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Tentaclii

~ News and scholarship on H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937)

Tentaclii

Monthly Archives: December 2018

Yes! We Have Bananas!

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings

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The sheet music for the song “Yes! We Have No Bananas” by Robert King and James F. Hanley slips out-of-copyright in America at the start of 2019, having been held up for 20 years by the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

One H.P. Lovecraft once crept (rather naughtily) up to the organ loft of the Providence First Baptist church and tried to play this tune to liven things up a bit. Now it can be played whenever and wherever one spots a handy organ loft, royalty free.

In terms of being a 1923 publication one assumes that the Lovecraft revision story “The Horror at Martin’s Beach” (1923), written with Sonia, is affected by this? His other 1923 fiction is already in the public domain. His 1924 collaborations “The Loved Dead” and “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” also seem likely to be affected at the start of 2020, as the annual conveyor-belt of releases now starts up again after the 20 year hiatus.

The 1923 Harry Clarke edition of Poe’s Tales of mystery and imagination also seems of interest for its outstanding illustrations by the Irish artist. It appears to be a New York first edition, but is actually a reprint from 1919 but with new illustrations including new colour plates.

This 1923 Life cover is also rather good…

Wladyslaw T. Benda died 1948, so presumably his art also comes out of copyright under the 70 years rule?

In terms of “70 years” literature from authors who died in 1948, and likely to be of interest to readers of this blog, see this post. Canada and New Zealand have life plus 50 years, and so get Mervyn Peake’s work (Gormenghast).

New books from Modiphius

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, New books, REH, Scholarly works

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A new 120-page book claims to catalogue all the monsters of Robert E. Howard. Conan: Horrors of the Hyborean Age appears to be one of those PDF books for gamers that that give them the monster ‘stats’, but which are also rather useful for the reference shelves of writers.

Not sure about the cover, though. I recently re-read the Howard Conan stories in audiobook and I don’t quite remember Wonder Woman fighting a T. Rex, as per this book’s cover. Nor the distinctly LOTR orc who flanks Conan.

As a gamebook it needs to be interflipped with the Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed core rule-book. There appear to be other catalogue-like guide books to Conan’s world in the same series, one on Ancient Ruins & Cursed Cities and a guide to Nameless Cults, Cosmology and Gods. Apparently they all have inspiring art inside, and I’d guess also some maps.

New book – The Cracks of Doom: Untold Tales in Middle-earth

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books, Scholarly works

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New book! The Cracks of Doom: Untold Tales in Middle-earth. This new book is available now in paper. It is a side-project from my larger scholarly Tolkien book, and should be of interest to RPG makers as well as to fan-writers of Tolkien stories set in Middle-earth.

The Cracks of Doom is a comprehensive, fully annotated and indexed list of ‘Untold Tales’ in Middle-earth, pointing out the ‘cracks’ where new fan-works or role-playing might be developed. There are 125 entries and these usually lightly suggest ideas for story development and connections that might not otherwise be considered. This book is intended as a handy and inspiring reference work for writers, game makers, role-players, performers and daydreamers. It will also be useful for scholars seeking to understand what Tolkien “left out” and why, or those interested in ‘transformative works’ and fandom.

1. Introduction: “On Untold Tales in Middle-earth”.

2. Writing guidance: “Faith, Duty and Fun: plan and style in Middle-earth fiction”.

3. The list: ‘Openings, Gaps and Cracks’. 125 entries. Note that this is only for LOTR, inc. the Appendices. It also draws on Unfinished Tales, books in the History series, and for one item I also reference the Letters. It does not, of course, delve into the vast amount of material in The Silmarillion.

Sample:

PDF sample with the Index. The full book has 64 pages, about 22,000-words, with place and character Index. The book is wholly unofficial, and very respectful of Tolkien’s vision.

