Angel Magic
I have recently been introduced to the late Angela Carter through an
essay of hers collected in
Shaking A Leg and entitled "The Inner Child" (p. 443-447).
Among her very interesting
observations are "The Lovecraftian 'tale of terror' is primarily an
aesthetic convention; so it
defines evil on aesthetic terms--that is, as a visible ghastliness."
Then a little later
"Lovecraft tacitly assumes that the 'unnameable' is the temporary embodiment
of a free-form,
cosmic evil like a blasting dew. . . Evil is . . . It is not what men
do." And: "So the
'tale of terror', like pornography, with which it has much in common,
represents a carefree
holiday from ethics. That is the sources of its enduring charm." She
sees the key to Lovecraft
in his childhood, which may be, in her summing up, the genesis of "L's
aesthetics of the horrid.
Maybe the source of all aesthetics of the horrid."
She is not necessarily complimentary
in some remarks as, "He can invoke the
marvellous, usually when he is not trying too hard to do so," and that,
being a highschool
dropout, he "revenged himself" by creating Miskatonic University.
"But he took the easy way
out and invented all his own references. So his work provides
all the appearance of pedantry but
none at all of the substance." And there's "The necrophagic passion
. . . is genuinely
disturbing because so unmediated by art."
She errs several times. He did not invent
the Image du Monde of Gauthier de Metz. Also,
she states his writing is "remarkably sexless" and cites "The Dark
Brotherhood" as an example
and adds that the Cthulhu pantheon "conspicuously lacks a mother goddess,"
ironically having
earlier mentioned Shub-Niggurath. Her sexual interpretation is amusing;
the de-evolved
Martensens "have reverted to their own seminal fluid in three generations."
If I were making a collection of essays on
HPL, this would be included. After reading it, I
began on others, and finally read most of the volume before I had to
return it to the library. Not
only is there an informing sense on most of what she writes--remarks
that make you think-- she
is extremely well-read and shows that books, like fandom, is a way
of life (BIAWOL?) As the
copious examples above show, she can turn a phrase as good as a poet,
but there is also
substance in her sentences, not just gaudiness. I am not speaking unqualifiedly,
since this is an
imperfect world. Part of my favoritism is due to the person revealed
in her work. She is kindly
and shows a sense of her own flaws--she shows humility. She seldom
says anything really mean
about someone she criticizes and seasons a lot of her work with a judicious
humor. (In some way
she reminds me of Robert Bloch.)
Lovecraft 2000
Since late October and up to late April I
have searched the world wide web for information
about HPL. The results, along with such sources as Necronomicon Press' The New Lovecraft
Collector, give about as complete a record as one can find in one place of a contemporary picture
of Lovecraft and his influence under the shadow of the millennium. This survey reveals an amazing
variety of ways that HPL has made his appearance in many cultural arenas, and that suggests new
avenues of exploration. Consider the surprises, such as a puppet show based on one of his stories;
while the Japanese entry could lead the properly endowed person to a study of Lovecraft's
popularity and influence in Japan. The categories (headings) I have composed have a tenuous
relation with those of the Library of Congress, as does their (non-alphabetical) order (Groups,
then Philosophy, then etc.), but the arrangement of the paragraphs within each category is fairly
haphazard.. Items in one category could as easily have glided into another, as Dunwich Horror
scripter Curtis Hanson could also have gone under "DH," "Films," or "Publications" rather than
the place it eventually landed.
The majority of my sources have been collected
through "Northern Light," considered the
biggest indexer on the net. Like a clipping service, it sends me a
list of appearances of
"lovecraft" whenever the word newly appears at a site. Then I recover
such things that I consider
worth your interest. If you prefer, you can do the same thing,
or try a different name ("yog-
sothoth"?).
What I have selected shows my biases. I generally
don't include Cthulhoid stories by
amateurs, nor necessarily professionals. Occultism is occluded. I am
more interested in the
mainstream or, to put it else way, I am less interested in the ghettoed
Lovecraft, Lovecraft in a
crowd of mundane horror writers. I have involuntarily excluded, through
my illiteracy, most
foreign language sites, which made up about a fifth of returns. Czech,
Hungarian and Swedish
were some of the exotics among the more common French and German. Finally, "Lovecraft"
has brought up "adult" sites and I have not found any compulsion to
enlist these.
One of the drawbacks in finding information
that was particularly time-sensitive was that
I had no way of alerting--or being alerted by--Ofians who might otherwise
overlook or miss, say,
the monthly televised biographies of HPL and other Rhode Islanders
on NBC. To sound
sententious, the internet has re-defined time, and our expectations
are on a short fuse. Waiting
three months--in my case of contributions, six months--to alert members
of EOD doings has
become progressively less satisfactory. As one answer, in March 2000
I "webbed" my previous
issue (which makes it the first EOD zine to be so digitized). However, this issue
will be online
almost at the same time as this paper version--perhaps even earlier--and the links will be live,
which requires some rewriting for the web edition. As a second of my strategies send me an
e-mail (if you have web access) and as I discover this stuff, I'll send it to you in raw form, ere
it becomes part of the 'aster (this presupposes that I'll continue this intelligence gathering, which
takes a lot of my
time).
I have been led to the links below by other
links, and I have not usually typed in the link
directly. If there's a problem, type in the address up to the
first virgule. For example, should
the first
selection below, www.netherreal.de/forum/index.htm not
work, try www.netherreal.de.
Finally, I cannot leave out a mention of the
most important of the online Lovecraft sites: Donovan
Loucks' "The H.P. Lovecraft Archive."
(Dare I say, "Good Louck"?)
Groups
"The
NetherReal Lovecraft Discussion Group" is, according to its founder,
"a controlled
discussion group for all topics concerning Lovecraft and the Cthulhu
Mythos." (See "Time Lines.")
It is in English,
though the site is in Germany. Then there's the Spanish-language "Lovecraft
WWWBoard."
At the Taiwanese site for "Deja News" (it
searches news groups) one example is
(lovecraft & rugose)
| cthulhu*
"Shoggoth-L" is the name of a mailing
list whose object is "magick inspired by the imagery of
HP Lovecraft's
poetry and stories."
