Archive for the ‘Lovecraft’ Category

Obit watch: January 26, 2023.

Thursday, January 26th, 2023

Paul La Farge, author. He wasn’t someone I’d heard of before, but he sounds interesting:

Mr. La Farge’s novels and short stories defied easy categorization, but they were all characterized by a sort of writer’s derring-do.
“With each novel he would set out, and then it would become clear to him that he had set what seemed like an impossible formal challenge for himself,” Ms. Stern, the artistic director of the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan, said by email, “but he would keep on, wrestling forward and sideways and backwards, and eventually the story and its form would be inextricable in a way that was awe-inspiring and yet felt inevitable.”

Mr. La Farge began “Haussmann: Or the Distinction” (2001) by presenting it as a translation of an unearthed French text from 1922. The novel goes on to tell a made-up tale about the real-life French official Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who oversaw the redesign of Paris in the 1800s.“The Facts of Winter” (2005) was another exercise in fiction-as-reality. Mr. La Farge presented it as his translation of a minor French poet, Paul Poissel, whom he had invented out of whole cloth.

“Luminous Airplanes” (2011), about a San Francisco programmer who returns to upstate New York to sort through his dead grandfather’s possessions, is perhaps the most realistic of Mr. La Farge’s novels, but it had its own unexpected element: Readers were invited to go to a website where Mr. La Farge posted elaborations on and continuations of the story.
His most recent novel, “The Night Ocean” (2017), again takes a real historical figure — the writer H.P. Lovecraft — and weaves a story around him.

A La Farge novel could be packed with history, and, Mr. La Farge told the literary magazine TriQuarterly in 2017, that meant research. For “Haussmann,” after spinning the story, “I went back to check all the little things,” he said. “Were the street lamps in Paris in the 1850s gas lamps or oil lamps? It was surprisingly hard to find out.”

Lance Kerwin. Other credits include “FBI: The Unheard Music The Untold Stories”, “The Fourth Wise Man”, and “Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy”.

Obit watch: March 26, 2020.

Thursday, March 26th, 2020

Lawrence sent me this the other day, but I forgot to note it in yesterday’s roundup.

Stuart Gordon, director and writer. THR.

He was probably most famous for “Re-Animator” (which, as you know, Bob, was based on an H.P. Lovecraft story). He also directed “From Beyond”, and some less well known works (“Space Truckers”, “Robot Jox”).

A couple of random notes: March 16, 2016.

Wednesday, March 16th, 2016

How did I not have a “Lovecraft” category before now? Fixed.

What brought this to mind? Anther AP story, this one about the relationship between H.P. Lovecraft and Providence.

Lovecraft aficionados, drawn to Providence, leave trinkets and notes at the author’s gravesite in Swan Point Cemetery. The Lovecraft council has a store downtown and holds conventions and events to celebrate Lovecraft’s work and influence.

When I visited Swan Point on one of my trips, I was told Lovecraft’s grave was the most visited one in the cemetery. This struck me as interesting, because Sullivan Ballou, aka “the guy who wrote the letter from the Ken Burns series that everyone but me loves” is also buried in Swan Point. My recollection is that this was near the peak of “Civil War” mania, but I guess Lovecraftian horror beats banjos and sentiment at least five out of seven days of the week.

Tam has a very nice obit up for Todd Louis Green, noted pistol trainer, class act, and “Archer” fan.

I never got to take a class with him, and I wish I had: I think I would have enjoyed both learning from him, and finding out if he hates Bionic Barry as much as I do.