The Planet Oddity blog showcased this photo set awhile back from Mexico's infamous Island of Dolls. Here, a man named Don Julian Santana spent decades throwing toy dolls across the island, supposedly to appease the spirit of a deceased girl. He inadvertently created a nightmarescape whose moniker sounds like the perfect title for a weird tale. The island's playful inhabitants are a genuinely eerie sight, doubly creepy because it's easy to imagine some other muse besides obsession directing its creator.
Victoria, British Columbia's Solstice Cafe will be holding a birthday bash for H.P. Lovecraft later this year on...well, his birthday. This commemoration celebrating the 120 years since Lovecraft's birth will feature gobs of entertainment. Here's a prospective activity list from an official press release via Unfilmable.com:
Friday August 20th is the 120th birthday of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. What's that you say? The paranoid, xenophobic old bastard has been dead since 1937, from a combination of cancer and Bright's Disease? Well of course he has, but why let a little thing like that get in the way of a birthday party?! Have a little vision!
We have. We've had visions aplenty. Appalling visions! Visions of a Cthulhu-riffic cabaret the likes of which this town has never seen! After all, Lovecraft IS the father of modern horror; he deserves no less, we think you'll agree. Yes, a hideous spectacle of spoken word, a phantasmagoria of poetry, music and comedy to drive you mad with glee! A loathsome yet hilarious parade of shambling horrors and general yog-sothery before your very eyes!
Also, birthday cake.
Performances by: the diabolical Dave Morris Plutonian Warlock Skawt Chonzz the malevolent Missie Peters Tindlosi Hound Wrangler GLuke Maynard the khaotic Kimberleigh Roseblade and many other diverse and terrible entities!
And if you haven't fled gibbering from the building after so much cosmic awesomeness, we will present an exclusive screening of director David Prior's award-winning Lovecraftian short film "AM1200" in the second half of the show!
Door prizes! A thoroughly abominable HPL Trivia Contest! Prizes for Best Costume!
FEEL THE CALL... August 20th -- Solstice Cafe -- 529 Pandora Ave, Victoria Doors Yawn Wide @ 7:30, Show @ 8 $10 at the door, $5 with costume
Canadians and Northwestern US citizens with a clear calendar on August 20th should consider attending.
-Grim Blogger
Lovecraft's Birthday Celebration in Victoria, Canada
The shock discovery of urban deaths is nothing spectacular, but the imagery evoked by this Finnish case is worth mentioning. It's also a reminder of how urban chasms and ruined citadels of economic vigor are swallowing the dead in the way farmland and gothic castles used to. More spectral centers are sure to come down if construction demand ever emerges from the current recession/depression, and they, too, will yield up their mummies. How many unwilling bodies will be revealed when industrial coffins are pried up in potential catacombs like Detroit? And what about the lucky few who will remain shadowed for centuries, Ligottian internments in dead factories, whose idle limbs come a bit closer each year to merging with comatose smokestacks and warehouses?
The public monument is a symbol of a historical figure's lasting influence. Only Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and a few European writers of weird fiction have had commemorative plaques erected in their name. However, only one strange scribe has won a life size statue. Edgar Allan Poe's unique place in American literature leaves him as the weird "king" best recognized and memorialized by public consciousness.
Baltimore's Poe statue was unveiled nearly a century ago, and today stands as a testament to his greatness. It has suffered the elements, vandalism, and a move to the University of Baltimore campus, just outside their law school. Oddly, it has symbolically dovetailed the posthumous reputation of the man it was modeled on. And still it stands, like Poe himself--seemingly inveterate and unassailable, always somewhere in the culture's shadows.
The Transition of Juliet + Romeo is an indie film that's looking for Lovecraftian input and donations to get off the ground. The project is a bizarre marriage of ideas melding Shakespeare with H.P. Lovecraft. It's name is a play on words off Lovecraft's tale, "The Transition of Juan Romero." The film's website offers this description of their modernized and unexpected literary mash-up:
Imagine a world not unlike our own, but a world where William Shakespeare did not write the story of Romeo and Juliet. Instead that story remained untold for 300 years till discovered and reimagined by the horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft. It is this story that "The Transition of Juliet + Romeo" hopes to relate to you.
