Details on L’orrore di Lovecraft

28 Friday Dec 2018

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A new Italian review has further details of the new Italian book L’orrore di Lovecraft, which I noticed in a post some weeks ago but couldn’t quite figure out to what extent it might be an artbook. Although richly produced and illustrated, it’s actually more of an anthology.

It has 40 Mythos stories by various writers, and the review makes these sound like standard-fare. But the book also has four essays, plus a new Italian translation of Lovecraft’s “The Tomb”. A Deluxe colour two-volume edition also has a new Italian translation of “The Dunwich Horror” by “Professor Busnelli Miriam”. The essays, apparently left unread by the reviewer, are in translated-title:

“The ‘reverse’ positivism of H.P. Lovecraft” / “Il positivismo ‘inverso’ di H.P. Lovecraft”, by Stefano Spataro.

“Lovecraft and the in-communicability of materialism” / “Lovecraft e l’incomunicabilita del materialismo” by Giacomo De Colle.

“The” Weird Music Of H.P. Lovecraft” / “The “Weird” Music Of H.P. Lovecraft” by Cesare Buttaboni. [possibly in English?]

“Lovecraft: a journey into the unknowable” | Lovecraft: un viaggio nell’inconoscibile” by Daniela Ferraro Pozzer.

The Deluxe edition is a large-format colour version for collectors in two volumes, presumably so that the art can be fully enjoyed.

Friday “Picture Postals” from Lovecraft: the Industrial Trust Building

28 Friday Dec 2018

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Lovecraft sent a postcard of “New Industrial Trust Building. Providence, R.I” to Wandrei in April 1928.

The Industrial Trust Building replaced the Butler Exchange and was Providence’s first ‘skyscraper’ at 428 ft. It was completed and opened in 1928, but we might imagine that its top-most “beacon” light was fitted and lit as soon as the top-most sections were in place — in order to warn aircraft and airships. This beacon, then red but today said to be green, became a night sighting-point for Lovecraft from around 1928 onwards, as is shown by a letter and his late story “The Haunter of the Dark”…

“Now and then he would train his field-glasses on that spectral, unreachable world beyond the curling smoke; picking out individual roofs and chimneys and steeples, and speculating upon the bizarre and curious mysteries they might house. Even with optical aid Federal Hill seemed somehow alien, half fabulous, and linked to the unreal, intangible marvels of Blake’s own tales and pictures. The feeling would persist long after the hill had faded into the violet, lamp-starred twilight, and the court-house floodlights and the red Industrial Trust beacon had blazed up to make the night grotesque.” — from “The Haunter of the Dark”.

This picture shows there were several beacon lights, which would have effectively merged into one from any distance away.

“[On] these evenings when I tread the narrow ancient streets on the brow of the hill and look westward over the outspread roofs and spires and domes of the lower town to where the distant hills of the countryside stand out against the fading sky, I do not scan that sky as a measurer or an analyst. Resplendent Venus and Jupiter shine close together, hanging over the great beacon-tower of the terraced Industrial Trust Building as they used to hang 2000 years ago over the towering Pharos in Alexandria’s crowded harbour; and as I watch them and compare them with the great red beacon and the mystic twinkling lights of the dusk-shadowed city below, I surely hold no thoughts of their objective nature and position [in astronomical terms] […] I merely watch and dream. I dream of the evenings when these orbs did indeed hang over cryptic and seething Alexandria — and over Carthage before it, and over Thebes and Memphis and Babylon and Ur of the Chaldees before that. I dream of the hidden messages they bring down the aeons from those distant and half-forgotten places, and from those darker, obscurer, places in the still older world, whereof only whispered rumour dares to speak.” — Lovecraft letter to Harris, February-March 1929. Probably to Woodburne Harris rather than to the British Harris.

“And [the evening scene is] even more magical now that we have tall buildings (12, 16, 26 stories) to light up and suggest enchanted cliff cities of Dunsanian mystery” — Lovecraft letter to Hoffmann Price, 1933.

