The mighty sun-ward wall of Tentaclii Towers slowly thaws, in the earliest spring sunshine. In the groves beyond the moat, the pussy-willow buds fluff a little. Catkins dangle and twist in the chill wind. A low sunlight browses over a stack of bargain-priced books containing Lovecraft’s letters, each begging to be read with note-taking. But for now three Tolkien tomes must take precedence.
February brought many new discoveries about Lovecraft’s places and people. I took a look at the Providence Courthouse and especially the louver-boarded tower that Lovecraft could see from his windows at 66 College St., and found there an unexpected connection with “The Haunter of the Dark”. I also sauntered down Riverside Drive, NYC, in the 1920s, a place where we almost lost Lovecraft — had he taken up a dare he could easily have become a gory squish on the railroad tracks that lay far below a Riverside Drive bridge. This led to me considering the place in relation to Morton’s apartment in Harlem and the Roerich Gallery — I saw that one could walk between these points by going down the pleasant shorewalk. Lovecraft and Morton might even have walked on south along the shore and into Hell’s Kitchen to see McNeil, but that possibility is not yet confirmed. I also took a look at Morton’s actual north Harlem building at No. 211 and discovered more about the curious fellow who owned it. I was also pleased to discover more about the whereabouts and doings of Lovecraft’s friend Arthur Leeds, including the possible location of an unpublished memoir of his life among 1930s crime writers and new data on his fronting of a Chicago human freak show in 1927. As a lead-in to this Leeds post, a ‘Picture postals’ post was on Jean Libbera, a freak-show attraction and (accordingly to Leeds) a Lovecraft fan.
This month a Patreon patron asked for more about the attempts of “HPL & Robert E. Howard” to meet. Not having much Howard material to hand yet, my answer may have appeared a bit basic to Howard scholars. But I think I successfully outlined the three points in time at which they could have met. I also looked this month at some of the historical context for Lovecraft’s ‘cats fly to the moon’ idea in his Dream Quest, and along the way noticed a new source for his early local newspaper column on the possibility of man one day reaching the Moon.
Not many new non-fiction books in this short month. Lovecraft: The Great Tales is a weighty new non-fiction survey of the tales. Old World Footprints also reappeared as a reprint book, newly annotated and richly illustrated. In Lovecraft-related books, I noted a crop of new introductory books of interest to those curious about ‘the Stoic Lovecraft’, and pointed out the need for a more accessible ‘For Beginners’ type book on Lovecraft’s philosophy.
In journals, the first issue of S.T. Joshi’s annual scholarly mega-journal Penumbra became available in ebook, and the new Spectral Realms #14 is said to be a themed ‘poems about Lovecraft’ issue. The Fossil #386 appeared and in it David Goudsward presented a rich seam of new data about the early life of Lovecraft’s friend Mrs Miniter. One can see why she appreciated the sober Lovecraft and the amateur journalism life, after an early life with a drunken husband. Several reviews of Lovecraft items popped up in newspapers and zines, and were linked to and partly translated if needed.
In music, Joshi’s Songs from Lovecraft and Others is forthcoming. Another Tentaclii post brought news of a forthcoming new psychobilly album by the band The Arkhams (U.S. backwoods rockabilly with Lovecraftian lyrics), and a successful Kickstarter for Dunsany Dreaming: An Eldritch Folk Album. In audio I noted that the novel The Wanderings of Alhazred is now available as a nine-hour audiobook, a fictional account of the life of Lovecraft’s Alhazred.
In the visual arts, I gathered the Druillet covers used for a popular edition of Lovecraft in French. A Call of Cthulhu Graphic Novel is forthcoming, seemingly pitched at the slow readers in the youth/schools market. Apparently Netflix is also planning a one-off TV-movie vaguely involving Cthulhu. But don’t get too excited, as the title makes it sound like a quickie Indiana Jones spoof/parody. The Myst-like Lovecraftian videogame The Shore was released and seems to have been a modest critical success but with the usual first-day technical niggles taking the shine off reviews. The lone developer of The Shore is said to be working on a VR expansion for it, so it’s probably one for occasional gamers to keep on hold for a year until there’s a bug-fix patch and expansion.
Finally, a big crowdfunder was launched to purchase the Lovecraft-Long letters (not to be confused with the Long-Lovecraft letters, mentioned by S.T. Joshi in a recent blog post). The letters will go to the Brown repository if the campaign is a success. Many are said to be unpublished.
That’s it for February 2021. Please consider becoming my Patron on Patreon to help Tentaclii continue through 2021. Even $1 a month is encouraging.
