The team at ActuSF, who have produced the fine new French translation of Joshi’s I Am Providence, as the available-now Je suis Providence (Tome 1 & 2).
Team ActuSF
01 Monday Apr 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Category Archives: New books
New Book: Double-bill Terrors
30 Saturday Mar 2019
Posted in Films & trailers, New books, Scholarly works
A new book from McFarland, just published, is “Twice the Thrills! Twice the Chills!” Horror and Science Fiction Double Features, 1955–1974. The cover is too violent for a free blog on WordPress.com, but the Contents show that it’s a comprehensive survey that steps through the double-bills in chronological order. A sample from 1967…
1967
Prehistoric Women & The Devil’s Own
The Projected Man & Island of Terror
Frankenstein Created Woman & The Mummy’s Shroud
Bloody Pit of Horror & Terror-Creatures from the Grave
They Came from Beyond Space & The Terrornauts
It! & The Frozen Dead
$60 takes you on the guided tour through the schlock. I’m guessing that after the 1940s about six or seven of them have to be worth seeing.
Lovecraft at the Waldorf
28 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Historical context, New books
To be published at the start of April, the new 144-page local history book Lost Restaurants of Providence…
Not all of the eateries are from the Lovecraft period, but the book’s back cover blurb claims that…
“Harry Houdini supped at midnight with H.P. Lovecraft at the Waldorf Lunch”.
The new book has apparently been written by an assiduous expert on this aspect of Providence’s local history. The Waldorf Lunch chain gets two pages.
Lovecraft certainly mentioned the Waldorf Lunch a couple of times, once locally as a feed station on coming back from Pawtucket in the 1920s. Cook mentioned that when Lovecraft came back half-dead from Quebec in 1932, Cook immediately took him to a local Waldorf for an emergency meal. Despite the ‘Lunch’ name the chain’s restaurants were open 24 hours a day. Lovecraft later comments on the chain opening their first branch in New York circa 1933, although the business histories suggest they were there a few years earlier.
A Waldorf Lunch in Providence.
The photo seen above is likely to be a Westminster Street branch of the Waldorf Lunch Co. (because the 1915 Providence House Directory has an ad for the Robert L. Walker Co. in real estate etc at 171 Westminster Street, Providence. The New National Real Estate Journal has Walker still at that address in 1944).
It seems there were however multiple Waldorf Lunch branches on the long Westminster Street, possibly four according to a 1917 city inspection report. These Westminster Street branches were only a short walk from the Providence Opera House (115 Dorrance Street at Pine Street) where Houdini performed, so the branch shown above (or a very similar branch) was likely the one recalled by Eddy’s wife in her rather unreliable memoir The Gentleman From Angell Street. Here she recalls Lovecraft and Houdini at a Providence Waldorf…
“when Houdini played Providence for the last time Lovecraft went with her and her husband, making up a little “theatre party.” After the show Houdini took the group “to lunch at a Waldorf restaurant” around midnight. Beatrice, the wife of the famed performer, sat at table with her pet parrot, Lori, “perched demurely on her shoulder.” Mrs. Eddy writes that HPL “got quite a kick” watching the bird “sip tea from a spoon and nibble daintily at toast held” by Beatrice. She adds that Lovecraft “ordered half a cantaloupe filled with vanilla ice cream, and a cup of coffee.” “He [Lovecraft] was in great spirits and bubbled over with good humor, talking a blue streak about everything under the sun.” All this, Mrs. Eddy writes, while “Harry Houdini gazed at him admiringly.” (from Lovecraft at 125)
Chris Perridas dates this to 20th September 1925 and lightly grills the memories in “Testimony of Muriel Eddy (1961) Part 5”, but finds no reason to doubt the various core facts. The ‘midnight’ is not a disqualifier, as they were open 24 hours.
As one can see below, the local newspaper also has Houdini in Providence in late November of 1925? A return loop on the Fall 1925 tour? But the newspaper ad clearly states “Only appearance in Providence this year”?
The New Houdini Timeline also has him playing Providence in “Sept. ? 1924” and 4th-10th October 1926, though only part of the Timeline is online. Joshi also says October, and that Houdini then commissioned a ‘rush’ article on astrology from Lovecraft. One presumes they must have met in person in Providence for that.
Perhaps Muriel Eddy’s memory that the Waldorf after-show party was when Houdini “played Providence for the last time” means that the event was actually after the first-night opening, the 4th October 1926? Not 1925? Presumably the Houdini scholars have the tour dates and detailed biographies that could sort this tangle out (Sept 1925 or Oct 1926? / Sept 1925 or Nov 1925?), but I don’t have access to the relevant materials.
