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Tentaclii

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

Tentaclii

Monthly Archives: March 2023

“Pascoag for magazines”

31 Friday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Picture postals

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This week on my regular Friday ‘Picture Postals from Lovecraft’, new pictures of Pascoag and Chepachet. Readers will recall these places provide the opening to Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook”…

Not many weeks ago, on a street corner in the village of Pascoag, Rhode Island, a tall, heavily built, and wholesome-looking pedestrian furnished much speculation by a singular lapse of behaviour. He had, it appears, been descending the hill by the road from Chepachet; and encountering the compact section [of stores etc], had turned to his left into the main thoroughfare where several modest business blocks convey a touch of the urban. At this point, without visible provocation, he committed his astonishing lapse; staring queerly for a second at the tallest of the buildings before him, and then, with a series of terrified, hysterical shrieks, breaking into a frantic run which ended in a stumble and fall at the next crossing. […] A police surgeon with relatives in Chepachet had put forward that quaint hamlet of wooden colonial houses as an ideal spot for the psychological convalescence; and thither the sufferer had gone, promising never to venture among the brick-lined streets of larger villages till duly advised by the Woonsocket specialist with whom he was put in touch. This walk to Pascoag for magazines had been a mistake, and the patient had paid in fright, bruises, and humiliation for his disobedience.” (The Horror at Red Hook)

The map and the Lovecraft’s “turn to the left” both suggest that police detective Malone was walking via the Putnam Pike west out of Pascoag, and then up the Reservoir Road alongside the northern and eastern part of the giant Pascoag Reservoir (expanded c. 1860).

As he approached the urban centre he would have encountered places that looked similar to this…

But then one of the plain brick “modest business blocks” in Pascoag reminds him of Brooklyn and triggers his terror…

The taller central building was the Music Hall.

Overpainted version of the above, people removed.

Lovecraft knew Pascoag by September 1923 and he visited again in September 1926. For him it recalled — despite its red-brick “touch of the urban” — the “half-forgotten, beautiful simple America” that still existed away from the populous centres.

This area was touched on in Lovecraft’s journey to find the mysterious Dark Swamp…

The tavern lyes on the main Putnam Pike; but shortly after quitting it and passing the reservoir we turn’d south into the backwoods, coming in proper season to Squire Reynolds’ estate. He told us, that we had better take the right fork of the road, over the hills to reach the Dark Swamp…

And finally here are two pictures of the smaller magazine-less Chapachet, with its obviously rather sleepy Post Office and bridge, out of which detective Malone was venturing in “Red Hook”…

The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (1917) as an audiobook

30 Thursday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Podcasts etc., Scholarly works

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New on Librivox as a free public-domain audiobook, Dorothy Scarborough’s pioneering book The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (1917). S.T. Joshi called it…

a thematically exhaustive but critically undistinguished work that nevertheless is a landmark for its mere existence. […] Lovecraft would not read [the book] until 1932; but when he did so, he rightly criticised it as being overly schematic in its thematic analyses and hampered by an amusing squeamishness in the face of the explicit horrors of Stoker, Machen, and others.

Still, it may be of interest to Lovecraftians who would have liked the convenience of an audiobook version. Or those looking for a succinct contemporary “thematic analysis” of the available pre-WWI material, unhindered by the psychological theory / leftist politics of later eras.

Cornell University Library has a nice scan of the paper book, free on Archive.org.

War-nymphs of Venus

29 Wednesday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in AI, Odd scratchings

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The AI image-generator Dream by Wombo is getting better by the day. The following picture was generated by Wombo and was only my third-try with the simple prompt…

War-Nymphs of Venus, females, science-fiction illustration, painted by Frank Frazetta

… using the free VFX v.2 style module. Looks at those hands, Wombo is getting hands more or less right now. A year ago they’d have been a horrible mangled mess.

Thanks to Links of Steel for the idea about plugging in “War-Nymphs of Venus” as an AI-gen prompt. The title is from a story in Planet Stories (Spring 1941).