A contemporary tale, Juliet and Romeo are separated not by family feud but by social strata. Romeo is a humble mail clerk in Verona Legal Services and Juliet is the daughter of the CEO; when Juliet's father uses the Necronomicon to summon outer god Yog Sothoth all Hell is literally unleashed. Now our star crossed lovers must battle Fate, the forces of darkness, and parental disapproval so that they might spend eternity together.
The film will combine the survival themes of genre defining horror such as Dawn of the Dead with the Gothic Romance of works such as Dracula to create a new an exciting tale.
In Order to get this Film into Production, Team Gecko are trying to raise £15,000 by getting 15,000 people to give £1 each. In return you'll receive a minimum of a Digital Download of the film after completion and the more you give the more you get with DVD's, Bluerays, Posters, Merchandise, Parts in the Film, And Personal Spin Off Videos.
To get involved you can click on the IndieGoGo widget on the left, or go to our facebook group at http://bit.ly/YogSothoth and pledge to give £1 in August/September. In order for our campaign to succeed we need as many people to pledge their support as possible, so invite all your friends, and family particularly if they're into thoughtful horror/thrillers.
It won't be certain for awhile if this project is able to gather the money needed for production. But there's no question the team has already outdone themselves with the idea. These type of cross-genre cocktails are becoming increasingly popular, and not just in Lovecraftiana. Just look at Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for a perfect example.
Mixing horror with classic mainstream literature may be a useful tool for reintroducing old masters to younger and less literary obsessed audiences. The experiment has not yet been attempted (to my knowledge) with weird fiction or in cinema, but The Transition of Juliet + Romeo will provide a bold exploratory effort, if it's able to advance.
Here's a new student produced film of H.P. Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House." Though it's a bit rough in parts, as the creator notes in its Youtube description, the short movie draws on a unique type of animation. It effectively mixes stop motion puppets and environments with computer animation. The sounds and dream sequences are also exceptionally unsettling. Consider it further proof that interesting Lovecraft adaptations can be done on a shoestring budget.
Since H.P. Lovecraft's death in 1937, many writers have sought to tap his visions and energies for their own literary purposes. Some have careened wildly into new territory as a result. None, however, has done so in quite the way Laird Barron has. When his first short story collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, appeared several years ago, Barron gained a cult following. Now he is back with a new book of nine stories called Occultation and Other Stories, which at times seems like a ritualistic tome designed to transmit Barron's dark fantasies into readers' souls. The vibrant sorcery that thunders from these pages has its origins in his challenging depictions of exotic characters and environments, as well as a scrambled version of Lovecraft's Cosmicism designed to invoke a timeless chill within our bones.
Many have classified Laird Barron as a Lovecraftian writer--a deserved identification--but one that should only be used with limited parameters. The sheer range of style and setting that appears in Occultation probes venues and records voices Lovecraft could have never dreamed of, people and places unexplored by most post-Lovecraft "Cthulhu Mythos" authors. The stories in this collection tear through boundaries presented by societies and geography, letting through unadulterated strangeness and terror in its purest form...everywhere. Beyond that, Barron manages to unearth new treasures, shining with a grim luster that does not owe its brilliance to Lovecraft's ghost, but to other influences and the author's own experimental designs.
The book's remarkable diversity is inescapable, and much of it stems from Barron's large storytelling toolbox. In the title story, "Occultation," a nightmarish situation centered around a strange shape on a cheap hotel's wall unrolls itself through innocuous dialogue. These are the words of a hapless couple trying to deny the insanity of what is happening a few feet from their bed, in exchanges that are painfully human. However, the subconscious denial expressed here is feeble, and rightfully so. The collapse of safe, dependable anchors in Barron's worlds is so thorough that neither his fictional subjects nor his readers can successfully negate the transmutation carried out by outre actors. Subverting "known" reality is Laird Barron's specialty, and his faithfulness to this principle drives his dimensional membrane ripping styles.
