12 Wednesday Jun 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
Call for Papers for the Inaugural Session of the Monsters and the Monstrous Area at the 2019 Conference of the Northeast Popular & American Culture Association (November 2019). Proposals due by: 15th June 2019.
“the Monsters and the Monstrous Area is also especially interested in celebrating both the New England Gothic tradition and the life, works, and legacy of H. P. Lovecraft, a leading proponent of Weird Fiction and an immense influence on contemporary popular culture.”
12 Wednesday Jun 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
S.T. Joshi’s Liberation newspaper interview, in French: “Lovecraft admettait lui-meme que les relations humaines ne l’interessaient pas”. Now online and public, and with no paywall that I can see, but it may be one of those “the first view is free” newspapers.
Via Google Translate:
Q: Could you have written more with more [source] material, and are you planning a new version?
A: The biography is largely based on Lovecraft’s letters, an incredible source that often represents an almost daily chronicle of his life. This raw material does not interest everyone, and it needs to be interpreted to make it fit a coherent narrative frame. I could add more details to my biography, but it would not serve much purpose. Although in the last ten years we have learned new facts, and facts about Lovecraft. But I think I have already said a lot.
12 Wednesday Jun 2019
Posted in New books
The H. P. Lovecraft Cat Book now has a page on hplovecraft.com with a full contents list, including precise details re: the number of letters…
The Cats of New York (excerpts from 21 letters)
Old Man (longer excerpt from one letter)
The Kappa Alpha Tau (excerpts from 34 letters including “[Anthem of the Kappa Alpha Tau]”)
Musings of an Ailurophile (excerpts from four letters to Marian F. Bonner)
Extracts from Letters (excerpts from 50 letters)
So that’s 110 letters, a good haul. No Amazon listings for it, yet. Let’s hope there will be an ebook at some point, too.
12 Wednesday Jun 2019
Posted in Historical context, New discoveries, Odd scratchings
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12 Wednesday Jun 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings
Czocha Castle near the Polish-Czech border will host Carcosa Con on 27th-29th March 2020, organised by the Polish publisher for the Call of Cthulhu RPG game. 350 tickets only. Booking now.
11 Tuesday Jun 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s keen interest in our mysterious felines.
Frederick J. Waugh. Book-plate design, 1898.
11 Tuesday Jun 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
Wormwoodiana has news of an Arthur Machen Essay Competition, with Cash Prizes. Deadline “by early September”.
The Friends of Arthur Machen have announced a competition for essays on Machen … £200 prize for the best essay, and two runner-up prizes of £100 each. … 4,000 words [or more] … open to non-members”.
Worth having. Unfortunately I don’t know what hasn’t yet been discovered about Machen, or I’d unleash the Tentaclii Towers truffle-pigs on the online archives.
11 Tuesday Jun 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
The review journal Dead Reckonings #25 has been published in paper. The issue’s Web page says “Spring 2018”, but the cover says “Spring 2019” and the journal’s catalogue page has an eta for arrival of “June”. So I’m guessing the Web page should read “June 2019”.
Of Lovecraftian interest, among the contents:
* “A Look Behind “The Challenge from Beyond””, by Michael D. Miller.
* “Weird Fiction and Decadence”, the S. T. Joshi review of the important new mainstream academic book Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939.
* “Sesqua Valley’s Weirdest Inhabitant, Wilum Pugmire”, by David Barker.
* “Weird Fiction in the 21st Century: A Conversation with S. T. Joshi”, by Alex Houstoun.
* “Some Notes on Call of Cthulhu and Other Lovecraftian Video Games” by Geza A. G. Reilly.
Possibly the journal is also on Amazon. But they annoyingly mix books titled “Dead Reckoning” into results for a specific search for “Dead Reckonings”. Meaning that I’m not inclined to trawl through the resulting stew of dross to discover if the journal is listed there.
10 Monday Jun 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
Thomas G.L. Cockcroft’s Index To The Verse In Weird Tales (1960), free on Archive.org. Also related magazine titles edited by Farnsworth Wright, such as Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet.
Many good scans of Weird Tales can now be had free on Archive.org, but this Index should help speed up the finding of ‘on the original page’ verse by your favourite authors. Since it’s also effectively a keyword index to likely header illustrations, it might also be used as an index for finding illustrations by theme.
Also, I wonder if it might be possible for an ambitious student typographer, seeking a project, to get in touch with the heirs of Thomas G.L. Cockcroft (1926-2013) and request permission to do a new properly typogrified, designed and printed version of this old stencil-duplicated Index To The Verse In Weird Tales. Perhaps the new edition might integrate the best of the poem illustrations in the public domain, and for each poem add a line of colour-coded keywords indicating theme and symbolism/setting?
10 Monday Jun 2019
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
Black Gate has a new survey of “The Weird Tales Anthologies”. With covers and some tables of contents. It’s not comprehensive but lays out what you might find cheaply and has useful brief assessments. Note that some of the book covers may not be “safe for work”, in these prudish days.
Another new survey is a detailed evaluation by The Pulp Hermit of the run of Bronze Shadows, the ground-breaking early Doc Savage / Shadow fanzine which ran for 15 issues in the 1960s. Altus Press also has an evaluation of its place in history, in “Bronze Shadows & The Moon Man”.
Also in the category of retrospectiva posts, Murray Ewing has a new long post in which he revisits Erich von Daniken’s influential Chariots of the Gods? book and its claims…
Von Daniken’s own method mostly consists of rhetoric rather than proof. [His] technique is to find oddities, puzzles, and things that the average reader might be surprised to find in the ancient world, then point at them and say, “Well, who can say it’s not aliens?”
10 Monday Jun 2019
Posted in New discoveries, Scholarly works
The Pulp Super-Fan reviews Windy City Pulp Stories #19, the substantial 2019 program book for the convention and trading fair.
This year the focus is on the pulp writers, editors, and publishers from the Chicago area.
Th Farnsworth Wright section has the 1933 profile of him I posted here in April (I had no idea they were going to include it in the programme book). But there’s also much more on the other editors and publishers from the Windy City.
09 Sunday Jun 2019
Posted in Historical context, Odd scratchings
Don Herron has posted a picture of “Galpinius and Mrs. Galpinius” I hadn’t seen before. Galpin looks distinctly more chunky than I had imagined him in the 1920s and 30s, but it’s Italy in 1967 in the picture.