R.E. Howard Photo Album

28 Tuesday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books, REH, Scholarly works

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Howard Days usefully rounds up the Robert E. Howard publishing which is set to coincide with the 2023 Days. Including…

The long-awaited R.E. Howard Photo Album

Chicago Daily Tribune, April 1945

27 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context

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Thanks to the Archive.org’s ingestion of old newspapers from microfilm, I’ve found a new early item on Lovecraft that was not included in the collection A Weird Writer in Our Midst: Early Criticism of H.P. Lovecraft. It’s from the Chicago Daily Tribune, 27th April 1945. As the Nazi camps opened and the news floods the newspaper’s initial pages, an anonymous ‘book notes’ columnist reaches for his edition of Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others. The ‘black magic’ quote here attributed to Lovecraft was a fake, as many will recall.

AI snippet re-writing

26 Sunday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

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Why it’s no longer wise for scholars / bloggers to trust DuckDuckGo / Bing snippets in search…

1. The Guardian newspaper says something silly about Tolkien (to be expected)…

2. But, on clicking through to the source, The Guardian’s actual story says something different. It’s talking about Chaffey…

An AI at Bing has presumably re-written the snippet, possibly for extra click-throughs(?). I’d heard about AI search-result snippet re-writing, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in action.

Necronomicon Ilustrado

25 Saturday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

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A curiosity from Spain, newly popped up on Archive.org. Necronomicon Ilustrado is a 66-page booklet of unknown date, filled with rather pleasing pen-worked pages and forming a complete visual guide to Mythos monsters (inc. Derleth and Smith etc).

I regret I can’t credit the artist, as the booklet appears to be anonymous.

More Handicraft Club

24 Friday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Picture postals

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This week in my regular ‘picture postals from Lovecraft’ post, two newly-colourised additions to my Handicraft Club post from a few years ago.

Here we see the corner of Benefit and College Streets, Providence. Behind the magnolia trees are the headquarters of the Handicraft Club. A house in which Lovecraft’s aunt lived in 1927, and Lovecraft undoubtedly visited her there.

The side-buildings on the right were also part of the Club. Lovecraft was very familiar with this spot, and would later live further up the hill at No. 66.

Writer: the shaping of popular fiction

23 Thursday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context

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A handsomely designed collection of texts on early pulp writing, by L. Ron Hubbard. Collected in Writer: the shaping of popular fiction (2012). Now available to borrow on Archive.org. An earlier edition was already on there, but was not as nicely designed and the pictures were very dark and murky. Here they’re clear and crisp.

Previously on Tentaclii…

Lovecraft once had a long restaurant conversation with the flame-haired and young Hubbard, according to Frank Belknap Long. While impressed by the “extraordinary” lad, he evidently felt Hubbard was too professional and un-cosmic a writer to strike up a correspondence with.

So the interest here is more in Hubbard’s insights into the markets and fans of the period, rather than in any strong connection with Lovecraft.

Cthulhuton in Madrid

22 Wednesday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Films & trailers, Lovecraftian arts

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In Madrid this weekend, Cthulhuton, the Spanish Lovecraft film festival. Billed as “the first” such. 25th March 2023 is the date.

with the presence of prestigious guests such as the American Sandy Petersen, creator of the well-known role-playing game The Call of Cthulhu and one of the greatest disseminators of Providence writer’s work worldwide.

Three choice vintage movies are to be shown, picked for their faithfulness. Petersen will lead the discussion after the main screening.

New scans

21 Tuesday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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New on Archive.org, an open scan of the 1945 printing of Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature.

And on fanac.org, a partial run of Reader and Collector, the fanzine of H. C. Koenig, Lovecraft’s industrious New York correspondent. A high-quality ‘zine, e.g. Vol. 3 No. 3 was a William Hope Hodgson special with essays.

CQuill Writer for vintage sci-fi

20 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in AI, Odd scratchings

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CQuill Writer has an additional free dictionary for writing assistance…

Classical Sci-fi. Based on 1950’s Sci-Fi authors, devoid of modern terms.

Unzip and paste to… C:\Program Files\CQuill Writer\Dictionaries

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