The alt.sex.cthulhu newsgroup is a "discussion about sex, love, and lust with beings of the
Cthulhu
Mythos, and other dimensional over-achievers."
The only English page of a French language site
states: "La Clef d'Argent (The Silver Key) is a French
non-profit literary society dedicated to publishing contemporary & classic weird fiction and artwork."
It has produced translations of HPL and Clark Ashton Smith. Another French site concerns a Philippe
Gindre, who has translated HPL into that tongue.
Philosophy
Last issue I noted an article written by Gilles
Deleuze. He and fellow French philosopher
Felix Guattari ask in their book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia, "Is the
multiplicity that fascinates us already related to a multiplicity dwelling
within us?" and then
quote from that "masterpiece" (their description) "Through the Gates
of the Silver Key," to
expand on their meaning (p. 240). They later evoke Lovecraft's term
"Outsider" to distinguish
"the anomalous [that] is neither an individual nor a species" (p. 244).
This book, including mention
of HPL, has been the subject of a dissertation, Beast with a Million Eyes: Unleashing Horror
through Deleuze and Guattari, by David Eric Annandale of the University
of Alberta.
Noel's Carroll's The Philosophy of Horror,
or, Paradoxes of the Heart (Routledge, 1990)
has for its last chapter, ``Why Horror?'' a look at theories from H.
P. Lovecraft, Rudolf Otto,
Ernest Jones, and others. See a review of this book at the Canadian Journal of
Communication's website.
The journal Summa Philosophiae has
posted on the web an article, "Toward
an Esthetics
of Horror," where
Daniel Ust discusses Ayn Rand and horror, in which HPL receives several
mentions.
"Lovecraft"
The Edenfield Genealogical Society lists
an Aaron Lovecraft Braswell (born 2 September
1998, son of Geoffery and Jennifer). My inquiry about this name brought
a response from a
Richard Sallee, who said "His middle name is Lovecraft which is a Civil
War era name from
the Briggs (Jennifer) family. Can't tell you more than this but
apparently it has nothing to do
with H.P."
Under Cambridge University's Churchill College
for July
1998 the name Angelena
Francesca Lovecraft appears along with the designation "Master of Arts."
Family
The author of this page has shown in what way she is related
to HPL through a descendant
diagram. This is one of several links either written or compiled by the author. One of the links
has at the bottom of its page some of his works in Finnish (I think).
Events
"Salem's Peabody Essex Museum is calling its
two-week storytelling festival a series of
'Eerie Events' . . . The advertised spookiness -- Poe and Lovecraft
stories told out loud," --the
fall 1999 Boston Phoenix.
In Ekaterinburg (Russia) "Fear," a long
short story, and "Waiting at Crossroads," a
novel by H. L. Oldie, got 1st and 2nd places
at the 1994
Fantasy Competition dedicated to
Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
The Providence Journal (30/03/00) mentioned
a memorial service was to be held at his grave.
Time Lines
For years I have been stuck in the notion
phase of doing a time line for the fiction, and hadn't I
buckle down and do it? In his seminal essay, "A Literary Copernicus," Fritz Leiber had written
about the coincidences of some dated events, so a complete chronology might reveal something
significant or at least be fun to read. It's been done at "When the Stars Are Right," part of the
"NetherReal," a major Lovecraft site with an emphasis on the Cthulhu Mythos. I cannot vouch
for the thorougness of inclusion.
Recreation
Chris Zeller states in the webzine Trail Walker
(September-October,
1998) "The Ramblers
have attracted people from all walks of life and all economic backgrounds. Possibly the most
famous person to hike with the Ramblers was the science fiction author H.P. Lovecraft, who
mentions an outing with the Club in a diary entry from the mid-20's. There are currently just over
100 Ramblers." I cannot vouch for his statement. I couldn't find mention of the Ramblers in Life,
though S. T. describes Lovecraft's walking stamina as one of "tirelessness."
Games
"Sleepwalker
is a 3D first-person perspective action/adventure game for the PC. It is
inspired by the stories of 1920s horror writer Howard Philip Lovecraft"
There's a web quiz based on "Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire?," a game show I had not
heard about. One of the categories is "Cthulhu
Mythos (HPL and others)" You can "win" up to
$1,000,000, beginning with $100 and doubling the amount each time.
I flunked out with $1000
in my grasp.
"Cthangband" is a Cthulhu game.
This definition appears in The Hackers
Dictionary: "Shub-Internet:
/shuhb in't*r-net/
[MUD: from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity `Shub-Niggurath',
the Black Goat with a
Thousand Young] n. The harsh personification of the Internet,
Beast of a Thousand Processes,
Eater of Characters, Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting;
the hideous multi-tendriled
entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. A sect
of MUDders worships
Shub-Internet. .. . ."
Apparently--I am no gamer--the popular "Quake"
has some Cthulhuoid
connection.
"Nightmare Creatures," for Playstation, has
at least one Lovecraftian monster, according
to a reviewer.
Another reviewer regards the video game "Silent
Hill" as a lift from HPL, and yet another
refers to the "Lovecraft-inspired" "Abomination."
"Sarnath" is multi-player and downloadable.
The puffery
for this asks if it is "the scariest game of all time?" and states "The
popular traditional
RPG Chaosium's The Call of Cthulhu is being brought to the interactive realm by UK-based
Headfirst games in fall 2001. . . Although it's still more than a year from completion, Lovecraft fans
are already hailing the PC and PlayStation2-destined game as only as much as the author deserves."
Business
Silverman's Jewelers states:
"For generations, LoveCraft wedding bands have crowned
the defining moment of eternal love in the lives of countless couples
throughout the world." This
suggestion that these rings have become heirlooms causes me to wonder
how long this brand
has been around. A clue may be that Silverman's states it has existed
for over thirty-five years.
Sea World of California's attractions include:
"Dr. Lovecraft's Magic Medicine Show," in
the Nautilus Amphitheater. (LA Times, 27 May 1990, p.
