29 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in Podcasts etc.
A complete free audio book of Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in The Witch House”, read by Charly Crawmer in a fine laconic American voice. Plus complete readings of Arthur Machen’s Novel of the Black Seal; Novel of the White Powder; Great God Pan; Red Hand; Shining Pyramid; The Terror; and The White People.
29 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in NecronomiCon 2013
More possible stop-offs in New York, for those set to head for NecronomiCon Providence 2013 in August 2013…
* Nicholas Roerich Museum New York, 150 paintings on show from one of Lovecraft’s favorite artists. Free.
* A Beautiful Way to Go: New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery, a history exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. Aka Greenwood Cemetery, a feast of neo-Gothic architecture and carving. Lovecraft visited this cemetery on a night walk with Sonia and others while in New York. Lovecraft’s story “The Horror at Red Hook” buried Robert Suydam there.
* The New York Historical Society has Swing Time: Reginald Marsh and Thirties New York, which looks like it should provide a fine insight into the seedier and more grotesque sides of the city in the 1930s.
* Journey To The Stars, the planetarium show at the American Natural History Museum. Tickets needed.
* The New York Public Library has The ABC of It: why children’s books matter, 250 items curated by children’s book expert Leonard S. Marcus. May interest some, as it might skew toward the fantastical elements in children’s books.
Already mentioned here: Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt at the Brooklyn Museum.
29 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in New books
A new guide to pulps, just published… The Blood ‘n’ Thunder Guide to Pulp Fiction
28 Sunday Jul 2013
Posted in Podcasts etc.
Given the recent press reports on new research, a one-hour UK university podcast on The Moon and Madness might interest…
“a historical account of the lunacy concept, followed by discussion of hypothetical mechanisms and indications for further research.”
Preamble ends at 3:40.
28 Sunday Jul 2013
Posted in Podcasts etc.
53 minute podcast lecture by an astronomer from the University of Bath, in the UK, on how poetry portrays astronomy. Preamble ends at 6:35.
28 Sunday Jul 2013
Posted in Scholarly works
More additions to the Open Lovecraft page:
* Richard Palvik (2013), H.P. Lovecraft: narratologisk analys av atmosfar och fasor (Masters dissertation. Title translates as “H.P. Lovecraft: a narratological analysis of atmospheres and horrors”. In Swedish, with English abstract).
* James Odelle Butler (2012), “Name, Place, and Emotional Space: Themed Semantics in Literary Onomastic Research” (PhD thesis for University of Glasgow, UK. Examines “The Interlaced Realities of Lovecraft County” on pp. 172-188).
* Gert Jan Willem Bekenkamp (2006), The World of Wonder: on children’s lust for terror (PhD thesis for the University of Leuven, Netherlands. With an introduction by Ramsey Campbell).
* Bruce Lord (2004), The Genetics of Horror: Sex and Racism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Fiction (Part of Lord’s archive of writings at www.contrasoma.com).
28 Sunday Jul 2013
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
There’s another new biographical book about the Lovecraft Circle in New York, hot on the heels of my biographical book on Everett McNeil. So Many Lovely Days
By August 1925 the shop operated for about four months from Kirk’s rooms at 317 West 14th Street in Manhattan (the inspiration for the setting of Lovecraft’s “Cool Air”). Kirk also sold book by printed catalogue. Then the shop moved to retail premises at 365 West 15th Street. In late January 1927 Kirk took out a new shop lease at 58 West Eighth Street (“the south side of Eighth Street near Sixth Avenue”) where…
“He [Kirk] had a circulating library, mainly, but he was also interested in first editions and remainders. His shop [at 58 West Eighth] was taken over by somebody who could pay four times as much rent — that was in the days just when Eighth Street was starting to boom — either Marboro [Marlboro cigarettes?] or some other kind of shop took over his place and paid some fantastic rent, which he could not possibly touch. So he had to go out of business. And it was just at that time when I put my brother into the [book] auction business, and George became his partner.” (from New York City Bookshops in the 1930s and 1940s: The Recollections of Walter Goldwater).
Samuel Loveman of the Lovecraft circle wrote two poems “For the Chelsea Book-Shop” of which this is one…
[ Hat-tip: Hippocampus, and The Tippler for the picture. ]
27 Saturday Jul 2013
Posted in Scholarly works
A new S.T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship, for research on H.P. Lovecraft and his circle. The lucky recipient gets to spend six weeks at Brown University Library, with $2,500 to cover travel and expenses. Starts in 2015!
27 Saturday Jul 2013
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
“Weird Tales: The Unique Magazine and the evolution of American fantasy and horror”. Call for chapter proposals for a collection of essays. Abstracts due 31st August 2013.
“This volume will collect critical essays that seek to provide a broader understanding of the magazine Weird Tales and its authors, artists, readers, and editorial practices, as well as the larger impact that the periodical had on popular culture and genre fiction.”
The flyer doesn’t say who’s going to publish it, and at what price. One suspects it’ll be an academic publisher, with a “for academic libraries only” $90-$100 price.
27 Saturday Jul 2013
Posted in Scholarly works
From Barcelona, Spain, Brumal: research journal on the fantastic. Out now, under Creative Commons, Vol.1, No.1, Spring 2013 (PDF link). Mostly in Spanish, but with an Introduction and lead essay in English, “The Fantastic Hole: towards a theorisation of the fantastic transgression as a phenomenon of space”.
The Brumal website also has a link to another new open access journal, Pasavento: revista de estudios hispanicos. This also has its inaugural Vol.1, No.1 issue out now, and begins its run with a special Monsters issue. All Pasavento contents are in Spanish.
Also news from Brumal of…
* The first conference in Costa Rica (Central America) on fantastic literature, set for mid September 2013.
* A conference in Brazil in 2014, (Re)Visions of the Fantastic, for which the website is currently dead for me in the UK.
26 Friday Jul 2013
Posted in Historical context
It appears that the 1925/6 lost Houdini spiritualism scrapbook has turned up. Possibly a hoax, but the photos look genuine. Lovecraft scholars will remember that Lovecraft was closely involved with Houdini in researching and ghost-writing a book debunking the evils of spiritualism and other fraudulent modern superstitions. The finder reports…
“The majority of the material is from 1925 with a few clippings from early 1926.”
Which is shortly before Lovecraft set to work with Houdini and Eddy on preparing The Cancer of Superstition, although it seems there’s no Lovecraft material in the scrapbook. Interesting to think that Lovecraft might well have once looked through the scrapbook while preparing the book.
26 Friday Jul 2013
Posted in Historical context
Robert Olmstead, in France, reports that he has started a detailed illustrated Web timeline of Lovecraft in France.
He also has a clipping of an article from the Providence Evening Bulletin of 1970 that made Providence aware of the serious French reception of Lovecraft in translation…
