22 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
Wormwoodania this week draws attention to a book of prose-poems by Arthur Machen. I see that the book, Ornaments in Jade (1924), has since arrived on Archive.org as a good scan. I blogged about it back in 2021, when I also weighed up the chances of Lovecraft having read it before writing Dream Quest.
21 Sunday Jul 2024
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
I’ve at last been able to see the U.S. movie Ah, Wilderness!, 1935’s gentle celebration of the small-town world of America as it was in 1906. Lovecraft saw it late in life (circa Christmas 1935/36) and revelled in its lavish layers of thirty-years-ago nostalgia. Similar to a movie of today being nostalgic for 1994, or one of the 2010s being nostalgic for 1980.
saw “Ah, Wilderness”, which made me home-sick for the vanish’d world of 1906!
“… revelled in it. Yuggoth, but it made me homesick for 1906! [it] gives all sorts of typical 1906 glimpses, including an old street-car, a primitive steam automobile, &c. It was photographed in Grafton, Mass. […] where the passing years have left little visible toll.
“At times I could well believe that the past had come back, & that the last 3 decades were a bad dream. [the world it depicted] having many a value which might well have been preserved had social evolution been less violently accelerated by the war.”
I recall that Lovecraft also remarked that the family sitting room was almost a double for the one he had known as a boy. Also the hallway.
He also seems to imply that the rural newspaper office which published his astronomy articles, was in appearance similar to the office briefly seen in the movie (the young hero’s father owns the town newspaper).
the articles landed, & I also landed others with a rural weekly …. (this was the Ah, Wilderness year of ’06)
Ah, Wilderness! is very well-made and acted, with lavish costumes and scenes. Worth seeing simply for the very satisfying scene of a steam-car ‘scaring the horses’. But (unless I’m missing something, being British) it is perhaps not the all-time classic that some had claimed. Though, as the 1933 play, it does appear to have become a staple of American repertory theatre.
The film usefully gives one a better feel for Lovecraft’s formative environment and sensibilities. Many of us have been subtly trained by agitprop to casually think of the Victorian and Edwardian periods in bleak b&w Dickensian terms, all grimy urchins, grim school-masters, and grinding urban poverty. The movie is a useful corrective. As with the 1930s, the view of which has been similarly be-grimed for political purposes, most people were actually ‘getting on with getting on’, and rather enjoying the novelty of becoming middle-class.
The cynical young hero is somewhat Lovecraft-like, at least in the early scenes. The concerns of creeping socialism and chronic alcoholism, though treated lightly, are the same ones which permeated young Lovecraft’s world. The hero (Eric Linden), at first a ‘going to Yale’ stiff of a teenager, is perhaps the weakest part of the film and perhaps a little too ‘1930s movie star’ in appearance — this makes it harder for the viewer to suspend disbelief. His youngest brother is the firecracker Mickey Rooney. But the young Rooney’s usual gurning and capering is thankfully kept on a very tight leash, in what must be one of his first film appearances.
Even having seen Ah, Wilderness!, I’m still as a loss as to why the strange title was chosen. No-one gets to look at a sweeping vista and proclaim the words, unless I missed something. I would have called it “Bang goes the Fourth!”, since it’s set on the 4th July.
For another Hollywood view of 1906, this time from the post-war 1940s, I’ve found Ah, Wilderness! also inspired the glossy musical adaptation Summer Holiday (1948).
20 Saturday Jul 2024
I find that Stable Diffusion 2.1 768 knows about Conan, if you use the right model. Pure prompt, no Img2Img or ControlNet.
Conan’s body slipped and crashed down the icy ravine, his simple ice-pick useless to slow his slide, until suddenly he was halted. One foot has stuck through an ice sheet, where the high sun had partly melted it. It was that faint warmth which brought a musty smell to his flaring nostrils. He was suddenly alert to something behind him…
20 Saturday Jul 2024
Posted in Astronomy, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
Lovecraft the astronomer and Moon-gazer would no doubt be pleased to learn that “Brown University Researchers Develop More Accurate Moon Maps”. A new…
technique is used to create detailed models of lunar terrain, outlining craters, ridges, slopes and other surface hazards. By analyzing the way light hits different surfaces of the Moon, it allows researchers to estimate the three-dimensional shape of an object or surface from composites of two-dimensional images. … advanced computer algorithms can be used to automate much of the process and significantly heighten the resolution of the models.