55, Calendar)
"H.P.
Lovecraft's Labyrinth" was a haunted house-type attraction in Denver,
1995.
Interested in loud speakers? You could call
Lovecraft System Design (415 346-9256)
From a business address by Maxwell E. Bublitz,
President and CEO, Conseco Capital
Management: "I found a quote by H.P. Lovecraft on Conseco's chat room
over the weekend that
describes the science of modeling and mood of the bond market.
The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have
hitherto harmed us little; but some day [etc.]"
Lovecraft
calls itself "Canada's oldest sex toy store." It has an online catalog.
Maybe the
Freudian interpreters of his work should visit it.
Crime
A just-fired postal worker went on a rampage, as stated in the Los
Angeles Times, Orange County
edition, 22 August 1993 Sunday, p. A-1: "This was a man who was so
unobtrusive, so apparently
normal, that few noticed or remembered him. But he was also a man so
withdrawn and ill at ease
around others, and occasionally so bizarre, that some saw him as deeply
disturbed... A mailman
whose obsession with a female co-worker had cost him the job he loved,
[the man] has been
accused of stabbing his 63-year-old mother to death as she slept. .
. Then. . . he shot dead his best
friend and wounded a former co-worker. By the time he was caught .
. . police say he had
wounded four others. . .His job, his books and his music were the only
things that meant
anything to him and he seemed so uninterested in women as to be 'almost
asexual' . . . He
favored Rolling Stone magazine and the novels of John Steinbeck
and Stephen King. But he was
especially fixed on the surreal horror tales of turn-of-the-century
American writer H.P. Lovecraft,
whose work, one critic said, was characterized by 'the horror of unknowable
forces or beings
which sweep men aside as indifferently as men do ants.'"
Education
Go to Berkeley and attend English 150, Section
13: "American Horror and Violence after
1930." Or attend Yale University's comparative literature graduate
course entitled "Aesthetics
of
Horror and Disgust"; it requires readings in Baudelaire, Lovecraft,
Sartre, and others.
Tales of H. P. Lovecraft is an example
used in a Modern Language Association style
manual guide by one university.
A web-design example that is used to create
e-mail is "lovecraft@miskatonic.com"
A guide
to the University of Pittsburgh online catalog uses him as an example of
an author
search.
Music
From an article in the 25 November of The
East Hampton Star, written by Jeffry Obser:
"A haunting musical narration of H.P. Lovecraft's story, "The Music
of Eric Zann," sung by the
baritone Thomas Buckner, leads off a new recording by Stephen Dickman,
a classical composer
who lives in Springs. Carried forth by staccato triplets and tense
pauses, all departing from a
repeated single note, the piece sets a tone of longing and mystery
that carries through a unique
musical journey." A review
in Spectator Online states "Stephen Dickman's 'The Music of Eric
Zann' is a ghost story that is as powerful, in its way, as 'The Monkey's
Paw,' augmented to an
astonishing extent by the fact that its text, by H.P. Lovecraft, is
delivered at pre-ordained pitches.
It was concurrently a musical revelation and a theatrical tour-de-force,
the memory of which will
doubtless linger for a long time." This can be found on the C-D Who
Says Words (New World
Records).
How many bands with the name Lovecraft are
there? An individual or group appears to be still
singing with the name "Lovecraft," at least at New York's Maxwell's. A March 2000 issue of The
Florida Times-Union mentions a band with this name playing in San Marco, Fl. There's an "official"
site for the same(?) heavy rock band "Lovecraft" It's in Spanish. There's an Oklahoma City band called
"The Lovecraft" that
has been carried live on the net.
There's a rock and roll card that H.P. Lovecraft
shares with Donovan.
After a recommendation from a fan, musician Gary
Numan stated "I haven't read any
Lovecraft but I'll go out and get some as soon as I can. The more variety
of influence I can get
hold of the better."
The lyrics in Hip Slingers' 1987 single, "Pilgrim," was in part inspired by the fictitious Necronomicon.
Metallica's Ride The Lightning album
has songs inspired by HPL.
The Hexenhaus admits to being influenced by
Lovecraft.
"The Machine in the Garden" has one Lovecraft-inspired song in its album, One Winter's Night.
One of the cuts in the 1969 album Amazing
Adventures of the Liverpool Scene (by the
Liverpool Scene) is called "2 poems for H.P. Lovecraft." They also
have "4 love poems for Ray
Bradbury" and "Poem for Gully Foyle."
When Kirk
Hammett is asked about the group's "The Call of Ktulu" he responds
"Ktulu is a
Lovecraft character. He's big and he's hulking and he's all-powerful
and all-knowing. We thought it
would be cool to name the song after him because the song is big and
powerful and a huge piece
of music."
According to a Swedish webzine,
the musical name Fireaxe has a CD entitled Lovecraftian Nightmares,
whose cuts are "1.Beyond Zimbabwe 2.Nightmare Lake 3.The Ancient Track 4.The Outpost 5.Despair
6.Whispers in the Night ["The Whisperer in Darkness"?] 7.Hounds of Tindalos 8.Nemesis 9.Festival 10.
Nathicana."
Seattle has a "hard-core" band, "Teen Cthulhu."
The Way of The Vaselines: A Complete History includes the song "Lovecraft."
"Named after the great horror writer, H. P. Lovecraft
fashioned a hybrid of acid-folk-rock and oddly
striking vocal harmonies from two contrasting sources."--beginning of the article in the online version of
The Rough Guide to Rock.
The Mexican group sYnTHeD has made available online
some music from their Lovecraft, Synthed and
Another CD, including "Al-Azid (Necronomicron)."
Audio
Lovecraft tapes of various stories are for
sale.
Hear the poem "Continuity" recited,
or listen to Kevin Perry's "The
Yog Sothoth Jig."
A new one-hour audiotape: "the Champlin Foundations
Present Rhode Island Portraits in
Sound, The Fascinating Stories of Famous and Little-Known Rhode Islanders,
Part II, written by
Florence Markoff, read by Markoff, Oskar Eustis, Norman Jagolinzer,
David Nickerson and
Brian Ross. Bookmark Productions." There is free access at all Rhode
Island public libraries.
