New Eldritch Tomes

 

This summer a bump in liquid assets due to my advancing age coincided with the arrival of a catalogue in my email basket. Yes I did the mature thing and pondered whether I needed more books, Discussed it with Helen and and said hell yes what's two more given the thousands we have. And the catalogue did happen to contain relatively reasonably priced copies of two books I have wanted for years. (We all remember relatively from school, things appear different depending on where you sit, I think that's how it goes) Yes these are Derleth, but as I discussed in an earlier post when I began reading the mythos I made little distinction between HPL and his various imitators and collaborators. In truth it was hard to get books we could afford in Windsor in those days we took what we found in the drugstore racks, used book stores, and Coles. And opened the covers with eager anticipation, besides we thought Twinkies were food. (oh wait I still do)

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2019/10/wilum-hopfrog-pugmire-may-3-1051-march_27.html

Besides these are by one of the greatest cover artists every to grace Arkham House publications, Richard Taylor and they just happen to complete my collection of the five titles he did for them. And while you can debate the quality of some of Derleth stories "The Fisherman of Falcons Point" in The Shuttered Room and "The Seal of R'lyeh" in The Mask of Cthulhu are two of my favourite Derleth stories.

I knew Taylor was a cartoonist for the New Yorker but I did not realize he was Canadian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Taylor_(cartoonist)

Dreams has a wondrous cover, don't you think.

Rowena Morrill (1944-2021)

 

 Another illustrator that was once a significant force in the science fiction books I used to select from the spinning racks of drug stores and the Wee Book Inn has passed away. Locus provided an excellent overview of her career here.

https://locusmag.com/2021/02/rowena-morrill-1944-2021/

I cannot say that Rowena Morril was one of my favourite illustrators, but at one point, books with her cover illustrations seemed omnipresent. When I decided to pull together a few of my favourites, I was surprised with how few I found. Either I had culled the authors long ago, Piers Anthony or the books are currently misplaced Manly Wade Wellman as the ongoing basement renovations continue. However, I have a few, some of which I love. 

How can you not like Clark Ashton Smith?

This rather tatty Sturgeon is Helen's but as someone who compulsively collects translations of the Divine Comedy there is a lot to like here.

George R.R. Martin writes the best horror/science fiction short stores in the field. "Sandkings" is probably his greatest short story and quite possibly belongs on any list of the top science fiction stories of all time. This is a nice representation.

When I first owned these editions of Lovecraft I did not like them. As was sadly the case with many of my early paperback editions I did not keep them when I bought hardcovers. When I came to realize I wanted to collect the art of HPL as well as the words I had the joy of buying expensive copies in not very good condition so I could add them to my collection. While we are told we become more conservative as we age I find myself moving in the opposite direction in most areas of my life. These are certainly a case in point. Now I really enjoy the flamboyance of Morrill's interpretation of Wilbur Whatetely or the Great Race of Yith. Occasionally I do wonder how Wilbur keep all those bits sufficiently concealed beneath the 1920's equivalent of Dockers that he could ride the bus in search of the Necronomicon. But that is part of the fun of it. Do you have any favourite Morrill covers?

New Eldritch Tomes (not really) and Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams and Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country

 I wanted to put a post together and was waiting to gather some things I wanted to share. First off I have not been buying as many old paperbacks lately. I basically have accumulated lots and decided to hold off for a while. However will searching the basement for Blaylock's The Elfin Ship for another project, I found two books that really belonged upstairs with my main collection. Initially I assumed that The Phoenix Tree was part of Lin Carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, it must have been the unicorns and dragons that fooled me. However the authors on the cover had a distinctly weird tales or horror vibe. I have been collected a number of slim horror collections from the 1970's and this Stoker collection for 1974 by Quartet Books fit right in. 

