My two-part article “Lovecraft’s Longing,” which I wrote for Art Throb, and whose first part I announced in a previous post, is now finished and published. In Part Two I explain how, in the words of the introduction, Lovecraft was “about” more than just the horrors of bodily corruption and cosmic monstrosity that cling so…
MSNBC explains how Goldman Sachs stole billions from U.S. taxpayers with government help
Unbelievable. Not the news that Goldman Sachs used its no-strings-attached government money from Hank Paulson’s bank industry bailout last fall to earn inconceivable amounts of money in a titanically underhanded manner, but the fact that mainstream media heavyweight MSNBC would feature such a raw exposé as this one: The quick version (quicker than watching the…
Lovecraft’s Longing: Article for Art Throb
A few months ago I wrote a post about the launch of Art Throb, a Web-based arts initiative headed by my Salem-based sister that chronicles the creative life of the Massachusetts North Shore. Now I have become one of the writers for this venture. Dinah, my sister, invited me a couple of months ago to…
9/11, writer’s block, and creative rebirth
In a July column for NPR about the enduring meaningfulness of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for her life and work, Alice Hoffman revealed the following: After 9/11, I experienced serious writer’s block. Like so many, I had lost faith in the future. If our world was so perilous, if buildings could tumble and planes fall…
Those who love life do not read
From “The Myth Maker” (Guardian, June 4, 2005), an edited extract of the English translation of Michel Houellebecq’s H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (which, I can attest, is an astonishingly powerful and moving book): Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might…
Education and the pleasure of thinking
Edith Hamilton — a worthy intellectual companion indeed — once said something that ought to be emblazoned on the wall of every classroom and discussed at length by every teacher and teacher-wannabe, so wonderfully does it encapsulate a vital truth that cuts neatly through the endless layers of bullshit that encrust the contemporary theory and…
Is abstract thought just piggybacking on the physical body?
According to some new psychological research into the nature of metaphors, “much of what we think of as abstract reasoning is in fact a sometimes awkward piggybacking onto the mental tools we have developed to govern our body’s interactions with its physical environment. Put another way, metaphors reveal the extent to which we think with…
Arthur Machen profiled in The Guardian as “forgotten father of weird fiction”
I was pleasantly surprised to see this story come cross the Internet transom today: Machen is the forgotten father of weird fiction Damien G. Walter, The Guardian online, September 29, 2009 The slug line accurately indicates the article’s content: “Arthur Machen might be little read today, but his ideas lie at the heart of modern…
Impressions and advice from a new Kindle DX owner
A few weeks ago I announced here that I had decided to get an e-reader. Well, I’ve gone and pulled the trigger and am now the owner of a new Kindle DX, which I bought as a gift to myself for my birthday. (Clever man that I am, I asked family members who intended to…
ArmadilloCon 2009: Michael Moorcock, martial arts, and more
First read my previous post about last weekend’s ArmadilloCon, which I wrote on Saturday night during the con itself. Then read the following to fill in the rest of the details of my experiences there. In no particular order: I attended readings by Joe McKinney, Lee Thomas, and A. Lee Martinez, the last of whom…