There were skips and blurs on "The
Outsider," as I tried to listen to it from the National Public
Radio archives. Rebroadcast for Hallowe'en1998, it was a special All Things Considered
broadcast from 1981, "a dramatic retelling of H.P. Lovecraft's masterpiece of horror, The Outsider....
featuring Gahan Wilson and Bob Balaban."
Art
Michael Whelan has a few Lovecraft covers
on view (and for sale). Try the letter "L."
Take a look at the paintings of Nicholas
Roerich. A guestbook entry refers to Lovecraft.
If you had been in Edinburgh, Scotland during summer
of last year you might have seen (at the
Collective Gallery) Mike Nelson's "To the Memory of H.P. Lovecraft."
In a review from the online
"Londonart.co.uk Magazine" Dan Wilkinson states the work is "a
suggestion that notions of logic
and order are only as real as cinematic or literary devices and are
consequently at risk of collapse
the moment the fiction which supports them is unveiled." There's a
full
review plus a photograph of
the artist's conception.
See a photograph of an attractive needlework
wall hanging entitled "Moonrise Over
Sentinel Hill." There is, for me, something Lee Brown Coye about it.
"Hilary Lloyd has exhibited in numerous critically
acclaimed group exhibitions,
including ... Lovecraft
at the CCA, Glasgow and the South London Gallery, 1998."
Stephen Hickman has sculpted Cthulhu and has an
illustration
for "The Temple."
In March and April at Brooklyn's Central Library
artist Heidi Schlatter had a Lovecraft installation
entitled "Stories and Spaces: Lurker in the Lobby." She stated "Those who might not otherwise read
his work can travel to a world evocative
of Lovecraft's writings by entering the exhibition space."
Jill Engels has created a stained glass picture
of posies she has titled "Lovecraft
Iris Dream." I asked
her if the reference was to HPL, and she replied, "YES! that piece has everything to do with h.p.l. I
designed and built the window while in the throes of a lovecraft obsession. Mostly it was inspired by the
story "the color out of space". . . The glass i used for the background; an eerie, swirly combination of
greyish, bluish not-quite-right and possibly poisonous vapory greenish-gold; was a piece i'd been saving
for almost 20 years. It was made by a company that no longer exists, and i wanted to use it in something
very special. As i got into cutting it, i discovered that if i were to break even one piece, i wouldn't have
enough glass left to re-cut it, so i would have had to start over with an entirely different color background.
horrors! that would have changed the whole piece! you may also be interested to know that i (reluctantly)
sold it. It was one of only two of my works that i ever really wanted to keep for myself. The guy who owns
it now was in the process of writing a screenplay based on that story when he walked into my studio!"
Comic Books
Artist Mike Vosburg co-writes a comic book
entitled Lori Lovecraft,
published since
1995.
According to a writer on Dr. Strange
comic book [aside: the character is soon to be in his
own movie] "Dr. Strange returned to his own series, with intro artwork
by Barry Windsor Smith
(issue #3 only) [July 1972]. The storyline
followed concepts from pulp/fantasy writers H.P.
Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, with hidden horrible ancient gods awakening
to spread their
chaos over mankind."
I can only present this fragment as a disembodied
voice from Japan: "At first, we would
make an arranging episode of 'the sound of footsteps from the depth
of the earth' based on
H. P.Lovecraft's 'Dunwich Horror' by Mr.Shigeru Mizuki." Mizuki is
a comic book (manga)
artist and animator.
The site with The
Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft--comic book adaptions of various stories--
shows covers and provides for ordering the stories, while another site
offers the comic
book
covers
of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
Elvira #84 contains "Shadow Over Sinnsport,"
which has killer gillmen.
"Codex Arcana -- a Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft
(a.k.a
DHP #142) is 32 pages of
black-and-white horror stories executed in the Lovecraftian tradition."
According to editor Randy
Stradley
"There's no question that H.P. Lovecraft had a profound influence on horror
fiction --
and comics."
Film
At the H.P.
Lovecraft Film Festival The Hound, The Outsider,
and Cool Air (premiere)
are some of the entries. The
Lurker in the Lobby offers the best of the H.P. Lovecraft
film
festivals (1996-98) on a $15 video. Two of the productions are by the
"Darkest of the
Hillside Thickets."
There's a site that has information about
the filming of Ex
Oblivione and another that
discusses the video Nyarlathotep.
According to Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago
Reader, the 1977 movie Providence,
the first English feature of Alain Resnais, includes "H.P. Lovecraft's
werewolves (as well as his
hometown of Providence, Rhode Island." Verification?
At the Golden Gate Awards 1999 under "Television,"
and its subcategory "The Arts," the San
Francisco Film Society recognized with a Silver Spire (a second prize),
The
Case of Howard
Phillips Lovecraft. According to Jamie
Gaetz "The Case of Howard Phillips Lovecraft
(literal translation of Le Cas Howard Phillips Lovecraft) by
Pierre Trividic and Patrick-Mario
Bernard is a visually complex biography. . . If such a genre were possible,
it would be called
'gothic experimental.' The construction of the film, the visuals, and
the way in which they are
used, actually induce a state that reflects Lovecraft's 'mindscape.'
This film was awarded the
Golden FIPA at this year's festival in Biarritz." Ken had something
on Le Cas in a recent Snake Den.
In an interview,
director John Carpenter is asked about filming a Lovecraft story, and he
answers, "Yes, I'd love to do a Lovecraft story. I'm not sure which
one, though." His In the Mouth of
Madness (1995) has come out with a DVD "special edition" that has his comments on one track. I
have not seen it, but several month ago I finally saw Prince of Darkness, and was impressed by the
Dunwich Horrorish potential at the end; what a
film it could have been.
Director Aaron Vanek discusses his making
of The
Outsider.
According to one source, this year amateur
film-maker Andrew Migliore will be shooting
"The Temple."
