Things that HP Lovecraft was good at: Creating a mythos. Building atmosphere.
Things that HP Lovecraft was bad at: Writing dialog. Creating compelling characters. Not being a racist.
As a fan of horror in general, I can’t pretend that Lovecraft isn’t an important touchstone. But the man’s blatant racism is also impossible to ignore, especially since it often finds its way onto the pages of his stories. One of the most notorious is The Horror at Red Hook, which follows Detective Thomas Malone as he uncovers a sinister cult in the titular Brooklyn neighborhood.
The Ballad of Black Tom is a retelling of that story, but from the perspective of Charles “Tommy” Tester, a black man from Harlem who finds himself inadvertently stuck in the middle of one man’s quest for power and the police. The author, Victor LaValle, flips the explicitly xenophobic original, turning it into a commentary on police brutality, racism, and the psychological effects of living as an oppressed person. Lovecraft would have hated it.
Tommy is a hustler who we’re led to understand early in the book operates as a courier or a fixer to make ends meet. We’re also led to understand that Tommy is somewhat knowledgeable about magic and arcane artifacts. There’s no long-winded exposition dump to spell out the nature of the magic, nor are we spoonfed some explanation about how Tommy obtained this knowledge. It’s just an accepted fact of the world we’re dropped into.
In a longer book, this might be frustrating as you try to understand the logic behind its supernatural elements. But at 149 pages, The Ballad of Black Tom has no time to waste detailing a magic system, it has a story to tell.
Tommy embarks on a new hustle that leads him to Flatbush, where he hopes to make a few dollars busking, despite not being a particularly good musician. He is spotted by an elderly man named Robert Suydam, who hires him to play a party at his home. This exchange is witnessed by Officer Malone and a private detective, Mr. Howard, who shake Tommy down and attempt to scare him away from returning to Flatbush. Of course, the promise of $300 in the 1920s is too hard to pass up, and Tommy returns, allowing the rest of the story to unfold.
Warning: Spoilers for The Ballad of Black Tom ahead.
Interspersed between the conjuring of cosmic horrors at Suydam’s home, 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 way that Lovecraft never did. Tommy has an actual arc, motivations, and personality. When the climax of the book arrives, we’re fully invested in Tommy (who now goes by Black Tom).
Getting attached to Black Tom is important because, well, he’s not the hero. In fact, there are no heroes in this story, really. There are villains, there are victims, but it’s hard to call anyone a hero. Black Tom lashes out at the white men who seek to exploit him and oppress him. It’s cathartic and satisfying as a reader, but his vengeance is also indiscriminate, and it’s implied it will lead to the end of all mankind.
Tommy Tester is a broken man at the end of the story. One who is so tired of the indignities of being a black man in a white man’s world that he would prefer the destructive indifference of the great old ones like Cthulu to the destructive indifference of systemic racism.
The Ballad of Black Tom is not a subtle book, but it’s also a quick and enjoyable read that takes the iconic Lovecraft mythos and gives it real heart. The Horror at Red Hook is not a particularly good story. It has almost no plot, its story arc is a straight line, and the characters have less depth than a sheet of looseleaf. The Ballad of Black Tom salvages what makes Lovecraft compelling, at least in theory (despite his awfulness as a person), and gives us something worth reading in the 21st century.
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