“… the recent conjunction of Venus and the crescent moon. I saw it from my own west windows, and its natural impressiveness was enhanced by its setting. It was twilight, and the ancient roofs and boughs and towers and belfries of the hill were silhouetted blackly against a still-orange sky, The windows of the down-town office buildings, just beginning to light up, made the lower town look like a constellation — and the great red beacon atop the 26-story Industrial Trust Building (which dominates the town as the Pharos dominated Alexandria) was blazing portentously. In the southwest the lofty Georgian belfry of the new Court House loomed up darkly save for the lighted clock-face, the floodlights not having been turned on. And just south of this picturesque outline, high in the sky where the orange was turning to violet, floated Astarte’s bediamonded crescent with the blazing planet close to its upper horn! It certainly was a sight to gasp at — the black towers and roofs against an orange west, the twinkling turrets of the lower town, and the horned moon with its strangely luminous companion. Assuredly, I shall not soon forget it.” — Lovecraft letter to Clark Ashton Smith, November 1933.

Review: H.P. Lovecraft: He Who Wrote in the Darkness

27 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books

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H.P. Lovecraft: He Who Wrote in the Darkness is a substantial new graphic novel by writer Alex Nikolavitch and the Argentinian artist Gervasio.

A highly compressed low-res PDF preview edition was kindly provided for review by the publisher, Pegasus Books of New York. The body of the book runs to 98 pages of art, rising to 112 pages when counting the introduction by screenwriter David Camus, chapter dividers, a page of biographical endnotes on Lovecraft’s circle, and some cross-promotional padding. The book is available in print and as an ebook download via Amazon. While the book is currently rather expensive in the UK at £19 in print and £18 in ebook, I see that used print copies are starting to become available here at lower prices. I also see that the price of the print edition has dropped by $10 in the USA, since its Halloween 2018 publication.

The two-page introduction is by screenwriter David Camus and appears to have been translated from his native French. This is informed and perceptive, with Camus making interesting and very relevant points about Lovecraft’s delight in playing roles (the Old Gent, the Dandy, the Hermit, the Prankster, the Mentor, the Cynic and so on) and about the often-overlooked humour and subtle self-parody that can bubble up in Lovecraft’s work.

Gervasio’s art is not the slickest ever seen, but is a delight throughout. He frames his panels expertly, the panels flow a complex story over the page with ease, and within these panels his precise facial expressions speak volumes. For instance an especially memorable expression from Samuel Loveman. He has just passed Sonia on the stairs as she leaves Lovecraft for good, and Loveman is ascending toward Lovecraft.

This one panel shows how much there is for an informed reader to bring to this graphic novel, if one knows Lovecraft’s life and friends well. Yet it also shows the depths of meaning that the casual uninformed reader will totally miss. It’s a credit to the two creatives at work here that the book usually manages to walk the tightrope between the two types of reader.

Gervasio’s attention to period detail and clothing is excellent, and he doesn’t stint on this. His panels are filled with all sorts of charmingly authentic items, and yet they hardly ever feel cramped. One even wonders if he might be putting his own knowledge of Lovecraft’s life into the panels. For instance, in the first panel we see Lovecraft walking into the seedy Red Hook in search of cheap solo lodgings. Behind him a plump older man is about to be run down by a truck. Possibly Gervasio has no idea that Lovecraft’s good anarchist friend Morton was killed by a collision with a vehicle in 1941, but it’s a poignant little detail to open with. Having a cat watch Lovecraft is also a nice touch, but again it’s only something that will have meaning for those who know Lovecraft’s life.

