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Tentaclii

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

Tentaclii

Monthly Archives: July 2023

Two new ebooks

31 Monday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books

≈ 3 Comments

Wormwoodiana takes a look at Gary Myers’s Dreamlands tales in their original 1975 form. Said elsewhere to be typo-ridden in its 1975 edition, but the problem is not mentioned here.

It’s noted that the more recent book was a “corrected edition” as well as expanded, and Wormwoodiana usefully draws my attention to a further “2022” edition which had escaped me.

Also new in affordable ebook, S.T. Joshi’s compilation Ooze and Others (2023), being the best pulp shockers of Anthony M. Rud. Rud was an influence on Lovecraft, since the otherwise lacklustre March 1923 issue of the fledgling Weird Tales featured his tales of the Alabama swamplands…

“a striking novelette, “Ooze” by Anthony M. Rud, which Lovecraft enjoyed” (Joshi, I Am Providence)

Available in Kindle ebook…

New S&S

30 Sunday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, REH

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Spiral Tower on “The Glut of New Sword and Sorcery”…

[it’s] increasingly feeling like a claustrophobic, crowded field [in novels, but in a good and ‘too much quality to read’ way]. I don’t think the glut of new sword and sorcery literature is a problem. But I do think this acknowledging this new phase in indie S&S might be helpful for writers, readers, and publishers.

Sounds good. I knew the “New Pulp” was a thing, and I’d kind of felt the wider cultural sea-change ‘bubbling under’. But the “New S&S” in novels is… new. I’m spreading the word here. See Spiral Tower’s post for various author names and titles of novels.

So it sounds to me like the new Conan publisher will be bringing their items to market at the right time. There’s a new novel series (though the first book had so-so reviews, I recall) and a new non-Marvel comics series (un-connected to the new novels, according to a recent interview I read). Both are apparently more REH-aligned than the mega-corp Marvel/Disney could have made them.

What’s probably needed then is more outreach, to build young audiences for these “new S&S” novels and anthologies, rather than simply curation and book-reviews for old hands. The old hands probably know enough to detect the good stuff by osmosis, and are canny enough to be able to winnow the good stuff into a pile of the really good stuff. But the process for young people probably goes: hear about the novels -> are there audiobooks -> are there full-cast and music unabridged audiobooks? I’m assuming that the age 13-23 market for reading multiple 600-page manly S&S novels on paper is limited these days, amidst the many time-sucking demands of videogames, anime, manga, YouTube, AI image-making, movies, drugs and booze, sports, part-time jobs, college, online eBay side-hustles and whatever the latest social-media app craze is.

On the other hand, the failing Marvel Comics thinks there’s a market for their new line of “crime novels”… so who knows? Maybe a hybrid highly-illustrated form of novel? But that’s been tried before, with not a great deal of success.

So… yes… a really high-quality crowdfunded audiobooks of the very best of this “New S&S” glut would be my starting suggestion, accompanied by a really good free magazine to curate and signpost the stuff each month. Indeed, one might bundle the magazine back-issues free with each audiobook. Such a thing, modestly priced, would be a big draw and a ‘sub-genre taster’ for many.

Audio would also mean that the old hands could cram in even more reading each month. Just slap on a pair of 300ft RF wireless headphones (not the infernal Bluetooth type), and ‘read’ while doing other things.

I’d also emphasise to young readers (probably male) the courage, pride, honour, what Lovecraft calls the barbarian virtue of “unbrokenness”, etc. Just look at how immensely popular Wilbur Smith’s manly books still are. Of course, a bit of sex never hurt either, something lacking in REH due to the constraints of his time. And perhaps a catchy new youth-friendly marketing formula, alongside the somewhat tired old “S&S”? How about MMM! — manliness, magic and maidens. Sounds like a catchy short title for the free magazine that might curate the “New S&S”.

Against Religion

30 Sunday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books

≈ 2 Comments

An unusual item from Germany…

Against Religion by H. P. Lovecraft, Festa. Only 250 copies were published and there will be no reprints and no e-book. The selection includes his most important essays and letters on religion, atheism and related subjects. The structure of the book includes topics such as religion and science, religion and society, as well as general reflections on God and religion and much more.

I assume this is the best atheist-related essays from the Collected Essays, translated? Appears to be new. I’m guessing this may be the result of a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaign, perhaps?

Futures Past: A Visual History of SF

29 Saturday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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Jim Emerson is creating a complete Futures Past: A Visual History of SF set, year by year. Vol. 3 is now available. And you can get Vol. 1 (1926) free from the website, as a PDF download.

It’s apparently set to be a complete survey of the output, people and occurrences (i.e. new words, sub-genres etc) for each and every year, with nothing left unmentioned.

