Interesting new scholarly thesis by Stephanie Brimson, “Seabury Quinn: a Weird Tales view of gender and sexuality”. Sadly the full-text is not available. This an example of a regrettable recent development among open access repositories, which publicise the thesis as if it were open access but in reality add an embargo of around 12 to 18 months. Anyway, Brimson suggests that…

… a unique male characterization was born in Seabury Quinn’s protagonist Jules de Grandin. Unlike other interwar characters, Quinn’s Jules de Grandin rejected the figure of American bodybuilder in favor of one that emphasized male effeminacy. The sexuality of these effeminate male characters was often unclear, and it is difficult to discern whether this was a serious attempt by Quinn to circulate literature with homosexual elements in the public sphere or just an attempt to lure readers with mentions of social taboos.”

As the “star” author of Weird Tales in Lovecraft’s time, could Quinn’s choice of a lead character — that apparently “emphasized male effeminacy” — have primed the Weird Tales audience for similar characters? Specifically, to more readily accept Lovecraft’s own presentation of his unmanly lead characters?

Or is Brimson just reading too much into the character? Difficult to say, since there’s no full-text for the thesis and I’ve not read the Jules de Grandin stories. Certainly the book Uranian worlds: a guide to alternative sexuality in science fiction, fantasy, and horror (1990) seems to have failed to have noticed this aspect of Jules de Grandin, although it did spot some overt lesbian themes in a late 1947 Jules de Grandin story.

Cowboy-Lucas‘s fan-intepretation of Jules de Grandin.

* Gro Oskarson Kindstrand (2014), “Lovecrafts kvinnor: en undersokning av kvinnlig monstrositet i Howard Phillips Lovecrafts litteratur”. (Seems to be a Masters dissertation, for Sodertorn University. “Lovecraft’s inability to [develop his female] monsters forces him to literally put them away – in attics, cellars, or boxes. … these women [then] elaborate a monstrous form that transcends the boundaries of sex, gender, class and race.” In Swedish, with English abstract).

* Gavin Parkinson (2015), “Surrealism and Everyday Magic in the 1950s: between the paranormal and ‘fantastic realism’”, Papers of Surrealism, Issue 11, Spring 2015. (On the ‘return of the fantastic’ in France in the late 1950s and 60s. Touches on the reception of Lovecraft in France, and his probable influence on Morning of the Magicians which was the precursor for a wave of ‘ancient astronauts’ books in the 1970s).

* Tanya Krzywinska (2012), “The Secret World as weird tale”, Well Played journal, Vol.3, No.2, 2012. (On the partly Lovecraft-inspired MMO PC videogame The Secret World)

* James Steintrager (2015), “The Eldritch Voice: H.P. Lovecraft’s weird phonography”, Sounding Out!, 6th August 2015.

I once owned an Edison [phonograph] machine of the primitive type, with recorder and blanks; and I made many vocal records in imitation of the renowned vocalists of the wax cylinder. My colleagues would smile to hear some of the plaintive tenor solos which I perpetrated in the days of my youth!! But sad to say, I gave the old machine away about a year ago to a deserving and not too musical youth who occasionally performs useful labour about the place. I wish now that I had retained it! / … a decade ago [circa 1907, Lovecraft aged 16 or 17], when my phonograph was in constant use … I remember one record — a song called “Starlight”, which was truly Western in its cadences: “Good Nity, my Starrrrlight, hearrrt of my hearrt” … etc. etc.” — Lovecraft letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, April 1917.

An Edison Home Phonograph c.1904. Into which the young Lovecraft may once have crooned a cowboy song or two (the device could record, as well as play). Sadly there is no known surviving recording of Lovecraft’s voice.