Lovecraft’s beloved Georgian era is hot right now…
Lovecraft was right, part 546
15 Saturday May 2021
Posted in Odd scratchings
Monthly Archives: May 2021
Tales of the Long Bow (1925)
15 Saturday May 2021
Posted in Podcasts etc.
G.K. Chesterton’s Tales of the Long Bow (1925), now newly on Librivox as a free public-domain reading. Not, as you might think from the title, romping tales of the English greenwood from the times of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood. Rather, “impossible” tall tales, humorously mind-bending moustache-twiddling ‘club’ tales, more ably indicated by the titles of the stories themselves…
The Unpresentable Appearance of Colonel Crane.
The Improbable Success of Mr. Owen Hood Kingsnake.
The Unobtrusive Traffic of Captain Pierce.
The Elusive Companion of Parson White.
The Exclusive Luxury of Enoch Oates.
The Unthinkable Theory of Professor Green.
The Unprecedented Architecture of Commander Blair.
The Ultimate Ultimatum of the League of the Long Bow.
“Curious” rather than weird tales, and perhaps of interest to some Tentaclii readers.
The book is also on Archive.org in open PDF, from the Digital Library of India. Here is the dustjacket cover of the 1962 British reprint…
The picture apparently relates to a plan to parachute ‘flying pigs’ across the English countryside, to show that ‘pigs can fly’.
‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: ye olde doorways
14 Friday May 2021
Posted in Picture postals
Lovecraft’s near-obsession with discovering colonial doorways during his travels was not at all unusual for his era, and the appreciation was shared by many others. As tourism grew the interest also became understood, if perhaps not shared, by many more who lived in old colonial sections. The interest was normal and part of New England’s set of established antiquarian interests in material culture, along with covered-bridges, sailing ships, old lanterns, almanacs and so on.
Today we, and especially those outside the East Coast of America, might tend to think vaguely of the neatly painted-up and slightly chintzy re-creations of such doorways — and thus rather wonder at the attraction.
At best, people might picture the quieter doors of the type that could be seen in abundance on Lovecraft’s College Hill (as here) and which had never needed to be gentrified.
But as one can seen below, in 1920s pictures, some of the oldest original doors could be hoary and sinister with age… and thus most suited to a horror writer.
Lookout Court, Marblehead.
The Short House, Newbury.
Review: A Monster Of Voices
13 Thursday May 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
Neal Monks has a new and long review of Robert H. Waugh’s collection A Monster Of Voices: Speaking for H.P. Lovecraft.
Initially, he argues, there’s something to be said for Lovecraft as a surrealist, but Waugh observes that his writing style is closer to that of Tolkien. In particular, where [C.S.] Lewis [Narnia books] was very precise in his language, favouring short, clear sentences and convincing arguments, Lovecraft, like Tolkien, always has more to say.
Yes, there is a similarity. Tolkien uses a lapidary method that I call “Tolkien’s tantalizing teasing” where he carefully inlays a sub-story across a half-dozen tantalising slivers (e.g. the story/journey of Boromir from Osgiliath to Rivendell) often made up of asides, offhand remarks, small fragments of fact. The same is done to gradually build up character back-story without actually giving an info-dump (e.g. Sam and his family). The reader must, if he is a good attentive reader, join the slivers together in memory and then add his own imagination. It’s a potent method, for the right kind of reader. Lovecraft has a similarly tantalising approach to revealing back-story, which also assumes a closely attentive reader who is not skimming the text or barely able to comprehend what is going on (e.g.: the baffled letter-writers to Weird Tales or Astounding). While attentive close readers could once be counted on to exist in reasonable numbers, they have today become a relatively rare sub-species when compared to the vast size of the thundering herd.
The Shadow grows…
12 Wednesday May 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
I don’t think I’ve ever read a word of The Shadow‘s 339 pulp novels, but many Tentaclii readers may be interested to learn of Steve Donoso’s Kickstarter for the pulp fanzine The Shadowed Circle: The Foremost Fanzine about The Shadow. The campaign is live now, with a month to go, and already rising nicely. It will be “non-fiction” with art. And not just a one-man venture, being run by…
three Shadow fans with backgrounds in writing, editing, art, and graphic design
The first issue is due in July 2021, and there’s what appears to be a very rough front-cover mock-up on the Kickstarter page.