An issue of "Horrorline" claims, "Back in
1968, there was a Spanish film called ALIEN
TERROR (aka THE INCREDIBLE INVASION). Amazingly low budget disaster
that ripped-off
H.P. Lovecraft and is known only because it is the last film work of
the great Boris Karloff." Is
this a valid observation?
You can decide if this is a legitimate movie
poster--I think it is in Swedish--that
advertises H. P. Lovecraft's Beyond. It is otherwise called The
Beyond, directed by the late
Lucio Fulgi, a Lovecraft fan.
Learn about the short film "To
Oblivion," a Lovecraft adaption.
The Phantom Empire (1984), whose cast
includes Jeffrey Coombs, involves scientists
searching for the lost city of R'lyla. For a synopsis of this
and other enigmatic places, see Jessica
Amanda Salmonson's Cinematic
Lost Civilizations.
"Eschaton," is a Machinima film produced by the Strange Company (of Edinburgh) and
is
based on the writings.
Re-Animator is out on DVD, and there's commentary by the director, producer, and actors,
plus
cut and added scenes.
I have recently seen Roman Polonski's The Ninth
Gate, about the quest for copies of a satanic book.
If you are a bibliophile, there are a number of close-ups of woodcuts, and this movie ogles and totemizes
books as no other has ever done. I had hoped that there'd be an allusion to the Necronomicon, but no,
there wasn't. There are some excellent touches, and I consider the opening credits fitting for a Lovecraft
movie. The score is a wowser. The story, alas, sets up a mystery and-- perhaps this is a spoiler--doesn't
answer it.
A classified ad has appeared: "HORROR SCREENPLAYS--HPL Studios is seeking microbudget
Lovecraft-inspired horror screenplays with limited locations and effects for future production. Copy and
credit provided. There is possible pay. Send script to HPL Studios, 4872 Topanga Canyon Blvd., #154,
Woodland Hills, CA, 91364."
At the fourth annual Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee
one of the entries was the 7 minute Dagon.
Reporter Robert Butler put it as one of his favorite top 10 festival films, and described it for the 30 March
Kansas City Star: "Noted 'underground' comics artist Richard Corbin (an area resident) animated this
eye-popping effort that places a live actor within a surreal computer-generated dreamscape. . . . it tells the
story
of a man shipwrecked on a desert island populated by fish-people."
In an interview director Bruce G. Hallenbeck states "I'm currently working on a project
called London
After Midnight--not a remake of the Chaney classic but an Avengers/X-files/ H.P. Lovecraft combination
of elements that
should be a lot of fun. Hopefully, it will be completed by the end of 1999."
Director George
Romero was asked "Are you reader?" and replied "Well, I'm not an aficionado,
but
when I'm not reading to find a property, I love Henry James. I read a lot of Lovecraft and Poe."
Television
The 2-2-00 Providence Journal notes
that profiles of 10 famous Rhode Islanders will be
televised once a month on NBC. HPL will be among them. [The date I'm
recording this: 11
February 2000.] See also its 19/12/99 article "The Rhode Island Century
Top 100 - Notables."
I hope somebody gives a report of the program featuring him.
Carried by Canada's "Bravo" in March 1999,
Out
of Mind: The Stories of H.P. Lovecraft
(Appointment With Literature) is about a be-nightmared man who
discovers the stories and
then must contend with terrors. It is with Christopher Heyerdahl.
The site
states "Engaging in
a kind of game around the writer, the film playfully winks at some
of the themes characteristic of
his work: the occult, cursed books, monstrous creatures. Out of
Mind draws its inspiration from
Lovecraft's personal correspondence and many of his stories, carrying
the viewer through a
labyrinth 'beyond the wall of sleep.'" There a photo here of the actor
playing HPL and credits for
the 54 minute film.
Will there be a tv series based on the Mythos?
According to second hand info--that cites
SFX--a pilot has been shot by a
British company.
Theatre
Written by Jack Kyrieleison and originally
titled Battle Cry of Freedom, the Civil War
musical Reunion
"was held over at the Theatre Row Theatre in New York's famous
off-Broadway Theatre Row, where it played a total of 51 performances
between March 26 and
May 16, 1999." One of the characters is named Augustin Lovecraft. Ben
praised it in Ben's Beat,
but there was no mention of the Lovecraft name.
At the 1999 Philadelphia Fringe Festival "The
Music of Erich Zann" was presented by
the Dramaton Theatre. The following describes it. "Beautifully
crafted original shadow and rod
puppets come alive in this adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's short tale
of tall terror. An intimate
exploration of the undefinable abyss just outside your window, accompanied
live by the musical
ensemble Krakatoa." This is the first time I am aware that a Lovecraft
story has been adapted for
puppets.
Yale University has given performances of Lovecraft's
"Mountains
of Madness" [sic], about which
one of its actors said "we wanted to explore man's descent into himself, into insanity."
Text
It is Chaosium, I imagine, who has put on
the web the text of several Lovecraft works,
among them The
Case of Charles Dexter Ward!
"Gaslight" has the e-text of "Imprisoned
With the Pharaohs" (aka) and "Supernatural
Horror
in Literature."
There's a nifty side-by-side text comparison
of "The Thing in the Moonlight" both as it
appeared in a letter to Donald Wandrei--this is the first I've seen
it--and the version made of it
into a short-short by J. Chapman Miske. The site also has e-texts of
Poe, Bierce, Chambers'
The King in Yellow, and Clark Ashton Smith.
Other sites have collections of Lovecraft
(sites 1 and
2),
"Hallowe'en in a Suburb" and several
other poems,
and "Fungi
from Yuggoth."
Criticism
For those interested in the more esoteric,
there's a site plainly named "H.
P. Lovecraft."
A self-descriptive title, "The Great Anti-Cult
Scare 1935-1945" by Philip Jenkins was
presented at a conference sponsored by CESNUR (Center for Studies on
New Religions). The
17 page paper deals with real cults and in a couple of places makes
a few connections between
them and Lovecraft and the Weird Tales writers, among them Leiber
and Derleth. CESNUR's
library has what I presume to be a "schedule" of call number categories, one of which is "lovecraft,"
which is right after "chaos magick."