There are many such details to be found as one reads on. I should also note that Gervasio’s art has also been expertly coloured in a ‘very slightly faded’ way and with obvious reference to typical “1930s urban America” colour palettes. Unfortunately we don’t get a Marvel-style credits box which breaks down exactly who-did-what, so I’m uncertain exactly who the colour flatting was done by. But it doesn’t seem to have been Gervasio himself. In terms of the details of the visual characterisations, Gervasio accurately portrays the various members of the Lovecraft circle. Yet he obviously had no access to the good photograph I found of Henry Everett McNeil (see my recent book on McNeil, Good Old Mac) which revealed McNeil to the world for the first time since the 1920s. Thus, while McNeil is accurately portrayed here as an ‘oldster’, he is far too angular and crew-cut in appearance. Also, Sonia is perhaps not as voluptuous and well-fed as she really was, as here she is more angular in appearance.

The script by Alex Nikolavitch is neatly structured, covering Lovecraft’s life from 1925 to 1937 in chronological order while dipping occasionally into flashback memories and short evocations of the stories. This wide variety of settings retains interest, but often shuttles the reader about at a hectic pace. Nikolavitch necessarily condenses, highlights and omits, for dramatic purposes. For instance, we see only Mrs Miniter and no Mrs Beebe on the fateful visit to rural Wilbraham that birthed “The Dunwich Horror”. Nor do we see the many cats and curious ‘cat-ladders’ of the property. But this won’t be noticed by non-Lovecraftians. Sometimes emotional overtones are added, such as Lovecraft being rather ‘off-ish’ with a pushy Hoffman Price when they first meet in New Orleans in 1932. Overall, I’d say that Lovecraft is perhaps depicted by Nikolavitch as rather more openly grouchy and grumpy than he really was…

These are not really criticisms, just observations on the quite understandable changes that are inevitably needed when shaping and heightening a serious dramatic work.

But there are some minor criticisms to be made. The most significant point open to negative criticism is the dialogue. Often this is heavily encumbered by the need to explain an Important Biographical Fact to the uninformed reader. This leads to characters “speaking out of character”, often jarringly so. This ‘NPC’ problem is amply demonstrated by the first major splash page, which conveys a plain fact about the 1925 solar eclipse but which falls flat both emotionally and as spectacle.

There also are perhaps a few rather large historical liberties taken, though in some cases I can’t be sure. For instance Houdini is shown as being assassinated by a religious fanatic for his atheism, rather than killed by a jock-ish student who threw an idiotic and probably inebriated punch. Perhaps this actually reflects some new Houdini scholarship but, from my reading on Houdini and Lovecraft, I wasn’t aware of this religious aspect of his death. One recent trustworthy scholar shows it was actually all a mis-direction by Houdini’s conniving widow, who claimed the punch killed him in the hope of cashing in on a ‘double indemnity’ in his insurance policy. But I’m not a Houdini-ist and am not qualified to judge.

There are also a few basic errors that the publishers of an expensive £19 / $26 book should have caught but didn’t, such as Sonia’s line “Does the neighbour inspire you” (page 23) which should have read “neighbourhood”, and a jarring continuity error on the opening panel. In the very first text we read in the book we are told the date is “1st January 1925”, yet we see Brooklyn in high summer with the trees in full leaf… rather than darkly descending into the worst New York winter snowstorm in living memory (1st-3rd January 1925).

Despite my probably overly-picky criticisms, for the general reader this graphic novel will be a fine and informative read. It will introduce many to a basic outline of Lovecraft’s life and friendships, including those who would not venture to read a weightier life of Lovecraft. Such readers will miss a great deal but they will be pleased by the real richness of the art, entertained by the varied settings and the occasional dips into the famous stories, and they will simply not notice the historical omissions and changes.

H.P. Lovecraft: He Who Wrote in the Darkness is thus a welcome addition to a small but growing number of such graphic novels which depict aspects of Lovecraft’s biography, and it will sit companionably on the shelf alongside Une nuit avec Lovecraft (2018) and Some Notes on a Nonentity: The Life of H.P. Lovecraft (2017). Let us hope that these three are just the opening books in what will become a small library of graphic novels that depict the wealth of material to be found in Lovecraft’s endlessly fascinating life and strange interior dimensions.