Barron's ability to seamlessly integrate equally unsound dreams and realities is the most frequently marshaled technique in his narrative arsenal. Nowhere is this better applied than in "The Lagerstatte," where a disorienting trio of hallucination, nightmare, and faded life struggle for dominance over a woman who has lost her family in a plane crash. This is an enshadowed representation of madness intersecting with dark, primal spirits, who bring unwelcome reminders of loss to the tortured protagonist and beyond the book's covers. Another frightfully uncertain atmosphere settles over the wasteland of "--30--." Here, an alienated pair are stuck in an artificial module, far from civilization, tracking natural phenomena on land tainted by a bizarre cult's mysterious history. As in "The Lagerstatte," emissaries of the uncanny and unknowable intrude into minds that are already distraught by past burdens and frequent nightmares. No blows are withheld in the story's awful climax, and the excruciating collision engineered by Barron will leave readers inventing their own interpretations about the mechanics of the supernatural and the subconscious.
The Imago Sequence won broad appeal in part because its characters depart wildly from traditional Lovecraftiana. Unbalanced strongmen and clumsy elites suffered equally as they fell to forces they could never hope to understand. Occultation's cast includes a few familiar personality types, but its main characters are more diverse than in Barron's first collection. The professions, genders, ethnicities, and sexual preferences vary wildly in an egalitarian distribution of cosmic terror. None are spared. Similarly, no two environments envisioned by Laird Barron are the same, despite his slight preference for northwestern America's familiar stalking grounds. His cities, countrysides, forests, and deserts have their names--real or imaginary--but all of these places wind up as putty built to heighten each story's horrors, as backdrops for madness and menace.
While Barron's plots, characters, and styles are as unique as they come, there are strong echoes of a worldview familiar to H.P. Lovecraft readers in more than half the stories in Occultation. In fact, the clarity with which Barron presents H.P. Lovecraft's philosophical legacy marks him as one of the few writers working in the genuinely Lovecraftian tradition--not by dropping names of curious sounding entities and books, but by boldly showing mankind's dust speck like place in the universe. "The Forest" follows a renegade entomologist and his well-to-do buddies on a quest to breakthrough the barriers of time and species to communicate with humanity's insectoid successors. Extraterrestrials with an insatiable hunger are the chief threats in "The Broadsword," an anxiety boosting tale that chronicles an invasion by hostile voices and visitors at an old hotel converted into residences. In these stories, the horrors actually decipher themselves, but there is no comfort found in knowing their monstrous workings. The Lovecraftian theme of forbidden knowledge surfaces in the novella length "Mysterium Tremendium," which covers a group of gay friends and lovers on their trek to the Kalamov Dolmen mentioned in The Black Guide, a tome as unsettling and magical as any rattled off by Lovecraft. The sanity and relationship shattering encounter at the story's conclusion is practically expected by the time it occurs, but the full revelation of an ancient evil's true form is as surprising as it is disturbing.
Barron's unique modernization of Lovecraftian Cosmicism will probably be the book's main attraction, but another subset of stories presents a worthwhile contrast especially suited for more general readers of weird fiction. In these tales, the distant influences of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood supplant Lovecraft. They also testify to Laird Barron's capable handling of weird fiction at large, not just the Lovecraftian. "Catch Hell" is easily on par with this collection's best Lovecraftian pieces. Dark gods and black magic forever alter the disjointed lives of a couple trying to have another child after the shock death of their first. This story houses an original breed of possession, and eerie questions about mortality and fertility, questions that have never been asked in the gruesome way posed here. More traditional markers of evil also take center stage in "Six Six Six." As might be guessed from the story's title, Satanism and archaic occult powers cease to be banished when an heir occupies his family's ancestral home. Old shadows consume the present. Psychotic, ugly truths about the heir's family are exposed to his wife, who follows her husband into a black pit unbound by time. Finally, "Strappado" is quite different from any other Barron tale. An artistic performance in a foreign land turns equal parts criminal and mysterious, leaving one broken participant to drown himself in futile denial, even as acidic questions about the will to live wash over readers in a torrent. Questions raised by this story, like the others in Occultation, are designed to haunt and hurt well after completing an initial read. And a second, and a third, and so on. Barron powered queries are never comfortable, but they are definitely enlightening.
Occultation really is a well balanced collection that builds on the solid foundations left by The Imago Sequence. Laird Barron serves up more of the wonderful Lovecraftian fare his previous readers expect. His experiments in new directions pay off exceedingly well, and may foreshadow horrific vistas of future short story collections and novels. Occultation may be analyzed one day not merely as another successful collection of weird tales, but as an important transit point in Barron's literary career, leading to evolutionary paths as alien and vivid as his fictional horrors.
