Divine Felines: Cats in Ancient Egypt

13 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by in NecronomiCon 2013

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Should you be stopping off in New York City on your way to NecronomiCon Providence 2013, you might like to stroll down to Lovecraft’s old pest-zone, where the Brooklyn Museum will present the exhibition “Divine Felines: Cats in Ancient Egypt” from 24th July 2013 through to 31st December 2014.

Cat_mummy_mask

Trivia blip: Lovecraft’s character of Menes in “The Cats of Ulthar” shares his name with Menes (c. 3,188 B.C.) the semi-mythical founder of Memphis, Ancient Egypt — believed by the Egyptians to have been the first human pharaoh, and said by Pliny to have been the inventor of human writing.

Yet more escapes from the tomb…

12 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by in Scholarly works

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Added to the Open Lovecraft page on this blog…

* Patricia Garcia (2013), The Architectural Void: space as transgression in postmodern short fiction of the fantastic (1974-2010). (PhD thesis, some pages of discussion of Lovecraft as a precursor and influence).

* Erik Fredriksson (2010), Hidden Knowledge and Man’s Place in the Universe: a study of human incompetence and insignificance in the works of H.P. Lovecraft. (B.A. dissertation, in English).

* Ryan P. Kennedy (2012), “Evolution of Effect: the numinous in gothic and post-gothic ghost experience literature”. (B.A. dissertation, discusses Lovecraft relationship to the early gothic and then on pp.37-49 discusses “The Unnamable”, “Hypnos” and “Nyarlathotep”).

The Lost Lane, NYC

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Historical context

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Here’s a poor scan of the article in the New York Evening Post (29th August 1924) which sent Lovecraft to Greenwich Village to seek out the little lost alley… “just off Perry street, past Bleeker”. This setting appeared a year later as the “little black court off Perry Street”, in which the narrator emerges after his ordeal in the Lovecraft story “He” (written 11th August 1925).

littlesketches-nyep-29aug1924

Top ten cautionary lessons

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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Top ten cautionary lessons to be learned from Mr. Lovecraft:

1. Don’t eat the cheap canned stuff.

2. Don’t choose a day-job that’s too similar to your creative work.

3. If you must work for idiots, at least get the payments up front.

4. Writing faux-antique poetry may not be the most certain route to fame and influence.

5. Don’t let the wife give up her day-job as soon as you’re married.

6. Candy bars are not a breakfast.

7. Keep carbon copies of all letters.

8. Don’t give your family’s money to an uncle to invest in a ‘sure-fire’ scheme.

9. When naming a cat, stick to traditional names like “Fluffy”.

10. Don’t correlate the contents.

Pacific Rim

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Films & trailers

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del Toro’s Pacific Rim getting excellent reviews = slight uptick in the chances of a big-budget movie of At The Mountains of Madness. Although his next projects seem to be the SF classic Slaughterhouse-Five, and Frankenstein.

On enjoying Pacific Rim, note that the 12 years prior to the movie’s events are laid out in the 120-page comic-book prequel Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero, penned by the movie’s scriptwriter.

Lovecraftian places that really exist: yet more…

06 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by in Lovecraftian places

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Ball’s Pyramid, Pacific Ocean.

cave4

Krubera Cave, the Arabika Massif, Georgia.

Temple of Aphaia on Aegina, Greece.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, USA.

Woods of Coylumbridge, Scotland.

Moss mounds, high in the mountains of Peru.

Puente del Inca, Argentina.

Any Ancient Egyptian ruins still home to th kittehs of Ulthar.

See more Lovecraftian Places posts…