Necronomicon

[clovis-man]

Anyone in New England planning on this?

NecronomiCon To Celebrate H.P. Lovecraft

A better link:

http://necronomicon-providence.com/

 

[w h pugmire esq]

What a wonderful experience it was. What balm it brings, to be a Lovecraftian in Providence. It has fed me well, and I am writing with more energy than I have felt all year. Yok-Sotot!

 

[JoanDrake]

Ia Ia. I wish I could have been there, but perhaps it was better not, for I know the Thousand Gods and the Great Old Ones never forgive or forget any slight, however inadvertent.

Godalmighty but he was a man born out of his time. Were he alive today he'd be the richest blogger ever known.

 

[j d worthington]

Godalmighty but he was a man born out of his time. Were he alive today he'd be the richest blogger ever known.

If one could get him anywhere near one of these confounded devices. Given that he absolutely loathed the typewriter, and always preferred pen and paper for composing anything (from his stories to his poems to essays to letters), it is doubtful he'd have been a blogger.

But... if someone once got him started on things, given what a psychologist* called his "graphorrhea".....

*Sympathetic, I might add; meaning that in this context, the word is shorn of the majority of its negative connotations and refers almost entirely to "an obsessive compulsion to write".

 

[JoanDrake]

I think he'd overcome that. One must remember that to many horror critics his main fault was a tendency to turn his monsters into scientific phenomena. There is also the fascination he had with academia and books. With the possibility of putting vonJunzt's "ForbiddenKulten" on Gutenberg it is unlikely that Arkham University could ignore the Internet for long.

 

[j d worthington]

I think he'd overcome that. One must remember that to many horror critics his main fault was a tendency to turn his monsters into scientific phenomena. There is also the fascination he had with academia and books. With the possibility of putting vonJunzt's "ForbiddenKulten" on Gutenberg it is unlikely that Arkham University could ignore the Internet for long.

Not to take the thread off-topic too long, but....

On the last point, I certainly agree. Joss Wheedon has remarked that this is one of his biggest mistakes concerning Giles: his resistance to computers and the internet -- a definite drawback for a librarian.

On the other points... While Lovecraft looked askance at most machinery, he did enjoy his one airplane ride -- but noted that such things were "okay" for a jaunt, but he hated what they likely portended. He also enjoyed a speedy ride in an automobile, but felt much the same there. And what it comes down to is not only his mechanical ineptitude, but his intense belief that composing anything on such did not allow for the other aspects which contributed to doing one's best work. I not only refer to the speed of composition (for, as Tolkien called them, "the ten-fingered"), but the aesthetics of the words on actual paper, and the ability to go in and alter, transpose, scratch out, etc., an almost infinite number of times... while still having all the various choices there visually. Lovecraft was intensely sensitive to such things and, while the computer allows for a fair amount of that, I don't think it comes anywhere near allowing what one sees with a page of HPL's original holographic manuscripts... which, for anyone except HPL, are a grand royal pain-in-the-neck to decipher a fair amount of the time....

Also, he apparently derived a certain psychological/emotional pleasure from the action of scribbling with a pen (or, when his nerves were particularly troubled, with a pencil), and that is something, again, which the computer simply does not allow for.

So, while it is possible someone might have been able to get him past these blocks and actually using this nifty little tool, from all my knowledge of the man, it is about as likely as "Tricky Dick" Nixon admitting he was a crook.....

As for his turning his "monsters" into phenomena... well, essentially, that is what they were: symbolizations of the mechanistic, uncaring, and often completely alien universe. They tended not to be characters, but rather phenomena given a form of life....

 

[Extollager]

Lovecraft wanted to extend a tradition of writing that he explored in great detail. I think he probably felt a connection with earlier writers, as he wrote by hand as they had, that he would not have wanted to lose.

C. S. Lewis wrote a substantial letter to a young writer (Jane Gaskell, whose "Atlan" fantasies readers of a certain age will remember having seen in paperback) after, as a teenaged girl, she sent him some of her writing. One thing he recommended was: write by hand, not by typewriter, because (he said) the activity of typing and/or the noise interfered with one's sense of the rhythm of one's prose. I have seen Lewis's letter reprinted in a creative writing text. Make of that what you will....

 

[j d worthington]

One thing he recommended was: write by hand, not by typewriter, because (he said) the activity of typing and/or the noise interfered with one's sense of the rhythm of one's prose.

Yup. HPL said much the same thing, ad infinitum, in his letters. He brought forth a fair number of examples to back him up, too....

And back on the subject of NecronomiCON.... *sigh* I wish I could have gone... I'd love to have partaken of all this. But... quite a lot of the various addresses and such have been recorded and are available on YouTube, for those who were unable to attend... perhaps not a full day's worth, but at least several hours' worth (including some with Wilum); and the talks cover a wide variety of subjects, including some rather controversial ones....

 

[w h pugmire esq]

Thursday morning was my first event, a kickstarter group picnic in St. John's churchyard. It was a long painful walk there from the Biltmore (I suffer from a bad ankle that swells and gives me pain if walked on too long a time). We walked across ye Providence River to the First Baptist Church, past ye Fleur-de-Lys Building and up past ye Providence Art Club, to Benefit Street. We stopped to pose for photos before ye Shunned House. Finally, we reached ye hidden churchyard.

I read some of the sonnets and Lovecraft and his friends had written in memory of Poe when visiting the churchyard, and I read Helen Sully's account of Lovecraft scaring her to death when he took her there on a date. Then I produced my print-out of the poem that Derleth had written of Poe and Lovecraft meeting as ghosts in the churchyard. S. T. Joshi had been a bit annoy'd with me before the convention because of my praise of A LOOK BEHIND THE DERLETH MYTHOS and my foreword in that book, so the subject of Derleth was something I had to avoid when around him. I prefaced my reading of the poem by saying, "I read a poem by Derleth at the risk of summoning ye Cosmic Wrath of S. T. Joshi," and I playfully waved at ye clear blue sky. At the end of our picnic we were sitting on a tabletop tomb for our group photo and heard--ye distant sound of thunder! I joked and said, "Oh my gawd, it's ye Cosmic Wrath!" Our group split up, and a few fellows walked with me along Benefit Street, back to ye Biltmore. By the time we reached the Shunned House, the rainfail had become a very heavy downpour. I was soaked and dripping like a thing on a doorstep by the time we reached ye hotel.

But ye Cosmic Wrath wasn't finish'd with me. Friday night my room mate got home late and did not completely latch our hotel room door locked. Later I heard someone come in, and I thought it was a hotel security person who had used their key card and entered our room by mistake. I sat up in the bed and the person left. By the time I was fully awake and sensed that this incident was "fishy," it was too late--my wallet, left on the table near the leather sofa, had been stolen. I borrowed my room mate's cell phone to call my sister in Seattle and get the credit card and bank debit card blocked. I had lost all of my personal I. D. and ye $300 in ye wallet. I was depress'd, & cursed reading that Derleth poem, the root of this evil. I missed two of my panels that morning (this wasn't so bad, I don't enjoy being on panels).

Sunday I was on a panel with S. T., on gender identity and sexuality. We sat on chairs on a raised platform. Scott Connors had given me some books by Caitlin that he wanted signed. So I was walking behind S. T., who was standing with Jason Brock near to where we were going to sit, and I did not notice that the raised platform ended where I was meaning to walk. I walked into thin air and fell three feet. Ye Cosmic Wrath of S. T. Joshi is a KILLER!!!!! I feel lucky that I survived this convention, and have vowed to S. T. that I will never again read a Derleth poem in public at an event honouring H. P. Lovecraft.