New album: The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos

27 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.

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A very positive review for the heavy Lovecraft tribute album The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos (Dec 2018) by German band Sulphur Aeon. The ‘death metal’ form of heavy metal isn’t my thing, but I’ll take the word of the reviewer that this new release is something very special within the sub-genre. The album is also of interest here because it’s from one of the few bands who only focus on Lovecraft…

[The band] Sulphur Aeon stand as debatably the single best musical entity drawing inspiration from the Cthulhu Mythos. […] The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos, continues their conceptual obsession […] This is premium, nearly flawless death metal, building on every positive attribute of their previous work to create something titanic and utterly sinister. It’s one of the best metal adaptations of its source material, and also happens to be one of the single best death metal releases of 2018.

Other reviews are equally as positive and the sample track, at the foot of the review, is certain an impressive listen. Even a bit of a melodic toe-tapper, rather than the expected wall-of-noise-and-screaming. If this is death metal, at its best, then I may have misjudged it somewhat.

Apparently the focus of the album is a sonic evocation of Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark”, and the lyrics are in English. It appears to be available in full(?) and free to stream on BandCamp…

The album’s cover artist signs himself “Ozarsson”, which makes him un-findable in Google, but he’s online as Ola Larsson of Sweden.

Vastarien

27 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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S. T. Joshi has a new blog post. He notes a new and apparently high-quality literary journal on the macabre, which includes essays…

Vastarien, containing my essay “Richard Gavin: The Nature of Horror” (a chapter of 21st-Century Horror). This superbly produced journal, edited by Jon Padgett and published by Grimscribe Press, is a wonder to behold.

The content-lists make it rather difficult to tell what’s an essay and what’s not. For instance, is Christopher Mountenay’s “Bequeathing the World to Insects” an essay on this post-human notion in imaginative literature (the far-future ‘mighty beetle civilisation’ of Lovecraft, etc), or a story?

The Kindle ebook issues can also be had on Amazon at £3.50 (about $5) each, and there are 10% free samples.

Giuseppe Lippi

27 Thursday Dec 2018

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Newly published online, “An interview with Giuseppe Lippi”, one of the leading Italian Lovecraftians, who passed away before Christmas after a short illness. Lippi was a prolific translator and editor and, according to his Italian Wikipedia page, his edited volumes include the 1993 Italian edition of Lovecraft’s letters from 1915-1937, and the definitive edition of Lovecraft’s entire fiction in Italian in four volumes.

Following the recent departure of Giuseppe Lippi, who passed away on Saturday 15th December, we would like to share this interview with Andrea Scarabelli. The interview was done for the magazine Antares, a special issue which focused on the work of H.P. Lovecraft and the role and importance of the fantastic imaginary for today’s world. Our most heartfelt thanks go to Lippi for all he has done.

The interview is a re-publication from Antares No. 8, 2014.

Other immediate short news and tributes are: Giuseppe Lippi: addio al curatore di Urania e traduttore di Lovecraft; Addio a Giuseppe Lippi, esperto di narrativa fantastica e curatore di “Urania”; and Remembering Giuseppe Lippi (English). Doubtless there will be more considered obituaries in the New Year.

Perhaps an English Wikipedia page would also be a fine tribute, if someone can get past the Wikipolice re: the strictures on starting a new page these days. If someone cares to jump that hurdle, please post the link here and then I’ll bulk up the page.

Apparently he also edited Clark Ashton Smith, and had a hand in the late 1970s and early 80s Warren magazine reprints in Italy (the comics from Creepy, Eerie, and their science-fiction title 1984 went far and wide in Europe, translated and often with new masthead titles). Lippi is also said to have been the editor of the first Italian magazine dedicated to that nation’s rich seam of horror and macabre cinema.

Review: Aquaman (2018)

26 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Films & trailers, Lovecraftian arts

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WARNING: SPOILERS!

Aquaman (2018).

