The Unspeakable and Others

What is refreshing in Cloreâ€(tm)s work is a misanthropy as rare in literature as the Asianic style itself. Here one can only look to some of the darkest satirists of the past two millennia--Juvenal, Jonathan Swift, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ambrose Bierce, and Shirley Jackson almost exhaust the catalogue. The idea that we are required to extend benevolence to human beings merely because they are human beings is one of the deepest and most irrational prejudices in human thought. Let us recall "may not all mankind be a mistake--an abnormal growth--a disease in the system of Nature--an excrescence on the body of infinite progression like a wart on the human hand? Might not the total destruction of humanity, as well as of all animate creation, be a positive boon to Nature as a whole?" Whether Clore agrees with this remark is only for him to say; but that misanthropy is at the heart of all the tales of Lord Weyrdgliffe can hardly be gainsaid. --S.T. Joshi, from the Introduction