Reanimator Incorporated

17 Sunday May 2020

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Herbert West Reanimator may have been dashed off as a ‘quickie grue’ series for Lovecraft, written to help a friend fill a new magazine of cheap titillation. But within the tale may lie “philosophical and theological themes”. Or such is the claim of the creatives behind the new graphic novel, Reanimator Incorporated. This re-tells West by pointing up these themes, making the tale an “exploration of existence itself”. The creatives have also shifted the setting to the future, with the serum becoming a “AI-driven atomic assembler unit”. Part one of the six-part series is out now.

Corners and characters of Rhode Island (1924)

16 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts

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George Laswell’s artbook Corners and characters of Rhode Island (1924) is now in the public domain and online at Archive.org as a good scan. Possibly also at Hathi, although for the last few months Hathi has been so slow and un-responsive as to be totally un-usable.

My thanks to Ken Faig Jr. who in the latest Lovecraft Annual points out that Sonia recalled that Lovecraft knew and admired Laswell’s pen sketches — since they had first appeared weekly in his local newspaper. A paper on which Laswell was the Staff Artist. Oh, for the days when a local newspaper had a Staff Artist who worked in crisp pen and ink…

That must have been circa 1921-1924, and thus we see Providence as it was after the First World War but before Lovecraft left for New York City. The main focus is on the worthy and seemingly timeless historic buildings, many of which Lovecraft mentions in his letters and stories. While posterity might have preferred a selection of the less-noticed elements of Providence — such as the bookstores, the hidden courtyards and their cats, the Seekonk shoreline and its dark ravine-pools — the book’s extensive survey of the city’s key buildings does make it a handy ‘look up tool’ for visualising a building as described in Lovecraft’s work or letters.

But there are two or three glimpses of the less genteel life of the city, of the sort that Lovecraft could have encountered on waterfront night-walks in the early 1920s. Such as the dredging fleet which over-wintered at Fox Point, and this portrait of the wooden waterfront with its cheap cafes that (so the text says) often went up in flames and burned out sections of the waterfront.

Burned out

I can imagine Lovecraft and Eddy breezing into one of these coffee cabins at the crack of dawn, in the early 1920s, after a long night-walk.

Lovecraft moves to 66 College Street

15 Friday May 2020

Posted by in Odd scratchings, Picture postals

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On 15th May 1933 H.P. Lovecraft moved to his last home at 66 College Street.

Here we look down College Street, from the gates of the Brown Campus. Lovecraft’s pale yellow wooden house was hidden away in a secluded garden courtyard, reached down an unpaved little lane at the shadowy back of the John Hay Library. The Library is the tall white building seen on the right of the picture, and the lane entrance is on the corner — seen just a little ahead and in the centre of the picture.

At No. 66 he had more living space than formerly. This included access to a hoary old loft attic with age-encrusted nooks. Lovecraft also mentions “one of the attic rooms” to Bloch, shortly after moving in, and implies this was ‘shrine’ sized. There appear to have been loft windows (possibly shuttered, see below) in the ‘monitor’ roof, and there was an all round view. I recall reading that Brobst later found a way to open a mysterious attic door or hatchway, which the old gent had been unable to open himself, thus revealing another fine view. Presumably this was a door that gave workmen, chimney-sweeps and window-cleaners access to the roof. One imagines this was westerly-facing, as that would have also enabled a wider view across the sunset city than was obtainable from the small windows.

Some might imagine that this loft then became crammed with Lovecraft’s older and less-read books. In one letter he did anticipate using in in that way. But many of Lovecraft’s family items, and the childhood library of old long-s books, had to be stored in another and more distant loft which had stronger rafters. In 1934 Lovecraft mentioned to Barlow that the old books he had grown up with and inherited were stored in the loft of a friend’s nearby barn. There they had become inaccessible to him, because the removal men’s crates had been jammed between old family furniture and crates of heavy crockery. For those in search of this barn, the likely weight involved surely indicates that the loft’s boards and rafters were rather more substantial that those of 66 College Street. Thus a large and sturdy candidate is surely required for the barn.

What became of this inaccessible loft-library, that had once been so formative for Lovecraft in his isolated early childhood? We can be sure that his personal library retained his cherished old copies of the Spectator, similar works of his beloved 18th century wits and satirists, and the pick of the old library. But as for the rest, it’s uncertain, and Joshi’s Lovecraft’s Library doesn’t seem to offer an easy answer. I’d imagine that the residue of the family library was eventually hauled out of its barn, perhaps in spring 1941 a short while after Mrs Gamwell’s death, and sent down wholesale to be sold via the Dana bookshop in Providence? The interest in crates of mouldering 18th century books was perhaps not high during the Second World War, but some of the choicer items — such as the books once requested in vain by Barlow — may have found their way to appreciative collectors.

My enlargement and colourisation of the above picture…

Fragments from the Dreamlands

12 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts

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Here is my reasonably faithful large assemblage of the cover art for the 1971 Ballantine U.S. paperback edition of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. The spine could only be had as a low-res scan, which is why that bit is fuzzier than the rest.

