07 Saturday Aug 2010
Posted in Podcasts etc.
Just posted, a new hour-long podcast interview in the excellent Lovecraftian Obsession series. Episode 6 — W.H. Pugmire.
I’ve also found a new (to me) podcast called Yog Radio. It seems to be more of a Cthulhu RPG gaming thing, but also has the occasional more literary interview. And with 40+ episodes so far, there’s got to be a good few hours of non-game material in there.
07 Saturday Aug 2010
Posted in Astronomy, Historical context
The Boston Globe‘s “Star Watch” astronomy column has a charming column today on Lovecraft…
“Around 1893, when the poet and horror-story writer H.P. Lovecraft was a very young child, his mother took him at sunset to a bridge in Newton’s Auburndale district spanning the train tracks where the Massachusetts Turnpike now roars. The golden scene of the town’s Victorian roofs and tree-covered hills, under fantastic cities of clouds stretching to unknown glowing dreamlands, imprinted the precocious writer with a sense of wonder, expectancy, and mystical longing that, he said, drove his work for the rest of his life.”
Possibly this sunset was made especially intense by an unknown volcanic eruption…
“The erupting volcanoes that were responsible for the small atmospheric disturbances of 1890 and 1893 have never been definitely identified” — Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 101.
Perhaps his mother remembered the spectacular skies that resulted after the great eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, and jumped at the chance of having her son experience a similar spectacular sunset.
07 Saturday Aug 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Yog-Blogsoth is currently going through the Lovecraft stories, and matching up one story-quote per day with a new monster illustration…
Looks like there’s some strong line-art talent here that someone could employ if they wanted a range of trading cards, a short comic, etc.
07 Saturday Aug 2010
Posted in Summer School
Vacation Necronomicon School, summer 2010 assignment for 7th August 2010: “Final Creative Task”.
“Your long-term assignment — the end to our expedition — is to create your own Lovecraftian composition. It can be a short story, a poem, or some other creative work that expresses your personal interpretation of the genre.”
TASK TWELVE: 7th August 2010.
THE MONOLITHS UNDER THE SEA.
Being a new Lovecraftian tale and a prequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu”.
Download the printable PDF file + 35-minute audio-book reading (33Mb, .zip file).
My new short story has been crafted for the Vacation Necronomicon School. It is constructed around a scaffolding made of appropriated public-domain materials. These date from between 1859 and 1893 — one unpublished letter, a magazine article, and two hardly-known short stories by very obscure authors (full details at the end of the story). I have blended these sources together, generally rewritten sections, tinkered, cut ruthlessly, rearranged, and have added my own words to fill any resulting gaps. In this experiment I take my cue from Lovecraft himself, who once wrote in a letter of March 1933…
“Someone ought to go over the cheap magazines and pick out story-germs which have been ruined by popular treatment; then getting the authors’ permission and actually writing the stories.”
I hope the story also expresses the discoveries I’ve made on this summer school, about just how much Lovecraft was an expert collage-ist of his many diverse borrowings and inspirations.
Enjoy!
07 Saturday Aug 2010
Posted in Summer School
Vacation Necronomicon School, summer 2010 reading assignment for 6th August 2010: “Recommending Lovecraft”.
“Your assignment for today is [ to] explain which story you would recommend to someone unfamiliar with Lovecraft’s [ literary ] work. Which story seems most accessible to the new reader? Which do you think makes a good introduction, and why? Explain in 200 words or less.”
TASK ELEVEN: 6th August 2010.
“The Cats of Ulthar”: written 15th June 1920.
I would probably recommend the short story “The Cats of Ulthar”, for a newcomer to Lovecraft and to “weird horror”. This perfectly-formed early tale is in Lovecraft’s dream-cycle, and was one of his personal favourites. And can one possibly be a Lovecraft reader if one dislikes or detests cats? Affinity for the Felidae is surely the litmus-test Lovecraft himself would have applied to his readers — had Weird Tales ever been printed on a sort of “psychic paper” or somesuch. The story’s geography has a faint Tolkien flavour, and the medieval swamp-gothic atmosphere is somewhat akin to the fantasy RPG videogame The Witcher (PC, 2008). These are surely factors which might encourage a new reader coming to Lovecraft from a diet of quality fantasy media. The story is also short, the language is clear, and the ending is memorable. And did I mention it features cats? Lots of cats. The mountain-sized unspeakable mountains of slime and wings, and the tentacle-tangles of eldritch language, can all come later on in a reader’s encounter with Lovecraft. Bring on the kitties!