In his essay "Necronomicon
vs. Modernity," Tim Maloney discusses the attraction of
intentional and non-intentional (self-deception) hoaxes.
The 1998 Fall review Salmagundi has
Joyce Carol Oates' "The Aesthetics of Fear" (p.
176-185) begin with the famous opening quote from "Supernatural
Horror in Literature" and culminate
with comments on "The Rats in the Walls." It has "a lurid Boschean
grandeur" that "ends with a
brilliantly realized devolution of the protagonist." She also quotes
the familiar passage from "The
Call of Cthulhu," which story she calls "parable-like."
David Vilaseca has written "Nostalgia for
the Origin: Notes
on Reading and Melodrama in H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles
Dexter Ward," in
Neophilologus,
October 1991, 75, 4, pp. 481-95. Neophilologus is "an international
journal
of modern and medieval language and literature."
Joanna Russ' To Write Like a Woman: Essays in
Feminism and Science Fiction (1995) has a
chapter titled "On the Fascination
of Horror Stories, Including Lovecraft's."
Science and Destabilization in the Modern
American Gothic: Lovecraft, Matheson, and King
(Greenwood Press) by
David A. Oakes is, like Lord of a Visible World, slated for
June release.
John Mark Eberhart, a knowledgeable Lovecraft
fan who is a writer for the Kansas City Star, did a
long newspaper article (24 October 1999) about the life and writings. Among his views is that Harlan Ellison's
"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is very Lovecraftian, which I contended it was not in a letter I wrote
to him. He replied "The subterranean setting alone is straight out of HPL! The computer is a nonhuman,
monstrous agency. And the five human survivors in the story are tormented not because they have "sinned"
but because they simply have the misfortune to be chosen by this supercomputer to be its toys. . . I think the
most Lovecraftian element . . . is that the humans seem like ants in comparison to an immense power. To me
it doesn't matter whether this power is a Great Old One or a supercomputer." He also stated "S.T. Joshi's
great work [Lovecraft: A Life] and its burial in the mainstream press is a shame."
Biography
Paul T. Riddell has reprinted a review
of S. T.'s Lovecraft, which originally appeared in the summer 1997
issue of Tangent, "the science fiction and fantasy short fiction review magazine."
Influence (Writers)
Jess Mowry called HPL one of his favorite
writers. ( LA Times, April 10 1992, p. E-1), Lynn Flewelling
stated in an interview that one of her influences was HPL, and Kim Newman stated he read a lot of HPL
when a teenager.
John Dickson Carr read Lovecraft.
H. Wessells' website on Avram Davidson quotes
Davidson's flippant review of The Survivor
and Others that appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction (January 1963).
Wessells says "Surprise: despite
the above polemic, Avram made several significant allusions to
H.P. Lovecraft, in "Kindly Hold Out Your Right Finger," one of the
Adventures
in Autobiography;
and in such stories as "Something Rich and Strange" (where computer
programming assistance
from Miskatonic University helps track down the elusive mermaid), "The
Redward Edward
Papers," and "Death of A Damned Good Man," where his narrator muses,
somewhat coy, about
the authorship of the famed Lovecrafty couplet: [omitted by me]"
According to anonymous, Sabine Baring-Gould's
"'Marjery of Quether' is a very
remarkable short tale, a classic fantasy comparable with those of Lovecraft."
Felice Picano refers to the "overheated classroom
at Lovecraft Hall" in his Book of Lies.
In an autobiographical article, he speaks of a Providence aunt who
lived not far from Lovecraft.
In Horrorline Paula Guran interviews Joyce Carol Oates, who states " 'I'd first read
Lovecraft when I was a young adolescent, which is perhaps the best
time to read Lovecraft,' she
admits. 'Now, I admire him for his style, his monomaniacal precision,
the 'weirdness' of his
imagination, and the underlying, intransigent tragic vision that informs
all of his work. He's an
American original, whose influences on subsequent writers in the field
(Stephen King, for
instance) is all-pervasive.'"
Horrorline also interviewed Brian
Lumley, who said "I've read and talked Lovecraft until I
really can't do it any more. Why can't we just say of him that he was an original, one of the greats,
and that he influenced so many of us that he probably is the most important cornerstone of the
weird fiction tradition today...and
leave it at that?"
Michael Moorcock on influences: "Lovecraft was never one of my direct influences, I'm
afraid. I'm not a great horror fan at the best of times and found most
of Lovecraft impenetrable --
the only thing I read all the way through was Dream Quest of Unknown
Kadath maybe because,
like [Clark Ashton] Smith, it was in the Dunsany tradition."
Asked of George R. R. Martin: "Do you have a favourite author or book (or writer or film
or series) that has influenced you or that you return to?" Martin:
"Jack Vance. I think he is the
greatest living SF author and I read his books voraciously. H.P.Lovecraft,
Tolkien, Ursula K. Le
Guin."
Terry
Pratchett is asked "What is the 'H.P. Lovecraft Holiday Fun Club'?"
and replies: "Nothing serious, really. This was just the name I gave
to a group of people that
seemed to turn up at every UK convention in the late 80s -- me, Neil
Gaiman, Jo Fletcher, Mary
Gentle, Mike Harrison, etc, etc... As to why... well, it just seemed
to fit in that well-known group
of clubs like the Saudi Arabian Beer-Mat Collectors Association and
the Venetian League of
Joggers."
From an interview with Bruce Sterling: "H. P. Lovecraft was a big fan of that
cosmic-type stuff. That may be okay for him, but from the outside what
you see is this
pasty-faced guy eating canned hash in the dim corner of a restaurant,
hands trembly and a gray
film over his eyes. Lovecraft was a sick old man who died young. A
troll."
Salon webzine conducted an interview
with Stephen King. Andrew O'Hehir asked him
"Does your evocation of the Maine landscape owe anything to the fiction
you read as a kid --
H.P. Lovecraft in his books set in the woods of Massachusetts?"