One wonders if the Lost Restaurants of Providence book will also have any names of the cheaper backstreet cafes that Lovecraft might have frequented in his growing poverty in the 1930s? The letters to Morton names two of these to which visiting friends could be taken, “Al’s lunch”, and “Jake’s” (Jacques according to Ken Faig, who has discovered it was on the riverfront). Jake or Jacques had been discovered by Lovecraft in 1926, but by 1933 was allowing “extremes in the matter of clientele” according to Lovecraft. This change pushed Lovecraft over to patronise Al’s instead. This which was “Al’s Lunch (Alphonse Scatto) 99 N Main, Providence”. Judging by its location Al’s was likely a cheap student cafe serving the RISD students at the height of the Great Depression. There would also have been cafes unfit to take visitors to, where Lovecraft would have had a meal alone, most likely down on the docks for sailors and near the long-distance passenger ferry terminals. His aunt once complained to a friend that he ate ‘all over’ the city, and at all hours of the day and night.
New book: Cthulhu rocks!
25 Monday Mar 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Newly listed for June publication, Sebastien Baert’s Cthulhu : L’Influence du Mythe sur le Metal. A French language book on Lovecraft’s influence on heavy metal rock music. 432 pages, and it appears to be part musicological/historical study and part anthology of (new?) translations of the key stories…
Cthulhu: The Influence of Myth on Metal is for Lovecraft fans as well as metalheads who want to know more about the influences of their favorite bands. The work of the Master is approached in its entirety and compared to a multitude of musical compositions that inspired.
Seven of the founding Lovecraft stories are reproduced in their entirety …
This book includes a portfolio of eight pages of illustrations of albums selected by the author and representative of the link between the myth and the Metal.
Preface by The Great Old Ones, guest band at HellFest this year.
New Book: Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others
24 Sunday Mar 2019
A new book from Bobby Derie, Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others, on pre-order now. Hippocampus has the full contents list. Lots of fascinating new essays, many from Bobby’s excellent blog, on R.E. Howard and also the wider Lovecraft Circle. Also deeper historical context such as an essay on “Fan Mail: Prohibition in ‘The Souk'”. Prohibition was the worthy but impractical and thus ill-fated U.S. ban on liquor (a ban Lovecraft approved of), and ‘The Souk’ was the letters page of the Weird Tales ‘clone’ magazine Oriental Stories, also edited by Farnsworth Wright.
Je suis Providence
21 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Set to be available from today in Kindle ebook, the newly-translated French-language edition of Joshi’s monumental Lovecraft biography Je suis Providence.
New Book: an important memoir, re-published
20 Wednesday Mar 2019
Posted in New books
New to me, I’m pleased to see that Wildside Press republished Frank Belknap Long’s memoir Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside as an affordable paperback in September 2016. Not only that, but there’s an ebook and a German translation.
Important though the book is, I’ve clearly shown in Lovecraft in Historical Context that Long’s memory over that long distance of time is not to be entirely trusted. His recall needs to be checked against good primary evidence from the period.
Amazon have used paperback copies at around £10 inc. shipping. As usual the new paperback is about 70% more expensive from eBay than from Amazon. Still, even then it’s cheaper than the 1975 Arkham hardback.
No ebook listing on Amazon, but Wildside’s ‘up again, down again, broken images’ website reveals an ebook there priced at a “can’t-afford-it but got-to-have-it” $4.99. Checkout works but regrettably there’s no Paypal, and also uncertainty about if one will have to sign up to the site in order to download one’s purchased book.
I’d never heard of, seen or used, Amazon Pay before. I assume it’s a very lagging competitor to PayPal. But apparently it comes pre-loaded with your Amazon account…
Yet Amazon logged me in with my US rather than UK account, so… fail. Just get the ebook onto the regular Amazon USA and UK, please, guys.
The Paperback Fanatic #41
18 Monday Mar 2019
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
A British fanzine that’s new to me has a new issue… The Paperback Fanatic #41 is for collectors of vintage popular paperbacks. This new issue is 64 pages and includes, among others…
* “Crom’s Tomes” — 50 years of Conan in paperback.
* Brian Hayles – Dr Who and Doom Watch script-writer
It also has occasional interviews with cover artists, it seems. Their website is dead but it also seems the issues are paper-only and rapidly go ‘sold out’ and out-of-print.
Shown are the British 1970s Sphere paperback covers, with Frazetta cover paintings.
New book: The Culture and Art of Death in 19th Century America
17 Sunday Mar 2019
Posted in Historical context, New books
A new book from McFarland, The Culture and Art of Death in 19th Century America…
“Nineteenth-century Victorian-era mourning rituals — long and elaborate public funerals, the wearing of lavishly somber mourning clothes, and families posing for portraits with deceased loved ones — are often depicted [today] as bizarre or scary. But behind many such customs were rational or spiritual meanings. This book offers an in-depth explanation at how death affected American society and the creative ways in which people responded to it. The author discusses such topics as mediums as performance artists and postmortem painters and photographers, and draws a connection between death and the emergence of three-dimensional media.”
Currently on available on Amazon USA, and quite expensive at $55.
New book: Phantom Islands
16 Saturday Mar 2019
Posted in New books
Due in spring 2019, Phantom Islands in 180 pages…
“Phantom Islands tells the story of 30 such islands. Beginning with the alleged discovery of each, Dirk Liesemer recreates their fabled landscapes, the voyages attempted to verify their existence and, ultimately, the moments when that existence was at last disproved. Spanning oceans and centuries, these curious tales are a chronicle of the human lust for discovery and wealth. Beautifully illustrated with coloured maps and charts, Phantom Islands shows the cunning of imposters and frauds, the earnestness of explorers searching for knowledge, and the pleasure that can be found in our willingness to deceive and to be deceived.”
