The Shepard Cafeteria

12 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts, NecronomiCon 2013

≈ 1 Comment

On display as part of the NecronomiCon 2013 exhibitions, a postcard that H.P. Lovecraft sent to Donald Wandrei in 1934, with his own ink drawing overlay and self-portrait. Part of the Brown University collection…

shepardcaf

It presumably shows his black writing materials case, seen resting at the foot of the chair. This was commented on by several people in Lovecraft Remembered, but was never photographed only photographed once.

The Shepard Cafeteria postcard as a clean scan…

The Shepard Cafeteria, 122-124-126 Mathewson Street Providence, RI

“[the Mathewson St cafe] was owned by John Shepard [III], “a radio mogul, [who also] owned department stores in Boston and on Westminster Street in Providence.” (Providence, Arcadia Publising, p.93)

Lovecraft in Sweden

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by in Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

Lovecraft at Norrkoping Public Library…

“One of my responsibilities at Norrkoping Public Library is arranging academic lectures, inviting Swedish scholars and authors engaged in current cultural and scientific debate. This activity has by now developed into a form of literary salon, opening with a my dialogue with the author followed by a lecture and often a very vivid and stimulating discussion. On October 2, I invited Mattias Fyhr, Assistant Professor in Literary Criticism at Stockholm University and lecturer in Literary Criticism at Jonkoping University […] Mattias is the author of Dod men drommande: H.P. Lovecraft och den magiska modernismen (Dead But Dreaming: H.P. Lovecraft and Magic Modernism).”

Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Super-Nature and the Environment

10 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by in Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Super-Nature and the Environment is a forthcoming symposium to be hosted by Falmouth University in Cornwall, with the UK’s Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. Date is 8th March 2014.

“From places and spaces haunted by spectres, memory or history to conceptions of landscape as palimpsest, holy wells and ancient sites, literature, art and film have always explored concepts of the supernatural and the landscape and environment. … Encounters with the landscape reverberate through the ages and through the rocks, trees, hills and streams that are still present today.”

05092008210

05092008211

Photos: Radcliffe

Mind and madness

07 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by in Odd scratchings

≈ Leave a comment

How does Lovecraftian madness read in cultures that have differing conceptions of mind?

The Lao, like many communities in Southeast Asia, have only recently become familiar with Western notions of psychology and sanity. This leads to an interesting discussion of how Lovecraft’s recurring themes of the cosmic threats to sanity and an ordered, consistent sense of the cosmos may be an utterly alien topic of terror. One can almost imagine a Lao reader going “Ha ha ha. Oh. You lost the American version of your mind? That’s it?”

More Open Lovecraft

03 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by in Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

New additions to the Open Lovecraft page…

* Negin Ghodrati (2013), “The Creation, Evolution and Aftermath of Lovecraftian Horror” (Masters dissertation, University of Oslo).

* Gabriela Birnfeld Kurtz (2013), “Cibercultura e H.P. Lovecraft: historias de horror no tempo da inteligencia coletiva”, Revista Tematica, Sept 2013. (In Portuguese. Lovecraft’s ideas and networks related to the concepts of cyberculture, collective intelligence and culture fandoms, with special reference to contemporary Facebook activity).

Shoggoth biology

03 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by in NecronomiCon 2013, Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

Part five of the NecronomiCon 2013 talk on the biology of Lovecraft’s creatures: Shoggoths, with two more sections on shoggoths still to come…

“I see the Shoggoth as a endosymbiotic organism as well, being far more complex than the lichen (or human for that matter). Given their extreme plasticity and adaptability, the Shoggoth is probably a conglomeration of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells.”

Northern Illinois HPL collection

01 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Scholarly works

≈ 1 Comment

Northern Illinois University has a Lovecraft collection, including letters? Yup…

“The collection consists of Lovecraft’s fiction writing, letters, poems, scientific articles, pulp magazine stories, books about Lovecraft, collections of Lovecraft stories, titles of books known to have lived in Lovecraft’s personal library, and a few miscellaneous items, including several manuscript letters.”

No online finding aid to exactly what the collection holds, it seems. Fandom Directory, 2000, confirms there are only “a few letters”.