As Britain morphs into the old East Germany, a matching iron-grey curtain of mist and December drizzle descends. But indoors it’s at least a more cheery picture, amid the piled-high Black Friday goodies and the soft glow of screens. Possibly the power cuts and food shortages will arrive in due course, but until then I’m personally quite pleased with my small baggings in terms of discounted software and 3D models. These were not Lovecraftian except in one case, as there were no book bargains or Amazon Warehouse deals on the Letters to be had this month. But some of the products of the software may show up here soon. I did keep an eye out for software of interest to Tentaclii readers, but neither PDF Index Generator or JitBit Macro Recorder offered a discount this year, and the Topaz GigaPixel AI discount was gone before I could mention it.

This month’s new research essays at Tentaclii took a look at “H.P. Lovecraft at Christmas”, and “Lovecraft and Havelock Ellis”, the early sexologist; and also “the Newport boat” which is an item of Providence scenery that appears briefly by implication in “The Call of Cthulhu”. This last post discovered a new picture of the very dock and this also doubled as one of my regular Postcards posts. In a lesser and related boat post I hopped onboard with Lovecraft as he took a steamer across the Mississippi in the 1930s. There was also an in-depth look at the Providence Art Club and specifically the old alley which was the haunt of the cat “Old Man”.

An actual new Lovecraft postcard was elsewhere put up for sale. This didn’t have new data, but the sign-off to C.A. Smith of “Yrs for the Eternal Infra-red Flame” at least gives Mythos writers a new “it came from Lovecraft” concept for tales. Someone should really collect all such sign-offs and salutations together, and date them, thus forming a sort of companion to the Commonplace Book. Sadly it won’t be me, as I don’t have the funds to order an immediate complete set of the published letters. Also relevant to Lovecraft-the-man was my quick summary post of “Some anniversaries for 2021”, of which the 100th anniversaries of “The Outsider” and “The Music of Erich Zann” seem the most notable.

Of new-found scholarly work, my Open Lovecraft had three more links added; and I was pleased to hear of a new Masters dissertation, “Providence Lost: Natural and Urban Landscapes in H. P. Lovecraft’s Fiction”, though this is not yet online.

A clutch of new journals popped out after Halloween, and with non-fiction too. These included Wormwood #35; the Italian Lovecraft journal Providence Tales; Bare Bones #3, and Skelos #4. Prompted again about Skelos I tracked back through their previous issues and filleted the non-fiction Lovecraft titles for your perusal. I also have a soft spot for Doc Savage, so noted here was the new The Bronze Gazette #84. This month the latest Lovecraft Annual No. 14, 2020 arrived in digital form on JSTOR for subscribing universities.

In open access and on archive.org, the microfilm journal The Art Digest arrived for free, covering the Lovecraft years of 1926-1937; and CLIJ: Cuadernos de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil is available for free from 1988-2009.

New books noted here included the greatly expanded H.P. Lovecraft: Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner and Others; Ideology and Scientific Thought in H.P. Lovecraft; the Annotated Guide to Robert E. Howard’s Weird Fantasy; and I also dug out a preview of the TOC for the forthcoming Renegades and Rogues: The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard. S.T. Joshi noted his Lovecraft biography I Am Providence is set for a 2021 Russian translation. Also noted here as forthcoming, but several years away yet, was the book Lovecraft & New York. This sounds like another welcome addition to the writing on Lovecraft and his topographies and topophilias.

Not much in the visual arts this month, other than archive diggings, but some will want to note that digital 3D Lovecraftiana can be had for bargain prices at present. The DAZ Store and Renderosity both have substantial Black Friday sales still on for a day or so. “Dead Pool” at the DAZ Store is basically Innsmouth for (currently) $15, and Renderosity has Lovecraft’s typewriter for $6. There’s also a modest 10% off Sixus1’s Aquarians Bundle which lets you populate Innsmouth. To run such 3D, Poser 11 Pro is currently a mere $80 at NeoWin Deals. They also have a… “Use code CMSAVE20 for an additional 20% off site-wide.” Which, if it works, would get you Poser 11 at an absolute bargain price of $64. Don’t delay, as Poser 12 is coming out any day now and will sweep away the deals.