Happy New Year

30 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

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Wishing you, dear reader, a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

This month I count 16,000 words posted on my H.P. Lovecraft blog, along with numerous pictures, several maps and a couple of lengthy reviews. Also many Web links to new books, a major rock album, and scholarly works including one new free PhD thesis by a fantasy writer on R.E. Howard. Plus my year-end round-up, to be found in the post “Lovecraft’s 2018: a year in review”.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading your daily Tentaclii during December. If you were thinking of making a few New Year resolutions, it would be great if support for ‘Tentaclii’ could be one of them!

Please help me continue doing this blog, by supporting me on Patreon. Currently my Patreon is at $24 a month, and my current aim is $50 a month. It would be very encouraging to me if you were to add just $1 a month on top, or perhaps more!

Gloom Number

30 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts

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As we say goodbye to an irrationally gloom-shrouded year, it seems surprisingly fitting that I stumble on the newly-posted cover of Life magazine’s “Gloom Number” from July 1914. One imagines Lovecraft must have noticed this in the Reading Room of the Public Library, and on the magazine racks, at the start of July 1914.

Presumably the death of John Barleycorn, dated to 1st July 1919 on the central tombstone, had some relevance to the anticipated legal and political moves toward prohibition of alcohol? The cartoonist would thus be implying that the planned prohibition of alcohol would not work. If that’s the case then he also implied that those who promoted prohibition were gloomy killjoys, long past the age at which fun might be had.

London Lovecraft Festival returns in 2019

29 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

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The London Lovecraft Festival Returns…

“This year [2019] the festival is one day longer and many productions will be larger, with several one-off performances especially created for the festival. These include: a staged reading of “Cool Air” originally done at the 2005 Seattle Lovecraft Festival; a production of “Shivers”, the cult favourite spooky tales and music event; and a first-ever “Night of a Thousand Tentacles: Lovecraft” burlesque evening on opening night, co-produced with the Clocktopus Cabaret. There is also an interactive production “Patient 4620” which will place over all seven days of the festival, off-site at the Royal Museum of Contemporary Art. […] Two brand new, fully-realized productions will make their world premiere at the festival: “Late Night with Cthulhu”, a look at life after the Old Ones take over; and “Lovecraft After Dark”, an expansion of story-teller Jonathan Goodwin’s excursion into weird fiction. […] two nights of the show “Providence”, a blending of Lovecraft’s life and stories; a reading of “Pickman’s Model” by master storyteller Robert Lloyd Parry; two nights of a puppet-enhanced version of “The Lurking Fear”; and a sound-effects/radio play presentation of “The Colour out of Space. The festival also has a new writing strand…”.

El Escritor de las Tinieblas

29 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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I see that the new graphic novel He Who Wrote in The Darkness, which I reviewed here in English a few days ago, is now available in Spanish translation.

Essential Salt

29 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

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“Revealing Illustrations” by Jared A. Nielsen.

“We are celebrating the completion of Jared A. Nielsen’s 13 copper etchings for the book “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” for an edition by Uncanny Valley Press. Original etchings and posters for sale. Free letterpress printed poster set by Paul Alessini for those who attend the event!”

Date: Friday the 18th of January 2019, 6pm to 9pm.

Venue: Saltgrass Printmakers, at 412 South 700 West, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Vanquish Fantasy

29 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Fonts, Lovecraftian arts

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Propnomicon has discovered J.S. Sullivan’s Vanquish Fantasy Font, a pseudo-exotic calligraphic font that has a usefully indefinable air of ‘east of Alhazred’ about it. It’s only for “non-commercial use” though, so can’t be used for a comic, game or card-set — unless you first come to an arrangement with the font’s maker.

Looking through Sullivan’s DeviantArt gallery I see he has a similar script font, Banish, under the same license.

If you need free + commercial use then Font Squirrel is your main clearing-house and catalogue.

