In 2009 science journalist Joahua Foer and his friend Dylan Thuras launched Atlas Obscura, a Website intended to be “the definitive guide to the world’s wondrous and curious places.” As Foer said in an article for Boing Boing, “The Atlas is a collaborative project whose purpose is to catalog all of the ‘wondrous, curious, and…
Tag: h. p. lovecraft
How to read Lovecraft: A practical beginner’s guide
NOTE: When you’re finished with this article, be advised that it has a sequel. After reading “Lovecraft: Invading the ego with shadows from the id,” a friend and coworker asked if I could “give a first-time Lovecraft reader a title to start with!” The answer to such a request is of course a resounding yes,…
Lovecraft: Invading the ego with shadows from the id
Recently published at the online Trebuchet Magazine, which “champions contemporary art, activist politics, and ecstatic music” and strives to be “A creative magazine minus the lifestyle upsell,” this brief and astute analysis of Lovecraft cuts right to the heart of his deep and enduring appeal as a visionary supernatural horror writer whose works resonate with an…
Unnamable but Not Undrawable: The World of Lovecraftian Superheroes
A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part Three In Part One of this series I set out to demonstrate that it’s possible to find aspects of optimism and heroism in H. P. Lovecraft’s stories. In Part Two I looked at how a number of other writers, and also filmmakers — including Robert E….
H. P. Lovecraft: A rabidly racist, almost fascist, deeply repressed, and perfectly lovely person
Despite a number of stylistic and grammatical/syntactical gaffes and oddities that appear in a newly published biographical sketch of dear old Howard Lovecraft at the Website Machinations into Madness — see especially the first sentence quoted below, which is both incomprehensible and strangely fascinating — the piece captures something really vital about the man, or…
Lovecraftian Legacy
A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part Two NOTE: This article is the second in a series. It follows directly on from Part One, which sets the stage. * * * Having established that Lovecraft’s stories can be at least vaguely cheerful and optimistic, and that they can also feature feats of heroism…
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…
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…
Initiation by Nightmare: Cosmic Horror and Chapel Perilous
When the first of my sleep paralysis attacks occurred in the early 1990s, I had no idea that it was the onset of a period that I would later come to recognize or characterize as a spontaneous shamanic-type initiation via nightmare.