Film critic A. S. Hamrah on the life, mind, and work of David Lynch, including his pursuit of a fearsome disease and darkness lurking in the heart of everything, including America: A nicotine fiend and a coffee addict who mixes existential dread with sadomasochism in all-American settings, Lynch is that rare director who makes subversive…
Category: Arts & Entertainment
My “Daemonyx” album available on YouTube
A few months ago I discovered that my entire Daemonyx album has been uploaded to YouTube by CD Baby. This is the same album that accompanied my Dark Awakenings collection when people bought it directly from the publisher, Mythos Books. In case you’d like to hear it: The whole thing seems strangely alien to me…
Stephen King on the thing under the bed
There have been moments of insight in Stephen King’s work that legitimately qualify as sublime. This widely quoted passage from his foreword to Night Shift is one of them: At night, when I go to bed I am at pains to be sure that my legs are under the blankets after the lights go out….
Projects in progress
To quote Pink Floyd: Is there anybody out there? Three days from now will mark six full months since my last Teeming Brain post. Experienced readers of this blog might well surmise that my conflicted relationship with the Internet has been gaining more and more distance over time. These readers would be correct. A number…
World Fantasy Award nomination for ‘Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti’
I return from my Internet seclusion to pass along the news that I have been nominated for a 2015 World Fantasy Award for Born to Fear. This year’s nominees were announced yesterday, but I knew nothing about it until Jon Padgett sent an email to congratulate me. The whole thing comes as a complete, and…
The scourge of “relatability” in the arts
Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker: What are the qualities that make a work ârelatable,â and why have these qualities come to be so highly valued? To seek to see oneself in a work of art is nothing new, nor is it new to enjoy the sensation. Since Freud theorized the process of identification —…
A pall of uncanny corruption: ‘The Infusorium’ by Jon Padgett
New chapbook. From Dunhams Manor Press. By one of my dearest friends. Softcover and signed hardcover editions already sold out. Only a few copies of standard (unsigned) hardcover left. You should PURCHASE. Update 04/20/15: The book is sold out. About the book: Dunnstown is in the midst of a strange season: the choking fogs of…
New (and old) book projects: An encyclopedia of horror literature and a collection of horror fiction
Frontispiece to Frankenstein (1831 edition). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. On a morning when I’ve just finished up with several days of responding to publisher copy edits on Ghosts, Spirits, and Psychics, I’m happy to announce the birth of another book project: I have just signed a contract with the same publisher (ABC-CLIO) to edit…
Dehumanized in a dark age
“Fire of Troy” by Kerstiaen de Keuninck (Coninck), 17th cent. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons NOTE: This post was originally published in January 2007 in a different form. Based on various circumstances — including the publication just yesterday of a post titled “Collective Brainwashing & Modern Concentration Camps” over at Daily Grail, which calls out…
Forthcoming from Richard Gavin: ‘The Benighted Path: Primeval Gnosis and the Monstrous Soul’
Teem member Richard Gavin has a new book coming out this summer from Theion Publishing — and it’s nonfiction. Richard, as you know, has built a major reputation in recent years as a writer of exquisite weird fiction in a darkly esoteric and philosophical vein, and this book promises to be a kind of nonfiction…