Details on L’orrore di Lovecraft

28 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books

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A new Italian review has further details of the new Italian book L’orrore di Lovecraft, which I noticed in a post some weeks ago but couldn’t quite figure out to what extent it might be an artbook. Although richly produced and illustrated, it’s actually more of an anthology.

It has 40 Mythos stories by various writers, and the review makes these sound like standard-fare. But the book also has four essays, plus a new Italian translation of Lovecraft’s “The Tomb”. A Deluxe colour two-volume edition also has a new Italian translation of “The Dunwich Horror” by “Professor Busnelli Miriam”. The essays, apparently left unread by the reviewer, are in translated-title:

“The ‘reverse’ positivism of H.P. Lovecraft” / “Il positivismo ‘inverso’ di H.P. Lovecraft”, by Stefano Spataro.

“Lovecraft and the in-communicability of materialism” / “Lovecraft e l’incomunicabilita del materialismo” by Giacomo De Colle.

“The” Weird Music Of H.P. Lovecraft” / “The “Weird” Music Of H.P. Lovecraft” by Cesare Buttaboni. [possibly in English?]

“Lovecraft: a journey into the unknowable” | Lovecraft: un viaggio nell’inconoscibile” by Daniela Ferraro Pozzer.

The Deluxe edition is a large-format colour version for collectors in two volumes, presumably so that the art can be fully enjoyed.

Friday “Picture Postals” from Lovecraft: the Industrial Trust Building

28 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Picture postals

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Lovecraft sent a postcard of “New Industrial Trust Building. Providence, R.I” to Wandrei in April 1928.

The Industrial Trust Building replaced the Butler Exchange and was Providence’s first ‘skyscraper’ at 428 ft. It was completed and opened in 1928, but we might imagine that its top-most “beacon” light was fitted and lit as soon as the top-most sections were in place — in order to warn aircraft and airships. This beacon, then red but today said to be green, became a night sighting-point for Lovecraft from around 1928 onwards, as is shown by a letter and his late story “The Haunter of the Dark”…

“Now and then he would train his field-glasses on that spectral, unreachable world beyond the curling smoke; picking out individual roofs and chimneys and steeples, and speculating upon the bizarre and curious mysteries they might house. Even with optical aid Federal Hill seemed somehow alien, half fabulous, and linked to the unreal, intangible marvels of Blake’s own tales and pictures. The feeling would persist long after the hill had faded into the violet, lamp-starred twilight, and the court-house floodlights and the red Industrial Trust beacon had blazed up to make the night grotesque.” — from “The Haunter of the Dark”.

This picture shows there were several beacon lights, which would have effectively merged into one from any distance away.

“[On] these evenings when I tread the narrow ancient streets on the brow of the hill and look westward over the outspread roofs and spires and domes of the lower town to where the distant hills of the countryside stand out against the fading sky, I do not scan that sky as a measurer or an analyst. Resplendent Venus and Jupiter shine close together, hanging over the great beacon-tower of the terraced Industrial Trust Building as they used to hang 2000 years ago over the towering Pharos in Alexandria’s crowded harbour; and as I watch them and compare them with the great red beacon and the mystic twinkling lights of the dusk-shadowed city below, I surely hold no thoughts of their objective nature and position [in astronomical terms] […] I merely watch and dream. I dream of the evenings when these orbs did indeed hang over cryptic and seething Alexandria — and over Carthage before it, and over Thebes and Memphis and Babylon and Ur of the Chaldees before that. I dream of the hidden messages they bring down the aeons from those distant and half-forgotten places, and from those darker, obscurer, places in the still older world, whereof only whispered rumour dares to speak.” — Lovecraft letter to Harris, February-March 1929. Probably to Woodburne Harris rather than to the British Harris.

“And [the evening scene is] even more magical now that we have tall buildings (12, 16, 26 stories) to light up and suggest enchanted cliff cities of Dunsanian mystery” — Lovecraft letter to Hoffmann Price, 1933.