20 Saturday Jul 2024
Posted in Scholarly works
A call for papers for a two-day academic conference ‘Celebrating 215 years of Edgar Allan Poe’. To be held in California. Note also… “This conference will be held online at no charge. The Zoom link will be sent out the week prior.”
“215” apparently refers to the years since his “deathday” anniversary, but the organisers have that wrong. 2024 marks 215 years since his birth in 1809. It’s 175 years since he died.
Deadline for 200 word submissions: 13th September 2024.
19 Friday Jul 2024
Posted in New discoveries, Picture postals
I had little hope of ever finding a picture of Julia A. Maxfield’s ice-cream parlour, which was something of a repeating rural venue for the Lovecraft circle. But one has popped up at last. I’ve here colourised it. The card is still available, for a hefty price, on eBay.
Saturday morning all three of us went to Colonial Warren — down the east shore of the bay — and staged an ice-cream eating contest at the celebrated emporium of Mrs. Julia A. Maxfield — an aged matron of antient Warren lineage who has won fame by serving more flavours of ice cream than any other purveyor either living or dead. There are twenty-eight varieties this season, and we sampled them all within the course of an hour.
The game was, in the course of one hour…
Each would order a double portion — two kinds — and by dividing equally would ensure six flavours each round. Five rounds took us all through the twenty-eight and two to carry. Mortonius [Morton] and I each consumed two and one-half quarts, but Wandrei fell down toward the last. Now James Ferdinand and I will have to stage an elimination match to determine the champion!”
There were a number of visits and other contests…
Another time we visited the colonial seaport of Warren, down the East shore of the bay — incidentally stopping at a place (quite a rendezvous of our gang) where 28 varieties of ice cream are sold. We had six varieties apiece — my choices being grape, chocolate chip, macaroon, cherry, banana, and orange-pineapple.
Then back home via […] ancient Warren […] at which latter place we paused at the famous Maxfield’s (a rendezvous of Morton, Cook, & other visitors of mine) for a dinner consisting entirely of ice cream – a pint & a half each. HPL: chocolate, coffee, caramel, banana, lemon, strawberry.
After digesting Warren’s quiet lanes and doorways we went across the tracks to Aunt Julia’s, where we tanked up on twelve different kinds of ice cream — all they’re serving at this time of year [March]. The antient gentle-woman, of course, was not there – since (as I wish to gawd I could) she spends all her winters in Florida — but the bimbo in charge was very pleasant, and we got quick service since we were the only customers.
American Biography (1924) confirms the at-or-near 71 Federal Street location. At Warren…
is where ‘Elmhurst’, famous for Mrs. Maxfield’s ice cream, is located on Federal Street.
However the 1932 Providence Directory has it on Narragansett Av. There were likely several different ways of approaching it. Today Federal Street looks like a fine place, but seems too short in terms of numbering. Perhaps it once ran on, and would thus have given us a No. 71? Narragansett Av. also seems gone, but one wonders if it once ran along the shoreline and Federal Street ran on to meet it? But it would probably take a local sleuth to pinpoint the location and say if the building survives.
As for Lovecraft’s ice cream craving, it began early, if the evidence of its use in his seminal poetry is anything to go by. In his early comic/cosmic poem “The Poe-et’s Nightmare” (1916)…
Each eve he sought his bashful Muse to wake
With overdoses of ice cream and cake
The 1925 telegraphic diary has plentiful of mentions of ice cream in New York City.
By 1934 ice cream has become something of a staple meal on his travels south. June 1934, in Charleston…
Still on 20¢ a day for food, but off the canned stuff. Morning — 5¢ cup of ice cream. Evening, 10¢ bowl of Mexican chili and another 5¢ cup of ice cream.” […] I “frequently make a full meal of it (and nothing else) in summer.