“goldfish … I fancy the present fashion for them will prove reasonably permanent”
12 Wednesday May 2021
Posted in Historical context
Spanish blog Hijos de Cthulhu digs up a memoir by Javier Marias, remembering Juan Lopez-Morillas. Lopez-Morillas had lived in Lovecraft’s 66 College St. house after Lovecraft’s death. In translation…
A Spanish professor who lived in the city of Providence told me that, during his early years at Brown University, he had lived in what had been the home of the master of horror literature H.P. Lovecraft … When I asked if the teacher or his wife had ever noticed any strange presence in the middle of the night, he replied that luckily no creature of uncertain fishy descent or physique had ever appeared to them. But that there was a strange surliness in that house, a kind of forced silence that any sound revealed. As if the walls, accustomed for too long to Lovecraft’s taciturnity, were not willing to accept a raised voice or some crooning. And when they found out who had preceded them, within weeks of settling in, they had decided to give away the goldfish they had arrived with. Just in case.
The Werewolf In The Ancient World
11 Tuesday May 2021
Posted in Historical context, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
A new book, The Werewolf In The Ancient World (Oxford University Press, 2021). News to me, and perhaps to you.
the werewolf is far older than [the medieval period]. The earliest surviving example of man-to-wolf transformation is found in The Epic of Gilgamesh from around 2,100 BC. However, the werewolf as we now know it first appeared in ancient Greece and Rome, in ethnographic, poetic and philosophical texts.
I wonder if Lovecraft knew that? If so, that would be relevant to his expressed interest in the possible writing of a werewolf saga (in the 1940s, but of course he never lived to explore the notion), and also his developing ideas for tales set in the African frontier of the Roman Empire. I’d always imagined that the unwritten werewolf saga would have been set on the mist-shrouded coasts of England and New England in the 18th century. But now I wonder… could he have had an eye on combining werewolves with Rome’s African frontier? Perhaps in a sort of transplanted revisiting of the themes of “Polaris” and Lomar, with a touch of Howard’s Solomon Kane? Of course, being Lovecraft it would likely have got a lot wilder than that (recall his comment about having “sympathy” for the werewolf), and could even have then jumped into having surviving Ancient Roman werewolves prowling his other favourite, 18th century London. He had spent so much time studying London of that period, that he felt he knew every inch of it. Sort of ‘H.P. Lovecraft via early Anne Rice’, is what I’m imagining.
Call: Lovecraftian maps
11 Tuesday May 2021
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
The next issue of Digital Art Live will be themed “Maps” (June 2021). As editor I’d welcome, ideally as digital art, such things as…
* A general map of the Dreamlands, or Carter’s routes, or Ulthar (ideally with kitties).
* Curious cross-sectional Lovecraftian diagram-maps, such a hill showing tunnels etc.
* Map of Innsmouth, Dunwich etc.
* ‘Genre map’ of the original Lovecraft + circle tales (as opposed to the Derlethian and later expansions). Might be done as an isometric view of a large haunted colonial mansion and estate. Can go a little beyond Lovecraft’s death and the actual mythos (e.g. “F.B. Long’s Greenhouse of Dangerous Plants”, referencing Long’s wartime ‘alien plant’ stories).
* Guidebook map of an imaginary Lovecraft library/museum in Providence, with suitably whimsical touches.
* Condensed four-page timeline-map of Lovecraft’s life, or a two-page chart of his immediate circle and their connections.
* Map of Lovecraft’s ‘interests and fascinations’ as they waxed and waned during his life.
* A diagram-map of Lovecraft’s science as presented in the fiction, poems and essays.
* Maps relating to the work of his circle, if out-of-copyright. e.g. a ‘purist’ original Conan world map (albeit omitting items that may still be contested by copyright trolls).
* Reworked original public domain maps from the 1920s and 30s, given a Lovecraftian makeover.
