20 Saturday Sep 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
Franz Rottensteiner’s “Lovecraft as Philosopher” a dismissive review of S.T. Joshi’s The Decline of the West in Science Fiction Studies, March 1992. And Joshi’s lengthy demolition of the review in the November 1992 issue. Followed by slight whimpering noises from Rottensteiner.
19 Friday Sep 2014
Posted in Odd scratchings
“The healthiest aristocracy is the most elastic — willing to beckon and receive as accessions all men of whatever antecedents who prove themselves aesthetically and intellectually fitted for membership. It gains, moreover, if its members can possess that natural nobility which is content with a recognition of its own worth, and which demonstrates its superiority in superior works and behaviour, rather than in snobbish and arrogant speech and attitude.” — H.P. Lovecraft, October 1921.
19 Friday Sep 2014
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
New survey PhD online, Aerofuturism: Vectors of Modernity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture (2014). Some fleeting references to At The Mountains of Madness.
19 Friday Sep 2014
Posted in Odd scratchings
Enter… the Lovecraftorium. Beware lest you empty your mind wallet, as it provokes you to insanely jealous cultist frenzy on Amazon!
19 Friday Sep 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
“The Once and Future Antiquity: Classical Traditions in Science Fiction and Fantasy” conference, Seattle, 27th-29th March 2015.
“What roles has classical antiquity played in visions of the future, the fantastic, the speculative, the might-have-been?”
Given Lovecraft’s abundant uses of classical antiquity in his fiction and poetry, I’d be surprised if the organisers can’t squeeze in at least one Lovecraft paper.
18 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in Odd scratchings
Ah yes, the kids of today: no energy, no hope, no talent, and they dress funny too… 🙂
“… our languid youth to gloom resort,
and listless children must be taught their sport:
whose arts the stamp of waning pow’r confess,
and hide their weakness in eccentric dress;”
H.P. Lovecraft, from “Old Christmas”, written at the end of 1917.
18 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
* Don Jolly (2013), “Religion in H.P. Lovecraft”, The Revealer: a review of religion and media, 21st August 2013. (Short essay exploring the young Lovecraft’s sentiment for religious experience in the context of historical community, specifically the late 1917 poem “Old Christmas”).
18 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in Odd scratchings
An excellent blog, which I’m sorry to say has been a stranger to my RSS feedreader until now: The R’lyeh Tribune by Sean Eaton.
18 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Ah, ze French. “The Rats in The Walls” turned into, er… a “cannibal muppets” puppet comedy. Well, I guess they need something cheery to distract, while their socialist-run economy inevitably collapses…
17 Wednesday Sep 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Super cover illustration for a European edition of Lovecraft…
17 Wednesday Sep 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
A transcript of a lecture on “Argentinian Literature and its Monsters” and part two.
17 Wednesday Sep 2014
Posted in Unnamable
The Amazon recommendation system is still dumb, despite supposely being trained in my tastes for years now. I wish for Lovecraft scholarship therefore I will like… Dennis Wheatley, The Devil Rides Out. Er, no.
I think the general problem arises from lumpen categorisation systems, which are auto-sorted according to publisher supplied metadata and then parsed by artist/writer. It serves publishers well to make their tagging of a product as broad as possible. But a recommendation system needs to be able to make fine distinctions of taste, and do so even within artists. Such as knowing that Ziggy-era Bowie is not the same as Tin Machine-era Bowie. Or that Midge Ure’s Ultravox is mass-market pap compared to John Foxx’s Ultravox.