September proved to be a moist month here in the English Midlands. A grey mantle of rain often covered even the top-most turrets of Tentaclii Towers, and down below the rain encouraged unctuous fungi to coil above the dewy lawns. But for now the sun shines, picking out treetops of fallow gold among the still-green swathes of surrounding woodland. Faintly from beyond these woods one sometimes hears the grumbling of peasants, as they queue for their meagre doles of donkey-fuel. Thankfully the Towers needs no donkeys and the great estate is, of course, powered purely by cosmic rays and shoe-leather.
This month the Tentaclii ‘Picture Postals’ posts sat with Lovecraft on the shore at Sakonnet, waited for the night bus in Providence, journeyed to Cykranosh (Saturn) with Barlow, squinted through the keyhole-of-time at his friend Everett McNeil, and dug out the forgotten location of Dana’s Bookshop in Providence. The latter being the last resting place of the remains of Lovecraft’s library, until it burned. I suspect Cthulhu cultists.
The original handwritten “Pickman’s Model” is up for auction with Heritage Auctions. It currently has about 11 days to before the hammer, and is at $6,000. But will surely go much higher. I’d expect that you’ll need to cash in at last three Bitcoin to be in with a chance of carrying it off.
The Lovecraft Annual 2021 appears to be emerging now from the cargo-hold of its Atlantic tramp-steamer, or is just about to (Amazon UK seems uncertain on that point). It is mooted be an excellent issue. Joshi’s new Penumbra mega-journal has now reached No. 2, and has at least five articles that may interest Lovecraftians. The R.E. Howard journal The Dark Man is also now available for summer 2021 and has several items of interest. It seems worth obtaining, at just £5 in paper.
S.T. Joshi announced the imminent arrival of his insider-history book The Recognition of H.P. Lovecraft. The Lovecraft/Long travel book collaboration for Long’s aunt, Old World Footprints, is now available as an affordable ebook. It appears that the Italians have released Io Sono Providence, vol. 3, this being their final volume of the eminent Lovecraft biography I Am Providence in translation. The French can look forward to their Lovecraftian ‘Campus Miskatonic’ event later in October. The Germans bagged the second volume of Klinger’s annotated Lovecraft in translation.
I found several scholarly journals new to me, the Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy; Volupte: Interdisciplinary Journal Of Decadence Studies; and Iris, a long-running French journal “to promote and to disseminate research in the field of myths, images, symbols and cultural history”. New scholarly-popular books were spotted, on Poe and Science, and 18th century hoaxes — both relevant to Lovecraft. A call-for-papers was spotted from the Taiwan’s Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture (special issue on the Asian Gothic, some of which Lovecraft has influenced). Several museum exhibitions were noted, including major shows for the macabre dream-artist Redon and Sir Walter Scott (a minor influence on Lovecraft, though at a formative time).
New fan journals noted here included the newly magazine-ized Cthulhu Libria #2 (German, Lovecraft and railways theme), the slick oversized SICK #5 (English, Lovecraft special ‘designer arts’ issue), Bare.Bones #7 (English, leads with a Lovecraft in the movies essay), and Providence Tales No. 8 (Italian, a Mearle Prout special). In old journals arriving on Archive.org I spotted the substantial biographical article “Hannes Bok: Artist and Man”.
In audio, Libribox released a three-part “An appreciation of Poe” reading, giving a useful pre-PC appraisal of one of Lovecraft’s key influences; the Italian podcast Voice of Arda completed an epic 12-part Tolkien and Lovecraft comparison series of short podcasts; Morgoth’s Review had a pithy podcast lecture on “Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep And Our Changing World”; and the prolific Horrorbabble read “The Space-Eaters” by Frank Belknap Long. I wondered if the 1928 cartoon header for this story was the first public ‘cartoonizing’ of Lovecraft as a character.
In Lovecraftian arts I spotted Providence Blue, a major new novel featuring Lovecraft (and possibly Wilum Pugmire) as a character and written from a Catholic perspective; I found a major new Lovecraft graphic novel of Dream-Quest, H.P. Lovecraft: Kadath (in Spanish); the fine stop-motion “Report From the Ghooric Zone” animation had an extensive ‘making of’ post; Junji Ito has a new and ambitious Lovecraftian 240-page graphic novel called Sensor; and manga master Gou Tanabe announced and dated his forthcoming adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”.
I posted another ‘New on DeviantArt’ survey, and found a fine new 3D rigged Cthulhu on ArtStation Marketplace. I dug out and looked back at the covers for Kaja Saudek’s Lovecraft editions and for various editions of Bilal’s early semi-Lovecraftian Le Bol Maudit. I discovered a lengthy ‘Timeline of Botanical Fictions’, mostly weird or science-fiction and also encompassing fungi and spores.
I completed my series of posts on ‘Notes on Letters to Family’. I pondered the best season for pavement pounding walking in what remains of Lovecraft’s Providence. I gave readers some advice on translation add-ons and bulk PDF download from Archive.org. Not yet mentioned on the blog, this month I was pleased to discover the old abandonware Digital Film Tools Rays 2.1.2.2 plugin for Photoshop, that being the last version. Their DFT 55mm I know well, but I had no idea their old Rays plugin was so powerful. Definitely one for spooking up your Halloween pictures, if you can get hold of it. Though I daresay there’s now some phone-app that can do something similar.
And finally, the next issue of the free Digital Art Live magazine will be a bumper Halloween issue themed “The Gothic”, and is currently in progress. This is, I think, the first time we’ve strayed into the macabre for a full issue.
That’s it for September. What with a hard winter in the offing, I’m holding fire on book purchases at present. But having a few more generous Patreon patrons could encourage me to spring for selected bargains. Even a dollar or two extra per month is an encouragement. One-off PayPal donations are also very welcome — you can always find the PayPal button on the sidebar of this blog. Many thanks.