The book went through three paperback printings from Ballantine before 1975, as the USA’s baby boomers came of age and discovered Lovecraft and fantasy in general. By 1983 the Del Rey edition had galloped like a frisky zebra through 28 reprintings. Given such apparent popularity at that time, it’s a pity so few young writer cut their little kitty teeth on Lovecraft’s Dreamlands. Gary Myers’s fine The House of the Worm (1975) collection being the stand-out exception. As C.W. Thomas wrote, back in 2010 at Innsmouth Free Press…

It saddens me a little that the Dreamlands never caught on as a setting for other writers. This seems odd, considering how much of what Lovecraft wrote became the springboard for new authors. … My challenge to writers is simply to write a tale of Ulthar or lost Kadath. Forget the retread tales of Deep Ones, the diaries about guys who look for Cthulhu. Try a little magic, instead. I will gladly join you in the land of Mnar, where men built “Thraa, Ilarnek, and Kadatheron on the winding river Ai.”

The Ballantine cover art for the 1971 Dream-Quest was by Gervasio Gallardo (Gervasio Gallardo Villasenor, of Barcelona, Spain). He had a solo 95-page artbook in 1976, The Fantastic World of Gervasio Gallardo, and a feature in Novum in the early 1970s, “Gervasio Gallardo, Spain: a master of free and applied art”.

An example of his other 1970s work can be seen below. This picture was made at a time before the crude political usurpation of the Marian ‘crown of stars’ by the mundane European Union, and the symbolism here is rather in his blending of the Catholic Mary ‘star of the sea’ with the classical Venus. Though such a comparison was likely to have gimlet-eyed Jesuits leaping out at the artist from dark corners of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, it was and is a perfectly valid elision to make and rests on good historical foundations — it was not a made-up New Age hippy confabulation of the mid 1970s. The devout Christian C.S. Lewis had also felt free to make a similar elision at the end of one of his science-fiction novels, as a way of of introducing the Marian in a form palatable to his readers.

Born in 1934, the artist Gervasio Gallardo came-of-age in the Catholic Francoist post-war Barcelona of the mid 1950s. He left Spain for work at a German studio in 1959, moving later to an agency in Paris and then to USA in 1963. He was prolific in the early and mid 1970s, producing many covers for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series and other authors. Thereafter he went back to Barcelona and set up his own studio, and then appears to have worked mostly as a commercial artist, with clients among European perfumiers and the makers of fine Spanish liqueurs and brandies. Not a bad line of regular work to be in, as the boom years of the mid-1980s approached.

The Fantastic World of Gervasio Gallardo at Archive.org.

A Year Without Cthulhu

11 Monday May 2020

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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Une annee sans Cthulhu (A Year Without Cthulhu), a new colourful curiosity from France.

It’s a 176-page graphic novel murder-mystery, melding 1980s teenage schoolroom angst with Lovecraftian role-playing games. It’s in French.

Equally curious and gaming related is the new RPG booklet 100 Rumours to Hear in Lovecraft Country. Specifically being…

Rumours to hear in or about the towns of Arkham and Kingsport. … These rumours can be used as potential adventure hooks or background colour. They are aimed at the 1920s-30s setting but, with tweaking, some could be adapted to other settings.

Added to Open Lovecraft

10 Sunday May 2020

Posted by in Scholarly works

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* L. Arriagada, “Realismo estructural ontico en H.P. Lovecraft, Laboratorio, No. 21, 2019. (In Spanish. “Ontic Structural Realism in H.P. Lovecraft”).

* The Fantastic Universe of H.P. Lovecraft, a special issue of Brumal, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2019:

– “Rhetorics and Cosmicism in H.P. Lovecraft.”
– “Multiplied Horror: An isotopy in three stories by Lovecraft.”
– “H.P. Lovecraft on Screen: A challenge for filmmakers.”
– “Hidden Rituals, Secret Powers And Everlasting Horrors: The presence of the Lovecraftian imaginary in recent Spanish extreme metal.”
– “The Forms of The Unspeakable: some representations of Lovecraftian horror in the adaptations of Alberto Breccia.”
– “The Influence Of H.P. Lovecraft in the work of Junji Ito”.

“The Night Ocean”

09 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in Night in Providence, Podcasts etc.

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HorrorBabble has released “The Night Ocean” by Barlow and Lovecraft, as a new one-hour reading for free on YouTube.

S.T. Joshi evaluates the balance of the dual authorship in I Am Providence…

Another literary project on which Lovecraft and Barlow probably worked during his stay in Providence was “The Night Ocean.” We are now able to gauge the precise degree of Lovecraft’s contribution to this tale, as Barlow’s typescript, with Lovecraft’s revisions, has now surfaced. … Lovecraft’s contribution probably amounts to no more than 10%. … “The Night Ocean” is one of the most pensively atmospheric tales produced by anyone in the Lovecraft circle. It comes very close — closer, perhaps, than any of Lovecraft’s own works with the exception of “The Colour out of Space” — to capturing the essential spirit of the weird tale”

The gain in Spain…

08 Friday May 2020

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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More good news on ebooks and tax. Spain has reduced VAT (sales tax) on e-books, e-magazines and e-journals to 4%. Brazil’s highest court has also confirmed their zero-rating. As with last month’s reduction in the UK from 20% to zero tax, the question is now — will sellers pass on the reduction, or just trouser the extra profit?