Last week a man named John Steadman published his first book, on H. P. Lovecraft & the Black Magickal Tradition. (Forgive me for spelling the word in a way that doesn’t offend my spell checker; I’m not a huge fan of the twee “magick” spelling, no matter how much Lovecraft would have approved of the intentionally archaic form.) Steadman says that he is a practicing magician who works with various covens, as well as a professor of English in Michigan. He works at Lansing Community College, where he teaches writing. The biography provided by his publisher says he teaches at Olivet College as well, but he is not listed on their faculty page.
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It’s hard not to see a relationship between two articles that ran over the last week in the Atlantic. The first is extremely depressing and discusses the rise of “trigger warnings” and “microaggression alerts” on college campuses. On the surface this doesn’t seem like it would relate to subjects of interest to us, but bear with me.
H. P. Lovecraft is coming to television. The Hollywood Reporter says that Romark Entertainment and Markerstone Pictures have purchased the rights to the comic book Herald, which follows the adventures of Nikola Tesla and Lovecraft as they travel through time to battle Mythos monsters. No network or air date has yet been announced. I guess it makes sense, in a way, since Tesla famously thought that he was in communication with space aliens when he heard odd beeping in a radio signal.
Nick Redfern: "The Descent" (2005) Could Help Us Understand Underground Bigfoot. Or Not. Whatever.4/8/2015 As someone who produces a blog post every day, I can sympathize with the difficulty of finding new material to write about. But it seems that fringe science writer Nick Redfern’s writer’s block is getting the better of him. His recent articles at Mysterious Universe have become increasingly pointless exercises in rehashing and recycling. But yesterday’s article on horror movies and Bigfoot has to be one of Redfern’s most ridiculous pieces yet. And to top it off, it made me feel old not long before my upcoming birthday. The Descent (2005), a film about a group of young women attacked by humanoid creatures while spelunking, is now an old movie from another time? Where do the decades go?
I’m pleased to announce that my newest book, Foundations of Atlantis, Ancient Astronauts, and Other Alternative Pasts, an anthology of ancient texts used to support fringe history theories, has now been published! I did not know that the book was ready to be published, and I was surprised to discover that McFarland released the title yesterday, especially since the last corrections to the proofs were just finalized on Friday. I must confess that I am a bit disappointed to see that the price is set at $49.95 for a paperback or eBook, especially since the publisher had assured me that they had anticipated wider demand for this book. (Amazon is offering a $1.10 discount!) However, I hope you’ll find that the book is a useful research tool.
Many of you will likely remember that late last year Charles Baxter wrote an evaluation of H. P. Lovecraft for the New York Review of Books that I characterized as elitist and, largely, wrong. Baxter expressed his distaste for what he perceived as Lovecraft’s antisocial, adolescent fans, and he applied a Freudian reading to Lovecraft’s fiction that reduced the Cthulhu Mythos to, essentially, abject terror of vaginas. Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi was incensed at Baxter for a different reason, and he wrote a letter to the editor of the Review blasting Baxter for factual errors in his piece as well as what Joshi claimed was an overblown emphasis on racism.
If the promotional spots for America Unearthed are to be believed, tonight Scott Wolter gets taken in by a known nineteenth century hoax and spends the hour assuming it’s true. I can’t believe that the producers of the show are that stupid, but I can’t really put anything past them. I guess I’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, let’s talk about Lovecraft. The following are some more or less coherent thoughts, but not really a true analysis since I haven’t had the time to develop my ideas more fully.
The Curious Case of H. P. Lovecraft
Paul Roland | Plexus, 2014 | 240 pages | $19.95 Paul Roland is a singer, and author, and a believer in the paranormal. He has written more than forty books, many of which cover subjects related to the occult, the Nazis, and psychic phenomena. He is also the author of a new biography of H. P. Lovecraft entitled The Curious Case of H. P. Lovecraft. The publisher sent me a review copy of the book, which I read with bafflement. It is the most unnecessary and uninformative Lovecraft book I’ve ever read, and I read Donald Tyson’s Dream World of H. P. Lovecraft back in 2010. Today I have a few brief topics to discuss.
Early this morning, Scott Wolter announced (if I am to read his possessive case usage as written) that I am trying to confuse the issue of whether Europeans colonized America and ennobled the Native Americans with Jesus genes: “I think the word that sums up some of the skeptic’s personal attack strategy is ‘obfuscation.’” I know! All of those texts I examine and the facts I muster to critically examine specific claims from fringe figures’ published works, it’s all a personal attack strategy, unlike Wolter’s much more serious strategy of claiming that he doesn’t read my work but rendering judgment on it anyway, and then threatening to sue over what he imagines I might do. Of course, Wolter might have meant plural skeptics, but that isn’t what the singular possessive implied. I’m still astounded that he confuses a single blog post in 2013 about his own claim of an honorary master’s degree for a widespread multimedia strategy to harp on it for 21 straight months. Today I’d like to talk a bit about S. T. Joshi’s continued freak out over H. P. Lovecraft and racism. I know I shouldn’t keep talking about it, but I just can’t look away. I’ve never seen a literary critic implode so dramatically.
You will recall that Joshi’s dander rose up when Daniel Older suggested that the World Fantasy Award not take the shape of H. P. Lovecraft because Lovecraft was a racist who is not representative of current fantasy authors. He wrote a lengthy screed accusing Older of improperly going beyond his station by questioning his betters, prompting criticism from several quarters. |
AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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