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Monstrous Antiquities: archaeology and the uncanny in popular culture

30 Tuesday Jul 2013

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News of a new conference in London, 1st-3rd November 2013: Monstrous Antiquities: archaeology and the uncanny in popular culture…

“This conference aims to study and celebrate this long and productive relationship [between archaeology and the uncanny]. We are keen to hear from scholars and aficionados of the fictional world of uncanny archaeology including archaeologists, historians, writers and artists. The programme will include all genres where the ancient meets the ghastly including music, television, literature, film, and art. The conference will be held at UCL on 1st—3rd November 2013.”

Three days, so I expect there’s probably going to be a book or an open set of online conference proceedings coming out of this one?

For those who can also afford to spend a further five nights in the UK after the conference, this event segways nicely with the one-day London research conference The Weird: Fugitive Fictions/Hybrid Genre, on 8th November 2013.

Piranesi_Pyramid_RomeAbove: Pyramid in the Ruins of Ancient Rome, copper engraving by Piranesi.

Exhibition – The Shadow Over College Street

30 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by in NecronomiCon 2013

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The Brown University Library’s Lovecraft collection will apparently be closed during NecronomiCon Providence 2013, but Brown has just announced…

“a two-part exhibit this summer in partnership with the Providence Athenaeum … “The Shadow Over College Street: H.P. Lovecraft in Providence,” will be on exhibit 19th August through 22nd September in the Philbrick Rare Book Room of the Providence Athenaeum [251 Benefit St., and] a smaller satellite exhibit will be on view in the lobby of the John D. Rockeller, Jr. Library [10 Prospect St., their main arts and humanities student library] from 19th August through 24th October. … Both parts of the exhibit feature materials from the John Hay Library [at Brown]. Explores Lovecraft’s youth in Providence and the city’s role in shaping his career as a master craftsman of weird fiction.”

provath

Take in a show in New York

29 Monday Jul 2013

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More possible stop-offs in New York, for those set to head for NecronomiCon Providence 2013 in August 2013…

* Nicholas Roerich Museum New York, 150 paintings on show from one of Lovecraft’s favorite artists. Free.

* A Beautiful Way to Go: New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery, a history exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. Aka Greenwood Cemetery, a feast of neo-Gothic architecture and carving. Lovecraft visited this cemetery on a night walk with Sonia and others while in New York. Lovecraft’s story “The Horror at Red Hook” buried Robert Suydam there.

* The New York Historical Society has Swing Time: Reginald Marsh and Thirties New York, which looks like it should provide a fine insight into the seedier and more grotesque sides of the city in the 1930s.

eyes_tested_nyc_reginald-marsh

* Journey To The Stars, the planetarium show at the American Natural History Museum. Tickets needed.

* The New York Public Library has The ABC of It: why children’s books matter, 250 items curated by children’s book expert Leonard S. Marcus. May interest some, as it might skew toward the fantastical elements in children’s books.

Already mentioned here: Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt at the Brooklyn Museum.

More Open Lovecraft

28 Sunday Jul 2013

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More additions to the Open Lovecraft page:

* Richard Palvik (2013), H.P. Lovecraft: narratologisk analys av atmosfar och fasor (Masters dissertation. Title translates as “H.P. Lovecraft: a narratological analysis of atmospheres and horrors”. In Swedish, with English abstract).

* James Odelle Butler (2012), “Name, Place, and Emotional Space: Themed Semantics in Literary Onomastic Research” (PhD thesis for University of Glasgow, UK. Examines “The Interlaced Realities of Lovecraft County” on pp. 172-188).

* Gert Jan Willem Bekenkamp (2006), The World of Wonder: on children’s lust for terror (PhD thesis for the University of Leuven, Netherlands. With an introduction by Ramsey Campbell).

* Bruce Lord (2004), The Genetics of Horror: Sex and Racism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Fiction (Part of Lord’s archive of writings at www.contrasoma.com).

New book on Kirk’s NYC bookshop

28 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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There’s another new biographical book about the Lovecraft Circle in New York, hot on the heels of my biographical book on Everett McNeil. So Many Lovely Days is by Mara Kirk Hart, daughter of George and Lucy Kirk. Her book tells the story of Kirk’s Chelsea Book Shop, 1927-1939.

lovely

By August 1925 the shop operated for about four months from Kirk’s rooms at 317 West 14th Street in Manhattan (the inspiration for the setting of Lovecraft’s “Cool Air”). Kirk also sold book by printed catalogue. Then the shop moved to retail premises at 365 West 15th Street. In late January 1927 Kirk took out a new shop lease at 58 West Eighth Street (“the south side of Eighth Street near Sixth Avenue”) where…

“He [Kirk] had a circulating library, mainly, but he was also interested in first editions and remainders. His shop [at 58 West Eighth] was taken over by somebody who could pay four times as much rent — that was in the days just when Eighth Street was starting to boom — either Marboro [Marlboro cigarettes?] or some other kind of shop took over his place and paid some fantastic rent, which he could not possibly touch. So he had to go out of business. And it was just at that time when I put my brother into the [book] auction business, and George became his partner.” (from New York City Bookshops in the 1930s and 1940s: The Recollections of Walter Goldwater).

Samuel Loveman of the Lovecraft circle wrote two poems “For the Chelsea Book-Shop” of which this is one…

loveman-chelsea

  [ Hat-tip: Hippocampus, and The Tippler for the picture. ]