I also wanted to mention a couple items that I thought would be of interest to readers of this blog. The first is a documentary I just watched on Vimeo, Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams directed by Darin Coelho Spring. Smith is a favourite author and I thought this was a great overview of his life and career. It featured a number of tours by Smith scholar, Donald Sidney-Fryer. There were interviews with S.T. Joshi, W.H. Pugmire, and an extensive interview with Harlan Ellison on Smith's influence on his work. Ellison also mentions how he first encountered Smith's "City of the Singing Flame" in Derleth anthology  The Other Side of the Moon. I found the interview with Smith's stepson Prof. William Dorman particularly interesting. The documentary also featured some of Smith's painting and sculptures and I have to admit I has really impressed. The b&w reproductions in my copy of The Fantastic Art of Clark Ashton Smith did not do them justice and led me to undervalue them.

Author John Langan reviewed the documentary for Locus here,

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/john-langan-reviews-clark-ashton-smith-the-emperor-of-dreams/

And you can see the trailer here, (I really recommend it)

 https://vimeo.com/281911751

Lastly I want to recommend Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country by Edward Parnell and I am only on chapter eight. (Finished, a powerful but poignant (okay sad) memoir)

Parnell has written a beautiful and engaging memoir combining his personal history with an overview of the supernatural fiction and film that informed his childhood. Parnel's discussions of the works of authors like Machen, Blackwood. M.R. James, Alan Garner and William Hope Hodgson and films like The Wicker Man or The Blood on Satan's Claw are enhanced by visits to significant locations in their creators' lives and works. 

Readers of W.G. Sebald (who I love) may recognize some similarities. There are b&w photographs of the author and his family or the locations he visits. The work consists of descriptions of trips interspersed with personal anecdotes, capsule histories, observation of the local birds and the landscape.

But I think Parnell is more deeply immersed in his subject than Sebald sometimes was. This process seems vitally important to Parnell. His visits to the locations where these authors lived and worked become meditations on his own life and a trigger for his own memories. I have mentioned before that Helen is a big fan of The Fortean Times. One phenomenon which she made me aware of was the concept of The Haunted Generation, as mentioned in the link below; 

" The phrase ‘Haunted Generation’ comes from an article of that title by British broadcaster and writer Bob Fischer for the June 2017 issue of Fortean Times magazine, the purview of which is ‘the world of strange phenomena’. Fischer, who was born in 1973, discusses his childhood exposure to a popular culture thematically preoccupied with mysticism and the supernatural;"   

From 

‘A LOST, HAZY DISQUIET’: SCARFOLK, HOOKLAND, AND THE ‘HAUNTED GENERATION’ by David Sweeny

 

http://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/a-lost-hazy-disquiet-scarfolk-hookland-and-the-haunted-generation/

A link to the actual Fortean Times article is here.

https://hauntedgeneration.co.uk/2019/04/22/thehauntedgeneration/

I think Parnell's work provides an interesting example of the phenomenon. I have found it riveting not just for his discussions of supernatural fiction in Britain but also as an exercise in memoir.    

There is a excellent discussion of Parnell's book with an interview with the author here. Parnell states,

"I went back to Norfolk and thought hard about whether I would like to write such a book – a book concerned with ghost stories and films and the places around Britain that fed into them. And I decided that I did. Because I’d grown up obsessed from a young age with the supernatural and horror. Like a lot of children born in the 1970s, my early years had been surrounded by morbid public information films and terrifying, offbeat TV programmes aimed at, but quite probably unsuitable for, our age group; without knowing it, I was part of what the Fortean Times has come to term the ‘haunted generation’."

https://folkhorrorrevival.com/2019/12/27/ghostland-review-and-interview-with-edward-parnell/

Cover credits;

The Bram Stoker Companion unattributed

The Phoenix Tree unattributed

Genius Loci Frank Wakefield

A Rendezvous in Averoigne Jeffrey K. Potter

The Other Side of the Moon Virgil Finlay?

Emperor of Dreams Ned Dameron