December 1936. Ice-cream now a costly luxury, as poverty deepened. But still…
Occasionally, of course, extravagant additions [to one’s meagre diet] occur — such as […] a chocolate bar or ice cream at an odd hour [… and yet] the old man still lives — in a fairly hale & hearty state, at that! Oddly enough, I was a semi-invalid in the old days when I didn’t economise. Porridge? Not for Grandpa!
His ice cream cravings were such that in “The Exiles”, a Ray Bradbury ‘Mars’ story after Lovecraft’s death, Bradbury portrays the Martian Lovecraft as an ice cream-aholic…
Lovecraft hurried to a small icebox which somehow survived this red furnace and brought forth two quarts of ice-cream. Emptying these into a large dish he hurried back to his table and began alternately tasting the vanilla ice and scurrying his pen over crisp sheets of writing paper. As the ice-cream melted upon his tongue, a look of almost dreamful exultancy dissolved his face; then he sent his pen dashing. “Sorry. Really, I am awfully busy, gentlemen, Mr. Poe, Mr. Bierce. I have so many letters to write.” […] The writing man tried another delicate spoonful of the cold treasure. There were six empty vanilla ice-cream boxes piled neatly on the hearth from this day’s feasting. And the ice-box, in the quick flash they had seen of its interior, contained a good dozen quarts more.
18 Thursday Jul 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
Some final notes on Letters to Wilfred B. Talman, and Helen V. and Genevieve Sully.
Three small typos toward the end of the book, or at least that is what they appear to be: p. 484, begin = begun; p. 482, how = now; p. 478, had = hard.
Page 459. “The ancient brick building at the foot of the hill [is to go, in RISD modernisation, yet]… it will be some consolation to have the old familiar gable still in place, when one starts upwards from Market Square.” This indicates that, at least in 1936, Lovecraft’s route home from the commercial district was straight up College Hill. That would make sense if he was carrying heavy shopping and library books uphill in bags, since it was the shortest route home.
Page 460. He had been inside the cave system under “Lookout Mountain in Tennessee”. In 2020 I had a ‘picture postals’ post on the visit.
Page 460. Years ago, as a boy, he was fascinated by descriptions of Mount Rainier in the “juvenile books of Kirk Munroe”. The tale in question was serialised in Harper’s Round Table, a juvenile magazine, in summer 1896. Thus it’s not certain that Lovecraft read it in book form as Rick Dale, A Story of the Northwest Coast (1896), though he does recall “books”. Which also suggests he read more than one by the author.
Immediately after the Mount Rainier chapter in Harper’s Round Table is a long article for boys about small sail-boats, and we know the young Lovecraft was later a keen sailor on the Seekonk in such boats. I assume ‘keen’, because the Seekonk was a dangerous river and one would have to be keen to sail it alone and also land on its Twin Islands.
Later in his life his good friend Everett McNeil wrote books in much the same vein as Kirk Munroe.
Page 471. 1934. “Trips […] to certain historic of scenic spots […] leave a permanent imaginative residue which crops out again and again in dreams, waking thoughts, and literary attempts.”
Page 478. “… the giant oak with its brooding overtones of Druidic mystery. I have repeatedly dreamed of vast, night-black forests of gnarled, great-boled oaks, such as one sees in pictures of old England”.
Page 478. Lovecraft on swans. He associates the Northern lore of water ‘nixies’ with them.
Page 484. “I welcome any process which permits of duplicate or multiple creation [in works of art and sculpture].”
Page 486, 485. “Back to 1910″ […] I was a Shakespearean enthusiast and more of a theatregoer than I am now”.
17 Wednesday Jul 2024
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
At the San Diego Comic-Con 2024…
Friday 27th July, 4pm—5 pm, Room 4: “Discussing Lovecraft with Gou Tanabe”.
Gou Tanabe (H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth) and his editor, Hayato Shimizu, join Michael Gombos (senior director international licensing, Dark Horse) and Zack Davisson (translator, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth) to discuss the process of adapting H.P Lovecraft’s stories to manga format.
