Joshi considering a novel based on Lovecraft’s life

16 Thursday Sep 2010

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A most interesting aside on Wilum Pugmire’s moft esteemed blog today, writing of the creative plans of the Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi…

“S.T.’s moft astounding plot as fiction writer is to write a biographical novel on the life of H. P. Lovecraft”

That would be quite something. I’m reminded of a quote from Guy Davenport (whose fiction Pugmire should certainly know, if he doesn’t already), in which he writes…

“Biographies grasp the exteriors of lives and give what account they can of their interiors. These can be wholly different realities.” — Guy Davenport in “Ruskin”.

Lovecraftian Improv

15 Wednesday Sep 2010

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It seems the local improv theatre was inspired by the recent Lovecraft Film Festival in Seattle…

Wing-It Productions presents Unspeakable Horrors, an…

“unscripted play inspired by the writings of horror master H. P. Lovecraft. Each night, the cast will create a dark and frightening tale of supernatural dread based on audience suggestions. Unspeakable Horrors is fully improvised, and no two shows are the same.”

The Historic University Theater (Seattle, WA, USA), October-November 2010.

Lovecraft Creature Lab challenge

15 Wednesday Sep 2010

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Ah, that’s what I like — an opportunity to combine H.P. Lovecraft with 3D CG work (my other blog is about 3D CG indie animation). Lovecraft Creature Lab challenge asks for a still image…

“Create a creature based upon a non-human critter from H.P. Lovecraft’s literary works. The creature should have a fully resolved form, convey motion where appropriate, and be believable. Creature can be shown as either a 3/4 view or as a ‘turn-arounds‘ [ i.e.: a sequence of standing shots from different angles, combined in one still image ].

Any medium is acceptable — traditional, digital, 2D, 3D … anything. The minimum size acceptable is 8.5″ x 11″. For judging purposes on ArtOrder [ a Ning community of Fantasy and Science Fiction illustrators ], submit a .jpg no larger than 2500 x 2500 pixels. Photographs of non-digital entries are acceptable as long as they meet the minimum size requirements.

Part of this assignment is to go through the text and pull out the descriptive passages that are informing your creation. These passages should be included with your submission. Remember to dig out bits that talk about how the creature moves as well, if there are any.

[…] Finals [final works] should be dropped into the Lovecraft Creature Lab Final discussion folder in the ArtOrder community.

Deadline: 8th October 2010.

Keep in mind this is a character design challenge, so all of the creature needs to be clearly seen. No vague aery nebulous half-seen unnameables.

Tor.com has a nicely presented round-up of some of the most notable Lovecraft artists. There’s also a selection of links to artists over on the Directory sidebar for this blog.

‘I Am Providence’ is printed

15 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by in Scholarly works

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S.T. Joshi’s blog has updated, with an overview of his current scholarly activities. He writes…

“I understand that I Am Providence has shipped from the printer”

This is shipping in bulk to Hippocampus Press, presumably for quality-checking and then packing. So it look like those of us in the UK may get copies around the end of September? And Hippocampus now has a cover picture for the two-volume set…

Deadline interviews Toro on ‘Mountains’

15 Wednesday Sep 2010

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A new Deadline interview today, with Toro on At The Mountains of Madness…

“The screenplay that is on the internet is an old screenplay, and the one I gave to Jim [Cameron] and Universal is different.”

“We are not green lit, we are still budgeting and designing, and we are partners on this. I believe in my heart we are going to be making this movie in June of next year. We are budgeting the creatures and met with Spectral Motion and ILM, where Dennis Muren told me the sweetest words ever when he said, no one has ever seen monsters like this. […] The way the creatures are rendered and done is going to bring forth an aspect of Lovecraft that has not been done on live action films.”

Spores from Sharnoth

13 Monday Sep 2010

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There’s a new 50-copy numbered/limited revised reprint edition of Spores from Sharnoth and Other Madnesses (P’rea Press). Leigh Blackmore’s acclaimed weird verse collection has a foreword by S. T. Joshi. The new edition features a different coloured cover, an updated bibliography, and an extended reviews section. Several of the poems have also been revised. The collection costs AUS$15 + postage (Australia only, overseas buyers enquire). To order, contact Danny Lovecraft of P’rea Press:  dannyL58@hotmail.com (no website available).

Lovecraft and the Welsh Marches

10 Friday Sep 2010

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The Racial Worldview of H. P. Lovecraft, Parts 2 and 3 (yesterday I linked to part one, at another site), which this time tracks through the letters from 1919 to 1923. The three-part trawl of his letters, which appears to have been compiled in 2002, stops at 1923. Presumably the far-right compiler felt his own ugly lumpen assumptions would have been compromised if he’d ventured beyond 1923 — since Lovecraft married a Jewish woman in 1924, and Lovecraft’s earlier crude views began to change as he (like the rest of the world) wrestled with the intense social issues of the late 1920s and 1930s.

I hadn’t known that Lovecraft traced one side of his family back to the Welsh Marches of England…

“The Phillipses come from the borderlands of Wales, that mystic Machenian land.”

Although this is stated in a letter (May 3, 1923) that generally sounds very flippant, this personal snippet is probably(?) a sound personal belief. Yet I can’t find any mention of it via Google Books, so it may not have much basis in hard genealogy. I live not far from this area, and when he refers to the borderlands of Wales he must presumably mean the modern Welsh Marches, an interestingly imprecise and hybrid area so memorably evoked in literature by Kilvert’s Diary. Presumably this origin was a ‘family fact’ inherited via his great-great-grandmother, Esther Whipple, as to their origin in the British Isles. In view of his disparaging of the Celts and the Welsh in other early letters, one wonders if the exact location of the family origin may have been finessed by Lovecraft (or by earlier family members), in order to nudge his family origin over the English border. Since, in the above selection, for instance, he talks of…

“The Welsh, who have no Teutonic blood, are of little account.” (Letter #10, Dec 6, 1915).

“cursed, effeminate Celts” (Oct 6, 1921).

I wonder if the young Lovecraft, or his earlier family members, felt that a possible Welsh root to one side of the family was an unspeakable ‘skeleton’ lurking in his family tree?