DISCLAIMER: This artcile is an edited excepert from ‘The Literary Portrayal of Nihilism in the Weird: Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Response to H. P. Lovecraft’ by Shaun Mclaren, an undergraduate dissertation completed at the University of Stirling in 2025. While the dissertation was awarded the Justin D. Edwards Memorial Prize in association with the International Gothic Association, this article’s content is still ultimately at undergraduate level and the scope and depth of its research has since expanded. The article has undergone mild revision of its original chapter form in preparation for publiction through ‘The Mourning Paper’ but has NOT been subject to a peer-review process.
The ‘weird’ is a classification of literature that resists precise categorisation and eludes attempts to objectively describe it. Popularised in the early twentieth century by H.P. Lovecraft who emerged as its most notorious author, the weird is often associated with, and draws influence from, gothic literary traditions. However, its definition has continued to shift, varying over time from sometimes being considered the bastard child of horror, to the orphan of fantasy. With contemporary authors like Caitlin R. Kiernan incorporating elements of both in modern renditions of the weird, weird scholar Timothy Jones’ description of it possessing an ever-evolving, “progressive form that shrugs off stultifying tradition”[1] is accurate. Despite much of the weird’s history being mired in debate regarding what it actually is[2], a singularly concise literary definition still seems to elude it. Yet where conventional literary perspectives fail to objectively describe the weird’s essential nature, an ideological approach provides a more robust if not literarily accurate account. In his seminal text, The Weird and the Eerie, Mark Fisher positions the weird as existing within an abstract conceptual space. He describes that a core facet of its identity is “fascination for the outside, for that which lies beyond standard perception, cognition and experience”[3]. Weird literature focuses on anomalous encounters where these ‘external’ forces, portrayed as either an object or entity, invades the interiority of our accepted reality. All articles in this series will use the term ‘external’ in reference to this definition. These encounters, placing us into direct contact with something utterly unexplainable, induce “a particular kind of perturbation”[4], a sensation of recognisable wrongness. This perturbation ultimately amounts to existential doubt about the validity of how we experience the world, either how we mentally perceive it or solipsistically experience it, and the modes of understanding the world which we have used to apply value to all things. It is this sensation of existential anxiety, Fisher argues, that is the centrally defining sentiment of the weird. Regardless of its stylistic form or narrative conventions, a weird tale is one fundamentally preoccupied with meaning, for “if the entity or object is here, then the categories which we have […] used to make sense of the world cannot be valid”[5] (emphasis Fisher’s). Consequently, the ‘weird’ is a literary mode rather than a genre, whose primary aim is to challenge its readers with the threat of meaninglessness, represented by external forces.
In addressing this threat of meaninglessness, the weird seems to share the ideological concerns of the concept of nihilism. Nihilism can be broadly understood as “the notion that life has no intrinsic meaning”[6]and “that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.”[7] Nihilism, being one of the most vague, paradoxical and abstract philosophical concepts, proves incredibly resistant to codification and highly open to subjective interpretation (as well as misunderstanding), making it just as intangible as the weird. It isn’t a singular, coherent ‘ideology’[8] in the conventional philosophical sense in that it does not have premises that follow from each other to reach a sound, or even valid, conclusion. It is, rather, a collection of epistemological, moral and ontological concerns whose ratification into the concept of nihilism is most commonly associated with German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche offered one of the most concise, and still academically regarded, accounts of nihilism in the late nineteenth century, describing nihilism as a sentiment, a “psychological condition”[9] which maintains that “there is no goal, no answer to the question: why?”[10] For Nietzsche, nihilism is as external a force as Fisher’s description of weird entities; an inevitable, looming threat, waiting unseen beyond the periphery of standard human perception to plunge every value and principle into meaningless futility.[11] Unlike the weird, nihilism has undergone little ideological alteration to its core tenets since Nietzsche’s writings, however, his account, utilising “all his rhetorical prowess”[12] still proves sufficient to “shock his readers out of complacency”[13]. His account amounts to a startling pulling back of the enveloping illusions of accepted order to reveal the existential, immediate threat of nihilistic thought. His sole ambition in provoking such discomfort was the admirable attempt to make us recontextualise our values in order to live authentically and with purpose despite such cosmic uncertainty. It seems evident, then, that Nihilism shares the primary focus of weird literature, which, Jones sagely states “amounts to a defence of the self. Readers are asked to recognise the wrongness of the powers without”[14] in an effort to live a life of meaning.
