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Tentaclii

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

Tentaclii

Monthly Archives: April 2019

A trip into history

30 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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An interesting, if rather preliminary, article in Scientific American this week, on new research which asks Do Microdoses of LSD Change Your Mind?…

“So what’s riding on these studies? For those that are already convinced of microdosing’s powers, probably not much. But quite a lot is at stake for our broader understanding of the brain and the potential for drugs — LSD or otherwise — to enhance cognitive abilities.”

This is potentially also of interest to historians of the supernatural, in relation to the debate among scientists and historians about the possible role of natural hallucinogens present in food during the historic ‘witchcraft’ outbreaks, re: the impact on the general population and their susceptibility to such wild claims.

New Book: Gorham Silver

30 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New books

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Gorham Silver: Designing Brilliance, 1850-1970, a sumptuous new illustrated hardback published today, 30th April 2019.

Lovecraft’s father was, quite possibly, connected with the firm in its heyday as a buyer or salesman.

“Established in 1831, the Gorham Manufacturing Company adeptly coupled art and industry, rising to become an industry leader of stylistic and technological achievement in America and around the world. It was the only major competitor of Tiffany and Co., producing public presentation pieces and one-of-a-kind showstoppers for important occasions, as well as tableware for everyday use. Its works trace a narrative arc not only of great design but also of American ambitions. In this new volume, insightful essays are accompanied by gorgeous new photography of splendid silver pieces along with a wealth of archival images, design drawings, casting patterns, and company records that reveal a rich heritage of a giant in decorative arts and silver manufacturing. Produced in collaboration with the RISD Museum, which has the world s most significant collection of Gorham silver, this major new book casts new light on more than 120 years of grand aesthetic styles in silver, innovative industrial practices, and American social and cultural norms.”

Lovecraft and Powys

29 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context

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I’d always vaguely thought of John Cowper Powys as a Welsh Marches novelist who wrote slab-like and now-little-read 1930s novels such as A Glastonbury Romance (1932). I tried to read that in the 1980s, couldn’t get past the first 50 pages, and have never investigated him further. But LibriVox has just released a set of new recordings and the blurb for these reveals that in the 1910s and 20s Powys was in Lovecraft’s world — lecturing to rapt New York and New England audiences on the likes of Nietzsche and Poe. It seems that A Glastonbury Romance was actually written in upstate New York.

Who knew? Possibly Lovecraft did, even though Powys lectured primarily to bright youthful summer schools and keen adult-education gatherings. Because in 1924 Lovecraft noted of Frank Belknap Long that… “his favourite [is] John Cowper Powys”. Thus, one suspects that Long’s affluent family would have sent the boy to just such a summer school lecture series, and (if so) he would later have been able to recall for Lovecraft the details of Powys’s manner and ideas. Although this was many years before the famous novels such as Wolf Solent and A Glastonbury Romance, and thus Long presumably liked the poetry, philosophy and lecture-essays.

According to his diary Lovecraft “read Powys” in New York in August 1925. Perhaps this was just a volume of poetry loaned by Long, but I’d suggest it would well have been dipping into the most interesting bits of the book newly recorded by Librivox, Visions and Revisions: A Book of Literary Devotions (1915). Perhaps with its companion volume Suspended Judgments (1916).

Wolf Solent arrived in 1929. Lovecraft did not feel the need to read it, but in a letter to Galpin in 1933 he revealed he had read at least one review…

“The literary editor of the Providence Journal became especially enthusiastic about Wolf Solent when it first appeared” [in Summer 1929].

Incidentally, John Cowper Powys’s career story puts the kibosh on the notion that Lovecraft might have made a living as a public lecturer. By 1926 Powys was on his uppers, with his lecturing work having all but dried up in the face of radio, cinema, gramophone records and all the other attractions of the Jazz Age. If even such a highly experienced lecturer as Powys could not find work in New York, what chance for Lovecraft?

Journal: Heroism Science

28 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in REH, Scholarly works

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A relatively new open access journal may interest some R.E. Howard scholars, Heroism Science: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Vol. 1. No. 1 (2016) and No. 2 (2017) look like the most interesting and substantial so far, of four issues. They appear to have struggled a bit after that, and could perhaps do with beefing up the next issue with… some Robert E. Howard scholarship!

