Author Archives: asdjfdlkf

Sparrows, restored version

12 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by in Historical context

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The Library of Congress restored version of the gothic southern swamps movie Sparrows is now available on DVD. The movie starred the biggest star of her day, Mary Pickford, and consequently saw a very wide release in May 1926. The expressionist-style horror / dark melodrama is set in a decrepit ‘baby farm’ in the swamps of New Orleans. Lovecraft was, by that date, no longer in New York. But one wonders if he saw the movie in Providence in summer 1926? Lovecraft of course wrote “The Call of Cthulhu” in the summer of 1926, so one has to wonder if the movie’s acclaimed visuals could have influenced the feel or perhaps even the setting of his story’s New Orleans swamp scenes?

Sparrows1926

More Open Lovecraft

10 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in Scholarly works

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* Laurel Jean (2013), Cosmic revulsion: representations of the Longinian sublime in the works of H.P. Lovecraft (Masters dissertation, Humboldt State University)

* Leonam Baesso da Silva Liziero (2013), “O Estado-Cthulhu e a emergencia do terror totalitario na teoria do Direito e do Estado no Seculo XX”, Revista Juridica, Vol 3, No. 32, 2013. (In Spanish. On Lovecraft as a prescient foreteller of the rise of… “the decline of the value of human life in the totalitarian State” in the 20th century)

* Sid Sondergard (early 2000s?), “Elder Gods, Mutants, and Sorcerers: the Lovecraft semiotic as sociocultural critique in horror comix”

World Fantasy Convention panels on Lovecraft

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Podcasts etc.

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Courtesy of yog-sothoth.com, two recordings of panels from the World Fantasy Convention 2013, Brighton, UK. Sign-ins to the site are required…

* When did H.P. Lovecraft become a franchise? With Steve Saffel (moderator) + Martin Andersson, Ramsey Campbell, S.T. Joshi, Darrell Schweitzer, and Charles Stross.

* Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft and the development of the weird tale. With S.T. Joshi (moderator) + Nina Allan, Simon Bestwick, Jesus Canadas, John Llewellyn Probert, and Darrell Schweitzer.

Studi Lovecraftiani

04 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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A new edition of the Italian language scholarly journal Studi Lovecraftiani is out.

BookCoverPreview SL 13

My translation of the contents list:

* Thematic and diachronic analysis : The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and At the Mountains of Madness

* From the imaginary architecture of otherness: the perception of the world in the work of H.P. Lovecraft

* Lovecraft and the dinosaur egg [must refer to that controversy he stirred over the theme of a published story]

* Plants of Dr. Cinderella : parallels between Gustav Meyrink and H.P. Lovecraft

* Lovecraft and Physics

* Carcosa

* Dark castles, crypts and monsters : Lovecraft in Quake [the popular videogame]

* The Key and the Abyss : a Jungian reading of the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“The Well of the Ancients” by H.P. Lovecraft [?]

* “Gaze fixedly into the red eye of your god!” Or, the reluctant messiah of Rivermouth : a commentary on the film Cthulhu”

* Review

* The Library of the Lovecraftian scholar : notifications for a critical bibliography

* Notes on books, essays and articles in the press related to HPL, 2010-2013

Of Evill Sorceries done in New-England

28 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by in New books

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New blog post by S.T. Joshi. He notes of his forthcoming Variorum Lovecraft, an edition including all the textual variants in Lovecraft’s fiction, that…

“As an appendix [in Variorum Lovecraft], I will print things like … “Of Evill Sorceries done in New-England, of Daemons of No Humane Shape” — the fragment that August Derleth incorporated (with extensive alterations) into The Lurker at the Threshold (1945). It does not appear as if I or anyone else has ever published this document, in its original form.

del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities

27 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by in New books

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Del Toro’s new book Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions, in the New York Times…

“it also includes pictures of Bleak House, where del Toro works and stores hundreds of artworks, figurines and props. … Most disconcertingly, a lifelike full-size sculpture of H. P. Lovecraft stands in a library, angrily looking up from a book as if you’ve interrupted him”

Added to the Open Lovecraft page

27 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by in Scholarly works

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* Gretchen Marie Kasting (2013), Without contraries there is no progression : scientific speculation and absence in Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and “The Colour out of Space””. (Masters dissertation, University of Texas at Austin)

* Luciana Moura Colucci de Camargo (2013), “Presenca da tradicao da espacialidade gotica nos contos The Tapestried Chambre e The Dreams in the Witch House”, Anais do Silel, Volume 3, Number 1, 2013. (In Spanish. Compares the use of domestic space in Sir Walter Scott’s “The Tapestried Chamber” with Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House”)

* Luis Vieira (2013), “Historicidade e temporalidade na literatura de horror de Lovecraft”, Epigrafe edition zero, 2013. (In Spanish. “The Call of Cthulhu” as a historical document relating to the literary avant-garde of the mid 1920s)