NerdVana podcast has just finished three episodes looking at Lovecraft, and his influence on gaming and other popular culture.
Enter NerdVana
26 Saturday Oct 2013
Posted in Podcasts etc.
Lovecraft and Synchronicity
26 Saturday Oct 2013
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
New 120-page book by Renzo Giorgetti, Lovecraft and Synchronicity (EDS, Stienta 2012. In Italian). Here’s the gist of a translated review…
Giorgetti uses ideas of synchronicity theorized by [the mystic/psychotherapist] Carl Jung. [The book has a] chapter dedicated to the figure of “Nyarlathotep” [in which Lovecraft] incarnates the state of tension that unites the crowds at that particular moment in history […] because of political and social upheavals [arising in the the post-war crisis year of 1919]. Then there are seemingly daring combinations between Lovecraft and the contemporary Italian writer Massimo Bontempelli. […] Another very striking juxtaposition is in the final chapter where the music of Erik Satie is compared to that of Erich Zann. Satie — one of the greats of contemporary music — is portrayed as an eccentric and passionate about esoteric beliefs.
New England Vampire Panic
22 Tuesday Oct 2013
Posted in Historical context, Podcasts etc.
“New England Vampire Panic” history podcast. Starts at 2:46. The first instance sounds similar to “The Shunned House”, in terms of the run of deaths in a family. The second instance in Exeter also recalls the town of Innsmouth, in terms of the depopulation and the accusations of inbreeding.
Providence and Rhode Island c.1943
22 Tuesday Oct 2013
Posted in Films & trailers, Historical context
Providence in circa 1943…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsFNKsCCwfY&w=420&h=315]
Chicago Tribune on Lovecraft
21 Monday Oct 2013
Posted in Unnamable
A rather windy Chicago Tribune opinion piece on H.P. Lovecraft shedding his former lowly literary status. It’s only available to USA users, whereas I’m in the UK and so found my access blocked. Those outside the USA should fire up your TOR bundle and its Web browser to access such articles. It works a treat.
Dreams in the Witch House: A Lovecraftian Rock Opera
21 Monday Oct 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Fleeting-Improvised-Men reviewed
20 Sunday Oct 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
Green Mountains Review reviews the new book The Natural Dissolution of Fleeting-Improvised-Men, which weaves a pseudo-scholarly fiction around H.P. Lovecraft’s “last letter”.
Bewilderments of Vision
19 Saturday Oct 2013
Posted in New books
New book, Bewilderments of Vision : Hallucination and Literature, 1880–1914. Cercles review…
“The fifth Chapter is a study of Arthur Machen’s novel The Hill of Dreams (1907). It relies on insights from various authors like William James, Andrew Lang, John Addington Symonds, but also contemporary critics such as S.T. Joshi, Roger Luckhurst, Linda Dowling, and Julia Briggs.”
The Shepard Cafeteria
12 Saturday Oct 2013
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts, NecronomiCon 2013
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…
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 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 in Scholarly works
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 in Scholarly works
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.”
Photos: Radcliffe
Shoggoths in May
08 Tuesday Oct 2013
Posted in Scholarly works
Soggoth reproduction? You don’t want to know. You do? Oh, ok then…