So… there’s this story that starts at an old lighthouse. One stormy night the lighthouse keeper gets to mate with a sea-visitor. They produce a hybrid child, then there’s a submarine attack on a sunken alien city… and there’s a devolved race of monstrously fishy trench-dwellers, a giant trapped sea-monster under the ocean that’s a octopus-dragon-squid hybrid… then a mysterious stone codex with ancient lettering on it, and to decode this our heroes need to discover a hidden ancient city under the Sahara. It’s Lovecraft, right?

Nope. It’s the big-budget Aquaman. Having been told the new Aquaman movie is “surprisingly Lovecraftian”, I’ve now seen it. While it certainly has broadly Lovecraftian moments and elements, at its core it’s the stock-formula pulp that Lovecraft was writing against: those 1920s pulp tales which tiresomely re-worked well-worn themes of politicking medieval kingdoms, over-proud war-hungry princes, treacherous councillors, beautiful princesses who fall for the flawed and banished hero-prince, and a hidden ancient Sword That Will Unite the Kingdom. The pulp authors merely placing these stock elements in some hidden underground realm, on Venus, at the poles, or in this case underwater. Read a half-dozen good ones, and you’ve basically read them all.

That said, Aquaman is generally very enjoyable for what it is, and is full of very well-made visual spectacle. The amount and duration of high-end CG is amazing, and there is a ton of money on the screen. After recent disasters DC must have ‘bet the farm’ on this one, and it’s paid off. Despite the CG it’s all very believable and coherent, and in terms of the physical acting involved in doing ‘underwater’ I saw no flaws. The design values are very high in terms of how things look, and the costumes, vehicles and creatures are all well integrated into a tight example of movie world-building.

Is it Lovecraftian? Not really, certainly not as much as some have claimed. Though it has its moments:

* the opening of the movie echoes the opening of “Innsmouth”, in terms of the submarine attack on the underwater reef. This attack is, of course, a ‘false flag’ attack in a hijacked submarine. Aimed at helping the wicked power-hungry prince to stir up a war against the hated surface-dwellers.

* almost nobody will notice, but we see that Aquaman’s dad has been reading “The Dunwich Horror” before he mated with the Fishy One From The Sea (who after some initial puking very quickly turns from bedraggled mermaid to primped Glamour Queen). The book is under the snow-globe that emotionally grounds the movie’s opening scenes. The book should probably have been “The Shadow over Innsmouth” for thematic congruence, but I guess Hollywood felt that might be a little too politically incorrect.

* then there’s an undecipherable carved stone with a hidden message in it, and it needs to be taken to an ancient ruined city of the forgotten ones under the Saharan desert. But Aquaman and his companion princess have an Atlantean GPS to reach its hidden entrance, which is kind of lame. They could at least have used some kind of mystic ‘water-sense’ to follow the vast amount of water that’s said to be sunk beneath the desert.

* the secondary baddie starts quoting Lovecraft directly (“Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men”), when he surfaces for his big second-act battle with Aquaman. However, his costume looks so utterly ridiculous and camp that you just can’t take him seriously. He’s obviously disposable and just there for Aquaman to beat up, half way through the movie. The need to fit with the DC universe meant that the movie’s makers lost a huge opportunity to make him a deluded Cthulhu-worshipping cultist, whose secret double-crossing aim is to release the…

* giant Cthulhu-like mountain-sized Kraken-y sea monster that has been trapped below the sea for aeons. This monster is, of course, released… though no cultists are involved in making this happen.

* we get the briefest mention of a crucial bit of back-story involving Atlanteans who survived the famous deluge of Atlantis and remained pure-bloods and the Trench dwellers who did not remain pure and fell into a “savage regression” biologically. While the visual look of this devolved race is Lovecraftian, when it’s eventually revealed, the cultural nod is actually more to H.G. Wells and his famous devolved Morlocks. This is confirmed when we learn that the Trench dwellers hate light, and can be driven back merely with lighted distress flares.