King replied "No, not really. I mean, it did at the time, when I was
13, 14, 15 -- which I maintain
is the perfect age to read Lovecraft. Lovecraft is the perfect fiction for people who are living in a
state of sort of total sexual doubt, because the stories almost seem to me sort of Jungian in their
imagery. They're all about gigantic disembodied vaginas and things that have teeth. And that sense
of the ancient New England landscape ...very kindly, Lovecraft was a lot less interested in using the
landscape as a place where reality was thin and sort of deserted in the New England community as
he was in trying to express that kind of feeling of ancient life. So I had a tendency to copy that when
I was a kid, and I think later on I just tried to go back and find a more realistic way to talk about the
quality of that landscape. For instance, you know, when Lovecraft writes "The Dunwich Horror,"
about Dunwich, Mass. I mean, in a way it's a lot of idealized crap -- he was a city boy. He didn't live
in the country. And what he knew about it he saw from the windows of buses going between Providence
and
New York City."
King's conviction that HPL was a compleat urbanite goes back at least
to his introduction to the stories
of Joseph Payne Brennan in the 1980 paperback The Shapes of Midnight. He apparently is unaware,
for example, of Lovecraft's countryside tramps, as when Eddy and he searched for "Dark Swamp."
(Also see "Recreation," above.)
Cheri Scotch mentions HPL as a writer she likes.
She is author of Lifetime Online's new digital drama,
"In the House of
Dreams." and the novel The Werewolf's Kiss and similar titles.
A review (Booklist, 1 March 2000, p. 1194)
calls Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves "a
kaleidoscopically layered and deconstructed H. P. Lovecraft-style horror story. It hums and resonates
with wonder, dread, and insight." Likewise, in the New York Times Book Review (26 March) something
in the narrative reminded the reviewer of Lovecraft's "geometries." The story concerns a house with
disappearing passageways that are inhabited by menacing beings. If anyone reads it, would they consider
a review?
In 1975 Patricia
McKillip won, in absentia, the first World Fantasy Award for The
Forgotten Beasts
of Eld. Not having known that there was such an award, and never having heard of H. P. Lovecraft, when
she received Lovecraft's
head in the mail her reaction was, 'What the #@*!!$ is this?'"
Graham Masterton's Prey is a "twist on the
Cthulhu Mythos" according to the "Painted Rock" Horror and
Dark Fiction Reviews (December 1999).
Places and Haunts
Beside "A
Short Tour of Lovecraftian New England," find such items
as photos of the
Boston mentioned in "Pickman's Model."
There's a Lovecraft-drawn map
of Providence.
Popularity
According to Modern Library's Reader's
Top 100 Best Novels, AtMoM ranked 45. Lots
of Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard near the top.
"The
Science Fiction & Horror Directory" gives HPL the largest number
of links.
Portrayals
Naming Variety a source, the October
1999 edition of "TNMC
Bad Movie News" states
that the Miramax company "just purchased the film rights to an unfinished
book called Arcanum
by Thomas Wheeler. The book shows what would have happened if H.P.
Lovecraft, Harry
Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Marie Laveau met up and had to
battle supernatural evil."
Other details are elsewhere
available.
From an article in The New York Times
(13 February 2000, Arts & Leisure) about the
director Curtis Hanson and his decision to direct the new movie Wonder
Boys, based on a novel
of the same name by Michael Chabon: "What clinched the deal for the
superstitious Mr. Hanson
was that his own first name popped up twice in the novel, along with
a character based on H.P.
Lovecraft, whose "Dunwich Horror" he had adapted in 1970." p.26 AR
HPL appears in a fan publication, Perfect Timing,
an anthology of time travel stories written to
commemorate the 35th anniversary of Doctor Who.
Publications
Weird
Tales has an "official website."
In November 1997 a lengthy draft article entitled
"Early Ayjay & HP Lovecraft"
by
Ahrvid Engholm was put on a Swedish list.
There is an article (or site heading) entitled
"Twilit Grotto: Archives of Western
Esoterica."
A poem, "To Lovecraft," is among the writings
at this site.
There is or was a Lovecraft's
Mystery Magazine.
A July 1999 copy of the magazine Exit featured
illustrated panels for "The Tomb."
Cthulhu
Not to be confused with Crypt of Cthulhu,
the February March 1997 issue
of Crypt
Newsletter, whose subject is computers, mentions Cthulhu.
The catalog of antiquarian and hard-to-finds
put out by Vanishing
Books
glosses Kenneth Grant's Hecate's Fountain with "Much of Grant's
work incorporates the
Cuthulu Myhos of H. P. Lovecraft." Grant does not appear in Chris Jarocha-Ernst's
exhaustive 1992 A
Bibliography of the Cthulhu Mythos, which has to be due to the
1992
date of the Grant work. It would take Chris' recent print version
to include this.
"The Campus
Crusade for Cthulhu aims to round up victims for H.P. Lovecraft's slimy
green monsters, who they promise will bring on the end of the world.
Chapters for this sci-fi cult
club have sprouted up at more than a dozen campuses including Johns
Hopkins, Cambridge, and
Trinity College. Membership fees go toward the construction of the
Ziggurat of Doom."
In the book review section
of "Folk Tales, An Arts Review Magazine" Roger Zelazny's A
Night in the Lonesome October (Avon Books, 1993) is summarized
in part, "Come the
end of the month, a Ritual will be held, one that will determine once
again whether the Great
Old Ones break through into our reality." In the book's introduction
Zelazny thanks, Mary
Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P.
Lovecraft, Ray
Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Albert Payson Terhune, and the makers of several
old movies.
Although not named (he who shall be nameless?),
Cthulhu has a mask--a
literal Mask of
Cthulhu.