The Cthulhu Cult website has launched a new series of podcasts called "Lovecraftian Obsession." Its purpose seems to be to provide a platform for experts "obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft." The first episode contains a discussion with longtime writer and game designer Kenneth Hite. Check out this episode, which will hopefully be the first of many insightful audio ruminations on modern Lovecraftiania.
Time marches on, and new discoveries in Antarctica's depths continue to mirror H.P. Lovecraft's fiction. Everyone should know by now not to pry too closely into the study of mysterious polyps.
Last week, the long standing Robert E. Howard blog, The Cimmerian, shuttered its digital gateway to new content. This effective closure is a sad one, but the good news is that their many talented bloggers will probably continue writing elsewhere. Their extensive archive on Robert E. Howard, heroic fantasy, and loads of subjects connected to weird fiction will also remain functional. All good things come to an end, as an old cliche so bitterly reminds us, and it will not be easy filling the gulf left by The Cimmerian's departure. But now is a time to celebrate the many successes this blog has had over the years. Particularly their coverage of Howard, who was a skilled writer as well as a friend and correspondent with H.P. Lovecraft.
From Grim Reviews to The Cimmerian: a thousand cannon salute!
Though this is probably finding its way around the blogosphere at a steady pace by now, news regarding the biggest H.P. Lovecraft cinematic adaptation to date is too important not to pass on. Film maker Guillermo del Toro was recently interviewed by Aintitcool.com. During the dialogue, he gave a direct update about the status of his proposed film based on Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness:"
Q: You're saying that you know you need to get a little braver, you're trying to work up your bravery. That's something that strikes me that will be very necessary to mount AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS. Is this something that you're working on?
Del Toro: No, no, no. I have exactly the set of tools that I need to be brave on MOUNTAINS. It's just that when you see something that somebody else is doing that you would never do, you admire it, you know? But no, MOUNTAINS is exactly the movie I would like to do; it would push buttons, and it's extreme in many areas. It's a hard R-rated, big production tentpole in the genre of horror.
What I love about tentpole horror - which is not done much anymore, if at all - is that there was a time when you could see something like ALIEN or THE SHINING or THE THING. Movies that came not as a B-movie product of a studio, but as an A, tentpole, big release, high-end production like THE EXORCIST, and so on and so forth. And what I would love with MOUNTAINS is for it to have all the luster and the scope of a tentpole horror movie, but be R-rated. Not because I want to do gore for gore's sake, but because it is a very adult movie, and the consequences of things are really deep and disturbing. Hopefully, one day, I will have the clout to do it. But no, I am equipped with the exact bravery to go crazy on all the movies I make.
It seems del Toro is definitely feeling the pressure to do this right--and that's a good thing--given the sub-par history of Lovecraftian cinema, which has mercifully been turning around this past decade. Unfortunately, this also sounds like it will be awhile before the film will even start rolling forward, let alone hitting the screen. But at least a prominent director with vision is treating Lovecraft's fiction carefully.
-Grim Blogger
Del Toro Wants Lovecraft's "Mountains" to be A Grade Film
Dylan Trigg's thoughtful article over at the Side Effects blog deserves the attention of Lovecraftians with a soft spot for "The Shadow Out of Time." In somewhat obscure philosophical terms (at least to those not well schooled in formal philosophic studies), Trigg compares the conflicted self-hood experienced by Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee with the phenomenological conjectures of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an early twentieth century French thinker. The selection of quotes from both Lovecraft and Merleau-Ponty by Trigg generates a commendable feedback array that illuminates the murkier aspects of consciousness and self-hood in Lovecraft's work. Out of the intelligent static comes a promising angle for dissecting some real unexplored territory nestled in HPL's literary subconscious. This is an example of the critical lens needed to propel Lovecraft studies into truly new, fascinating, and strange directions.
Lovecraftian writer Wilum Pugmire recently interviewed S.T. Joshi in a recorded video posted at his MrWilum channel. In this short, but informative talk, the respected Lovecraft scholar talks with Pugmire about his latest projects: an imminent unabridged edition of the biography, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life, a second Black Wings anthology of Lovecraftian fiction, and several new books of Lovecraft's letters. It's clear that Joshi is balancing a lot of Lovecraftian material, which means a rich flood of it will continue to pour out into the literary world for years to come.