16 Tuesday Jul 2024
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Some scholars may be interested in the new book Fantasy Aesthetics: Visualizing Myth and Middle Ages, 1880-2020 (July 2024), which I find can be freely had in open-access, as a .PDF file. It has chapters on, among others, ‘Visualising the Elves throughout the Centuries’; William Morris’s enduring influence on fantasy visuals; the challenges of fantasy maps; medievalism in science-fiction; fantasy novels as shovelware commodity; and… unicorns in contemporary pop culture.
16 Tuesday Jul 2024
Posted in Odd scratchings
Should you be visiting southern England or Normandy, appreciators of science-fiction cover-art might like to hop over to one of the Channel Islands. Throughout the rest of the summer, on the island of Guernsey, “Chris Foss: A Sci-Fi Journey Exhibition”.
16 Tuesday Jul 2024
Posted in Scholarly works
Can’t wait for the Lovecraft Annual, due in August or thereabouts? Here’s some new 2024 work on Lovecraft to tide you over…
* “Charles Brockden Brown, George Lippard, H.P. Lovecraft, and the Urban Underworld”.
* “The History of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Brand on the Polish Book Market”.
* “The Non-Euclidean Gothic: Weird Expeditions into Higher Dimensions and Hyper-Matter with H.P. Lovecraft” ($ paywall).
15 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works
New on Archive.org, a collection of the strongly Lovecraft-influenced ‘Hyperborea’ tales by Clark Ashton Smith. This has the same cover as the early 1970s 95-cent U.S. Ballantine paperback, but this new upload is probably to be avoided. Because I immediately randomly spotted a typo at the start of a story: the German “die” for “the”.
Better, then, to look for these Lovecraft-influenced cycle of tales among the free texts kindly placed online by Will Murray and made from good corrected texts. These are freely available as HTML pages. Although one has to already know the list of Hyperborean titles and then hunt for them among what is an A-Z list.
So, to save people some time, here is my quick linked contents-list. The links lead to the HTML-format stories which make up the Murray-edited The Book of Hyperborea (Necronomicon Press, 1996). The listing below is in the same order as the book’s contents…
Introduction to ‘The Book of Hyperborea’, by Will Murray *
The Muse of Hyperborea [Fragment, not linked in the A-Z, but it is online] *
The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan
The House of Haon-Dor (Fragment) *
Lament for Vixeela [Poem, not linked in the A-Z, but it is online] *
The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles
[The Coming of the White Worm (Abridged)] *
Altogether, a relatively short collection by modern triple-decker doorstop standards, at around 70,000 words in total including introduction and postscript.
Audiobook? Yes. The tales above can now be found as a free HorrorBabble audiobook playlist The Hyperborean Cycle on YouTube. Around seven hours. This playlist lacks only the above-starred (*) fragments, poem, and introduction / postscript.
Note that the early 1970s Ballantine book (mentioned at the start of this post) also had…
* Hyperborea (simple map).
* About Hyperborea and Clark Ashton Smith: Behind the North Wind (essay by Lin Carter).
[the core stories, then to finish]
* The Abominations of Yondo (story)
* The Desolation of Soom (fragment)
* The Passing of Aphrodite (fragment)
* The Memnons of the Night (fragment)
Of these additional four however, Carter was unsure if they belonged… “I have the feeling that the short tales which follow are the surviving fragments of yet another such cycle: one which was abandoned, or left undeveloped, for some reason we can only conjecture. I may be wrong in this assumption.”
* Notes on the Commoriom Myth-Cycle (essay by Lin Carter) — I. The Genesis of the Cycle, II. The Sequence of the Hyperborean Stories, III. The Geography of the Cycle.
For further tales by others see A Hyperborean Glossary by Laurence J. Cornford, which is an A-Z and its front page lists the additional sources — tales ‘finished’ later by Lin Carter but apparently based on work or notes by CAS (?), plus various Hyperborea related/set tales by others. Many of these appear to be collected in Robert M. Price’s Book of Eibon along with what looks like an expanded map.
More recently there was also a substantial 2013 anthology, containing the work of some notable modern writers, titled Deepest, Darkest Eden, The New Tales of Hyperborea. I see this now has an affordable Kindle ebook on Amazon.