Found on Brown

28 Friday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Picture postals

≈ 3 Comments

This week on my regular ‘picture postals’ post, a short tour of the Brown University repository in which I point out few of the more remarkable ‘picture postals’ from Lovecraft. These and many more can be found, free online at the Repository.

First, one that’s not actually in the Lovecraft collection, but is in the Repository. It shows a view of the Wickle gates I’ve never seen before, a view which puts them in visual context with the Brown clock tower in the corner of the campus. The gates were just a stone’s throw from Lovecraft’s last home at 66 College St., and he could see the clock tower through the trees. I’d never realised that one would have such a ‘Roman’ feel here, due to the columned building in the background. Something Lovecraft would surely have appreciated.

An early one from 1923, showing that the “old man” head was not modelled (with a bit of help by human wedge and sledgehammer) on the older Lovecraft.

Three additions to my recent post on Lovecraft in Dunedin, Florida.

Another evocative card from Florida, which is said to have physically gone missing from the collection. Though the scan remains.

The Woolworth Tower, New York City. If I remember rightly this was the tallest of the towers when Lovecraft first visited the city. One of his first acts was to ascend to the top and survey the city. He later thought fondly of Mr. Woolworth, who became very rich by providing people with reliable items at affordable prices in his stores.

In New York Lovecraft would pick up cards from the many museums. Here we see the phases of prehistoric man reconstructed from skulls. I don’t want to spend an hour reading up on the history of early anthropology, so I’ll just say that I seem to recall that ‘Piltdown Man’ was later discredited. And that the implied direct evolution of man from Neanderthal is also discredited, though we probably picked up some Neanderthal genes. I could be wrong on that though, since the scientific understanding may have changed again. Suffice it to say that much has changed since Lovecraft’s time.

Also a card showing “King Senusert III as a Sphinx” from Ancient Egypt, which appears to have been enclosed with a letter, to an unknown correspondent who was about to visit NYC.

The interior of Julius’ bar, NYC. Lovecraft stayed in a room above this bar for several weeks in 1935. It was later a famous gay bar in the 1950s-70s, though its status in 1935 is unknown.

The Japanese gardens at Maymont. Lovecraft went into raptures about these, thinking them even better than the similar Japanese garden in Brooklyn.

A view up College Hill. At his last home Lovecraft lived just in front of the distant white building with the long white windows — the John Hay Library at Brown, where his papers are now a prize collection.

Here we see a similar view, not in the Brown collection. It’s possible that Lovecraft’s house can be glimpsed, in a little courtyard garden back of the street-facing houses.

The Akley house, one of the inspirations for “The Whisperer in Darkness”.

On the Mississippi. Lovecraft travelled as far west as the Mississippi, and even crossed over for a short time.

The old Spite House, at his beloved Marblehead.

The re-created Pioneer Village at Salem.

Many more can be found, often alongside writing by Lovecraft, at the Brown University repository. High-res versions can also be found (look for the .JP2 files).

Letters to Wilfred B. Talman – the third set of notes

27 Thursday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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Here’s my third set of notes on Lovecraft’s Letters to Wilfred B. Talman and Helen V. and Genevieve Sully. These notes cover letters from November 1929 to May 1931.


Page 124. We get the last address of ‘Good Old Mac’, the boys’ adventure novelist and sometimes juvenile fantasist Everett McNeil, which may be of use to those still seeking the lost letters and manuscripts of McNeil. He was with his sister at “Collins, 6227 Warner St., South Tacoma, Wash.” He died there shortly after arriving.

Page 127. It’s mid April 1930, and Lovecraft’s summer travels are in the offing. He implies he is to meet Belknap Long in Atlantic City, “thereafter continuing southwards alone”. Thus it seems he visited Atlantic City.

Page 130. “Strange musick around Red Hook [Brooklyn] seems quite a usual thing. I always noticed gangs of sinister-looking youths marching about with ukuleles and harmonicas, & wondered what dark & furtive gods of the nether-world they were hymning in their cryptic rituals.”

Page 131. Said of his new story “The Whisperer in Darkness”, in mid late July 1930… “When I get a chance to rewrite it … It won’t do in its present form.” If I remember correctly it was relatively rare story in terms of being written away from home and during the summer.

Page 134. The New Zealand amateur Robert G. Barr published Lovecraft’s “Harbour Whistles” (part of Fungi from Yuggoth) in his Silver Fern. Today the National Library of New Zealand has Robert G. Barr Collection of Amateur Journalism. “This collection is catalogued online”.

Page 135. On seeing the initials “FOFA”, Lovecraft imagined some possible meanings. “Fiends of Forest Abbey” and “Fifty Ogres from Acheron”. These may be of interest to RPG gamers and Mythos writers.

Page 135. September 1930. Arthur Leeds was then touring with a theatrical company, and had recently “passed through” New York City in the late summer.

