06 Tuesday Apr 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
August Derleth primed America’s English teachers on “Contemporary Science-Fiction” in the lead article in The English Journal for January 1952.
Also newly on Archive.org, back in 1946 in the same journal there was a survey of recent fantasy, such as it was in those days.
05 Monday Apr 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association seeks…
papers that explore and highlight the Northeast’s contributions to monster lore, including authors, events, individuals, locations, and, of course, monsters.
This is for an online session. Proposals by: 1st August 2021. I can’t find a map of what they count as being “Northeast” (now there’s an opportunity for an map-artist/illustrator, potentially) but it definitely includes New England.
Rather surprisingly there appears to be no New England historical folk bestiary other than the 64-page children’s book Ghastly Perils of the Great Outdoors (1986), though I’m not sure how historically grounded its whimsies are…
Here for the first time the truth about the Womkeag, Rumweevil, Gouger, Pakroc and dozens of other snaggers, shuckers, nitters, fumblers, grinders, chuckers, and twangers infesting the Great Outdoors
Possibly the region is just too big to bring sales for a comprehensive survey, since most likely readers will only be interested in their own smaller sub-region? From a British perspective it would probably be like expecting people to be interested in a survey from the Orkneys in Scotland down to Brittany in northern France. When what you really want is a county survey. However, the region’s sea monsters are surveyed in The Great New England Sea Serpent (1999) and several other books.
Possibly a good stocking-filler for a child in New England?
01 Thursday Apr 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
Just a note to say that our UK 1921 national census-returns will become available to the public in early 2022. This may well be of some interest to those researching the biographical details of British authors and artists, or correspondents of American authors such as Lovecraft.
31 Wednesday Mar 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
Neale Monks reviews Lovecraft Annual #14, 2020 for Stephen Hunt’s SFcrowsnest.
22 Monday Mar 2021
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
S.T. Joshi’s blog has updated. Among the news…
I understand that Lovecraft’s Letters to E. Hoffmann Price and Richard F. Searight … will be out soon from Hippocampus.
21 Sunday Mar 2021
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works
I find I had overlooked a work from 2018, the Spanish book El sonador de Providence: El legado literario de H. P. Lovecraft y su presencia en los videojuegos (‘The Dreamer of Providence: on the literary legacy of H.P. Lovecraft and his influence on videogames’). Published from Seville by Heroes de Papel.
Said when it appeared to be “a detailed review of videogames inspired by Lovecraft’s work, that have appeared since the 1970s.” However the book runs to 320 pages, and seems to be about more than the publisher’s initial “it’s-for-gamers” marketeering might have suggested. The blurb, in approximate translation, gives a fuller picture…
For many the author H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) represents the definitive point of connection between the gothic terror tale that culminated in Edgar Allan Poe, and the new weird literature and modern science fiction. We all know his creations such as Cthulhu that have now seeped deep into the culture, thanks in part to their powerful impact on fans. But he also raised important points about the place of mankind in the cosmos, the fear of the possible existence of creatures older than Earth, and the discovery of the absence of gods and protective spirits. Aesthetics also meet philosophy in his work and, when woven into innovative narratives, this admixture allures readers with its dreamlike glitter. The Dreamer of Providence is a detailed study drawing on the latest works on Lovecraft, and also a journey through the works of his own masters and his many correspondents. The aim is to build a new and fuller picture of the author for Spanish readers. The book also analyses the influence his creations have had on the language and mechanics used in videogames, and also board or role-playing games. The book especially considers some of the most important videogames, ones that draw most deeply on his philosophy and aesthetic vision.
A Spanish gamer’s recent review indicates that the videogames take a back seat in the first half, and he comments on the clarity of the writing and the clear conveying of a wealth of new-to-the-Spanish information about Lovecraft and his circle. This half also touches on Lovecraft’s distorted Derleth-ian afterlife. It’s in the second half that the games are considered. Apparently Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a Lovecraftian videogame? Well… maybe. It seemed more like a distillation of about 20 old 1970s British sci-fi TV series, to me, with a dash of evangelical Christianity. Some Spanish games are also said to be considered, ones that are rarely if ever considered in the Anglosphere.
