26 Wednesday May 2021
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
S.T. Joshi’s blog has updated with news of his 350th(!) book. He is currently working on his The Recognition of H. P. Lovecraft book and also the forthcoming Lovecraft Annual #15. Also news that “Ken Faig Jr.’s Lovecraftian People and Places” is due soon from Hippocampus.
26 Wednesday May 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
Simple Translate for Chrome, Opera, and other Web browsers which support Chrome addons. Works on Google Books. Unlike other free addons, this one doesn’t make you jump through hoops or go to Google Translate. It also has a feature that ensures it doesn’t work in places such as search-engine input boxes. Made in Japan, and a mature and maintained bit of software development.
How it works:
Select your target text, a small button shows up.
Click the button to instantly show the translation. Language is auto-detected.
While the translation box is displayed, you can also select and Ctrl + C to copy text from it if you wish.
Clicking away from the translation removes the translation box and also deselects the page text.
To run on Google Books, as seen above, after install in Opera:
1. Access Options. Run on all sites. (This appears to be the default, but make sure it is).
2. Applications. Manage Extension. Turn on “Allow Access to Search Results”, to have it work on Google and Google Books and other search results. Opera requires this, and I assume others Web browsers do also.
3. In its own Settings page there are also switches to ensure it does not display its button in unwanted places such as search-engine input boxes, password input forms etc. This vital feature is missing in a couple of other similar addons.
25 Tuesday May 2021
Posted in Podcasts etc.
Recent free and worthy readings on YouTube, by HorrorBabble:
“The Trap” by Whitehead and Lovecraft.
“Far Below” by Robert Barbour Johnson, well-regarded by those in search of 1930s Lovecraft-a-like pulp tales.
HorrorBabble is also currently progressing through reading a short series of ‘botanical horror’ tales.
24 Monday May 2021
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Alex CF’s Lovers one-off comic and handcrafted HPL figure both sold-out in an instant, long ago. But in case all trace of them vanishes from the Web, I’ll post some of the pictures here…
Alex does, however, have a nice line in pen & ink screenprints, Eldritch Lovecraftian Horror print series. 25 sets only, and some still remaining it seems.
23 Sunday May 2021
Posted in Scholarly works
New as an open 300Mb PDF at Archive.org, and currently with zero views, the Scarecrow Press Dictionary Of Mythology, Folklore And Symbols, Vols. 1-3. This is the pre-PC 1962 edition and Vol. 3 is the Index.
Hathi also has public scans of the first two volumes of the 1962 edition, though only in flipbook.
22 Saturday May 2021
Posted in Historical context, REH, Scholarly works
The new Spring 2021 edition of the journal Modern Age: a Conservative Review offers two free and public articles…
* “The Dark Virtues of Robert E. Howard”.
Of the Howard article the editor states…
If all you know about Conan comes from Arnold Schwarzenegger, you should definitely read Birzer’s piece. You’ll see how Howard’s nihilistic philosophy and experiences in early 1900s Texas influenced his ideas about: religion; sexuality; modernity; masculinity; big business; decadence.
In the same issue…
* “The Western Canon”, reviewing the Library of America’s new The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s and 50s.
Does it matter that such fiction is finely typeset on bible-paper with sewn-in satin bookmarks and clasped in firm leathery boards? Rather than in warm-smelling woodpulp paperbacks, with garish six-gun covers and gummy discount-store stickers? The latest Journal of American Culture (March 2021) might seem to have an answer that question with the essay “From Pulps to Paperbacks: The Role of Medium in the Development of Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction”. This is currently online for free.
Sadly this essay does not turn out to be an elegant Guy Davenport-like consideration of the subtle psychological impacts of the actual mediums involved. I mean in terms of the madeleine-like tactility, the olfactory qualities, the surrounding-matter, the ads, the font and its size, the memory of the point-of-purchase and suchlike. That essay remains to be written. But the fannish reader who can make it beyond the introduction (“the genre reached full maturity in the works of Michael Moorcock”) is treated to a usefully brisk historical overview covering the role of editors, fans and publishers from the 1930s to the 1980s.
22 Saturday May 2021
Posted in Historical context
Without the 1930s U.S. summer heatwaves, as well as the wintertime 24-hour 87-degree steam-heat being pumped into 66 College St., would Lovecraft have lived even as long as he did?
The hotter it gets, the more energy I seem to have — mental and physical alike. I perspire freely, but am comfortable for all that. I can relish temperatures of 97° and 98°, and never want it cooler than 80°.” “I can’t steer my finger-muscles when it’s much under 70°.
It seems 1930 was a special shock to the nation because of its duration and because it was the first big leap up. 1931 was a repeat. 1932 and 1933 appear to have been modestly high but not brutal. Then a huge spike in 1934, followed by a more average 1935, then “Cthulhu is rising!”-scale brutal in 1936. But that is nationally. It would be interesting to compile a reliable and more precise “heatwaves where Lovecraft was” timeline.