“… the recent conjunction of Venus and the crescent moon. I saw it from my own west windows, and its natural impressiveness was enhanced by its setting. It was twilight, and the ancient roofs and boughs and towers and belfries of the hill were silhouetted blackly against a still-orange sky, The windows of the down-town office buildings, just beginning to light up, made the lower town look like a constellation — and the great red beacon atop the 26-story Industrial Trust Building (which dominates the town as the Pharos dominated Alexandria) was blazing portentously. In the southwest the lofty Georgian belfry of the new Court House loomed up darkly save for the lighted clock-face, the floodlights not having been turned on. And just south of this picturesque outline, high in the sky where the orange was turning to violet, floated Astarte’s bediamonded crescent with the blazing planet close to its upper horn! It certainly was a sight to gasp at — the black towers and roofs against an orange west, the twinkling turrets of the lower town, and the horned moon with its strangely luminous companion. Assuredly, I shall not soon forget it.” — Lovecraft letter to Clark Ashton Smith, November 1933.

Review: H.P. Lovecraft: He Who Wrote in the Darkness

27 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, New books

≈ 2 Comments

H.P. Lovecraft: He Who Wrote in the Darkness is a substantial new graphic novel by writer Alex Nikolavitch and the Argentinian artist Gervasio.


A highly compressed low-res PDF preview edition was kindly provided for review by the publisher, Pegasus Books of New York. The body of the book runs to 98 pages of art, rising to 112 pages when counting the introduction by screenwriter David Camus, chapter dividers, a page of biographical endnotes on Lovecraft’s circle, and some cross-promotional padding. The book is available in print and as an ebook download via Amazon. While the book is currently rather expensive in the UK at £19 in print and £18 in ebook, I see that used print copies are starting to become available here at lower prices. I also see that the price of the print edition has dropped by $10 in the USA, since its Halloween 2018 publication.

The two-page introduction is by screenwriter David Camus and appears to have been translated from his native French. This is informed and perceptive, with Camus making interesting and very relevant points about Lovecraft’s delight in playing roles (the Old Gent, the Dandy, the Hermit, the Prankster, the Mentor, the Cynic and so on) and about the often-overlooked humour and subtle self-parody that can bubble up in Lovecraft’s work.

Gervasio’s art is a delight throughout. He frames his panels expertly, the panels flow a complex story over the page with ease, and within these panels his precise facial expressions speak volumes. Here, for instance, is an especially memorable expression from Samuel Loveman. He has just passed Sonia on the stairs as she leaves Lovecraft for good, and Loveman is ascending toward Lovecraft…

This one panel shows how much there is for an informed reader to bring to this graphic novel, if one knows Lovecraft’s life and friends well. Yet it also shows the depths of meaning that the casual uninformed reader will totally miss. It’s a credit to the two creatives at work here that the book usually manages to walk the tightrope between the two types of reader.

Gervasio’s attention to period detail and clothing is excellent, and he doesn’t stint on this. His panels are filled with all sorts of charmingly authentic items, and yet they hardly ever feel cramped. One even wonders if he might be putting his own knowledge of Lovecraft’s life into the panels. For instance, in the first panel we see Lovecraft walking into the seedy Red Hook in search of cheap solo lodgings. Behind him a plump older man is about to be run down by a truck. Possibly Gervasio has no idea that Lovecraft’s good anarchist friend Morton was killed by a collision with a vehicle in 1941, but it’s a poignant little detail to open with. Having a cat watch Lovecraft is also a nice touch, but again it’s only something that will have meaning for those who know Lovecraft’s life.

