10 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Hippocampus Press are apparently gearing up to publish peer-reviewed Selected Proceedings of the Lovecraft research presented at the Emerging Scholarship Symposium, as part of the NecronomiCon Providence 2013. Probably needs a snappier title than that. How about: “Precocious youth of known genius”: emerging scholarship from NecronomiCon 2013.
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
* Francesco Levato (2014), “Semi-peripheral : spaces of deviation, abjection, madness”, New Academia, Vol.3 No.1, January 2014. (A ‘performative writing’ text, blending fragments of critical theory with bits from “The Call of Cthulhu”)
* Anthony Conrad Chieffalo (2011), “Poe, Lovecraft, and the uncanny: the horror of the self” (Masters dissertation for Central Connecticut State University. Uses Freud to suggest that Poe and Lovecraft draw on… “internal confrontations between the protagonists and the formerly concealed aspects of themselves” to make their stories into powerful horror).
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in New books
An entertaining essay-by-essay fisking of New Critical Essays on H.P. Lovecraft (2013), an expensive book aimed at academic libraries and the shelves of tenured academics.
By the time Simmons [the editor] mentions Donald Tyson’s The Dream World of H.P. Lovecraft as “an interesting biographical reading of Lovecraft’s writing” alarm bells were going off in my head.
“half of them [the essay writers] really haven’t even done the proper research”
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in New books
Encyclopaedia of ancient Egyptian demons, coming soon(ish) from the UK, via a “Leverhulme Trust grant worth £158,000”. The organisers say that… “no such resource currently exists”. Hopefully the finished work will be open access.
Interesting to learn about the ancient world’s tradition of “dream-sending” which was apparently strongest in Ancient Egypt, where almost every book of magic has spells and suchlike for doing so. Possibly relevant to Lovecraft’s idea for the “dream-calling” of Cthulhu.
“Luven-Kerapht, High-Priest of Bastet”, by Richard Svensson.
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Scholarly works
Possibly useful, for some. A keyword search facility for the first edition of The Ancient Track (Lovecraft’s collected poems). Though it doesn’t even give you snippets in the search results, just page numbers where the keyword occurs.
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Del Toro has told the Wall Street Journal that his At The Mountains of Madness mega-budget movie adaptation could be revived at Legendary Pictures. He’s now willing to concede on the need to make it as a PG-13 movie [Meaning: Parents Strongly Cautioned that it may be unsuitable for those under 13: but all ages admitted].
“I’ve seen PG-13 become more and more flexible, I think I could do it PG-13 now, so I’m going to explore it with [Legendary], to be as horrifying as I can, but to not be quite as graphic.”
Which sounds like it would be even more Lovecraftian. Nice.
08 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Super Lovecraft art from Runa Rosina, from her new series “Das Ding auf der Schwelle” (acrylic on toned paper). T’would make someone a fine book cover…
06 Sunday Jul 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
Complete scans of certain 1937-39 Weird Tales editions, with ads…
Weird Tales, Jul 1937 (Poem, “To Virgil Finlay”, also Clark Ashton Smith’s poem “To Howard Phillips Lovecraft”)
Weird Tales, Oct 1937 (“The Shunned House”)
Weird Tales, Dec 1937 (“Polaris”)
Weird Tales, Feb 1938 (“From Beyond”)
Weird Tales, Mar 1938 (“Beyond the Wall of Sleep”, Francis Flagg’s poem “To Howard Phillips Lovecraft”)
Weird Tales, Jul 1938 (Poem, “The Messenger”)
Weird Tales, Nov 1938 (“The Nameless City”)
Weird Tales, Apr 1939 (“The Wicked Clergyman”, “The Curse of Yig” credited to Bishop)
06 Sunday Jul 2014
Posted in Films & trailers, Historical context
Restored version of the silent movie Down To The Sea in Ships (1922) on YouTube. Lovecraft had missed seeing this when it was first released, but was able to see “the striking New Bedford whaling film” at the Cameo Theatre in New York City on the evening of 26th July 1925.
I had never imagined that so perfect an evocation of the old whaling days could be possible. The pictures were taken either actually in New Bedford or at sea, & shew the actual surviving houses, churches, whaves, ships, & accessories. To one who has lately read “Moby Dick” and “The Gam“, the film was incredibly impressive. “Faking” it was impossible—for one beheld the whales spouting in full splendour, the chase of the boats, the throwing and landing of the harpoon [and] it was the actor himself, seen full in the face, who threw the successful dart […] The whole film is of inestimable historical value [especially since the last American] whaler has gone to its eternal rest [so now…] whaling is done in steam vessels—mostly Norwegian—with auxiliary launches …” (Letter to Lillian D. Clarke, 27th July 1925)
Aha, so now we have the answer on Moby Dick! It was “almost certain” that he read it in mid April 1925. And now there’s 100% proof he read it then. The above quote even gives a possible source for his idea of having a “Norwegian sailor Gustaf Johansen” in “The Call of Cthulhu”.
Lovecraft may also have been rather thrilled to see a stock type in the movie, who looked remarkably like himself…
Photo of the Cameo Theatre, NYC, c. 1930.
Later, in August 1929, Lovecraft saw the New Bedford Whaling Museum (Jonathan Bourne Whaling Museum). He also visited the aquarium at Wood’s Hole, suggesting his aversion to sea-food did not extend to live specimens.
05 Saturday Jul 2014
Posted in Odd scratchings
It’s cool when worlds collide. Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog, which I know of through my work on JURN (SVPoW recently inspired me to add coverage of open-access dinosaur academia to my JURN academic search-engine) has a new blog post on pathological rodent teeth and Cthulhu…
in my experience, in the Venn diagram of life, the “interested in paleo” [dinosaur fossils] and “interested in Lovecraft” circles overlap almost entirely.
His post links out to his superb 2013 post on What Cthulhu should look like.
04 Friday Jul 2014
Posted in New books
Poe and the Visual Arts
“the first comprehensive study of how Poe’s work relates to the visual culture of his time [and how] his enduring love of beauty and knowledge of the visual arts richly informed his corpus”
1. Poe’s Exposure to Art Exhibited in Philadelphia and Manhattan, 1838–1845.
2. Artists and Artwork in Poe’s Short Stories and Sketches.
3. Poe’s Homely Interiors.
4. Poe’s Visual Tricks.
5. Poe’s Art Criticism.
“Poe integrated visual art into sketches, tales, and literary criticism, paying close attention to the sculptures and paintings he saw in books, magazines, and museums”
It strikes me that this was one of the lessons Lovecraft learned from Poe. It would be interesting to have a similar art history book on Lovecraft.
04 Friday Jul 2014
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Banned Books Week will this year focus on comics…
