"Old Bugs," and how to make a point badly

One thing I will say about Lovecraft,* he is good enough that his misses are educational. I keep coming back to a story I didn't like very much, as a good example of a sort of literature I don't like very much, that being the fictional polemic.

"Old Bugs" is a deviation from form for Lovecraft, being a fictional harangue about the evils of alcohol. Not being particularly interested in the American interbellum period, myself, I tend to forget about the temperance movement, Prohibition, and so on. So it came as a surprise, but shouldn't have, that H.P. Lovecraft, in addition to his other uptightnesses, was a teetotaler.

The story, written in 1919, takes place in the distant future of 1950, where alcohol is illegal and only available at the seediest of speakeasies alongside hashish and opium. The title character** is a thoroughly wretched drunk who is far fallen from prior respectability. The story is contorted a bit to give the impression of a major reveal, but the upshot is that in spite of being a lifelong thrall to the demon drink, Bugs heroically prevents [spoiler] from starting down the same dark path.

It's worth pointing out that, according to Wikipedia, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz) calls "Old Bugs" "a little masterpiece of comic deflation and self-parody."*** It may well be, although the humor went by me, and I think the sin Lovecraft commits is basically the same either way.

It's not the argument itself I want to talk about, although it intrigues me a bit to see how Lovecraft portrays drinkers as wretchedly addicted, to a man. Was the concept of alcoholism as something that some people are prone to and others aren't in circulation in the 19-teens, I wonder? Even uninterested as I am in recreational drugs, some of the imagery (men licking spilled whiskey off the floor in a bar where they're presumably already being served) makes me wonder if the excesses of D.A.R.E.'s rhetoric existed through the ages with its target changing with the circumstances.

I enjoy and appreciate arguing and making points. I don't like seeing polemical points made overtly through fiction.

Now, I was going to go off about my frustration with the practice--but then I remembered that tales as venerable as "Little Red Riding Hood," wouldn't I? What am I saying if I condemn "Old Bugs" for making a point through fiction but let stand stories that are genuinely persuasive or thought provoking.

There are two points I won't settle for from myself:
1. It's wrong to do it badly, but it's okay to do it well.
2. It's okay as long as you're making a point I like.

My conclusion is that fiction is useful for demonstrating "truths," but not for demonstrating "facts." If an author says "what if such-and-such?" and proceeds honestly from there, the reader will usually follow. True, the author may only have presented an intriguing thought experiment in this case, but that is the limitation of not using facts. If an author simply says "this is so" in the context of fiction, there is no argument. The author is simply saying "because I said so" and there is a very narrow range of subjects on which I will take a fiction author's word. It's a good habit not to trust a nonfiction author either if you can manage it.

* There are actually many things I will say about Lovecraft, but today I will say this.
** One also forgets that "Bugs" was once a "name."
*** It's also worth granting that this story was not published until after Lovecraft's death, so we shouldn't judge him too harshly by it. I hold it to be unfair to judge an artist by what they choose not to release to the public.