The Great Monster Magazines

03 Saturday Jun 2023

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New on Archive.org to borrow, The Great Monster Magazines: a critical study of the black and white publications of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (2008, McFarland). This has very variable Amazon reviews, with some enjoying it and others saying it’s yet another of McFarland’s many duff and over-priced titles. One even called it “Just a shill for Marvel Comics”… which is not necessarily a bad thing in my view. Though monster-mag collectors may disagree.

On the topic of marketing, it’s sad that today a magazine is very often just regarded as a vehicle for “marketing”. Something to be produced in a cliched dumbed-down, ‘template and boilerplate’ form by a dull marketing department. A good well-curated and dynamic magazine can be so much more than that.

Rhode Island Hospital

02 Friday Jun 2023

Posted by in Maps, Picture postals

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Continuing yesterday’s medical theme, this week on ‘Picture Postals’ I take a look at the exteriors of the main Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, as it was in Lovecraft’s time.

His uncle Dr. Clark has been an outpatients surgeon here 1876-1883.

However, in the 1930s both Lovecraft and his aunt were at the Jane Brown Memorial Hospital. Faig Jr. has this at the “Jane Brown Memorial Building of Rhode Island Hospital” and Joshi has “Jane Brown Memorial Hospital (now Rhode Island Hospital)”, so I assumed that JB and RIH are the same institution. But were they at the same location?

Today the “Jane Brown” in Providence has the address of “593 Eddy Street”, but Google Street View has some difficulty in getting me close enough. So, back to the 1930s. Where, exactly, was the 1930s Jane Frances Brown Building for Private Patients? I then found a reference to the…

“Jane Frances Brown Building for Private Patients, Rhode Island Hospital, Providence” (building commenced 1919, opened 1922, gift of Jesse H. Metcalf and Jane Frances Brown).

A 1919 article which anticipated the new “Jane Frances Brown” suggests an coherent and elegant interior…

And this led me to a good photo of the block, newly opened in 1922…

This then is where Lovecraft passed away. However, I was still uncertain if this was on the main Rhode Island Hospital campus, or was somewhere else in the city. A little more jumping around on Google Street View finally landed me at a reasonable view. The hospital block is still there, just across from the Eddy Street car-park. I don’t know if one would be able to ghoulishly peer up at Lovecraft’s exact “death window” from below (likely to be frowned on by the hospital, as it would disturb any current patients), and finding that out would take a lot more research.

An old map then pairs the relevant sites together, with the new 1922 Jane Brown block just south of the older Hospital campus. Seen here in relation to Lovecraft’s 66 College Street…

His mad mother was at the Butler Hospital for the Insane, a different place. Butler was also where his father died, also insane.

Understanding H.P. Lovecraft’s Anxiety

01 Thursday Jun 2023

Posted by in Historical context, Scholarly works

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There’s now another recent attempt to fathom Lovecraft’s possible and actual medical conditions, in the new dissertation “Understanding H.P. Lovecraft’s Anxiety Narratives through the Medical Humanities” (2023)…

“I argue that deciphering these writings as anxiety narratives will be giving a new insight about the author, as well as mental illness in general.”

For a Spanish university, in English. Free online, and under Creative Commons.

Interestingly, and somewhat in relation to this, I recently heard that the years 1908-11 are now deemed to have been the coldest years on record in the USA, a run which broke in the “notably fine summer of 1911” before the nation was plunged into the well-documented and bitter winter of the ‘1911–12 United States cold wave’. 1908 coincides quite well with the start of Lovecraft’s hermitage / mystery years of 1908-1916, and this makes me think that new attempts at diagnosis would necessarily have to closely consider the weather and temperatures of New England and also New York City.

