racism can also be unimaginable to disregard, particularly because it usually finds its manner onto the pages of his tales. One of the crucial infamous is The Horror at Crimson Hook, which follows Detective Thomas Malone as he uncovers a sinister cult within the titular Brooklyn neighborhood.
The Ballad of Black Tom is a retelling of that story, however from the attitude of Charles “Tommy” Tester, a black man from Harlem who finds himself inadvertently caught in the course of one man’s quest for energy and the police. The writer, Victor LaValle, flips the explicitly xenophobic authentic, turning it right into a commentary on police brutality, racism, and the psychological results of dwelling as an oppressed individual. Lovecraft would have hated it.
Tommy is a hustler who we’re led to grasp early within the e book operates as a courier or a fixer to make ends meet. We’re additionally led to grasp that Tommy is considerably educated about magic and arcane artifacts. There’s no long-winded exposition dump to spell out the character of the magic, nor are we spoonfed some clarification about how Tommy obtained this information. It’s simply an accepted reality of the world we’re dropped into.
In an extended e book, this is likely to be irritating as you attempt to perceive the logic behind its supernatural parts. However at 149 pages, The Ballad of Black Tom has no time to waste detailing a magic system, it has a narrative to inform.
Tommy embarks on a brand new hustle that leads him to Flatbush, the place he hopes to make just a few {dollars} busking, regardless of not being a very good musician. He’s noticed by an aged man named Robert Suydam, who hires him to play a celebration at his dwelling. This alternate is witnessed by Officer Malone and a personal detective, Mr. Howard, who shake Tommy down and try to scare him away from returning to Flatbush. In fact, the promise of $300 within the Twenties is just too laborious to go up, and Tommy returns, permitting the remainder of the story to unfold.
Warning: Spoilers for The Ballad of Black Tom forward.
Interspersed between the conjuring of cosmic horrors at Suydam’s dwelling, the assault on the cult compound in Redhook, and the police harassment, we get a handful of scenes with Tommy and his father, fleshing out characters in a manner that Lovecraft by no means did. Tommy has an precise arc, motivations, and character. When the climax of the e book arrives, we’re totally invested in Tommy (who now goes by Black Tom).
Getting hooked up to Black Tom is vital as a result of, properly, he’s not the hero. In reality, there aren’t any heroes on this story, actually. There are villains, there are victims, however it’s laborious to name anybody a hero. Black Tom lashes out on the white males who search to use him and oppress him. It’s cathartic and satisfying as a reader, however his vengeance can also be indiscriminate, and it’s implied it can result in the tip of all mankind.
Tommy Tester is a damaged man on the finish of the story. One who’s so bored with the indignities of being a black man in a white man’s world that he would favor the harmful indifference of the nice outdated ones like Cthulu to the harmful indifference of systemic racism.
The Ballad of Black Tom just isn’t a refined e book, however it’s additionally a fast and pleasurable learn that takes the long-lasting Lovecraft mythos and offers it actual coronary heart. The Horror at Crimson Hook just isn’t a very good story. It has virtually no plot, its story arc is a straight line, and the characters have much less depth than a sheet of looseleaf. The Ballad of Black Tom salvages what makes Lovecraft compelling, at the very least in concept (regardless of his awfulness as an individual), and offers us one thing value studying within the twenty first century.
The Ballad of Black Tom is accessible on most e-book stores, however I extremely advocate you go and purchase a bodily copy at your neighborhood independent bookshop or help your local library.