* there’s ten minutes of a nightmare encounter at sea with this devolved deep ocean race. These are definitely Derleth-Lovecraftian in appearance, and we’re told they were once Atlanteans but that they devolved in a “savage regression” to fishy bestiality over the millennia. This scene has its moments, but the monsters are again only really there for Aquaman to battle past… so that he can reach a tropical Thunderball-like Paradise Island… where the Magic Trident of All Power power-up thing is resting.

* the Magic Trident of All Power power-up thing is in a cave behind the Glowing Waterfall, where it’s guarded by a giant tentacular being. But Mrs Squiddy talks, in a manner more akin to Tolkien’s Smaug the dragon than to anything in Lovecraft. Anyway… there’s little time for a chat, as War Is Brewing.

Except for about 30 seconds in the dark Trench, the ocean conveys no sense of a vast and eerie darkness, and there’s no unfathomable ‘cosmic awe’ akin to outer space. So, it’s not Lovecraftian in that sense.

Is it DC, then? I have no clue at all about that, not being a DC fan. I know absolutely nothing about the DC comics version of Aquaman, other than that he’s DC’s equivalent of Marvel’s Sub-Mariner character. I thus probably missed many DC-tastic Easter Eggs, but I guess they’re in there. I only noticed how Aquaman positioned itself to dovetail with other blockbuster properties. Disney’s Tron: Legacy is probably the biggest debt it owes, and that debt is massive. But this viewer didn’t mind in the slightest, since the movie re-works the best bits of the Tron sequel so beautifully, at such duration and on such a vast scale. In terms of the hero’s own personality and style it’s very obviously pitched as a rival to Marvel’s Thor. As ‘screen fun with a coherent story’, Aquaman even manages to hold its own against the excellence of the latest Thor: Ragnarok movie. Those who know the Lord of the Rings movies will also spot visual nods in Aquaman, such as the distant shot where a tiny Gandalf falls silently into the inky depths of Moria.

Overall Aquaman is entertaining fun, and if you have a strong bladder it’s worth seeing at the cinema purely for the visuals. It deserves its “top movie of Christmas 2018” box-office cash take. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t an Oscar in the offing for the costume designers and/or the action scene story-boarders. Although in terms of ‘action Oscars’ they’ll have tough competition from the latest Mission Impossible.

The story and dialogue is… still messy, but it’s an enjoyable mess. It veers wildly between jaw-dropping fanboy ridiculousness, over-the-top camp homage, and a surprisingly sugary moms-iness. But this isn’t meant to be a movie that one thinks about deeply. It’s just a good adventure romp and zips through at a fast pace. The Thor-like hero is engaging and of the ‘clever guy who hides it under goofy-and-dumb’ type, and his Atlantean princess is winsome-but-tough. Their dialogue might have popped and surprised just a little more. But on the other hand the script editors have kept the talkiness and jokes under control. There are some three-minute “let’s talk about our feelings” family reunions, but there’s no turgid lecture-mode that slows things down every ten minutes (as in the interminable second movie of The Guardians of the Galaxy series). The usual worthy ‘messages’ from the Hollywood elite are in there, but only briefly and at a very basic level:

* don’t put plastic and effluent in the sea;
* ‘place all humanity above the needs of one nation’;
* modern pirates are bad people;
* human/Atlantean half-breeds can become King, if they prove themselves worthy by their actions.

The latter point raising the question of what, exactly, some of the surviving Atlanteans were mating with in order to devolve into Trench dwellers — thus raising in the remaining pure Atlanteans such an abject horror of hybridity that they never once pause to make the obvious distinction between humans and lobsters. By the look of it, the rogue Atlanteans were sneaking off to snuggle up to the primitive Giant Crab People on dark nights. Which, in a way, is very Lovecraftian.