Fisher creates space for an ideological parentage between weird literature and Nietzschean nihilism by detaching the weird from its wrongly applied roots in the uncanny. The uncanny, improperly translated from Freud’s ‘unheimlich’, is steeped in psychoanalysis and is associated with bizarre occurrences in the mundane world of sensory perception, provoking an internal, rather than existential, scepticism[15]. The uncanny influenced early-contemporary gothic writers, crucially Edgar Allan Poe, who Lovecraft, early in his career, drew significant influence from, considering him “an opener of artistic vistas.”[16] As such, the concept came to be mistakenly conflated with the weird; however, as the weird developed into its own mode of literature, the internalised perspective of psychoanalysis proved insufficient for the grandiose scope of weird literature’s concerns. Fisher dismisses the association as one that is merely superficial, convincingly arguing that where the uncanny “is symptomatic of a secular retreat from the outside”[17], the weird wholeheartedly focuses its attention on the external. Like nihilism, its scepticism is geared towards attempting to discern what lies beyond the mundane-bizarre rather than turning inwards from it.
However, while the weird shares nihilism’s fundamental preoccupation with discerning meaning, that is, how one derives a sense of purpose and understanding of their existence, and applies it to pursue an individually meaningful life, it could similarly be said to share this with the concept of absurdism. A defining notion of absurdism is that it strives to find meaning in life despite the inevitability of death rendering anything we do meaninglessness,[18] born from a “sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition”[19]. Absurdism shares nihilism’s philosophical concerns for addressing epistemic failure, values and pessimism. However, where nihilism pursues questions of meaning by adhering to traditional principles of philosophical enquiry in the form of coherent rational systems, absurdism “expresses its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought.”[20] This approach leads absurdists to a sentiment of acceptance, attempting to accept that human actions are ultimately meaningless; a sentiment that goes against the weird’s direct challenge of the destabilising forces of external meaninglessness. None of Lovecraft’s characters come to accept the externality that challenges them without going mad or becoming agents of destruction themself. While some of Kiernan’s characters reconcile their own existence with the tangible existence of external forces, they are often resentful or otherwise alienated as a result; neither author responds to meaninglessness in such a way that could be considered acceptance. Like nihilism, weird literature rebels against the sentence of meaninglessness that externality imposes upon its characters. Weird characters pursue questions of meaning with the same lucid rationality as Nietzsche; they do not, and cannot, accept meaninglessness, even if it results in their personal detriment. Thus, while the ideological concerns of the weird may be similar to absurdism, the attitude and approach of weird literature reflects a nihilist approach.
While the qualities and ideological focus of the weird aligns with those of Nietzschean nihilism, to actually study its authors through a nihilistic lens, that lens must be more comprehensible than abstract philosophical terminology. As stated above, nihilism is a concept which does not easily admit of analysis, but analysis can be facilitated by reducing it to its constitutive, tangible aspects. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche identifies epistemic failure, value rejection/revaluation, destructive tendencies and existential pessimism as intrinsic aspects of nihilism[21]. The expression of these intrinsic aspects is often accompanied by the characteristic aspects I alluded to but can define here as resentment and alienation. While Nietzsche does not philosophically justify these as being intrinsic to nihilism, his writing demonstrates them as being consequential products of the others he identifies[22]. While these aspects are all constitutive elements of nihilism, the inclusion of all aspects is not a necessary condition to distinguish or identify ‘nihilism’. However, neither do any of these aspects exist, philosophically speaking, in isolation. With specific instances of nihilist-manifestation not following any kind of generalised order of how, or when, any of the aspects will manifest, it is rather the interactivity of their presence that appears to be crucial in the identification of ‘nihilism’.
Yet, the individual manifestation of these aspects can occur without being deemed symptomatic of nihilism, which indicates that some kind of ideological distortion must occur that results in them becoming ‘nihilistic’. Nietzsche clarifies the causes of nihilistic attitudes in generalised socio-political, epistemological, and ontological terms,[23] demonstrating this ideological shift in abstractly applicable, conceptual terms. This broad explanation pertains to the intrinsic aspects that he identifies, however, he fails (in this author’s humble perspective) to address the more common experiences whereby individuals exhibiting these aspects adopt a ‘nihilistic’ perspective, the specific moments where their perception of the world is broken. This perceptual break is the point where the corrosive germ of nihilistic modes of thought is given ingress into an individual’s psyche. It is a moment in which an individual’s perceptions or understandings of reality, whether that be located in their sense of self, metaphysics or any other seemingly stable principle, belief, or notion they accept to be true, becomes the subject of serious scepticism and is, for whatever reason, unable to be dismissed. The conditions under which such extreme, existential scepticism emerges are incredibly subjective and essentially unique to any individual who adopts a nihilistic mentality; however, it seems to be commonly characterised by a level of associated trauma[24]. It seems that this moment where an individual’s ideology is distorted is a necessary condition for nihilism’s ingress, though it too does not occur in isolation and can be provoked or enabled by the interplay of the aspects as we will discuss in future articles of this series. Weird authors portray it as the moment where externality “emerges from a certain perception of or feeling about the world”[25] and finds ingress to the reality of the text. Both Lovecraft and Kiernan demonstrate a keen understanding of the perceptual break, portraying it through plot devices like traumatic experiences with the aformentioned entities, intoxication and addiction, dreams, epistemological pursuit, madness and depression. Their adherence to exploring the perceptual break allows their work’s portrayal of the aspects listed above to be regarded as literature that is intrinsically nihilistic.
