Houdini: Art and Magic

11 Saturday Jun 2011

Posted by in Historical context, New books

≈ Leave a comment

A review of the exhibition Houdini: Art and Magic (The Jewish Museum, New York, 2010), which has now transferred to the Skirball Center in Los Angeles until 4th September 2011. There’s an accompanying book, from Yale University Press.

Lovecraft and Houdini had connections, not least in the long story Imprisoned with the Pharaohs (1924). Lovecraft ghost-wrote this for $100 (paid in advance, for the only time in Lovecraft’s life), based on an after-dinner tale invented by Houdini but which he claimed as true. Lovecraft seems to have considered it improbable and badly formed, and was pleased to be told in confidence that it was actually a fabrication, since he could then let his imagination rip on the tale. Although often talked of as a minor story, and as having a little too much of the travelogue about it, Michel Houellebecq’s 1991 book on Lovecraft said Pharaohs contained some of Lovecraft’s… “most beautiful verbal extravagances”. This was, of course, also the story whose manuscript Lovecraft fatefully left and lost on a train, and which he then had to spend some of his honeymoon re-typing — possibly to the detriment of his marriage.

Lovecraft also admired Houdini for his tireless debunking of spiritualists and other faux-mystic charlatans. Houdini is known to have socialised with Lovecraft, occasionally dining with him after shows, and in one of his letters Lovecraft recalls being taken out by Houdini to the incongruous theatrical event of a Noel Coward play in 1924. Houdini personally arranged for Lovecraft to have a meeting with a newspaper publisher, with a view to some employment, but nothing came of it.

Lovecraft later had a further very healthy payment of $75 for a ghost-written Houdini article attacking and debunking astrology. Houdini’s sudden death due to a student prank, in 1926, put an end to the prospects of more collaborations and income — such as the planned The Cancer of Superstition, a book debunking superstitious beliefs. Lovecraft had apparently already drafted this in basic outline form, and started researching magic and witchcraft for it. Possibly some of this research found its way into his The Horror at Red Hook.

Pages of passion

01 Wednesday Jun 2011

Posted by in Historical context, Odd scratchings

≈ Leave a comment

Miskatonic Books blog today on the importance of the passionate genre book collector. Collectors pass-from-hand-to-hand otherwise neglected works, and equally importantly write articles about them, until one day changing tastes and new audiences eventually combine to bring the work to the attention of a wider readership…

“The purpose of the book collector is a considerable one. Genre fiction written within the small press will one day be seen as treasures by many rather than few. And we, as collectors, are simply the caretakers of these treasures. For example, society is just now starting to see the real influence that H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction has had on American literature, film and art nearly a half-century after his death.”

I think there may be a little more to say on the subject though. I mean in this ‘age of abundance’ and ebooks, is there such a thing now as pseudo-scarcity promoted by small publishers? And is this antiquated business model actually damaging to some sorts of authors? I mean, I can see the value of the beautifully printed and acid-free small-press book for passing the work on to the far future. And there are some types of books that require print but which only have perhaps 50 interested people and libraries in the world, such as Blurb POD photobook photo-essays on obscure topics. As for contemporary fiction, I think Cory Doctorow points the way to the future. Actually give away multi-format ebooks or sell then at very low sub-$2 prices, but then also sell an affordable print-on-demand paperback edition and a sumptuous top-of-the-line $300 hardback for collectors.

ARRRGH!: Monsters in Fashion exhibition

16 Monday May 2011

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

Greece may be about to add itself to the long monstrous regiment of socialist basket-case nations, but at least their art scene appears to be thriving in the chaos. The latest interesting item is the exhibition ARRRGH!: Monsters in Fashion, at Athens (until 31st July 2011)…

“the first exhibition about monstrous character design in fashion, curated by Vassilis Zidianakis. International artists create playful dresses, avant-garde costumes and hairstyles, re-inventing the human body and sending their monstrous, enigmatic, radical and grotesque new Characters onto the catwalk and beyond. They redefine the relation between body and costume by mixing visual communication codes and questioning the established aesthetic norms. The exhibition ARRRGH! Monsters in Fashion is realised with the contribution of the following institutions, fashion designers and artists: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Netherlands, Maison Martin Margiela, Walter Van Beirendonck, LucyandBart, Jean-Charles De Castelbajac, Mareunrol’s, Bas Kosters, Issey Miyake, Henrik Vibskov, Charlie Le Mindu, Boris Hoppek, Craig Green, Bernhard Willhelm, Cassette Playa, Andrea Ayala Closa, George Tourlas, Piers Atkinson and Pyuupiru amongst others.”

They had an “Atopic Bodies” Monster’s Ball event two days ago to launch the show, and hopefully Flickr photos will be surfacing soon. There is a website for the exhibition, but it seems it hasn’t been published in time for the exhibition launch.

Time Machine sequel – first review

09 Monday May 2011

Posted by in Odd scratchings

≈ Leave a comment

I just found what I feel is a deeply unfair and lackadaisical review of The Time Machine: a sequel, written by Richard A. Lupoff on SF Site. It’s perfectly obvious he has hardly bothered to read the book. He gives a so-called summary of the plot that is a complete travesty. It’s just outright wrong in places, such as his claims that the sequel gets Weena “trapped in a walled city”. There are any number of SF subtleties, themes, repeating motifs and symbols, and plot twists in the book — and continuations from Wells’s original — that are simply not mentioned. Lupoff criticises only whatever garbled version of the plot his drastic skim-reading has managed to cobble together in his mind.

He is also very misleading when saying that the extensive scholarly bibliography at the back of the book “barely scratches the surface” of general Wells criticism — but that’s a bizarre criticism because it simply wasn’t the aim to pick up on every aside and footnote on The Time Machine in every work ever written on Wells. He fails to point out that the very comprehensive bibliography (PDF online) is tightly focused only on criticism that is clearly about The Time Machine and its themes. In omitting to mention this, the reader of the review is deliberately given the impression that the bibliography is somehow skimpy. It isn’t.

In the end it seems he’s not criticising the book, he’s just criticising the fact that he’s been made to glance at a book of an unfashionable type and write a hasty review on it. Probably he got a bit miffed when the Editor thrust a finely-crafted Victorian-style literary sequel under his nose. On this evidence, I’d say he’s become habituated to the sort of action-oriented ‘doorstopper’ SF novels, of the sort that can be read at speed and heavily skipped over. And I admit I do that myself, with Stephen Baxter and others. Publisher-driven padding of books has a lot to answer for. But there are some books that obviously demand a different and more literary type of closer and slower reading. The Time Machine: a sequel is one of them.

If there’s a consolation in the review, it’s that his summary of the plot simply isn’t the plot-spoiler he intended it to be — because he’s completely missed the key elements and revelations. Ho hum. Anyway… anyone fancy writing a real review of it? I’ll happily send out copies.

Perhaps I’ll do an audio book version of the book, so it can be appreciated word-for-word. Lovecraft certainly works excellently that way, because you can’t skip anything and thus get the full impact of the language and atmosphere.