Lovecraft and his Puritans

24 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in Scholarly works

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An M.A. thesis from a religious university, currently only available via Google “Quick View”…

Geoffrey Reiter (2005), “A Dark Poem”: Lovecraft and his Puritans.

“This work examines the fiction and letters of H.P. Lovecraft […] and seeks to explore the way in which he incorporated Puritanism into his works and artistic philosophy, despite the fact that his materialistic worldview would not permit him to accept Puritan doctrinal tenets.”

It can be found with a Google “Quick View” link, via the following Google Search query:

   lovecraft “Puritanism and Christianity” filetype:pdf

The Age of Lovecraft: Cosmic Horror, Posthumanism, and Popular Culture

24 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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Call for Proposals for academic book chapters: “The Age of Lovecraft: Cosmic Horror, Posthumanism, and Popular Culture”.

Editors: Carl Sederholm at csederholm@byu.edu / Jeffrey Weinstock at Jeffrey.Weinstock@cmich.edu

250-word proposals are sought for chapters for an edited scholarly collection on H.P. Lovecraft and his place in 21st century literature, film, media, and popular culture. This collection will consider the late 20th and early 21st century as “The Age of Lovecraft”, as he achieves unprecedented levels of cultural saturation. In short, we will be asking ‘why Lovecraft, why now’?

Deadline for proposals: 31st October 31st 2012. Chapters of approximately 6,000 words due one year later.

Conversations with the Weird Tales Circle

24 Friday Aug 2012

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A glimpse of Wilum Pugmire’s bookshelves led me to a new doorstopper book, one I don’t remember hearing of before: Conversations with the Weird Tales Circle (2011). This is a limited edition book (200 copies) of over 750 pages…

“contain letters and essays by the writers, with many interviews and memoirs about the writers, often by other writers from the Circle. With dozens of color and black & white photographs, and many of the articles never before reprinted (several coming from 1930s and 1940s fanzines that are now very difficult to find), this is an important and illuminating look at a group of people that defined an era.”

Seemingly still available at Centipede for $225 plus shipping.

Spooklights

23 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in Podcasts etc.

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On the BBC Radio 4 “Listen Again” online service: Spooklights…

“Folk tales are full of fleeting phenomena like will o’ the wisps, faint glows that must have spooked our ancestors. But these days, it’s just about impossible to escape the omnipresent illumination of modern life, and these evocative spooklights have vanished like ghosts. Chemist Andrea Sella explores the science of lights so dim, they can be witnessed only in complete darkness.”

Lovecraft’s donuts and chilli

22 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Historical context

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The Billfold (a money-saving website) examines Lovecraft’s frugal eating habits…

“I never spend more than $3.00 per week on food, and often not even nearly that” — November 1932.

That’s $46 (USA) or about £25 (UK) a week on food, in 2010 prices. Later, as his poverty increased, he appears to have been down toward $2 a week…

“I do most of my own laundry, cut my own hair with a patent device that hitches on to a Gillette razor, never spend over two dollars or two-fifty per week on food, and wear my clothes for ever.” — Selected Letters V, 1934-1937.

When working out what he would be spending on food in today’s money, we also have to take into account that food has become very much cheaper for us, since the 1920s. So while £25 a week might sound liveable, if very frugal, to us, remember that we now have the advantages of food made cheap by modern efficient techniques in breeding, production, transportation, and storage.

100th anniversary of the mythos

22 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Historical context, Odd scratchings

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If we date the inception of the mythos to “Dagon” (written July 1917), then July 2017 will be the 100th anniversary. Five years to go. Time to start doing some tentative planning?

Some ideas:

* Publication of a fully searchable “Selected Letters” in digital form.

* Lovecraft research library, containing a copy of all the scholarship ever published on the man and his work.

* Major conference.

* Global online film festival, with major sponsorship for a competition for new animated films of Lovecraft’s work.

* Major publicity push to try to recover ‘lost’ letters and other items from attics, archives, personal effects etc.

* Publication of a complete Lovecraft Studies archive set, in digital form.

* Worldwide sugarcraft cake-decoration competition.