Bobby Derie reviews the new pulps-for-academics book Weird Tales of Modernity: The Ephemerality of the Ordinary in the Stories of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H. P. Lovecraft.
Weird Tales of Modernity: review
26 Saturday Oct 2019
Author Archives: asdjfdlkf
Friday ‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: the Fulton Street Fish Market.
25 Friday Oct 2019
Posted in Picture postals
Continuing the dockside theme of recent ‘Picture Postals’… the Fulton Street Fish Market, and a view of some of the towers of New York City as they appeared in 1930.
“Some years ago Long and I attempted to explore the Fulton Fish Market section of New York — which is full of quaint scenes and buildings. I don’t know where I left the lunch I had eaten an hour previously — for I was too dizzy to read the street signs! In the end I managed to stagger out of the stench without actually losing consciousness …” — Lovecraft in a letter of 1933, Selected Letters IV.
This brief mention suggests this daytime after-lunch visit perhaps followed a perusal of the large used magazines bookstore on that section of Fulton Street. Evidently Lovecraft had strayed too close to one of the main market-places, probably as it was being sluiced out at the end of the day’s trading, and his well-known reaction to the smell of fish took hold of him.
“New” Fulton Fish market, 1910.
Yet, according to Vrest Orton’s memoir of Lovecraft in New York, the same area was also a fairly frequent night-walk haunt, as he and Lovecraft went in search of 18th century remains (see his memoir in Lovecraft Remembered). How to explain the apparently incongruity? My guess would be that the fish-smell was less so in the dead of night, when the boats were away and fishing, and the disinfected slabs of the fishmongers awaited the dawn and the landing of the catch? There is also the weather to consider. Lovecraft could have explored with Orton in New York in the winter, whereas an early 1930s visit with Long might have been in high summer.
The far-off Spire
24 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in New books
A tentative date, on the Bowker forward book-ordering database, for the paperback of Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. These appeared in a 500 limited-edition hardcover in 2017. Volume 1 in paperback lists as… “Aug 2020”.
Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship 2020
24 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
Now that the “back to uni” rush is over, a reminder of the The S. T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship in H. P. Lovecraft, 2020/21 edition.
The Fellowship provides “a monthly stipend of $2,500” to one lucky Lovecraftian “for up to two months of research” on H.P. Lovecraft and his circle, at the John Hay Library in Providence.
Application deadline: 13th March 2020.
Lovecraft Geek Podcast – new series, #2
23 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in Podcasts etc.
I’m pleased to see that Robert M. Price’s The Lovecraft Geek Podcast – Series 2, #1 has returned. It had vanished, at least for me.
And now it’s also just now been joined by #2 of the new series.
You can download an .MP3 file from ListenNotes by clicking the cryptic “…” over on the right-hand sidebar, and then right-clicking the “Download” link…
My thanks to ‘Governmentdrone’ for the heads-up on appearance of this new podcast.
New journals, conference and others
23 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in Scholarly works
A quick round-up of some calls, new journals, conferences, of possible interest…
* A new open access journal, Gothic Nature: New Directions in EcoHorror. The chunky first issue is already online, seemingly coming out of the Gothic Studies / Ecocriticism postgrad crowd in academia. They are obviously happy to range into popular culture. Note also that they will also review suitable works.
* Journal of the British Fantasy Society, call for papers for a future (late 2020 or 2021) special issue “about works of fantasy translated into English”.
* MDPI’s Humanities journal is planning a Special Issue on the “relationship between modernism and science fiction”.
* Journal of Dracula Studies, is planning a Special Issue on witches.
* Gothic Studies is planning a Special Issue on ‘Tales of Terror: Gothic and the Short Form’ (Nov 2021). They appear to want papers on how the very short form, brevity, elision, the left-unsaid, tight story-mechanics, etc, contribute to the effectiveness of terror-tales.
* Announced is a new wide-ranging Religion and Comics series from Claremont Press. Not open access, but “paperbacks with a price point between $20-$30” rather than the usual $80 academic tome.
* The Outer Dark Symposium, 27th – 28th March 2020, Atlanta, USA. The focus is on “contemporary Weird fiction writers”, and it appears to be something of a social convention for writers as well as a symposium.
* Conference on Contemporary Folk Horror in Film and Media, Leeds Beckett University in the UK, 30th – 31st July 2020. Probably with a British slant, I’m guessing. Think Wicker Man and Penda’s Fen.
Kittee Tuesday: H.P. Lovecraft Cat Book
22 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, New books
A weekly blog post, celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
I see that the The H.P. Lovecraft Cat Book is now also at the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society store. It’s also been at Necronomicon Press for a while now. But at the HPLHS you may prefer to combine shipping on it with another HPLHS store item.
Howard Days 2020
21 Monday Oct 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings, REH, Scholarly works
Robert E. Howard Days: Howard Days 2020 has dates and theme. June 12th and 13th, and the theme is “Celebrating REH in Comics”.
“Dimensione Cosmica” returns
20 Sunday Oct 2019
Posted in New books, REH, Scholarly works
Dimensione Cosmica has returned to regular quarterly publication in Winter 2018, after being absent for some years. This is an Italian language magazine of non-fiction, reviews and interviews, with a strong focus on the history of the fantastic.