Event: Walking in Providence

28 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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Walking in Providence. Booking now. Free.

On 4th and 5th May 2019, staff and students at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University will lead an arduous, 2-day, 20-mile collaborative walk through all 25 of Providence’s neighborhoods, in which the “route” is mapped by strangers in the street.

How does it work? The walkers will meet once on 1st May, to pick the locations throughout the city that they would like to hit over the two days. On Saturday, 4th May, the group will set out and will ask passers-by for the best route to their location based on specific questions, like “What is the route that bypasses particular places that have meaning to you or your community?” or “What is the ugliest route we can take and why is it so ugly?” The walk will be shaped by people in the streets — some may even join in for part or all of the day. The route, generative questions and some information about each route-giver will be recorded, and a map will be produced at the end of the weekend.

New book: The H. P. Lovecraft Cat Book

28 Sunday Apr 2019

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

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The H. P. Lovecraft Cat Book now has a Necronomicon Press pre-order page, a cover and TOC, and a release-date of 20th May 2019 for the paper editions. The hardback first edition is limited to 100 copies.

“assembled by S. T. Joshi … lavishly illustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt” in pen and ink.

I’m assuming that “The Cats of New York”, listed in the TOC, might be something drawn from the letters? Or perhaps a scholarly essay from Joshi on the cat-encounters? We also get an “Extracts from Letters” section, although at present it’s unknown how completist this is.

A major new audiobook

28 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books, Podcasts etc.

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I’m pleased to hear that audiobook makers Tantor have popped out a 17 hour audiobook of Joshi’s In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales (Penguin Classics, 1986), in which Joshi presented his ‘best of Dunsany’ selection. Amazon USA and UK ‘knows nurthing’ about this at present, but Tantor’s site has details, stating a 26th March 2019 publication date and offering a link to a download purchasing site that doesn’t appear to be run by Amazon.

Formerly Trantor (as in Asimov), Tantor did the excellent Conan and Solomon Kane audiobooks, so the quality should be top notch. However, someone should tell them that keyword “Joshi” gets no results on searching their site, and that Tantor are damn difficult to find via regular Web search.

Sale: Draw! / Write Now / Kirby Collector

27 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

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TwoMorrows, an online store dedicated to comics history. They currently have a sale on for their Draw! magazine “the professional ‘how-to’ magazine on cartooning”, with most issues as low as $5 and some as low as $3.

Also Jack Kirby Collector and Write Now magazine, for writers of comics and similar.

Their sale runs through 1st May 2019.

The return of the fanzine

27 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings

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The Lovecraftian Rlyeh Reviews brings the happy news that…

“On the tail of Old School Renaissance [in tabletop RPG gaming] has come another movement — the rise of the fanzine.”

Fantasy Faction pins down what the phrase “Old School Renaissance” means in RPG-land, for clueless newbs like myself, in his review of the fab-sounding RPG The Midderlands.

Lovecraft was right, part #534

26 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Unnamable

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“Dynamic DNA material with emergent locomotion behavior powered by artificial metabolism”, new in Science Robotics. Or, in pulp-speak: ‘They made tiny tentacle-robots that live and walk!’

“We are introducing a brand-new, lifelike material concept powered by its very own artificial metabolism. We are not making something that’s alive, but we are creating materials that are much more lifelike than have ever been seen before,” said Dan Luo, professor of biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Friday Picture Postals from Lovecraft: Pawtucket / Pawtuxet / Pawcatuck

26 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Astronomy, Historical context, Picture postals

≈ 1 Comment

Sleepy Pawtuxet. The view looks across the Pawtuxet bridge toward Broad St. Note the electric trolley car nestled in its terminus bay, presumably having arrived from Providence, and the Lovecraft-alike man on the right of the picture walking away from it. Lovecraft had a regular 1906 column in the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner at about the time of this card (probably photographed c. 1906 or 07), with astronomy articles such as “Is Mars an Inhabited World?”. The card photographer was very unlikely to have caught a 16 year old Lovecraft crossing the bridge to make the trolley connection to Phenix, though he is known to have worn his father’s clothes as might be the case with the man seen here. But the card is indicative of a scene he would have known, had he travelled out to the Gleaner newspaper offices or simply taken an early-springtime walk down that way.

