Flatbush Dutch Reformed

01 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Historical context

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The Newtown Pentangle has fine photographs of the Flatbush Dutch Reformed churchyard and graves in Brooklyn…


Photo: Mitch Waxman

The churchyard is the location for Lovecraft’s “The Hound”. Also a key site of his nocturnal investigations…

“That evening Kleiner and I investigated the principal antiquity of this section — the old Dutch Reformed Church — and were well repaid for our quest.”

   [ Hat-tip: Danny Callaghan ]

Fun with Fungi

29 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in New books

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Got shrooms? Innsmouth Free Press have pre-announced a new anthology based around fungi…

Full guidelines for the anthology will be posted in December (Don’t send anything, yet!). […] Fungi will be released by Innsmouth Free Press as a special edition hardcover, paperback and e-book. Look for it in October of 2012


Above: from Matango (1963, aka Attack of the Mushroom People)

Monsters conference in Manchester – call for papers

26 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in Scholarly works

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Monsters: Subject, Object, Abject :: April 12th-13th 2012. The Manchester Museum, Manchester (northern England), United Kingdom

From children’s toys to religious architecture, from medical and legal definitions to Gothic romance – cultural products resonate with fear, obsession and desire for the monster.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Proposals are sought for 20-minute papers. Possible topics include (but are not limited to)…

Monsters in literature, art, music and film
Architectural monsters
Subjectivity and the monster
Objectification and the monster
Historical definition of the monstrous
Medical and legal monsters
Theorisations of the monstrous
Mythology, folklore and legends
Hybrids and hybridity
Cyborgs and the posthuman

Please send 300-word abstracts to conference@hic-dragones.co.uk by Sunday 1st January 2012. For more information, please see our website: www.hic-dragones.co.uk/events.

Following the conference, there will be a two-day public Monsters Convention in Manchester. We would be interested in hearing from anyone interested in offering a talk or seminar at this convention. Please email Dr. Hannah Priest for more info: events@hic-dragones.co.uk

Ann & Jeff Vandermeer interviewed

26 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in New books

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An excellent long interview with Ann & Jeff Vandermeer, editors of the new megathology The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories…

Q: “Is there anything that surprised you when researching and compiling The Weird?”

A: “What surprised us, quite frankly, after reading so much across a century of fiction is that some of what has been dubbed “classic” just re-treads earlier work by other writers that most readers don’t know about…”

“We also discovered that some writers are obscure because the reprint rights are so difficult to acquire. […] Contemporary writers should give great thought to who will represent them after they have passed on. Because we also discovered estates represented by agents who had literally succumbed to dementia and were unable to negotiate.”

Read the whole interview at GavReads.

More recent Lovecraft scholarship

25 Friday Nov 2011

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Another quick trawl for recent Lovecraft scholarship published in out-of-the-way places…

* Micheal Gentry. “Parser at the Threshold: Lovecraftian horror in interactive fiction“. In the book: IF Theory Reader, March 2011. (Online, free.)

Also related to IF (interactive fiction), an English summary of a talk given at the Storyworlds Across Media conference (Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, 30th June — 2nd July 2011)…

“In a talk on “The Developing Storyworld of H.P. Lovecraft”, Van Leavenworth (Umea) demonstrated that Lovecraft’s works hold two mythical concepts that appeal to his followers who have not only developed a number of textual, audio-visual and interactive fictions but also integrated elements of his stories into obscure cults: the loss of control or ‘cosmic fear’ and humanity’s inability to understand cosmic knowledge. Apparently, these universal human concerns adapt well to different uses and invite recipients to engage in the spiritual and transcendent body of thought that is attributed to the author’s name and persona. Hence, Leavenworth, as the previous speakers, put Ryan’s criteria of consistency and media-exclusiveness of the storyworld up for debate.”

* David Marks (2011). From the will to Wessex to Arkham: Lovecraft’s geophilosophical debt to Hardy. California State University, M.A. dissertation. (Hardy as in Thomas Hardy. Not yet online.)

* Julio Franca (Oct 2011). “Fundamentos Esteticos da Literatura de Horror: A influencia de Edmund Burke sobre H. P. Lovecraft“. (Article in Spanish on the influence of Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful, on Lovecraft. Online.)

* Matthew Strohack (2011). “The City under the Hill: Allegorical Tradition and H. P. Lovecraft’s America.” A chapter in the book American Exceptionalisms: From Winthrop to Winfrey, SUNY Press, December 2011. (Already available to read online at Google Books.)