06 Friday Aug 2010
Posted in Historical context, Odd scratchings
The Wikipedia police would plaster this with “not notable!” and other warning banners within seconds of my posting it. Or it even be automatically deleted by the idiot-bots. But it’s here, for what it’s worth:—
Franklin Chase Clark (26th May 1847 — 26th April 1915) was a medical doctor of Rhode Island, and an author. He is notable as an uncle of the writer H.P. Lovecraft, and he had a formative influence on the young Lovecraft.
Life:
Clark was a graduate of Brown University (A.B., 1869), attended Harvard Medical School in 1869-70, and took his M.D. certificate from the New York City College of Physicians & Surgeons in 1872. He practised first as an outpatients’ surgeon at the main hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, and then set himself up as a general practitioner.
He was a distant relative of the Lovecraft family, and then at the age of 55 in 1902 — after being freed from obligations by the recent death of his parents — he married Lillian Delora Phillips (1856-1932) who was then 46 years old and who was H.P. Lovecraft’s elder aunt.
Clarke died of cerebral haemorrhage and “chronic Bright’s disease”.
Influence on Lovecraft:
Clark was the author of translations of Greek and Roman works such as Homer, Virgil, and Lucretius. Between the years 1902 and 1905 it appears that he was able to greatly correct the writing style of the young home-schooled Lovecraft. He also helped Lovecraft compile a “Manual of Roman Antiquities”, possibly as an exercise in formal writing. Lovecraft was also encouraged to continue his pursuits of chemistry and astronomy, and his publication of small hectographed magazines. Immediately after Clark’s death in 1915 H.P. Lovecraft wrote a conventional elegy, “An Elegy on Franklin Chase Clark, MD” which was published in the Providence Evening News. Lovecraft also referred to Clark in his letters…
“Dr. Franklin Chase Clark, a distant relative who had become a closer kin through marriage to my aunt, began to influence my intellectual development. He was a man of vast learning”
From 1926 until her death Clark’s widow shared an apartment with H.P. Lovecraft at 10 Barnes Street, at the rear of Brown University. The rent was very low, and it may have only been possible to acquire the rooms because her husband had been a graduate of Brown.
Works:
In addition to his classical translations, Clark was also the author of many scientific and medical papers. He wrote at least one foreword to a catalogue of the Providence Art Club, and the novel ”Susan’s Obituary : Sketches of New England life” (Moshassuck Press, 1996).
Clark became a member of the Rhode Island Historical Society in 1907, and he wrote a number of papers on local history. His researches are said to have contributed greatly to knowledge of the Lovecraft family genealogy.
In relation to Lovecraft’s work, it is interesting to note that Clark wrote articles and papers on: undersea ‘sponge cities’ (“A Curious City”, 1878); hypnotism (n.d.); and the local history of the circus (“The Ring in Providence”, 1909).
Clark’s papers are now held by the Rhode Island Historical Society Manuscripts Division, and these include some unpublished historical papers.
06 Friday Aug 2010
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
For a limited time, a 15% discount when you order a copy of my new Tales of Lovecraftian Cats book. Simply follow this link and enter coupon code NEWREAD305 at checkout.
Offer ends 15th September 2010.
I’m hoping this should be valid in the UK as well as in the USA. Be the first to order a copy!
I’m also looking for people or publications who would like a free review copy, for a timely web-accessible review.
06 Friday Aug 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Dreaming Methods has as new Issuu-based magazine-journal, Impossible Journal, explaining the techniques and approaches behind his weird interactive fiction.
06 Friday Aug 2010
Posted in Historical context, New discoveries
An interesting snippet from some notes by Roland John Chester on “Western Hypnosis Arcana” for the website Magazine for Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy…
“Dr. Franklin Chase Clark believes that this state [of hypnosis] occurs through fear (being ‘rooted to the spot’) and cites the serpent’s apparent power over some animals. The victim fears that he can not move: and thus can not.”
