{"id":57080,"date":"2022-10-29T03:07:06","date_gmt":"2022-10-29T03:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/?p=57080"},"modified":"2022-10-25T09:13:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T09:13:13","slug":"new-book-el-asesinato-de-robert-barlow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2022\/10\/29\/new-book-el-asesinato-de-robert-barlow\/","title":{"rendered":"New book: El Asesinato de Robert Barlow"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new novel about Lovecraft’s friend Robert Barlow, El Asesinato de Robert Barlow<\/a><\/em> (The Assassination of Robert Barlow<\/em>, 2022), by Veronica Evers and available now in Spanish. It appears to be a murder-mystery police-procedural novel, set in the 1950s or perhaps into the early 60s in Mexico. A Lovecraftian homage, apparently. My translation and digest of the blurb…<\/p>\n

Some years after Robert Barlow’s death, the historian Galo finds an unknown manuscript. It is a prequel to “The Call of Cthulhu”. This, he thinks, contains hidden keys relating to Cthulhu. Simultaneously, there is another and related mysterious death. Detective Acosta will not leave the cases unsolved, and he uncovers a whirlwind of old stories and unknown parts of Barlow’s life. He even has talks with William Burroughs and other beatniks, and discovers that his crumbling old Mexico City harbours some very dark places…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can’t find out much more about it, and the dates are a little uncertain (Burroughs was in Mexico City in the early 1950s for five years, I recall, and so the tale may stretch into the early 1960s if the detective is pursuing the trail some years later?). There’s a YouTube recording of the author<\/a> at a literary festival, though that may just be a reading rather than a Q&A. YouTube can offer no transcript to translate. <\/p>\n

Apparently the “old Mexico City” was very different from the “new Mexico City”, and the author tries to evoke the latter. So I assume a lot of vintage local colour is involved, and I’d guess the author is also a knowledgeable citizen of the city. Level of gay content, and the angle it take on that… unknown. But it’s not being tagged as a gay novel.<\/p>\n

No sign that Lovecraft appears in the book as a character, though if I was writing such a novel I’d at least have a cameo. Perhaps via a letter between Barlow and Burroughs that recalled the Lovecraft he had known.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new novel about Lovecraft’s friend Robert Barlow, El Asesinato de Robert Barlow (The Assassination of Robert Barlow, 2022), by …<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lovecraft-as-character","category-lovecraftian-arts","category-new-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57080"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57086,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57080\/revisions\/57086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}