Within the weird, each manifestation of an aspect can be seen to affect nihilism (defined as the interconnected relationship of the aspects centering around a moment of perceptual break) in one of three ways. They can be facilitatory, contributing to or directly provoking the emergence of nihilist externality. They may be products of confronting or adhering to a worldview tainted by nihilistic externality. Or they may be the end of following a nihilistic mode of thought to its ultimate conclusion. Lovecraft and Kiernan both adhere to the conceptual template of nihilism that Nietzsche outlines in The Will to Power in that they illustrate the intrinsic aspects as being inherent features of their external entities. However, they also focus on the characters who witness or experience them, exploring the repercussions of these aspects on the individual rather than exclusively analysing their wider ontological or social implications.
Both Lovecraft and Kiernan utilise the aspects in particular narrative roles to explore the interconnectivity of nihilistic externality and while this will be analysed thoroughly in future articles in this series, each aspect follows a general formula of presentation in both of their works. Alienation, whether social, individual, or even geographical, in the weird primarily tends to facilitate the necessary distortion of perception where externality finds ingress, in particular, often being presented as a precursor for epistemic failure. Characters in both authors work also exhibit and experience alienation as a product of adopting or confronting nihilistic externality which is often accompanied by some form of resentment. Resentment is generally presented as being equally faciliatory to and consequential of externality, often coming as the product of distorted beliefs or presaging a character succumbing to the appeal of destructive tendencies. Both Lovecraft and Kiernan explore how alienation and resentment are inseparable from the manifestation of the intrinsic aspects. The presentation of value rejection and epistemic failure is often a mutual relationship, with one facilitating the other and vice versa. The relationship between both of these aspects and the perceptual break is one of the most thoroughly explored by both authors. In their texts, it is often the character’s inability to reconcile one with other that leads to the narrative concluding (even with the weird’s predilection for leaving narrative conclusions unresolved) in one of the ends of nihilism; existential pessimism or destructive tendencies. These aspects are most commonly positioned as the ultimate end a character arrives at in the wake of encountering nihilistic externality. Weird characters, unable to comprehend what they uncover in their pursuit of epistemic certainty, often succumb to existential pessimism. Alternatively, others become destructive, lashing out in resentment at the world which they perceive to be unaccommodating to their values, now reshaped by their encounter with externality. Lovecraft and Kiernan position these end-aspects, arguably more than the others, as pure, undiluted nihilism in their stories, the manifestation of the others threatening to allow either of these inescapable ends to come to fruition.
One of the two central focusses of these articles is to critically analyse the literary techniques that H.P. Lovecraft and Caitlin R. Kiernan utilise to explore the abstract concerns of nihilism, using the aspects outlined above to examine how successfully they do so. In the next two articles, The Nihilistic Aesthetic of H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft’s Pessimistic Response to Nihilism, will demonstrate how Lovecraft creates a literary nihilist aesthetic by equipping the topoi of the weird with linguistic capabilities that make it uniquely suited to explore nihilism. They will will closely examine Lovecraft’s use of inversion, irony, atmosphere, realism, characterisation, motif and setting, showing how through them he demonstrates a thorough, and accessible, understanding of nihilistic modes of thought. This analysis will cover a range of his works, paying particular attention to The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness, The Colour Out of Space and The Call of Cthulhu. The third and fourth articles, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Nihilistic Literary Aesthetic and Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Optimistic Response to Nihilism will attempt to show how Kiernan adheres to Lovecraft’s tropes and literary conventions, “make[ing] progressive use of the potential”[26] they offer to continue to evolve the weird mode as a means of understanding nihilism in contemporary times. These articles will examine a range of Kiernan’s short stories from across her now extensive literary career, these being; Fish Bride (1971), Houses Under the Sea, To This Water (Johnstown, Pennsylvania 1889) and In View of Nothing.