* General ‘genre map’ of weird pulp themes and settings before 1950, showing connections and intertwinglings.
And any other artistic maps or timelines you may have to hand and think suitable re: science-fiction, weird fantasy, steampunk, for worlds now in the public domain.
Maps should work as a 4,000 pixel double-page landscape spread, when viewed whole on a widescreen monitor with a height of 1200 pixels.
Good news for del Toro
10 Monday May 2021
Posted in Censorship, Lovecraftian arts
Good news for movie director, writer and collector Guillermo del Toro. His acclaimed ‘not-Lovecraft but still fish people’ movie The Shape of Water had been hit, soon after its success, with a rather shaky-sounding plagiarism claim. This related to a 1969 U.S. Flipper-tastic TV movie in which a woman ‘bonded’ with a dolphin. Such things were hot, back then when dolphin language decoding seemed a real possibility.
Entertainment Weekly now reports that the legal challenge has finally dragged through the courts and come to a result — the U.S. Ninth Circuit federal court has definitively ruled there was no plagiarism.
Zothique #6 & #7
10 Monday May 2021
Posted in New books, REH, Scholarly works
A new (to me) issue of Zothique: Rivista di Cultura Fantastica e Weird, from Dagon Press. This is No. 7 (Summer 2021), and an R.E. Howard special. Here are the contents translated…
The World of Robert E. Howard, by Giuseppe Lippi.
“Autobiography” by Robert E. Howard.
“A Confession” by Robert E. Howard.
“An Analysis of the Howardian Vampire”, by Wade Wellman.
“The Song of Vampires” by Robert E. Howard.
“A Dream” by Robert E. Howard.
THE LETTERS OF ROBERT E. HOWARD.
“The day I met Robert E. Howard”, by E. Hoffmann Price.
“Wolfsdung” [Wolfshead?] by Robert E. Howard.
“The Tower of the Elephant: a Lovecraftian tale”, by Robert M. Price.
“The Appearance on the Moor”, by R.E. Howard.
“The Shadow of the Condemned”, by R.E. Howard.
“Almuric, the wild and mysterious planet”, by Giovanni Valenzanol.
“Steve Harrison: iron fist against degradation in River Street”, by Matteo Mancini.
THREE STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION by Robert E. Howard:
The Gondarlano. [?]
The Supreme Moment.
The Land of Ashish.
“The romantic roots of the poetry of Robert E. Howard”, by Mariano D’Anza.
“A portrait of the marauder Cormac Mac Art”, by Michele Tetro.
“Lo latromante” [?], by Andrea Guido Silvi.
Also new to me, Zothique #6 (spring 2021) which was a Gustav Meyrink / The Golem special.
Previously on Tentaclii: Zothique #2 and Zothique #3 – #5.
Studi Lovecraftiani #19
09 Sunday May 2021
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
The latest Studi Lovecraftiani #19, the Italian Lovecraft studies journal, now available from Dagon Press.
* The volume opens with two essays on Lovecraft and racism/censorship, one by S.T. Joshi.
* A long special “The Cats of Ulthar” section, including “a new complete and annotated translation [to Italian]” of “Ulthar” and related artwork.
* An essay on “Lovecraftian archetypes of ‘the alien invasion'”, though it seems to survey uses of his ideas by later authors.
* A survey of “curious parallels with Dante, present in the story “In the Vault”.”
* What appears to be an account of a personal falling-out or disagreement among Italian Lovecraft scholars?
* A comic by Teodorani and Farinelli.
* An essay on “Lovecraft and witchcraft”, with the author apparently drawing on real letters from a (modern) witch?
* “A Lovecraftian story” by Pietro Rotelli.
* Some reviews and reports.
For those who read Italian, here is a screenshot of the TOC…
Alan Moore, un-retired
09 Sunday May 2021
Posted in Unnamable
Alan Moore is popping out of retirement, having landed a six-figure Bloomsbury contract for a quintet of books to be titled Long London. Said to be set in an alternative-history London “encompassing murder, magic and madness” over a long time-period, and with the first book due in 2024. One wonders if he’ll have Lovecraft visit London in the late 1920s.