20 Saturday Mar 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
Are you interested in the depictions of traditional religious knowledge and experience in horror? Here in the UK, the University of Chester has a major new project and a survey for those who encounter religion in horror. Are the religious trappings just lazy go-to “aesthetic set-dressing”, on the part of cliche-ridden writers and producers? Or are deeper currents sometimes at work, either good (e.g. horror as a Biblical good-vs-evil spectacle) or bad (e.g. resembling a slyly re-worked anti-semitism)? After the survey the project researchers will…
move on to in-depth focus groups, allowing for a more detailed examination of these interactions, before finishing with some detailed interviews with participants.
17 Wednesday Mar 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
I’m pleased to find another academic journal on popular culture. This time a comics journal, albeit published in Spanish. Cuadernos de Comic (CuCo) has issues online from 2013-2020 in public open-access. (“public” = I distinguish between ‘genuinely public, free and open download’ and ‘fudgy’ services which claim to be sort-of open access).
Also here.
14 Sunday Mar 2021
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
Old-time New England, the journal of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Hathi has scans of 1910-25 in public flipbook form with varying quality. Archive.org, has four from Lovecraft’s time, a couple being after 1925 and one of which has the article “Symbolic Cemetery Gates of New England”…
Surely Lovecraft must have eagerly perused each quarterly copy at the public library. Though, surprisingly, he was not a member of the Society and never contributed an article to their journal. Despite it being the natural outlet for local and regional antiquarian writing. I wonder why?
13 Saturday Mar 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
The Pulpster is now calling for ads and articles about historical pulp magazines and their writers. Ad space can now also be booked…
If you have a proposal for an article, please contact editor William Lampkin and let him know what you have in mind. Articles and artwork must be submitted by early May 2021. You can reach Bill via email at bill@thepulpster.com.
If you’d like to advertise in THE PULPSTER, please write to the magazine’s publisher, Mike Chomko, at mike@pulpfest.com. He can provide pricing and print specifications.
09 Tuesday Mar 2021
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
S.T. Joshi’s new essay collection The Progression of the Weird Tale is now available in an affordable £2.60 Kindle ebook. The second half is substantially Lovecraft and Barlow, plus a critical assessment of two novels by Frank Belknap Long and memoirs of several fellow Lovecraftians. Also many short encyclopaedia entries, but judging by the one on Arnold Bennett they only cover supernatural novels not short-stories.
His latest blog post also reveals a worthy new mammoth project, A World History of Atheism, expected to take about six or seven years. Sounds great. Grab the graphic novel rights now.
06 Saturday Mar 2021
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
Possibly of interest to some, re: learning more about the historical context for Lovecraft and the Great Depression. A new book by John Marsh, The Emotional Life of the Great Depression, from Oxford University Press. Rejecting the usual approach of a ghoulish focus on ‘the despair of the 1930s’, the book…
explores the 1930s through other, equally essential emotions: righteousness, panic, fear, awe, love, and hope.
The author appears to delight in Walt Whitman, also being the author of In Walt We Trust: How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America from Itself.
Sadly I can’t find a single public review of The Emotional Life of the Great Depression, even on Amazon. I even looked on Good Reads, a site I usually disregard.
News of the book leads me to recall my elderly history teacher once impressing on his class, way back, that the 1930s in the UK were actually a time when many had a good time, got ahead, worked hard, were relieved from drudgery by labour-saving inventions, saw amazing cinema and read lively magazines, enjoyed better health and healthcare, revelled in public libraries, moved to beautiful new and affordable suburbs, were broadly optimistic about the future (they didn’t know a World War was coming) and generally unaffected by all the hand-wringing and maudlin machinations among the intellectuals. He had actually been there in 1930s Midlands Britain, albeit as a lad, and had later studied the period. He felt the need to enlighten his students because of the distorting effects of the stark and grimy black-and-white depiction of 1930s — pit-head and dust-bowl poverty, etc. — that had been relentlessly promoted in the media from about the 1960s until the 1990s.