Over at The American Scholar, Michael Dirda is retiring his wonderful “Browsings” column. (In case you’re somehow unaware of Michael Dirda — a crazy thought — he “is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and the author of the memoir An Open Book and of four collections of essays: Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book, and…
Category: Arts & Entertainment
Publishers Weekly praises Richard Gavin’s ‘At Fear’s Altar’
We’re very pleased to see that At Fear’s Altar, the numinous horror collection by our own Richard Gavin, has received an excellent review from Publishers Weekly. A couple of months ago we passed along some strong praise from other reviewers. Now PW has this to say about the book: Literate horror fans who have yet…
In Praise of Horror that Horrifies
The Horror genre can evoke a panorama of emotions in its audience. Dread, lust, anxiety, giddiness, and even joy often arise, sometimes in paradoxical combinations. Peculiarly enough, it seems that the one emotion the genre evokes most rarely is the one from which its name is derived. In plain speaking, the genre is rarely frightening….
The Plot Running Like a Silver Cord: Channeling and Mediumship on the Margins of Literature
(Given all of the conversations that have arisen here recently on the connections between theological speculation and fantastic fiction, it seems an appropriate time to revisit, and revise, and expand, a piece that I originally wrote for The Eyeless Owl.) Let no man read here who lives only in the world about him. To these…
Win a copy of Stuart Young’s ‘The Mask Behind the Face’
The Mask Behind the Face, the collection of metaphysical horror fiction by Teeming Brain contributor Stuart Young (see his column Sparking Neurones), was short-listed for the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection in 2006, and the title story — about brain disease, psychedelics, and the far outer and deep inner reaches of consciousness — ended…
George Clayton Johnson describes the reality of the ‘Twilight Zone’
Fans of both The Twilight Zone and the realm of philosophical, spiritual, religious, and psychological inquiry represented by the likes of books such as Daimonic Reality and Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness — the latter featuring contributions from Teeming Brain teem members David Metcalfe and Ryan Hurd — will find much of interest in…
Eldritch Optimism: A Kinder, Gentler Rereading of H. P. Lovecraft
A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part One Novelist Jonathan Ryan recently wrote an essay, “Meaning to the Madness,” that was largely devoted to exploring the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. Teeming Brain head honcho Matt Cardin wrote a response. There was then a Teeming Brain podcast (the first ever) about the whole…
Stephen King: We forget that life is fundamentally mysterious
I ask you to consider the fact that we live in a web of mystery, and have simply gotten so used to the fact that we have crossed out the word and replaced it with one we like better, that one being reality. Where do we come from? Where were we before we were here?…
Alan Moore: “Writing is a very focused form of meditation”
From an excellent new profile of Alan Moore in The Observer, focusing mainly on his rejection of Hollywood but spinning out into various and sundry areas of deep fascinatingness (as befitting his fascinatingly deep and varied person), a statement regarding the deep intertwinement of magic, consciousness, creativity, and writing: This business of being a practising…
Zombie horror and global revolution
During the present lead-up to the release of the widely anticipated World War Z movie in June 2013, and amidst the ongoing waves of political and socioeconomic unrest convulsing the real world, there’s much to think about, meditate on, and be thoroughly shaken by in this blog post from anthropologist Gastón Gordillo of the University…