My podcast notes at Tentaclii included one in which I was pleased to find Robert M. Price looking very hale and hearty at his new slot on the MythVision podcast, which I noted included a couple of new Lovecraft episodes; the discovery of A Scottish Podcast, this being a comedy Lovecraft podcast that seems well-regarded and worth noting; and a 50-minute “Lovecraft in the Merrimack Valley” talk from a local museum (time-bombed for 15th November, so it’s gone now).

In more substantial audio, Dark Adventure Radio Theatre released their new The Curse of Yig adaptation this month; Cadabra Records has a sumptuous new vinyl LP presentation of Lovecraft’s festive story “The Festival”; I linked a free recording of a world premiere of a song cycle All The Wild Worlds by Nicholas Ryan Kelly, which culminated in a Lovecraft poem set to music; and I found Clark Ashton Smith’s City of the Singing Flame and its sequel in free audiobook. I still haven’t got around to listening to this yet, but it’s cued up for Christmas. So many goodies, so little time…

I’m trying to find time to ease back into Tolkien and the post “Of cat-demons, Tolkien and Lovecraft” was a nice cross-over that resulted from this.

If you enjoy reading Tentaclii, please consider dropping me $1 a month or more via my Patreon please. Your Patreon giving has actually dropped slightly this month from $70 to $69, as one $1 patron has dropped out. So it would be encouraging to see a few more monthly dollars arrive over Christmas. Thanks!

Some anniversaries for 2021:

50 years: 1971

Death of August Derleth.

Derleth’s book HPL, “Biographic Notes on Lovecraft”, a first try at assembling a coherent biography, following Moskowitz’s 1960 bio-article and Shea’s 1966 memoir.

S.T. Joshi dates 1971 as the beginning point of scholarly Lovecraft Studies.

Death of Virgil Finlay, the key early Lovecraft illustrator.

Death of C. M. Eddy, Lovecraft’s Providence friend and collaborator (“The Loved Dead” and others).

1971 Ballantine U.S. paperback edition of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Immensely popular, goes through 31 printings.

75 years: 1946

First translation of Lovecraft to Spanish, the substantial book The Lurker at the Threshold, Buenos Aires, Editorial Molino, 1946.

The Acolyte completes its 14 issue run in 1946.

100 years: 1921

“The Outsider”.
“The Music of Erich Zann”.

“In Defence of Dagon” (essay).

Squish, squish squish. No, that’s not the sound of Lovecraftian monsters arriving ready for Halloween… only to look around in a puzzled manner and wonder where all the people have gone. It’s just that October 2020 was a rather squishy month. Squishy underfoot, with the fallen and yellowing leaves slowly turning into gooey mud. Squishy and futile attempts to squish what is now a not-very-lethal virus. Squishy political operators squirming through America. Students squishing through the rain, back to campus. Tentaclii even became a little squishy, with a temporary paucity of H.P. Lovecraft items in the middle of the month forcing side-topic posts on Machen, Derleth and others.

In new books, the chunky 600-page Eccentric, Impractical Devils: The Letters of Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth was released for Halloween. I also surveyed where one might find the ‘best of’ Derleth’s imaginative fiction, and was disappointed to find that the two print book needed — In Lovecraft’s Shadow: The Cthulhu Mythos Stories of August Derleth and The Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus — are now ridiculously expensive and lack affordable ebooks. On the other hand, nearly all of Derleth’s science-fiction can now be had free on Archive.org in the original magazines.

In scholarly work, a new Italian book was noted that appears to have a useful summary of ‘Lovecraft and Nietzsche’ in terms of the influence. There was news of a big new book on Lovecraft by leading scholar Ken Faig, but it’s only “forthcoming” at present. The Spanish appear to have reprinted a 1972 book collection of Lovecraft’s essays in translation. In work from the occultist crowd, the new book Dark Magic: H.P. Lovecraft, Starry Wisdom and the Contagion of Fear looks serious and to have an interesting central idea.