The essay on the influence of the fluctuating seasonal temperatures on Lovecraft has yet to be written, I think. Or perhaps a timeline + graph might be a better format. Whatever the format, first one would have to track down the reliable non-‘adjusted’ data, ideally drawn from and referenced to primary data such as local newspapers of the period. I see there are now books on the history of New England weather, but they focus on the front-page headline events and have titles such as Mighty Storms of New England. I find that Lovecraft’s own favoured source, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, can only provide North Providence data back to 1945. Perhaps a Tentaclii reader knows where a good reliable and succinct week-by-week graph for pre-1938 North Providence might be had?

Call: New England Moot, October 2023

29 Monday May 2023

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The worthy Signum University plans a New England Moot, to be themed as “Perilous Realms & Haunted Spaces”. Set for 21st October 2023 and a little place called Derry, which the map shows translates as “25 miles north of Boston” or about “45 miles north of Providence”.

New England Moot is excited to spirit you away to Perilous Realms & Haunted Spaces. Whether threshold-realms are real or imagined, Faerian or horrifying, deadly or whimsical, mysterious or lucid, they are the playgrounds for imaginative exploration of what is possible. Discovery, danger, failure, and transformation occur in such interstitial spaces.

Whether you are inspired by the Bifrost, the Bermuda Triangle, Wonderland, or an ordinary-looking Wardrobe, we welcome you to question how to define Perilous Realms & Haunted Spaces. How do you know when you’ve entered one? How does the experience of the unknown inform artistic creation? Join us as we traverse the blurry edge of boundaries and venture into the wildlands beyond. You may not be the same when you leave as you were when you arrived…

The Team are currently looking for proposals for “creative presentations, academic papers, or discussion panels”. The Studio Lab physical venue is said to have a 5,376 × 1,344-pixel video-wall. The Moot will also be a hybrid physical/online event.

The deadline for submissions is 7th October, and I’m assuming that’s 2023.

Malign Providence

29 Monday May 2023

Posted by in Lovecraft as character, New books

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News to me, Malign Providence (2022), a new Centipede Press book offering a “collection of stories by Jonathan Thomas”…

sixteen tales that depict a time and place from our recent past that is at once familiar yet distorted through Thomas’ cosmic horror lens. His Providence isn’t just that of Lovecraft’s home, but of his own brand of mythos [and the] creatures of Lovecraft’s most revered work are only present in whispers and rumblings.

Has titles such as “King of Cat Swamp”, although I’m uncertain if Lovecraft himself puts it some sort of appearance. Yet I know that Jonathan Thomas has written at least one story in which (it is said) the shade of Lovecraft rises to revisit modern Providence. Thus this book seems close enough for me to use the “Lovecraft as character” tag for the blog post.

Unfortunately for those wanting a copy, the 500-copy edition has sold out.

Cthulhu: the Musical!

28 Sunday May 2023

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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I’m always partial to a bit of good song-and-dance musical theatre, and so was pleased to hear of a new musical version of Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu”. Albeit done with puppets, in a Muppets style. Sounds fun, and it runs for two hours under the title of Cthulhu: the Musical! (R-rated). You can catch it touring America with the ‘Puppeteers for Fears’ troupe, a puppeteer troupe based out of Oregon, USA. They’re now a month away from setting out on a 2023 post-lockdown summer tour, with a banner tour headline of “Back from the Dead”. Also on the road with them will be a full rock band, multimedia projectionists and (one hopes) some cute 1970s-style groupies.

Booking now.

Update: Reviews say it’s only very “loosely based” on Lovecraft’s story.

In Cat Swamp: Lovecraft’s Herbarium

26 Friday May 2023

Posted by in AI, Lovecraftian arts

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Readers will recall the young Lovecraft roaming in Cat Swamp, Providence. It was also a richly wild and raggedy hunting-ground for botanists, at around the same time (c. 1900), and thus the plants of the swamp were both drawn/painted and preserved as botanical pressings. Brown University now shows many of these in their online Herbarium catalogue.

So, something a little different for this Friday’s ‘Picture Postals from Lovecraft’.

Using some of the Brown (literally brown) scans of the botanical plant-books as sources, and sprinkling a little magic AI pixie-dust over them brings them back to horrible Lovecraftian life…