Translated, titles of selected historical and Lovecraft articles for the issues to date…
No. 1.
* Lovecraft at 80. [Perhaps an article on Lovecraft’s ‘baseline’ presence in Italy in either 1970 (age 80) or 1980?]
* The Italian Star Wars.
* J.R.R. Tolkien, a professor with many anniversaries.
* Arthur Machen, scribe of miracles and magical realist.
* James Allison, a forgotten hero. [R.E. Howard]
* Conan and the Ninth Art. [R.E. Howard]
* Gnome Press: when science fiction conquered books.
No. 2.
* Neo-symbolism: features for an exegesis of the fantastic literature of Alex Voglino.
* The Babel Catalog: E. Vegetti: the story of a friend and his endless work.
* The Cosmic Dimension interviews: Alan Lee, the art of Middle-earth. [A leading Tolkien illustrator]
* The damned Bran Mak Morn. [R.E. Howard]
No. 3.
* Challenge to infinity: Futurism and the future.
* The thousand faces of Solomon Kane. [R.E. Howard]
* Welcome to the “Bradbury Center”. [Perhaps a Ray Bradbury museum in Italy?]
* The kingdom of Hyperborea, between horror and decadence [R.E. Howard]
* Is there a fantastic fiction crisis?
* Sounds from deep space: when music meets science fiction.
No. 4.
* Scientification: Alternative History of Italian Science Fiction.
* Ursula K. Le Guin: a true glory?
* Fantastica “Made in Italy” and the foreign market: a conversation with Alessandro Manzetti.
* 1828-2018: Verne is dead, live Verne! [Presumably a history of the reception and afterlives of Jules Verne in Italy?]
* Frazetta: when the flesh becomes art.
No. 5.
* Tolkien between Myth, Symbol and Literature.
* Tale of the Holy Grail and Lord of the Rings: two “intertwining” stories.
* The “Cosmic Dimension” in comics. [inc. Kirby]
* Mr. Urania: memories of Giuseppe Lippi. [Memories of the leading Italian Lovecraftian, by multiple authors]
* Of the attempt to obscure Tolkien. [Perhaps a history of the attempts at erasure by leftist critics, in the 1970s and 80s?]
* “Lo Smeraldo”: the dream-apocalyptic journey of Mario Soldati in the Italy of the future.
* Robert E. Howard and the Italian writers of the fantastic.
* Providence: between Lovecraft and Moore. [Presumably a review of Alan Moore’s completed Providence comic?]
No. 7 (summer 2019).
* Mystery is my job: interview with Alfredo Castelli.
* A nineteenth-century French Tarzan.
* The return of the myths of Cthulhu. [At a total guess, perhaps a survey of how clueless and gullible many modern ‘fans’ are about Lovecraft and his original mythos?]
* “From an enthusiastic Frenchman”: a letter from Jacques Bergier to Weird Tales.
The originals are in Italian, and the above are just my translations. The magazine also carries regular book reviews.
Third International Colin Wilson Conference
19 Saturday Oct 2019
Posted in Odd scratchings
The Third International Colin Wilson Conference will be held in Nottingham in the East Midlands of England, on the 3rd to the 5th of July 2020. There’s nothing specifically Lovecraft on the current speaker list, but it’s still an event likely to interest some Lovecraftians in the UK.
Friday ‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Outward Bound
18 Friday Oct 2019
Posted in Night in Providence, Picture postals
Providence R.I., outward bound, 1906.
“Into this bay of [Providence] used to come the shipping of all the world, and about a century ago it was a veritable forest of masts. The great storm of 1815 caused the bay to overflow and inundate the whole waterfront. Full-rigged ships were cast up on Market Square, and one schooner was driven some distance up Westminster Street — past the corner known as Turk’s Head. Never hath so great a storm lash’d the shore since. The shipping has sadly fallen off during the last fifty or sixty years, but the bay is still beautiful — as it will always be in spite of decadence and Bolshevism [i.e.: the revolutionary socialism of 1919].” — Lovecraft, letter to Galpin, 30th September 1919.
“Providence, of the old brick sidewalks and the Georgian spires and the curving lanes of the hill, and the salt winds from over mouldering wharves where strange-cargoed ships of eld have swung at anchor.” — Lovecraft, “Observations on Several Parts of America”, 1928.
“Providence, whaling ships, streets and roads that climb uphill and end against the sky, long s’s [in 18th century books], narrow winding streets with old bookshops near a waterfront amidst which one cannot be sure where one is, dark rivers with many bridges…” — Lovecraft, letter to Morton, January 1931.
“The effect of night, of any flowing water, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest of it.” — R. L. Stevenson, noted by Lovecraft as entry No. 222 in his Commonplace Book of story ideas. He had found it quoted in John Buchan’s The Runagates Club (1928). It was to be his last entry in his Commonplace Book.
Swamp Monsters
18 Friday Oct 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
One I missed, back when it appeared in spring 2019. Swamp Monsters is a 144-page survey of swamp monsters in American comics, from the days before the Comics Code. With a 15-page introduction and survey.
Related is a forthcoming December 2019 book on what grew out of such schlock… Monstrous Imaginaries: the legacy of Romanticism in the comics. This will look at… “Enki Bilal’s Monstre tetralogy, Jim O’Barr’s The Crow, and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters … Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing“.