Cirsova Magazine #1
15 Friday Mar 2019
Posted in New books
I’m pleased to hear about what amounts to a new pulp magazine, published today. The Cirsova Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense, Issue #1 / Spring 2019, apparently takes an old-school approach to pulp. Or perhaps we should now call it the New Pulp. The story descriptions certainly sound alluring…
Young Tarzan and the Mysterious She, by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Michael Tierney. Based on a fragment from 1930, this previously “Lost” Tarzan adventure takes place in the Jungle Tales period.
Atop the Cleft of Ral-Gri, by Jeff Stoner – The Nazis’ never-ending quest for powerful and sorcerous relics to aid the Father-land’s conquests brings the SS to the mountains of Tibet, where a deadly and mysterious weapon is rumored to lay dormant and waiting for a new master!
The Idol in the Sewer, by Kenneth R. Gower – A reverse of fortune sends Kral Mazan fleeing through the labyrinthine sewers of Vasaros empty-handed from his audacious heist! His life may be forfeit to the rat-men who lurk in the tunnels—unless he accepts a job to retrieve their idol for them!
Born to Storm the Citadel of Mettathok, by D. M. Ritzlin – For aeons, Verrockiel the Warlord has struggled vainly to seize the stronghold of Mettathok! With infinite time and resources at Verrockiel’s disposal, what of those fated to claw, tooth and nail, inch-by-inch, progress towards their master’s goals?!
The Book Hunter’s Apprentice, by Barbara Doran – An ancient and powerfully magic book has laid a curse of death upon a sage who had spitefully defiled it! Can Zhi, a book hunter, and Qing, her apprentice with the power to “fall” into nearby closets, retrieve the volume from a haunted manse?!
How Thaddeus Quimby the Third and I Almost Took Over the World, by Gary K. Shepherd – A strange object has fallen from the sky and into the hands of one Thaddeus Quimby III! The alien artifact creates life-like facsimiles of anything imaginable, so it’s only a matter of time before everyone’s wildest dreams may be fulfilled, right?!
Deemed Unsuitable, by W. L. Emery – A beautiful young woman is at the center of a high-speed chase and shoot-out right where Morgan, a crack-shot Construct, was about to grab some lunch! Against his better judgement, Morgan enters the fray, but who is after this woman and why?!
Warrior Soul, by J. Manfred Weichsel – A strange man with a mysterious camera claims that he can capture the truth and inner beauty of a subject’s soul! Lured in by the photographer and his entrancing prints, a pair of young women find themselves imprisoned and in dire peril!
Seeds of the Dreaming Tree, by Harold R. Thompson – Its fruit are the subject of myth and legend—some hope to exploit it for knowledge and medicinal purpose while others are prepared to kill to keep its secrets! Can the bookish adventurer Anchor Brown survive the trials of the Dreaming Tree?!
The Valley of Terzol, by Jim Breyfogle – Kat and Mangos have been hired to accompany the adventurer Andorholm Wallenoop to the ruins of Terzol in search of an ancient lost delivery! A thousand-year-old receipt offers a clue to fabulous reward or certain death in the Valley of Terzol!
The Elephant Idol, by Xavier Lastra – The blind thief Auger sneaks into the opera house to steal a trinket that the lovely Trannen von Fitzburg received from a lovestruck foreigner! The gift-box’s riddle and its giver’s suicide engulf Augur — and the opera house — in a world of darkness!
Moonshot, by Michael Wiesenberg – The Government wants to put a barn on the Moon — why?! To prove that the United States is capable of landing a barn on the Moon, of course! But the question is, whose barn are they going to send and can they send it to the moon on budget?!
New book: Collected Essays on H.P. Lovecraft and Others
14 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Historical context, New books, Scholarly works
Douglas A. Anderson’s A Shiver in the Archives post made me aware of George “Wetzel’s Collected Essays on H.P. Lovecraft and Others, e-book 2015″. I missed this when it became available in October 2015. It’s a 116-page ebook with eight essays. A bit expensive for me, at present, at £3.68. But it’s definitely gone onto my ever-lengthening ‘to get’ Wish List of Lovecraft Scholarship…
CONTENTS:
“Biographic Notes on Lovecraft” (from HPL, 1971)
“The Mechanistic Supernatural of Lovecraft” (from Fresco, 1958)
“The Cthulhu Mythos: A Study” (from HPL: Memoirs, Critiques and Bibliographies, 1971)
“A Lovecraft Profile” (from Nyctalops #8, April 1973)
“The Pseudonymous Lovecraft” (from The Lovecraft Scholar, 1983)
“Lovecraft’s Literary Executor” (from The Lovecraft Scholar, 1983)
“Copyright Problems of the Lovecraft Literary Estate (from The Lovecraft Scholar, 1983)
“A Memoir of Jack Grill” (from Huitloxopetl, 1972)
“Letters of George Wetzel” (from Fan-Fare, 1951-1953)