Ghostworld, vanished into the aether
10 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Monthly Archives: July 2014
The Arkham Gazette: call for articles
10 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
The Arkham Gazette is calling for article writers…
* A write-up of [the Lovecraft fragment] “Of Evill Sorceries Done in New-England of Daemons in no Human Shape” [found in Collected Essays V]
* Alchemy in New England [a vast subject, very active in terms of recent scholarship].
* A [linguistic and folkloric] discussion of what colonial witches might call various Mythos beings.
* New England folklore about witches.
Unknown Friends of H. P. Lovecraft: No.2, Woodburn Prescott Harris
10 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
I’m very pleased that the legendary Lovecraft researcher Randy Everts has chosen Tentaclii to help publish another document on Lovecraft’s unknown or little known friendships. This publishes, for the first time, a letter about Lovecraft from Woodburn Harris.
With his permission I have slightly tweaked the text, formatted it with my usual book style, and added my footnotes plus an extra picture. My thanks to Randy for this great opportunity.
Download: Randy Everts, “Unknown Friends of H. P. Lovecraft: No.2, Woodburn Prescott Harris”. (PDF, formatted for 6″ x 9″ booklet printing)
Selected Proceedings book from NecronomiCon 2013
10 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Hippocampus Press are apparently gearing up to publish peer-reviewed Selected Proceedings of the Lovecraft research presented at the Emerging Scholarship Symposium, as part of the NecronomiCon Providence 2013. Probably needs a snappier title than that. How about: “Precocious youth of known genius”: emerging scholarship from NecronomiCon 2013.
Added to Open Lovecraft
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
* Francesco Levato (2014), “Semi-peripheral : spaces of deviation, abjection, madness”, New Academia, Vol.3 No.1, January 2014. (A ‘performative writing’ text, blending fragments of critical theory with bits from “The Call of Cthulhu”)
* Anthony Conrad Chieffalo (2011), “Poe, Lovecraft, and the uncanny: the horror of the self” (Masters dissertation for Central Connecticut State University. Uses Freud to suggest that Poe and Lovecraft draw on… “internal confrontations between the protagonists and the formerly concealed aspects of themselves” to make their stories into powerful horror).
“He prepared a special record for the benefit of certain learned men”
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in New books
An entertaining essay-by-essay fisking of New Critical Essays on H.P. Lovecraft (2013), an expensive book aimed at academic libraries and the shelves of tenured academics.
By the time Simmons [the editor] mentions Donald Tyson’s The Dream World of H.P. Lovecraft as “an interesting biographical reading of Lovecraft’s writing” alarm bells were going off in my head.
“half of them [the essay writers] really haven’t even done the proper research”
Encyclopaedia of ancient Egyptian demons
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in New books
Encyclopaedia of ancient Egyptian demons, coming soon(ish) from the UK, via a “Leverhulme Trust grant worth £158,000”. The organisers say that… “no such resource currently exists”. Hopefully the finished work will be open access.
Interesting to learn about the ancient world’s tradition of “dream-sending” which was apparently strongest in Ancient Egypt, where almost every book of magic has spells and suchlike for doing so. Possibly relevant to Lovecraft’s idea for the “dream-calling” of Cthulhu.
“Luven-Kerapht, High-Priest of Bastet”, by Richard Svensson.
“A peep at least into the shadowland…”
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
Possibly useful, for some. A keyword search facility for the first edition of The Ancient Track (Lovecraft’s collected poems). Though it doesn’t even give you snippets in the search results, just page numbers where the keyword occurs.
“I saw outlined against the luminous aether what could not be seen”
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Del Toro has told the Wall Street Journal that his At The Mountains of Madness mega-budget movie adaptation could be revived at Legendary Pictures. He’s now willing to concede on the need to make it as a PG-13 movie [Meaning: Parents Strongly Cautioned that it may be unsuitable for those under 13: but all ages admitted].
“I’ve seen PG-13 become more and more flexible, I think I could do it PG-13 now, so I’m going to explore it with [Legendary], to be as horrifying as I can, but to not be quite as graphic.”
Which sounds like it would be even more Lovecraftian. Nice.
Runa Rosina
08 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Super Lovecraft art from Runa Rosina, from her new series “Das Ding auf der Schwelle” (acrylic on toned paper). T’would make someone a fine book cover…
Weird Tales
06 Sunday Jul 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
Complete scans of certain 1937-39 Weird Tales editions, with ads…
Weird Tales, Jul 1937 (Poem, “To Virgil Finlay”, also Clark Ashton Smith’s poem “To Howard Phillips Lovecraft”)
Weird Tales, Oct 1937 (“The Shunned House”)
Weird Tales, Dec 1937 (“Polaris”)
Weird Tales, Feb 1938 (“From Beyond”)
Weird Tales, Mar 1938 (“Beyond the Wall of Sleep”, Francis Flagg’s poem “To Howard Phillips Lovecraft”)
Weird Tales, Jul 1938 (Poem, “The Messenger”)
Weird Tales, Nov 1938 (“The Nameless City”)
Weird Tales, Apr 1939 (“The Wicked Clergyman”, “The Curse of Yig” credited to Bishop)
Down to the Sea
06 Sunday Jul 2014
Posted in Films & trailers, Historical context
Restored version of the silent movie Down To The Sea in Ships (1922) on YouTube. Lovecraft had missed seeing this when it was first released, but was able to see “the striking New Bedford whaling film” at the Cameo Theatre in New York City on the evening of 26th July 1925.
I had never imagined that so perfect an evocation of the old whaling days could be possible. The pictures were taken either actually in New Bedford or at sea, & shew the actual surviving houses, churches, whaves, ships, & accessories. To one who has lately read “Moby Dick” and “The Gam“, the film was incredibly impressive. “Faking” it was impossible—for one beheld the whales spouting in full splendour, the chase of the boats, the throwing and landing of the harpoon [and] it was the actor himself, seen full in the face, who threw the successful dart […] The whole film is of inestimable historical value [especially since the last American] whaler has gone to its eternal rest [so now…] whaling is done in steam vessels—mostly Norwegian—with auxiliary launches …” (Letter to Lillian D. Clarke, 27th July 1925)
Aha, so now we have the answer on Moby Dick! It was “almost certain” that he read it in mid April 1925. And now there’s 100% proof he read it then. The above quote even gives a possible source for his idea of having a “Norwegian sailor Gustaf Johansen” in “The Call of Cthulhu”.
Lovecraft may also have been rather thrilled to see a stock type in the movie, who looked remarkably like himself…
Photo of the Cameo Theatre, NYC, c. 1930.
Later, in August 1929, Lovecraft saw the New Bedford Whaling Museum (Jonathan Bourne Whaling Museum). He also visited the aquarium at Wood’s Hole, suggesting his aversion to sea-food did not extend to live specimens.