You know that weird fiction has entered 21st century media with this planned release of an H.P. Lovecraft iPhone App. The Necronomicon Card Game is an interactive RPG (Role Playing Game) scheduled for a summer 2010 release. The computerized "card game" apparently draws its gaming inspiration from card based strategy games like Magic: The Gathering, and quite possibly this older flash game with the same name. Slide To Play's article has this to say:
Billed as a role-playing card game, Necomonicon is apparently designed for quicker gameplay sessions and will take some influence from dice-rolling tabletop RPGs. We know that achievements will let you unlock new cards, but we're unclear about whether this will be a primarily single-player experience, or allow you to play against other masters of the occult in multiplayer.
Certainly, this game won't be the last Lovecraftian App made for the iPhone and other portable multimedia devices. It's likely to be nothing less than a flagship in a great fleet of strange media setting out on the digital seas from the familiar ports of literature and film.
I have a confession to make: Grim Reviews is here to provide observations, curiosities, and timely commentary, but it doesn't always do the best job of hitting on breaking news when it's...well, "breaking." I had toyed with the idea of a Twitter account for exactly this purpose, and may still do so in the future, but for now, I'd like to direct your attention to this excellent Weird Fiction News feed by a Polish aficionado of weird literature. This twitter stream is a veritable candy shop for horror readers. There, relevant tweets on weird fiction's newest releases and authorial activities soar through cyberspace magnificently. In this digital age, there's no excuse for the press releases of publishers and writers moving at a disjointed crawl, and Weird Fiction News may be just the prescription for helping modernize the weird genre in real time coverage.
The bizarre, wanton cruelty of this mass chicken killing in a far flung outpost of North America is truly baffling. What's even less certain, and might never be known, is the motive and the actor behind it. Was it just a frost bitten psycho or something more mysterious? Perhaps a mythic force haunting the wintry boundaries of Canada and Alaska best represented by Algernon Blackwood's Wendigo? You decide.
Jordan McCann recently posted this interesting article on his Forensics' blog about investigating the causes of Edgar Allan Poe's death. About a century and a half later since his mysterious demise, there is still good reason to wonder what caused it. Disease? Drunkenness? Long or short term illness? These and other possibilities have been raised. Historically, Poe entered Baltimore in bad shape in early October, 1849, and died soon after.
McCann's article is unique since it approaches his mysterious death from a forensic perspective. A discussion of what could possibly be unearthed by giving Poe's body a proper examination today follows a summary of the popular theories surrounding his death. This enduring curiosity will probably never be known in full, but McCann makes a strong case for a forensic investigation on Poe's remains to help unravel at least a little of the uncertainty.
Desencyclopedie contains a bizarre entry (that I can barely make sense of, being ignorant of French) about H.P. Lovecraft. It seems the article envisions an alternate life for HPL after he's born in France, rather than Providence, Rhode Island. Like his real world self, the French Lovecraft becomes a writer. Unlike the historical Lovecraft, this man enjoys a lasting marriage, has a family, and then seemingly befalls a fate blurring fiction with alternate reality.
Lovecraft is one of the few great authors, and perhaps the only weird horror writer so far, to be subjected to alternate selves. For a lengthy account of what might have happened if HPL had lived much longer, see Peter Cannon's thought provoking novel, The Lovecraft Chronicles. This book may soon be joined by new alternate Lovecrafts if this French piece is any indication of foreign interest in re-imagining Lovecraft's life.
French wise readers will have a better time understanding the sourced article. For the rest of us, there's this exceedingly crude translation from Google Translate:
HP Lovecraft is a writer Ariege, author of comedies and new burlesque. Born in Barjac (Ariege) in 1890, he died at the Mas d'Azil in 1937 under conditions not well understood.
His literary work, unknown in his lifetime, was unanimously acclaimed as it was plagiarized by American author HP Lovecraft namesake.
A silly misunderstanding
Early in the existence of HP Lovecraft were struck with an amazing misunderstanding that would mark the seal of all the absurdity of its creation. The child was born to an Irish father and Congolese mother, is his uncle who said his African name in the register of births: Aubrey Dale Fitzpatrick. But the employee, abused by a foreign accent of the sponsor, consigned to a pen applied what he had understood: Psychiatric Hospital.