"The Dunwich Horror"
A search for "Dunwich" on Amazon's British
site brings out there is a cassette where
"The Dunwich Horror" is hilariously juxtaposed--if for no reason other
than by title--with
another work, "The Happy Man" (Gerald Page). There are also books on
witchcraft authored by
a "Gerina Dunwich." Lest one think the name comes directly from HPL--though
it could--there
are also titles about the original English town of Dunwich--The
Lost City of Dunwich and
Dunwich: East Anglia's Atlantis. Peter Cannon I think it was
noted that this Dunwich appeared in
Paul Theroux's The Kingdom by the Sea.
"The Rats in the Walls"
I was reminded of this story from Thomas Hood's
remark: "In the twilight the rats used
to come and peep out of the holes in the wainscoat [sic]." In Thomas
Hood, p. 118
Computers
It is unclear to me, but there may be a computer
virus named Lovecraft.224
A long discussion about the naming
conventions of servers includes bits about Yuggoth, Hastur, and
others.
Science
There's a long quotation from a letter to
James F. Morton used in a list message titled "H.
P. Lovecraft
on the Existence of Aether."
According to Walden West Fest '99, star-gazing
would be done courtesy of a telescope
that had belonged to H.P. Lovecraft. I wonder where his various
belongings are now?
Arkham House and Others
The October 1986 Esquire carried "The
Rise of the House of Arkham."
Arkham House
has begun distributing Fedogan and Bremer Books.
Grim
Reaper Books was founded in 1975 in New York City as an imprint of
The Poet's Press. Its
site states, "In the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury, we publish poems
that tap into myth, monster and dread." Its online catalog lists a number of books by a Brett Rutherford.
Contemporaries
This deserves multiple, dumfounded exclamation
points. What may be the entire Clark
Ashton Smith corpus is becoming available at "The
Writings of Clark Ashton Smith".
Read his short stories, poetry (I looked up "The Hashish Eater"), prose
poetry, plays, and
non-fiction writing; and see his art. There's a bibliography, with
a link to the full-text of
Arkham House's The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith! There
are also biographies
and other material. Warning, when I was at this site the connection
was
both slow and iffy.
Some band members are working on a musical
adaption of Lord Dunsany's The King of
Elfland's Daughter.
To see what M.R. Jamesians are up to, visit
"Ghosts and
Scholars."
See the Henry
S. Whitehead Letters To Lovecraft. (This is copyright by Arkham House.)
An interview with Robert Bloch appears in
Paradoxa
(v.5, no.9, 1998).
Darkness and Dawn, The Phantom of the
Opera, The Moon Pool, and other titles are
available in full e-text.
There's an interview
with stars Vincent D'Onofrio and Renee Zellweger and director Dan
Ireland about The Whole Wide World. It is conducted by Lawrence
A. Terenzi under the "Film
Nation" aegis.
I Wouldn't Say That
There is no difference between
a man who doesn't read a zine and one who reads a zine and doesn't comment.
(adapted from Mark Twain)
Don and Mollie: When it comes to matters Roswellian, I'm a sceptic and a scoffer. Your conviction that
aliens have visited this planet and the government has covered this up seems to me less founded on
objectivity than faith--emotional opinion--and your aim seems, at times, less to prove that aliens have landed
than that there is a government conspiracy. Such a belief cannot be contradicted by logic or reason--for
what evidence would you allow as a decisive rebuttal?--so my observations must be feckless. (I regret if I
sound impolite in these statements. I could, of course, always be shown in error if this delusion were fact,
but if so I'd adapt,
as would lots of people.)
Were the alien crash true, then there would
be scientific fallout as there was with the launch
of Sputnik. NASA, for example, wouldn't have such a problem with
funding and there would be
at least a half-ambitious space program, though in both instances the "real" reason could be
covert. If there are aliens, they should know better than to mix with
us. The nearest thing we have to aliens
are animals, and consider what
extinctions we are causing so many species.
Despite my view, I wish you continued enjoyment
in your interest.
Kennett: Add a pinch of chagrin to my appreciation
for the copy of the Necronomicon program. The pinch
came because I learned
that Timo Airaksinen had appeared there, so my interview with him
was in part superfluous.
Ken: Re your statement that HPL's work has
a sexual subtext: as always, the difficulty is drawing the line
between what the author said and what you interpret the author to have said. A work of criticism can turn into a
posthumous collaboration. *** Your delayed bio of R. H. Barlow in Scott's Continuity was a treat. I have
never seen before examples of Barlow's scholarship. As you say, his editorial was a "moving portrait." Was it
intentional or otherwise (considering the date that you researched this article) that you overlooked Barlow's
homosexuality altogether? It was a pivotal factor in how he socialized with other people and-- following de Camp
--in his suicide.
John: Your unpleasant experience with that
book collecting and/or book selling couple does not mean, I think,
my position about collecting vs. public stewardship is boostered. You find difficult people in every circle of interest
--look no further than the EOD(!) (I'll throw in a necronomoticon :) Thanks for keeping a fair mind. Also, huzzas
for the observation that Lovecraft personally sought knowledge but
in his fiction knowledge is better avoided.
Scott: Your essay on CAS and modernism left
me breathless--for my mundane head the atmosphere was so thin
that I had to come down from philosophies and aesthetics. Congrats on getting it into Lovecraft Studies. Of the
reviews of Smith's poetry that you reprinted, the most perceptive and sensitive was Alfred Galpin's.
Lovecraftian, the OED, and the EOD
The magisterial Oxford English Dictionary collects, with
illustrations, the earliest usage of a word. One of the editor
told me that its file dated the first appearance of the word "Lovecraftian" from 1976, until I mentioned a 1974 item.
While way back HPL had a zine named Lucubrations Lovecraftian, what I prefer to discover is its use as a
description of his type of fiction or atmosphere or cosmic viewpoint, rather than a designation for the man, as Derleth
and perhaps Leiber used the word in the 1949 Something About Cats. If anybody comes across an early usage of
the word as I have defined it, could you let me know, and I'll pass it on to the OED; or you could do the same, if you
fear that you might otherwise lose credit.
sw
This has been the 29th issue of The Criticaster (April 2000, mailing 110) by Stephen R. Walker. Published simultaneously for the
Esoteric Order of Dagon, an apa. (Reformatted 2/2009)