Franklin Chase Clark (1847-1915) was Lovecraft’s learned uncle — a medical doctor, translator and author, member of the Rhode Island Historical Society. I can’t find any trace of the paper or book he presumably wrote on hypnosis, but the date would be interesting. Did he perhaps try to hypnotise the boy Lovecraft, to relieve the lad of some of his “nervous maladies”?
I did however, uncover a Sunday magazine article by Lovecraft’s uncle, “A Curious City” in Frank Leslie’s Sunday Magazine, April 1878, pages 385-390. It appears to start off as a speculative utopian description of a mysterious ‘communist’ future or past city, the reader then realises that this is an essay on the sponge/corals and the mysterious cities they build in the deeps…
“[sponge] palaces surpassing in elegance and beauty the works of the most famous artists upon earth. These little architects and builders, working miles below the surface of the great ocean, building up quietly and silently in darkness their fragile houses, must remain for ever the wonder and admiration of man.
What beauties, what wonders, then, are found miles beneath the sea? The great steamship, the Challenger, sent out for a four years’ cruise by the English Government, has now returned. It has brought back with it the story so long concealed in these darksome and almost fathomless depths; the story of that great and strange and hitherto unknown country stretching for 140,000,000 square miles beneath the dark blue waves.”
A possible origin here for the underwater cities that Lovecraft would use prominently in his stories, in addition to Poe? And is this illustration for the article a proto-Shoggoth? …
06 Friday Aug 2010
Posted in Summer School
Vacation Necronomicon School, summer 2010 reading assignment for 5th August 2010: “The Cephalopod” (essay).
“There is no official writing assignment today, though you may report your opinion on any aspect of this essay [ on ] the Cephalopod from H+ Magazine.”
TASK TEN: 5th August 2010.
It is composed of ever-winding labyrinthine strands. It has a narrowly-focussed eye. It sometimes has a hard cover about its body. It is filled with black ink. Are we talking about the Cephalopoda, or a book? There seem to be certain odd parallels between the two. Possibly Lovecraft never noticed these parallels. But we know that he loved one and loathed the other…
“I can not tolerate seafood in any form, […] The very sight and smell of it nauseate me” — letter by Lovecraft.
“Rhode Island is almost as famous as Louisiana for sea-food. But all this doesn’t mean anything to my palate. From earliest infancy every sort of fish, mollusc, or crustacean has been like an emetic to me.” — letter by Lovecraft.
In what context did he come to loathe the Cephalopoda? New England was of course deeply connected with the the life of the sea, and one might guess at an early unfortunate childhood experience. Perhaps a visit to a harbour fish-market or fish-shop, in which the denizens were all-too fresh.
Did these sea creatures then invade the dreams of the young Lovecraft, and in larger versions? There would have been ample reason for this to happen, since New England abounds in myths and even eyewitness reports of Continue reading
05 Thursday Aug 2010
Posted in Historical context
Chris Perridas posts news of a most unusual item, Lovecraft’s own annotated wall plan of his grandfather’s study, which along with the attic library is the ‘ground zero’ of 20th century horror. Unfortunately the online scans at L.W. Perry are too small to read. I’ve enlarged them and sharpened as best I can. You can make out what some of the labels say…
It seems there was a whole wall of cat/kitten paintings, which Lovecraft dubs “Kitten Row”.
I’d love to see this space and the 2000-volume attic library (strong joists! *) faithfully recreated via a videogame engine, so we could “step inside it”. Many of the library’s volumes must now also have been scanned and placed online by Google and others — would it also be possible to recreate the book collection in “virtual form”?
( * although the attic was apparently only a store-room or sub-library for the older books of the library)
05 Thursday Aug 2010
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
The H. P. Lovecraft Project: A Classic Horror Anthology call-for-stories makes a refreshing change from reading anthology-calls that say things like… “oh, and /yawn/ we’re so tired of New England and traditional Lovecraftian horror settings, so please don’t send any”…
“In this case, story style does matter. Your style must resemble the style of the classic horror stories of the 19th and early 20th century. Classic examples of this genre are H. P. Lovecraft, of course, but also Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H. G. Wells, etc. (Lesser known authors of this style would include Gertrude Atherton, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, etc.)”
Deadline: 1st March 2011. 5,000 word limit.