There’s not much happening in scholarly journals in this hectic back-to-uni / Christmas-is-coming time, but S.T. Joshi launched his new mega-journal Penumbra #1 to fill the gap, and I noted the non-fiction essays in it which seem of most interest.

In bargains and freebies, I noted that The Lovecraft Arts & Sciences store in Providence appears to have Eckhardt’s illustrated booklet Off the Ancient Track for just $10, and in the revised 2013 edition too. I also noted that one can now get a run of the venerable and informative zine Pulpdom complete in PDF for $30, with an Index. On Archive.org, the H.P. Lovecraft Companion (1977) popped up and is available to borrow.

My regular ‘Picture postals’ blog posts returned to College Street, with a look at the Handicraft Club. Also, I found more night pictures in the form of two evocative views from Providence artist Whitman Bailey (1884-1954). One of these was from Lovecraft’s favourite place, Prospect Terrace, in 1914. I also peered inside Robinson Hall, the first Brown Library, and considered what a fine H.P. Lovecraft Archives & Museum it might have made for the city.

Ahead of an Art Club ‘Picture Postals’ post, which is set for November, I also posted a list of the Providence Art Club Costume Party themes, 1913-26, and the full TOCs for the important new two-volume Letters to Family and Family Friends collection of Lovecraft letters.

My own short research essays in October considered: H.P. Lovecraft’s tentative editorship of the unrealised revival of the Magazine of Fun; Lovecraft and the artist Fuseli; and Lovecraft and Halloween (as a real-life annual event). The latter usefully led me to consider the location of Lovecraft’s un-named New York “occultist” book shop, and to suggest a possible candidate for this. My short post “More on Lovecraft in Harlem” also updated my previous look at the topic, and suggested a walking route he knew and that there was a Kalem meeting in Harlem. And in “Lovecraft in Esquire, 1947″ I was pleased to discover a previously unknown 1940s memoir-fragment about both Lovecraft and Weird Tales, written by the magazine’s publisher Henneberger. I also tested his memory against what we now know.

In academic opportunities, I noted a call for chapters for Religion and Horror Comics, and that Providence’s Brown University has a fully-funded PhD opportunity in Music and Multimedia Composition. A couple more items were added to Open Lovecraft page.

The month was light on podcasts, but I linked to the Voluminous podcast as they began reading a multi-part Robert E. Howard – Lovecraft letter series. I was also pleased to find a new free reading of Lovecraft’s “The City”, a long and seminal poem that I copiously annotated a year ago.

Finally, I’ve just looked at my Patreon and am pleased to find it’s increased slightly to $70 a month, from $69. My thanks to the booster, Daverius, who is giving $1 per month. If you can find a $1 or two to also support Tentaclii and my other ventures, it would be most helpful.

That’s it for October. More next month!

H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Familiars”, and “The Pigeon-flyers”, from Weird Tales for January 1947.

Added to my post on The John Brown house, a photograph from 1914…

In 1927 Lovecraft sat inside one of the doorways and, in his untrained manner, sketched a Providence scene of the colonial period as it might have been viewed from there.

I’ve updated the Web links on my 2019 post Machen’s autobiography – all three volumes now online and I had also linked there to Strange Roads.

Two of the 2019 links went only to Hathi, which wasn’t ideal since they don’t let you download the entire book. Hathi can also be slow, and can stop working if it thinks you’re trying to ‘pirate’ the book by reading too many pages. The new links are to The London Adventure and Strange Roads, which are now free and openly public on Archive.org with downloads. This leaves only Things Near and Far as the lone Hathi-only title.

If you want them all in printed-paper as good texts and with the S.T. Joshi stamp-of-approval, there’s also the new book Autobiographical Writings by Arthur Machen which I’m told will ship in November 2020.