Page 137. Talman wrote a “tale based on our good old friend Honest Mac” (Everett McNeil). Lovecraft notes “His real charm as a perpetual boy telling stories to other boys”. Talman’s story was mangled by an editor. The man being “a sterotyped commercial robot” and “a big-winded office-hound” in Lovecraft’s view. The editor had demanded that a stenographer be added, “as if it were illogical for a writer not to be able to hire a typist”. The tale was “The Story Teller: A Tale of Christmas”, which survives in its editor-warped “mangled” form.

Thus McNeil features as a character in another story, albeit not a weird one. I have a survey of ‘McNeil as character’ in my biography of him. Talman’s tale ran in the Christmas number of The Texaco Star (Vol. 17, No. 11, December 1930), and is interesting as a romantic pen-picture of a key Kalem member by one who knew him. Lovecraft objected to the frock-coat in the illustrations, but thought the pictures “looked a bit like him”.

Page 138. Lovecraft’s camera was, by October 1930, a portable “vest-pocket Kodak” though it made what he called “microscopic views”. This was then his only camera “in working order”. He doesn’t give its model or date, so the model can’t be guessed. A 1918 early “vest-pocket Kodak” model looked like this…

Several years later he tells Talman that he has photographed his new home at No. 66 with his old “1907 #2 Brownie” (a Kodak ‘box-brownie’), so he must have had it mended since 1930 or perhaps just bought film for it and given it a clean.

Page 149. “Bedford is one of my favourite villages”. The latest Texaco Star has arrived, and the “New London article interested me greatly”, and he was further captivated by “the whaling article” along with “the Jamaica article”. He eagerly awaits “the Providence article” in a later issue, to which by the sound of it he has contributed something. At this time Talman is working on the magazine. Not noted by Lovecraft, the latest Texaco Star’ Contents page briefly notes that dinosaur eggs have been discovered in the USA for the first time.

Page 153. Lovecraft reads the reviews in the Sunday Times, presumably the Sunday edition of the New York Times and not the Times of London.

Page 160. Of his press cuttings collection he notes that “most of them are printed on such rotten paper that they perish in the course of a very few years”. Thus his cuttings file(s), which I had previously wondered about re: their present location, might only have been a relatively ephemeral thing. By Christmas 1930 it was possible to copy a document by hunting up what he calls “a photostatic reproducer” who would change “50 cents” to copy the proofreading booklet that Talman had then sent. But obviously the costs would have been prohibitive for preserving newspaper cuttings.

Page 162. “Prose must be created with just the same exactness, delicacy of ear, imaginative fertility etc, as verse.”

Page 164. On Blackwood… “His prose is so accursedly bad and journalese”.

Page 169. He reveals what he was doing in 1904-05, at age 14-15. Intensively studying the histories of the ancient world. On the details of the capture of Babylon in 312 B.C…. “in 1905 or so I knew all this just as well as I know my own name”. In 1932 he had to refresh his memory of some of the details.

Page 175. “My postcard collection is classified”, ordered by place presumably, and it “hath now overflowed the trunk and includes two cardboard boxes as an annexe”. Today, the Brown repository only 557 cards, some of those not from Lovecraft (e.g. Cook to Cole) or if from Lovecraft are not picture-postcards.

Page 175. “I’ll have to cook up some adventures of Ward Phillips, the occult deteckatiff” (i.e. himself). In April 1931 he was evidently perusing the “scientifiction” magazines, if only on the news-stands, since he remarks that he has not yet seen any Belknap Long science-fiction stories in these.

Page 177-178. He gives detailed advice on “The Curse Wheel” for Talman, re: re-writing this ‘Jersey Devil’ tale. Getting carried away, he gives his own substantial rewriting in five long paragraphs. New fiction from Lovecraft! Well, new to me anyway.

New journal: Insolita

26 Wednesday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works

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I was pleased to find another new journal of the fantastic, Insolita: Revista Brasileira de Estudos Interdisciplinares do Insolito, da Fantasia e do Imaginario (‘Brazilian Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Unusual, Fantasy and Imaginary’). Which is of course not in English (mostly, there is some English in the latest issue). But there are auto-translators these days.

Five issues, so far, in open-access as nearly all South American journals are. Seems to have a definite tilt toward horror. The new and latest issue is themed “The Philosophy of Horror; the horror of philosophy”, and leads with an article which translates as “Cyclopean Games: the Lovecraftian heritage in games”.

Two more newly-seen texts by Everett McNeil

25 Tuesday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

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I’ve found a little more from Lovecraft’s friend Everett McNeil, “Good Old Mac”, courtesy of new uploads to Archive.org. Newly found there, his thoughts on tipping waiters, as verse in Good Housekeeping in June 1905…

Which makes me wonder why I’ve never heard Lovecraft on tipping. He was in restaurants and cafes often enough, and poor enough to resent having to tip. Maybe he just never tipped?