The return of Morton

26 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Housekeeping

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I’m pleased to see that the Kindle ebook edition of Letters to James F. Morton has returned to Amazon UK and USA. The ebook had vanished in the summer. I’ve corrected my recent post on Lovecraft’s 2018: a year in brief review accordingly, and the text now reads…

“Several ebooks vanished from Amazon, such as Lovecraft’s Letters to James F. Morton, and H.P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent. So did the Arthur C. Clarke biography, which is of interest re: the early Lovecraft influence. The Morton letters later returned to Amazon, at the end of the year, but such vanishings suggest it is perilous for scholars to assume that once an ebook is published it will always remain available.”

Sadly it seems this has blanked the keyword-search ability, inside the book. My old Kindle 3 ebook of Morton can still be keyword searched. The same book on my Kindle Fire HD cannot be searched. I suspect this is because the Kindle Fire HD is set to auto-update a book to the latest edition, and the Kindle 3 isn’t. This then illustrates one of the perils of ebooks over paper books.

Inside the Ladd Observatory, in colour

25 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Astronomy, Historical context, Lovecraftian places, Picture postals

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“The late Prof. Upton of Brown, a friend of the family, gave me the freedom of the college observatory, (Ladd Observatory) & I came & went there at will on my bicycle. Ladd Observatory tops a considerable eminence about a mile from the house. I used to walk up Doyle Avenue hill with my wheel, but when returning would have a glorious coast down it. So constant were my observations, that my neck became affected by the strain of peering at a difficult angle. It gave me much pain, & resulted in a permanent curvature perceptible today to a close observer. My body has ever been unequal to the demands of an active career. […] I no more visit the Ladd Observatory or various other attractions of Brown University. Once I expected to utilise them as a regularly entered student, & some day perhaps control some of them as a faculty member.” — Letter to Kleiner, 16th November 1916.

[During my time at Ladd] “I had a chance to see all the standard modern equipment of an observatory (including a 12” telescope) in action, and read endlessly in the observatory library. The professors and their humbler assistant — an affable little Cockney from England named John Edwards — often helped me pick up equipment, and Edwards made me some magnificent photographic lantern-slides (from illustrations in books) which I used in giving illustrated astronomical lectures before clubs.” — Letter to Duane Rimel, 29th March 1934. (My emphasis)

I’ve newly colourised two interior pictures, one showing the Observatory library in which the young Lovecraft spent so much time:

“As a boy I used to haunt the Ladd Observatory of Brown University — looking through the 12″ refractor now & then, reading the books in the library, & probably making an unmitigated nuisance of myself through my incessant questioning of everybody present. Curiously enough, the assistant there was one of your grandfather’s humbler compatriots — a Cornishman named John Edwards, whose capacity for mis-placing h’s was limitless. Scarcely less limitless was his mechanical skill, & in his infinite kindness he fixed me up all sorts of devices (a long-focus celestial camera, a set of photographic lantern slides, a diagonal eyepiece for my telescope, etc. etc.) at no more than cost price. I still have the slides somewhere — as well as lunar & other photographs I took with the camera. He is dead now — as is Prof. Upton, the director in those days [Winslow Upton], our acquaintance with whom gave me my passport to that dark-domed enchanted castle. My third victim there — Associate Prof. Slocum — is now head of the observatory at Wesleyan U. in Middletown, Conn. I would have carried astronomy further but for the mathematics — but I hadn’t quite the right stuff in me.” — Letter to Jonquil Leiber, 29th November 1936.

He continued to bicycle until the summer of 1913 (age 22) long after most other boys of Providence would have had given it up (to cycle after about age 18 was deemed ‘not the done thing’). So presumably from 1913 to 1918 he walked to the Observatory or took a trolley car.

There was a biography of Lovecraft’s Ladd mentor Winslow Upton, An Earth-bound Astronomer: Winslow Upton, A Memoir (1971), and his “A Visit to Kilauea” (1883) is online. Kilauea is the active volcano on Hawaii, and the model reed-boat seen in the picture above is likely both a souvenir of the trip (ultimately to observe an eclipse, some 1000 miles to the south) and a conversation-starter with shy students. Or possibly it was from a sabbatical in Peru. As well as being an astronomer Upton had also been interested enough in storms in the 1880s to publish two papers, “An investigation of cyclonic phenomena in New England” (1887) and “The storm of March 11-14, 1888” (1888), which might perhaps interest those looking for a ‘hook’ for a Mythos story.

