I've always enjoyed H P Lovecraft and was disappointed to learn about his racism and xenophobia. AI tells me its was way beyond what was normal at the time.
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The AI is incorrect. Lovecraft's views largely reflected the white societal norm, particularly the "scientific racism" of time, and they softened considerably near the end of his life. His letters from the time mention that several of his earlier depictions of race were unfair. If he hadn't died so young I suspect we would have seen a very significant shift in his views.
And, for me, it recontextualizes a lot of his writing knowing his racism. Who he thought "the other" was and how they appeared in his work is colored by who he thought the other was in real life.
Related, I read Lovecraft for the first time a while back and the xenophobia was so overt it was almost humorous.
The story was basically a police detective uncovering ritual cult activity by immigrants (from some unspecified place) in a NY slum. And the narrator (the detective) goes on and on about these strange foreigners and their dark skin, weird languages, heathen religions, etc.
But it only occurred to me after finishing that, though the reader is told from the start that weird cult stuff will ensue, the detective doesn't actually find anything nefarious until pretty late in the story. So with the story's timeline it's mostly just a cop being suspicious of foreigners for being foreign, until many months later he suddenly discovers unspeakable horrors of etc. etc.
You may be interested in the novella "The Ballad of Black Tom", which is a re-telling of "The Horror at Red Hook" from the perspective of the immigrants in the New York slum, and why they decide that maybe dealing with eldritch horrors is a better alternative than trying to reason with this detective that keeps on hassling them for no reason.
What am amazing premise for a story, thanks for the tip!
> AI tells me
You are using AI to form personal opinions?
<speechless>
The AI provided me links and a summary to Wikipedia and Blogs and Reddit posts. No different than any other google search would reveal.