I should clarify a possible point of placename confusion for those reading Lovecraft’s letters. Pawtuxet is not Pawtucket. Pawtucket now appears to be effectively a suburb of Providence, and lies to the north of the city beyond Swan Point Cemetery and at the head of what seems to be the navigable part of the River Seekonk…

… while Pawtuxet is in the far south and just beyond Providence, at the head of a river-valley where that valley meets the Providence River as it starts to meet the ocean. Of the two places Pawtuxet was by far the more sleepy and homey place in Lovecraft’s time. This is confirmed by an author in The Survey of 1922, which gives a vivid flavour of the trolley-ride Lovecraft would have had there…

As the [inexpensive electric trolley] car turns south from Providence, out toward the Pawtuxet Valley, it passes through about nine miles of usual city outskirts. Then suddenly, round a curve, rows of little white clapboard houses appear grouped about a mill close to the sides of the river; and on the hill where once also stood the company store, is the spotless white frame company church. The whole picture is flanked by hills and rolling farm lands. The car has entered “the Valley.” It is a different world. Many inhabitants have never visited the city nine miles away.

Although the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner offices were out in Phenix, so to visit them from Pawtuxet Lovecraft would then have change trolleys and taken another trolley or bus going west some 12 miles along and deep into the Pawtuxet Valley. I imagine he would taken this more scenic route — Providence – Pawtuxet – Pawtuxet Valley – Phenix, which is only about 21 miles in total. This was apparently one is his mother’s home-places when she was growing up, which was why the Gleaner — the valley’s main paper — was still taken in Lovecraft’s home.

The even sleepier Phenix, circa 1908.

An example of Lovecraft’s column in the weekly paper, 1906…


Later, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Lovecraft would take friends down to Pawtuxet on the trolley and the place was evidently then known for its fine seafood dinners at the local restaurants. These were presumably on the “shore”, and probably rather affordable given the usual state of Lovecraft’s finances…

On the way back I blew Price [‘treated Price’] to a typical R. I. [Rhode Island] clam dinner at antient Pawtuxet and later stopt at a Waldorf [chain restaurant] to tank up my’self.”

Still another trip was to old Pawtuxet — where, as with Price, I watched Morton eat a shore dinner.

Kirk & his wife passed through Providence on the last lap of a long New England motor tour. I took him to the ancient & unchanged fishing village of Pawtuxet, down the bay.

I imagine that Lovecraft might have been tempted to tantalise his friends while showing them around, by mentioning that Pawtuxet had featured as a substantial setting in his unpublished novel Dexter Ward. Written 1927, the book was not to be published until 1941…

He must likewise have begun to practice an extreme care and secrecy in his graveyard expeditions, for he was never again caught at such wanderings; whilst the rumours of uncanny sounds and manoeuvres at his Pawtuxet farm diminished in proportion. His rate of food consumption and cattle replacement remained abnormally high…

“the creaking of Epenetus Olney’s new signboard … was exactly like the first few notes of the new jazz piece all the radios in Pawtuxet were playing”.


Whipple.org has further useful clarification of the placenames, and warns of a third element of potential confusion, in the article “Pawcatuck, Pawtucket, Pawtuxet: Three Places in Rhode Island?”.

Sadly, the feline-loving Lovecraft never made use of ‘Pawcatuck’ in the kitty sense (one imagines a possible witty word-playing poem on the three Paw-places, re: his inevitable encounters with their paw-padding cats). Though it is deemed the site of ‘faery’ in “Dexter Ward”…

… after a few heralding cards the young wanderer quietly slipped into New York on the Homeric and traversed the long miles to Providence by motor-coach, eagerly drinking in the green rolling hills, the fragrant, blossoming orchards, and the white steepled towns of vernal Connecticut; his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years. When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved.

Joshi on Tour: “Nah mate, that’s not a Lovecraft, THIS is a Lovecraft…”

25 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

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Necronomicon Australis in June 2019, with S. T. Joshi in the land of the kangaroos. Booking now.

S.T. Joshi will undertake a short speaking tour:

“Seating may be limited so tickets should be purchased early.”

Other presenters may appear at select events.

* Canberra, Saturday 22nd June 2019.

* Melbourne, Monday 24th June 2019

* Hobart, Wednesday 26th June 2019. (Doesn’t seem to have an Eventbrite listing)

* Sydney, Friday 28th June 2019.

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