The fantastic is where you find it

[HardScienceFan]

This painting for me somehow has a very Lovecraftian flavour.
Let's see which one of U knows his/hers mainstream art.

AYTCH(favourite HPL (short)story:the outsider)

 

[j d worthington]

Now, darn it! I know that piece of art -- I KNOW I know it... and I'll be darned if I can recall the title or the artist! Sheesh! I guess the old brain really is softenin'....

At any rate... Yes, it does have a very Lovecraftian feel (which is interesting, considering his feelings about Futurists, Cubists, and Surrealists ... although he did admit in a late letter that the work of such as Pickman would fit in beautifully in an exhibition of such work....)

Thanks for bringing that one in... and I'll be glad to find out the artists' name... assuming (which is likely the case, at this point) my own memory doesn't cough it up along the line.....

 

[HardScienceFan]

The title is *translated*:Silence,and it's by Max Ernst;in several Sf art books he is mentioned as an influence,can't remember if the anthologizer thought
his influence big or small.Colours and shapes conspire in this one to create a pretty alien mood.
Now JD,yesterday I read a Lovecraft short:the White Ship What I want to know,if U care to answer,U clearly being an admirer of his work(as I am)why this one was slightly disappointing to me.the White Ship is pretty well witten:verbose,but in a good way,moody.However the ending was not up to his usual standards,and a little strange after the pretty grandiose buildup.To me it seemed like he didn't really have a clue how to finish that one!
Aytch.

 

[j d worthington]

Ach! Of course; Max Ernst... gakkk! Now I do feel like a right idiot! Ah, well...

As for "The White Ship"... I've never got that feeling from it, myself; and I know, from HPL's working habits, if he didn't know how to finish a story, he never put it out there. He always had things very worked out in his head (and on paper) before he'd even begin the process of typing it up (which he hated with a passion), let alone showing it to anyone. I've seen a facsimile of the manuscript of this one (it was published in an early issue of Whispers) -- albeit a later copy, not the original; even then you can see where he would make alterations that he felt improved the tale.

This one... perhaps because of it being one of the very rare outright allegories in his corpus? Most of his work has levels of allegory, but isn't intended quite so didactically. The point, of course, being his strongly-held philosophy that ideals are nothing but illusions; to give up a present real contentment for an ideal happiness is to ensure disappointment -- a very Epicurean approach. So perhaps the message was just a bit too obtrusive? That's the case with others I've talked to, where this one is concerned. What was it in particular you found disappointing? Or was it just the general feel of the ending?

Anyway... thanks again for bringing in the Ernst... It certainly didn't influence HPL, but it has influenced others who have done art based on his work; and it has a very Lovecraftian look and feel to it.....

Question: The title of this piece is "Silence" ... inspired by the Poe prose-poem, "Silence: A Fable"? Or am I mistaken.....?

 

[HardScienceFan]

Ach! Of course; Max Ernst... gakkk! Now I do feel like a right idiot! Ah, well...

Just one word:don't.
I've worked with people who showed me their BIC ballpoints,when the discussion turned to music and I mentioned that most famous of Polish composers,Show Pen.Surprised I'm a BIG Dilbert fan?

Thanx for the exegesis on the white ship.

Question: The title of this piece is "Silence" ... inspired by the Poe prose-poem, "Silence: A Fable"? Or am I mistaken.....?

-As to that one:dunno,actually.
Do I gather correctly from the scribblings on this forum that HPL
is being scrutinized by the world of academe?

 

[j d worthington]

-As to that one:dunno,actually.
Do I gather correctly from the scribblings on this forum that HPL
is being scrutinized by the world of academe?

Well, I think I'd add "increasingly" in there.... he's been examined by academe since at least the 1960s, when thesis papers were being submitted on him to major universities (including the Sorbonne). But since the mid-1970s, it's picked up steam, with occasional lulls.

The problem is that this also popularizes him with those who are la mode, so that a plethora of books good, bad, and indifferent are out there on him, and it takes some sort of guide to know which are which. (Not all those that look on him favorably are good, not all those that look on him askance are bad. The indifferent just seem to be muddled.)

There are several journals devoted to his work, the most prominent (until lately, when publication was suspended due to the publisher ceasing publication of anything for a time) being Lovecraft Studies, ed. by S. T. Joshi, which has been published since 1980, I believe. This, I understand, is to resume publication again later this or early next year. He'll also be doing a Lovecraft annual through Hippocampus Press. For a lighter touch, there's Crypt of Cthulhu (ed. by Robert M. Price), which ran the gamut of broad humor to very serious scholarship to new Lovecraftian fiction.

There have been three quite good anthologies of critical writings on HPL's work: Four Decades of Criticism (ed. by Joshi), An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H. P. Lovecraft (ed. by David E. Schultz -- who is working on a critical edition of the sonnet cycle Fungi from Yuggoth, and Joshi), and A Century Less a Dream: Selected Criticism on H. P. Lovecraft (ed. by Scott Connors, who is also one of the leading Clark Ashton Smith scholars, involved in putting out the definitive edition of CAS's fantasy in a 5-volume set through Night Shade Books -- going back to the original mss. and first publications, as well as Smith's letters and such, to present the stories as Smith intended them; they've had some pretty heavy editorial tampering over the years). He has also been included in the prestigious Library of America Series, as of 2005:

Library of America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some of the better books are those by Donald R. Burleson, who did both H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study (a general overview with a lot of very keen insights and interesting takes on his work, from stories to poetry to essays to letters), and H. P. Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe (looking at several of his works from a deconstructionist approach -- also one of the most readable and enjoyable books on deconstructionism I've ever come across); Prof. Barton L. St. Armand's The Root of Horror in the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent (very rich, thoughtful and thought-provoking examinations, including some extremely good work on Lovecraft's symbolism; St. Armand is also a Poe scholar of note); Maurice Lévy's Lovecraft ou du fantastique (trans. as Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic); Steven J. Mariconda's collection of essays, "On the Emergence of Cthulhu" and Other Observations (which includes a very good examination on HPL as prose stylist, as well as work tracing certain sources, such as the influence of S. Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages on "The Rats in the Walls"); Robert H. Waugh's The Monster in the Mirror; and S. T. Joshi's Primal Sources (a collection of his essays on various aspects of Lovecraftian scholarship), H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (examining Lovecraft's philosophy and its place in his work), and A Subtler Magick. He has also done a superb biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life.

(Joshi has also done three excellent examinations of the weird tale in general: The Weird Tale -- covering Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, Lord Dunsany, and HPL -- The Modern Weird Tale, which deals with such writers as Ramsey Campbell, Shirley Jackson, William Peter Blatty, Thomas Tryon, T. E. D. Klein, Robert Bloch, Bret Easton Ellis, etc.; and The Evolution of the Weird Tale, dealing with W. C. Morrow, F. Marion Crawford, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Robert W. Chambers, Rudyard Kipling, L. P. Hartley, Edward Lucas White, etc.)

Those are just a handful of them -- it's actually quite a wide field, and a surprising amount of it not only worthwhile, but genuinely good.....