A French look at horror masters

From L.A. City Beat:

H.P. Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick earned imperishable places in American letters by redefining the horror story and the parameters of science fiction. For a great many readers and writers, these authors are no less than seers, and their books are works in which to become immersed. Like so many others, I discovered both as a teenager, but I continue to return to their books; they have never lost their irresistible grip on me. Recently translated into English for the first time, Michel Houellebecq’s H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (Believer Books) and Emmanuel Carrère’s I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick (just issued in paperback by Picador) offer an opportunity to consider these highly original authors in ways we haven’t before. Lovecraft and Dick are among those figures from the neglected corners of American pop culture revered and resurrected by French intellectuals, like “Edgar Poe” (as the French call him, sans Allan), jazz musicians, noir authors, and film “auteurs” such as John Ford, Sam Fuller, and Jerry Lewis. To look at Houellebecq’s Lovecraft and Carrère’s Dick is to see an America viewed as if through a glass, or – to borrow from one of Dick’s titles – a scanner, darkly.