Lovecraft’s recall of John Edwards as a Cockney (working-class Londoner) is perhaps more to be trusted than the late recollection that Edwards was a Cornishman. However, a highly intelligent lad from remote and rural Cornwall might soon find himself in London, circa 1865 or thereabouts, and picking up the Cockney speech from the local lads. Which could mean that both were true.

In the mid 1930s some in fantasy and science fiction fandom heard rumours that Lovecraft had once been the director of the Providence Observatory. He had to write to The Phantagraph (Nov-Dec 1935) fanzine to correct the misapprehension…

“Your statement that I was once director of the Providence Observatory flabbergasted me a bit, insomuch as there has never been any ‘Providence Observatory’! Then after a moment, it dawned on me that you must have seen one of my kid publications of 30 or more years ago — when I used to call my own small telescope and other astronomical apparatus ‘THE PROVIDENCE OBSERVATORY’ and publish (by hectograph or typewriter) important looking ‘bulletins’ and ‘annuals’. Thus do the exaggerations of youth bear misleading fruit in old age.”

He refers to his boyhood ‘astronomy newspapers’, mostly made when a preteen, containing his own observations from the rooftop of his house…

“The roof of 598 Engelstrasse [Angel St.] is approximately flat, and in the days of my youth I had a set of meteorological instruments there. Hither I would sometimes hoist my telescope, and observe the sky from that point of relative proximity to it. The horizon is fair, but not ideal. One can see the glint of the Seekonk through the foliage of Blackstone Park, and the opposite bank is quite clearly defined. With a terrestrial eyepiece of fifty diameters on my telescope, I can see some of the farms in the heart of East Providence, and even Seekonk, Mass., across the river. One in particular delights me — a typical bit of ancient agrestick New England with eighteenth century farmhouse, old-fashion’d garden, and even archaic well and well-sweep—all this bit of primitive antiquity visible from a roof in the prosaic modern town!! […] A good telescope, or even a binocular glass, is a great pleasure when one has a wide vista. I am fortunate in having an almost ideal battery of optical aids, including a Warner and Swasey — hell, no, I mean Bausch and Lomb—prism binocular which cost me $55.00 about twelve years ago. Ah, them golden days when I didn’t have to worry about what I spent! I’d like to see meself buying a $55.00 plaything today!!!” — Letter to the Gallomo, 30th September 1919.

Toward the end of this life in the summer of 1936, ill and in a generally weak condition, Lovecraft returned to the Ladd telescope…

“Had an interesting view of Peltier’s Comet on July 22 at the Ladd Observatory — through the 12″ refractor. The object shewed a small disc with a hazy, fan-like tail.”

Katharsisdrill’s CC Lovecraft art

24 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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Scandinavian artist Katharsisdrill kindly places his work under full Creative Commons Attribution. Attribute uses to Katharsisdrill and mention “Made with Krita“.

* A Nordic-style Christmas Card and ‘Christmas Card from R’lyeh’…

* Abdul Alhazred…

* Nyarlathotep…

* Those in search of interior ornaments for their book will also like his Squid mandalas, and the Kraken dividers, under the same licence.

These can be all reworked, with colouring etc, and commercially used on book covers and suchlike. You just need to credit Katharsisdrill and mention he uses the excellent free open source Krita 4.x software.

He also does an episodic Mockman / Corben-style comic strip, which is also at his blog. Some pages of which are ‘not safe for work’. I’d also warn that he uses a deeply unintuitive blogging system, on the Danish social site datataffel.dk, and perusing and finding links to the individual posts and full-size images is not at all easy. It’s not quite as bad as Tumblr, but nearly.