There are many such details to be found as one reads on. I should also note that Gervasio’s art has also been expertly coloured in a ‘very slightly faded’ way and with obvious reference to typical “1930s urban America” colour palettes. Unfortunately we don’t get a Marvel-style credits box which breaks down exactly who-did-what, so I’m uncertain exactly who the colour flatting was done by. But it doesn’t seem to have been Gervasio himself. In terms of the details of the visual characterisations, Gervasio accurately portrays the various members of the Lovecraft circle. Yet he obviously had no access to the good photograph I found of Henry Everett McNeil (see my recent book on McNeil, Good Old Mac) which revealed McNeil to the world for the first time since the 1920s. Thus, while McNeil is accurately portrayed here as an ‘oldster’, he is far too angular and crew-cut in appearance. Also, Sonia is perhaps not as voluptuous and well-fed as she really was, as here she is more angular in appearance.

The script by Alex Nikolavitch is neatly structured, covering Lovecraft’s life from 1925 to 1937 in chronological order while dipping occasionally into flashback memories and short evocations of the stories. This wide variety of settings retains interest, but often shuttles the reader about at a hectic pace. Nikolavitch necessarily condenses, highlights and omits, for dramatic purposes. For instance, we see only Mrs Miniter and no Mrs Beebe on the fateful visit to rural Wilbraham that birthed “The Dunwich Horror”. Nor do we see the many cats and curious ‘cat-ladders’ of the property. But this won’t be noticed by non-Lovecraftians. Sometimes emotional overtones are added, such as Lovecraft being rather ‘off-ish’ with a pushy Hoffman Price when they first meet in New Orleans in 1932. Overall, I’d say that Lovecraft is perhaps depicted by Nikolavitch as rather more openly grouchy and grumpy than he really was…

These are not really criticisms, just observations on the quite understandable changes that are inevitably needed when shaping and heightening a serious dramatic work.

But there are some minor criticisms to be made. The most significant point open to negative criticism is the dialogue. Often this is heavily encumbered by the need to explain an Important Biographical Fact to the uninformed reader. This leads to characters “speaking out of character”, often jarringly so. This ‘NPC’ problem is amply demonstrated by the first major splash page, which conveys a plain fact about the 1925 solar eclipse but which falls flat both emotionally and as spectacle.

There also are perhaps a few rather large historical liberties taken, though in some cases I can’t be sure. For instance Houdini is shown as being assassinated by a religious fanatic for his atheism, rather than killed by a jock-ish student who threw an idiotic and probably inebriated punch. Perhaps this actually reflects some new Houdini scholarship but, from my reading on Houdini and Lovecraft, I wasn’t aware of this religious aspect of his death. One recent trustworthy scholar shows it was actually all a mis-direction by Houdini’s conniving widow, who claimed the punch killed him in the hope of cashing in on a ‘double indemnity’ in his insurance policy. But I’m not a Houdini-ist and am not qualified to judge.

There are also a few basic errors that the publishers of an expensive £19 / $26 book should have caught but didn’t, such as Sonia’s line “Does the neighbour inspire you” (page 23) which should have read “neighbourhood”, and a jarring continuity error on the opening panel. In the very first text we read in the book we are told the date is “1st January 1925”, yet we see Brooklyn in high summer with the trees in full leaf… rather than darkly descending into the worst New York winter snowstorm in living memory (1st-3rd January 1925).

Despite my probably overly-picky criticisms, for the general reader this graphic novel will be a fine and informative read. It will introduce many to a basic outline of Lovecraft’s life and friendships, including those who would not venture to read a weightier life of Lovecraft. Such readers will miss a great deal but they will be pleased by the real richness of the art, entertained by the varied settings and the occasional dips into the famous stories, and they will simply not notice the historical omissions and changes.

H.P. Lovecraft: He Who Wrote in the Darkness is thus a welcome addition to a small but growing number of such graphic novels which depict aspects of Lovecraft’s biography, and it will sit companionably on the shelf alongside Une nuit avec Lovecraft (2018) and Some Notes on a Nonentity: The Life of H.P. Lovecraft (2017). Let us hope that these three are just the opening books in what will become a small library of graphic novels that depict the wealth of material to be found in Lovecraft’s endlessly fascinating life and strange interior dimensions.

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