The secondary focus of this series will be to analyse how each author uses the techniques in their work to reflect their own, differing responses to nihilism, Lovecraft’s being pessimistic and Kiernan’s being optimistic. I will expand on the distinctions between these responses and the implications they entail throughout the discussion of each author’s work, but in summary, the pessimistic response to nihilism is to, essentially, succumb to it, becoming unable to see beyond nihilistic meaninglessness. Pessimistic-nihilists are “often left with the impression that living authentically with the meaninglessness of life is impossible.”[27] The pessimistic response leads to what Nietzsche calls “[r]adical nihilism […] the conviction that life itself is absolutely indefensible”[28]. The optimistic response is not ‘optimistic’ in the conventional sense, but rather focuses on positive outcomes that can be derived from meaninglessness. This response leans towards Absurdist notions of acceptance, but the distinctions between these perspectives will be expanded on during the course of this series. I intend to demonstrate that Lovecraft’s response to nihilism is nuanced, having one eye veering towards radical nihilism, but not quite as macabre as Michel Houellebecq’s ascription that Lovecraft had “[a]bsolute hatred of the world in general”[29]. As parts of this examination draw on his personal ideology, Lovecraft’s vitriolic racial beliefs must be acknowledged. This discussion does not intend to dismiss or alleviate this facet of Lovecraft’s work or worldview, but rather, its analysis is concerned exclusively with explicating the elements of his texts which pertain towards the metaphysical implications of nihilistic externality. In Lovecraft’s own words, “we must judge a weird tale not by the author’s intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level at which it attains its least mundane point”[30], which, when evaluating a text’s philosophically metaphysical implications, is all that is pertinent. I will then attempt to show that Kiernan’s work amounts to an optimistic response that champions the notion that when “[f]aced with the horror of the cosmos, we should seek to cling to those things and those people that make life worth living, to human life in all its raw chaos.”[31] The arguments made throughout these articles will hopefully be sufficient to establish the weird as a literary lens for individuals to grasp nihilism and to thus deal with the negative effects such a worldview can bring. For although nihilism poses little threat to academic philosophical discussion[32], the threat meaninglessness poses to the individual currently elicits a greater number of pessimistic responses than ever before.[33]
[1] Timothy Jones, “The Weird Tale” in The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English ed. Adrian Hunter & Paul Delaney, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, p. 161.
[2] Ibid., p. 160.
[3] Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, Random House, 2016, p. 8.
[4] Ibid., p. 15.
[5] Ibid., p. 15.
[6] Alan Pratt, “Nihilism”, Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, last revised May 2019.
https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/
[7] Ibid.
[8] For the sake of brevity and ease of reading, this series will refer to nihilism as an ideology despite this philosophical distinction.
[9] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Michael A. Scarpitti & R. Kevin Hill, Penguin Classics, 2017, p. 17.
[10] Ibid., p. 15.
[11] Ibid. Pp. 15-49.
[12] Lanier R. Anderson, “Fredrich Nietzsche”, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, last revised May 2020.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
[13] Ibid.
[14] Jones, “The Weird Tale,” p. 168.
[15] Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey et al, Hogarth Press, 2001, pp. 217-253.
[16] H.P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” H.P. Lovecraft.com, last revised Oct 2009.
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx
[17] Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, p. 10.
[18] Ronald Aronson, “Albert Camus”, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, last revised Dec 2021.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/
[19] Michael Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, Eyre Methuen, 1974, p. 5.
[20] Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, p. 6.
[21] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pp. 15-49.
[22] The Will to Power is layered with barbed jabs at other thinkers and schools of thought, establishing resentment as a characteristic feature of nihilism. Nietzsche also alludes to alienation as a facilitator and product of the intrinsic aspects of nihilism.
[23] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pp. 15-49.
[24] ‘Trauma’ in this context refers to the psychological term outlined by Horowitz.
See Horowitz, “Post-traumatic Stress Disorders: Psychosocial Aspects of the Diagnosis,” in International Journal of Mental Health, Vol. 19, No. 1, Taylor and Francis, 2001, pp. 21-36.
[25] Jones, “The Weird Tale,” p. 164.
[26] Timothy Jarvis, “The weird, the posthuman and the abject world in itself: fidelity to the ‘Lovecraft Event’ in the work of Caitlin R. Kiernan and Laird Barron,” in Textual Practise Vol. 31, No. 6, Taylor and Francis, 2017, p. 1137.
[27] Pratt, “Nihilism”, Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
[28]Nietzsche, The Will to Power, p. 15.
[29] Michel Houellebecq, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, Cernunnos, 2019, p. 57.
[30] Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” H. P. Lovecraft.com.
[31] Jarvis, “The weird, the posthuman and the abject world in itself: fidelity to the ‘Lovecraft Event’ in the work of Caitlin R. Kiernan and Laird Barron,” p. 1144.
[32] Moral philosopher Bernard Williams dismisses nihilistic perspectives in the context of moral philosophy, arguing that the position’s circularity poses no threat to moral philosophical discussion.
see Bernard Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 3-13.
[33] Suicide rates (in the U.S) increased by 37% from 2000 to 2022. While nihilism is not listed as a cause of suicide, the constitutive aspects outlined above are commonly described as contributing factors.
see ‘Suicide Data and Statistics.’ https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html