What was written was written, no turning back. In an absurd, discouraged by the obstinate refusal of all attempts to rectify this lamentable error. A revealing letter
We calculate, but much later, that this resistance incomprehensible from the French administration was from a single person: the registrar in charge of claims. This hypothesis was established once and for all when the proponent of the work of the writer ariégois Jean-Seyblagat Aymar de Bales, published an unpublished letter of public officer to his wife:
"My dear friend,
You can not imagine how the pettiness of the world can spread! For six months I am assailed petty jokes of a certain Mr. Lovecraft. He claims by administrative request the rectification of her male child whose name would be in his muffled: Psychiatric Hospital.
There is no doubt that the only reasons for harassment are cursed stupidity and wickedness of the most futile. What can I do if my dear father wished to give me his love of learning the names of Daniel Haziel Aeneas? What if I do stutter and that his dearest wish was so misunderstood?
With my affection, your always loving
Insane Asylum "
Because of this misunderstanding fatal, the name of the child could not be changed. His parents were now easier to call HP.
A quiet life
Nevertheless, this mistake was helpful to the writer once in his life during the First World War, HP was reformed ex.
After a CAP plumber, HP went to Barjac a small business selling cold showers. He met in 1919 at the Mas d'Azil one who would become his wife, the sultry Camille Ysolde Forse was a lingerie shop renowned for the strength of its tissues. In their happy union were born two sons, Bart and Joe Earl Hubert Lu
From my years in this small town of Ariege, cashed in his valley from a remarkable cave system and a hill with a dolmen, HP drew much of his inspiration. The village, whose buildings left decaying remains likely reflected a certain standing rural past century, its narrow cavities where the cement revealed the timbered medieval his prehistoric archeology museum with tools of bone and Flint plaster HP Lovecraft in the company of his neighbors, Avenue de la Grotte Mas d'Azil. he served as a backdrop for The Abomination of Mas-Carla (1929) as well as other news such as in the deep hole (1931), hallucinogens Hills (1932) or The Big Hairy Beast in the Cave (1934 ).
HP Lovecraft drew on his experience to describe rural life scenes earthy, where a population with strange customs, half of which is called Massat, one of Rouch, lives in lands unknown to civilization and seeks to heard despite an accent you could cut with a knife.
Published at the author in a publishing house Lavelanet, these naturalistic studies worthy of Zola had no success. They brought him in return for enduring resentment on the part of its close neighbors who thought himself in the characters described. It remains to determine whether it is for this reason that his body was found crushed beneath a cliff, a rainy day in October when he was looking for mushrooms.
His work HP showing his girlfriend hairy beast in the depths of the cave.
From 1924 until his mysterious death in 1937, HP Lovecraft wrote thirty short stories written in a tone that is both sincere and burlesque. The most famous are The Abomination of Mas-Carla, The Nightmare of Vernet-sur-Arize, The Curse of Art'yggath, The No-Name-screaming on the mat, fungi from Quer'hygguth, The Cure of Death Kill, Who trembled in the cupboard, The Eater of men Biroth, Quest dreamlike Tourneggath the unknown Horror Villeneuve-de-Bousignac, The Case of Charles Hector Trémoulet and certainly the most famous of all, The Call of Saint-Quentin-de-Gras-Capou.
Without attempting to summarize the entirety of his work, we present here an outline of the most notable of his writings: The Abomination of Mas-Carla
In the small town of Mas-Carla Crampagnous family, lineal descendant of the Cro-magnon by the mother, has discovered the secret of his mysterious ancestors who lived in the depths of the cave: they now resort to the abominable sacrifices chickens at night on the dolmen, to the chagrin of their neighbors genetically debilitated by inbreeding. The Nightmare of Vernet-sur-Arize
A naive student Toulouse realizes that the strange inhabitants of Vernet-sur-Arize have found a natural fertilizer to increase miraculously thrust fungi. The Vernétois then seek to frighten by disguising himself as a bear. The Case of Charles Hector Trémoulet
The first part of the story takes place during medieval times-and-Barrineix Fougasse where an ageless man, escaped the pyre at Montsegur Cathar heresy, is passionate about fly fishing. Lovecraft describes perfectly this universe where the miscreant is finicky frowned he prefers to tease the stud as getting to Mass on Sunday. Generations later, Charles Hector Trémoulet, too passionate fly fishing, ends up discovering a terrible secret in seeking hooks in his attic. Gradually, his physical turns: why Charles Hector as he finally looks like a trout? The Call of Saint-Quentin de Gras Capou
This new, arguably the most famous, became emblematic of the literary universe of HP Lovecraft.