21 Friday May 2021
Posted in Historical context, Picture postals
Following on from last week’s ‘Picture Postals’ post, more sinister doorways. On 24th-25th October 1924 H.P. Lovecraft went on a long walk with Kirk to further explore New York City. As part of this they visited the new American Radiator Company building, a distinctive and free blend of new modern deco and old-world gothic that must have been very stimulating to Lovecraft’s sensibilities.
the new black & gold Dunsanian skyscraper design’d by the Pawtucket architect” (Letters to Family)
“Radiator Building” (1923-34) etching by Hugh Ferris.
The pair “for the first time explored the interior”, and specifically they visited the building’s basement.
A crack formed and enlarged, and the whole door gave way […] whence reached a sucking force not of earth or heaven, which, coiling sentiently about the paralysed detective, dragged him through the aperture and down unmeasured spaces filled with whispers and wails” (“The Horror at Red Hook”)
After exiting the ornate elevator visitors found the basement was styled like a complex crypt. This was, according to an architecture journal of the time…
reached by stairs leading down a series of platforms … The lowest level will contain the boiler-room[s and air conditioning chambers running at 300,000 cubic feet per hour] [with] a stone floor and wainscot and a decorated vaulted ceiling
Modern interior pictures of the building are for some reason almost unknown online, while there are thousands of pictures of the now-famous deco exterior in black brick and gold trim. But above and below are some interior pictures from The American Architect and Architecture Review, 19th November 1924. They have been rescued from Archive.org microfilm so far as is possible, and they indicate the spaces and atmosphere as Lovecraft would have seen them.
The ‘crypt’ gates.
He and Kirk walked down and found, as Lovecraft described it…
The basement is a dream of picturesqueness and spectral charm — crypt under crypt of massive vaulted masonry … terrible arches on Cyclopean columns, black things & haunted niches here & there, & endless stone steps leading down… down… down… to hellish catacombs where sticky, brackish water drips. It is like the vaulted space behind the entrances to some ancient amphitheatre in Rome or Constantinople — that, or some ghoulish tomb-nightmare not to be imagined save in visions of nameless drugs out of unfathomable Ind.” (Lovecraft, Letters to Family)
This visit was before the writing of “The Horror at Red Hook” (written early August 1925) so might have somewhat inspired the final scenes of that tale which is set in… “those nighted crypts, those titan arcades”.
20 Thursday May 2021
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
At The Gotham Center for New York City History, David J. Goodwin takes a look at Marriage, Failure, and Exile: H.P. Lovecraft in New York.
By Percy Sperr, No. 169 Clinton St. (end, left) on 29th April 1935. My upscale to 1300px (it won’t take more, without looking like it’s been run through a naff Photoshop filter) and colourising.
Over at Another Town on the Hudson blog Goodwin also reveals he’s created a photo-map of Greenwich Village with H.P. Lovecraft, and has found some fine pictures.
Many favourites had gone from Greenwich, some as early as a few months after Lovecraft’s own departure, though. For instance he revisited in May 1928 and found many of his former key Greenwich ‘places’ swept away, Varick St. gone along with “the tangle of The Minettas”, and in other places many Georgian houses had been individually pulled down.
19 Wednesday May 2021
Posted in Podcasts etc.
The HPLHS Store now has a Web page for Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: The Horror in the Museum. Pre-ordering for now, with an anticipated release on Lovecraft’s 131st birthday, 20th August 2021.
Until the release, there’s some audio to tide you over. A new H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society Interview podcast.
18 Tuesday May 2021
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, Scholarly works
S. T. Joshi’s Blog has updated. Lovecraft’s letters to Long are finally safely in the scanning-vaults at Brown University, and Joshi tentatively places a 2024 date on the paperback.
He also notes several foreign language publications, including Lovecraft, l’Arabe, l’horreur, a French book of 90 pages. In this a historian considers “The Orient and Islam and the Gentleman of Providence”. According to the blurb this finds that Lovecraft… “is neither hostile to Islam nor contemptuous of Arab-Muslim culture.”
Also a slimmer booklet of just 58-pages from the same publisher, Lovecraft: sous le signe du chat. On looking into this I learn that the author apparently muses on the notion that… “cats are at the centre of Lovecraft’s life, philosophy and literary work”. And indeed that Lovecraft himself could be understood as becoming ever more cat-like during his life. H.P. Lovecat, indeed.
Both together might make for a viable double-bill English translation in one volume?
18 Tuesday May 2021
Posted in Odd scratchings
Looking nice, being sold by Amazon UK and with free shipping. I bought when it was scarce even in paperback, and had to pay more than twice the current price — and even then thought I had bagged a bargain.
