Slightly later than usual, my monthly roundup for Tentaclii. I have the honest excuse that I’ve been “away with the fairies”. No, really, the next issue of Digital Art Live is a ‘Fairies’ issue. But it’s now complete. And now that there’s actually time for me to go out and cavort around fairy-rings in the dewy morn… Tentaclii Towers is inundated by a 36-hour deluge of rain and wind. Ah well, more time for reading about Lovecraft and catching up with my (now working properly) Kindle Fire 10″. And learning Terry Thomas-style moustache twirling — I have discovered Got2B’s “Glued” paste.
In April I finished the first volume of Lovecraft’s Letters to Family and posted a set of notes. I also found occasional related photos, such as Lovecraft’s model of the portable oil stove he mentions so often. Rather more importantly I even glimpsed a possible ‘unwritten story’ in 1925, based on the newly public Letters and the Commonplace Book.
In new discoveries, I found a large cartoonish caricature of Lovecraft correspondent Ernest La Touche Hancock; unearthed a little more on the latter part of Edward Lloyd Sechrist’s life and work; from a scan of Rocks and Minerals (July 1946) I learned that Lovecraft’s friend Morton had built a collection of glow-in-the-dark minerals and rocks at Paterson; I found that Morton had long been a Theosophist and had lectured and taught on the beliefs; I tracked down several Lovecraft cafes in 1925 and found photos, although one identification is still tentative and I’ll return to the hunt in due course. I also found that Providence vaudeville from Lovecraft’s youth is well documented in scrapbooks and booklets held the Keith Albee Collection located in Iowa City. Various Archive.org ‘new arrivals’ were noted, including a complete run of Rhode Island History, 1942-2011 and of Astounding. A late uncollected memoir by Robert Silverberg was a poignant find (“Lovecraft as science-fiction”) in which he fondly recalls the immense impact on him of reading “The Shadow out of Time” in 1947.
I posted a survey of the items and interesting authors likely to be “Public domain in 2022”, either due to author death date or publication date. I looked into the origin of the term “weird fiction”, and the earliest item found for the current definition was from 1894. No-one has yet offered an earlier possibility.
In books, Donald R. Burleson’s Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe should be out now as a new ebook edition. I also looked at the new RPG game encyclopaedia Malleus Monstrorum, and found another large encyclopaedia A Dictionary of Fairies free on Archive.org. Which covers not just fairies, but all supernatural folk entities. I noted the surprising absence of a good encyclopaedia on New England folkloric and literary monsters and ghouls, ghosts etc. We also need a good book on Lovecraft and cinema, and the role of cinema production in the background of his circle. Lovecraft’s Letters to E. Hoffmann Price and Richard F. Searight is not quite out yet, but from what Joshi says on his blog it sounds like an imminent treat with wholly new Price letters. Such a pity Price’s memoir can’t be reprinted as an affordable ebook, as it’s now become collectable and high-priced.
My regular weekly ‘Picture Postals’ posts looked at: the Lovecraft family carriages and the apparent family tradition of ‘getting lost’ in order to discover new fine views; springtime at Lincoln Woods, a favourite haunt of Lovecraft; the interior of Shepard’s in Providence; The Arcade in Providence inside and out; and I re-visited Silver Springs after finding a brochure from the very year Lovecraft visited it. David Goudsward later had an article on a different aspect of the Springs, in the new edition of The Fossil.
Various foreign journals were noted here: Circulo de Lovecraft, Ulthar, and very shortly Zothique and Studi Lovecraftiani with TOC translations. The forthcoming student journal Mapping the Impossible: Journal for Fantasy Research was linked. My copy of the Lovecraft Annual 2020 arrived, and I started on a reading and review of it. This could be about 6,000 words when finished. My ‘Open Lovecraft’ Web page continues to update with new ‘open’ scholarly works and it already has a good selection for 2021.
In the arts, not a great deal this month. Some games, a coming-soon comic, and I surveyed DeviantArt again. I also offered readers various Creative Commons or Public Domain pictures suitable for book covers. Not much in audio, either, though the free release of the full soundtrack for the recent ‘Lovecraft-via-Myst’ videogame The Shore was nice to see. Just out, there is also a new edition of the Voluminous podcast, reading some of Lovecraft’s letters to Farnsworth Wright. And of course “Ask Lovecraft” continues the loquacious flow of wise words on YouTube.
In R.E. Howard news, the Robert E. Howard Days 2021 event is back on; Exploring the Worlds of REH #3 gives those interested in Howard’s Weird Texas a good hunk ‘a rawhide ta’ chew on; the Christmas 2020 issue was belatedly spotted for the publicity-shy The Dark Man (Vol. 11, No. 2), and it looks interesting enough for me to get.
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