After eating a fat capon at Christmas Eve, three people from very different conditions, from different places of the Ariege - a traveling salesman, a farmer in his fifties and a school teacher of Mirepoix - are the same nightmare Recurrent which leads to the village of Saint-Quentin-de-Gras-Capou. The investigation reveals the existence of an ancient legend that crowns the numinous is the patron saint of the parish. Led by a strange coincidence to travel simultaneously on the church square, they assist with the Parish Priest to the spectacular appearance of St. Quentin. A final misunderstanding
Just as his birth had given rise to a cruel mistake, it is ultimately a misunderstanding that will be due the celebrity of the work of HP Lovecraft. Discovering at a friend's bookstore, near the fireplace and used as fuel, the integral of the writer Ariege, a passage curiously American namesake, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, decides to translate it into English.
Its approximate French, his deliberate intention to put the work in the United States to please the American public, his rejection of any reference to ailing local religions, for him vaguely related to satanic cults, allied in numerous translation errors : a work is distorted or mutilated, which reaches a huge success posthumously.
As the author himself, the understandable confusion between his name and the translator did the rest: HP Lovecraft, the greatest writer that ever wore the Ariege, remained in oblivion where it was never released.
I want to highlight this post from Cian Gill's Age of Empire blog about Australian weird fiction. Besides being a review of Australian Ghost Stories edited by James Doig, it forms an excellent commentary on this isolated continent's weird fiction tradition. What comes across in the analysis and quotations selected by Gill is a conflicted legacy. Australian writers of ghostly and Gothic stories, prior to the late 20th century, appear to be stricken with a shadow of inferiority hanging over their work. This is a curious contrast with the way things have developed in the United States and even Canada. Australia, like both of these other nations, is home to a wonderful array of otherworldly terrain, native traditions, and historical occurrences that should make it a natural mental playground for the weird.
Yet, oddly, Australia's weird literary flowering seems stunted until late last century. It's easy to wonder whether this has something to do with the nation's colonial legacy and a confused, sometimes violent legacy with its aboriginal population. But, then, if this is the case, what about the U.S. and Canada? All of these nations were originally British imperial extensions, though America broke away much sooner than either Canada or Australia. Further, both North American nations share Australia's difficult history with other ethnic groups--native or otherwise--that happened to settle sooner or later than the dominant population.
Other observations by Gill bring up the interesting question of a society's perceived age. Australian horror writers quoted in his article express uncertainty over the worth of their own spiritual and cultural traditions, which appears correlated with a feeling of immaturity. Once again, this is more serious and quite different than both the U.S. and Canada. The former country saw Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce rise to prominence within less than a century of its establishment. Lovecraft's work came along not long after, and expresses some of its psychic strength in Lovecraft's devotion to, what is to him, a rich and archaic American colonial experience. Canadian weird fiction took longer to flower, but its unique national features were attractive enough by the early 20th century to be used by foreigners like Algernon Blackwood in "The Wendigo." Meanwhile, British writers have produced the majority of earlier weird fiction, especially that a ghostly kind, by drawing on the country's Medieval cities and ancient myths left by Romans and Celtic tribes.
The question of national perceived age among literary circles may be an imperfect one for explaining why there was such a delayed outgrowth of strange fiction in places like Australia, but it's definitely one that must be considered. It's also worth noting that modern Australia has overcome an initial hesitancy to draw on its natural resources as an expression of unusual and haunting horrors. The Australian Horror Writers' Association publishes an annual journal called "Studies in Australian Weird Fiction." Additionally, the Australian Ghost Stories volume recognizes the existence and importance of weird horror in Australia's past and present.
The band Cockfight Club has uploaded a music video of their song "H.P. Lovecraft," which doubles as a nice tribute to the gentleman from Providence. It contains an actor done up like HPL himself. He's hard at work writing in a study, surrounded by plenty of blasphemous idols and curios. The lyrics are a jaunty toast to Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, set to the thundering background of guitars and drums. Enjoy.