And his vivid account of Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, carried in the Lowell Sun in 1898…

Lost Continents

24 Monday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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New on Archive.org to borrow, a good scan of L. Sprague de Camp’s Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature (1954). The original Gnome Press edition, not later popular re-issues. It looks like maps and illustrations are un-stolen.

New from Hippocampus

23 Sunday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books

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Newly listed on Hippocampus Press website (now accessible from the UK without a VPN, I’m pleased to see) are…

For the Outsider: Poems Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft which collects… “a plethora of poetic tributes from friends, colleagues, and disciples” and later acolytes. What a great idea. The listing page has the full list of included poems.

Those wanting even more poetry can find it in the new Spectral Realms No. 19, which I’m pleased to see includes “The Nightmare” by Erasmus Darwin as a classic reprint. This must be an extract from the famous The Botanic Garden: the Economy of Vegetation. This section (if given in full, rather than just the ‘demon chapel’ scene) is set near to me in the Staffordshire Moorlands. The section follows the river underground (it vanishes underground each summer). Interestingly, it’s also the very same valley used as the setting of the final part of the supernatural classic Sir Gawain & The Green Knight. Though Erasmus had no idea about Gawain at that time. My recent book Strange Country: Sir Gawain in the moorlands of North Staffordshire. An investigation has the details.

And… hurrah… another table-trembling slab of letters from Lovecraft, in the form of the near 600-page H. P. Lovecraft: Letters to Hyman Bradofsky and Others. We also get letters to… “Richard Ely Morse, Margaret Sylvester, John J. Weir, and a pair of brilliant weird artists, Virgil Finlay and Frank Utpatel.” Despite the page-count it’s currently on Amazon UK at £22.95, rather than the now-usual £30+ price for the books of letters I don’t yet have.

2024 anniversaries

22 Saturday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

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As we turn the year and start to look toward 2024, what anniversaries might one want to start preparing for?

Here are a few. Perhaps Tentaclii readers can add more?

1944: 80 years

Winfield Townley Scott and others. Lovecraft’s likely long-term influence starts to be felt.

* Scott, W. T. “Howard Lovecraft’s Lengthening Shade.” The Providence Sunday Journal, 109, No. 47 (21st May 1944).
* Scott, W. T., “His Own Most Fantastic Creation : Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (1944).
* Fritz Leiber, Jr.,, “A Literary Copernicus”, Acolyte, Fall 1944.
* U.S. soldiers carry “The Dunwich Horror” into and across Europe, in Derleth’s special military paperback edition.
* Edmund ‘always dismally wrong’ Wilson attempts to blast Lovecraft’s emerging reputation, in The New Yorker in May 1944.

1924: 100 years

* Lovecraft leaves for New York City, marries Sonia. Begins his ‘New York exile’.
* Lovecraft completes “Imprisoned with the Pharoahs” for Houdini.
* Lovecraft writes “The Shunned House”.
* The ‘Kalem Club’ attains its recognisable form.
* Publication of “The Rats in the Walls”.

1874: 150 years

* Births of Charles Fort, Houdini.
* Lovecraft’s father all-but vanishes from the historical record. He turns up again in 1889 for his Boston marriage.

Return to Innsmouth

21 Friday Jul 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Picture postals

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Previous Tentaclii picture posts on Newburyport — a key inspiration for Lovecraft’s “Innsmouth” — have included Along the Innsmouth shoreline, Newburyport – part one and part two. The images are now restored on these posts, after the site-move.

For this week’s regular ‘Picture Postals’ post I wondered if, some four years later, other pictures had become available? They had.

For context, above we see Newburyport showings its relation to its salt marshes and ocean coastline, on a U.S. Geological Survey map of 1934. Newbury and Ipswich are just south of this map.

This fine picture I found is probably fairly close to what the ‘local bus to Innsmouth’, which features in the famous tale, would have looked like. This combination carrier / bus is destined for a working life around Newbury, just south of Newburyport and in the middle of the marshes. The picture looks like it’s about the right time-period too.

Curious doings at Newburyport. A pamphlet by the aptly named H.P. Davis. Probably the same as the interior of haunted schoolroom in the photo I found and fixed in 2019.

On the Rocks, off Plum Island.

A curious Marsh Scene, Plum Island. Not one of the early pre-Photoshop montage ‘farm cards’.

School Street, Newburyport.

Inn Street. Newburyport.

An unusual garden, at the back of the High Street, Newburyport.

A (the?) tug-boat, Newburyport. 1930s?

And finally, readers will recall the U.S. submarine in “Innsmouth”. I couldn’t find one off Newburyport, but here’s one off the relatively nearby Newport.

Well, those are some newly found ‘picture postals’ that seem to chime with elements / atmospheres in Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931).

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