Cover design for UFOs and Extra-Terrestrials in History (four vols, 1978) by Yves Naud.
• Come To The Sabbath, “a festival of dark arts delving into the influence of Black Magick, Witchcraft, Demonology and Satanism in pop culture”, takes place at Apiary Studios, 458 Hackney Road, London, from Tues 18th–Sun 23rd August.
• “Visitors, if there had ever been any, would have said that the little town of Mansfield was haunted.” Showdown is a previously unpublished short story by Shirley Jackson.
• “A sandbox stealthy immersive sim in a surreal, horror-y world inspired by writers like Burroughs and Ballard…” Alice O’Connor previews the forthcoming computer game, Tangiers.
Sometime in the late 1960s, the artist Robert Smithson took a trip to southwestern Ohio. He saw the Great Serpent Mound there and decided that he would make a great spiral too. […] Because the Great Salt Lake’s levels vary several feet from year to year, and also from season to season, Spiral Jetty is not always visible even if you make the trip to Utah. You could go out to Spiral Jetty and find that the entire earthwork is invisible underwater. When Robert Smithson created this earthwork in 1970, he did not care if it could be easily seen or who owned it. And so, even today, no one knows to whom Spiral Jetty really belongs. To view it requires a pilgrimage.
Stefany Anne Goldberg on earthworks, new and ancient, and the art of disappearance
• “Commercial book cover design is a minor portion of Gorey’s award-winning legacy, but not a lesser art.” Steven Heller on Edward Gorey: cover designer.
• “You are accepted,” he says, “by the genre that can accept you.” Samuel R. Delany talked to Peter Bebergal about being an outsider in the world of science fiction.
• A battle of Witts: A brief look at ‘Taboos’ and the work of The Passage. Mark Griffiths on a great, if seldom-remembered, Manchester band.
• “Hispanic photomonteur Josep Renau aimed Technicolor jets of scorn at the mirage of US consumerist culture,” says Rick Poynor.
• Because the internet is really big… Kelli Anderson reworks the Eames’ The Powers of Ten using imagery found via Google searches.
• Against Nature is a forthcoming musical adaptation of Huysmans’ À Rebours by Marc Almond, Jeremy Reed and Othon.
• “What makes a film noir?” Adam Frost & Melanie Patrick have an infographic for you.
• Mixes of the week: Gizehcast #20 by LCC, and Jenny Hval‘s WEIRD Quietus mix.
• Mysterium Tremendum: Russell Cuzner on The Strange World of Lustmord.
• The charming march of the Penguin Books logo.
• Cosey Fanni Tutti: Agent Provocateur
• Dark Times (Peel Session) (1980) by The Passage | XOYO (1982) by The Passage | Revelation (1982) by The Passage
• The charming march of the Penguin Books logo.
I own a few of those 1940s Penguin books with the cavorting penguin and words cannot express how much I love them.
John, hello – re: Huysman’s ‘Against Nature’ – l have a downloaded version of a translation, but do you know of a good essay/reflection on it that comes to mind without too much bother?
Ian: Not really, most of my prior knowledge came from reading about Symbolist art which then led to Huysmans and others. That said, the Wikipedia entry is a good overview.
A word of caution about translations: an early English version omitted sections which were regarded as too much for delicate sensibilities. I don’t have details to hand but there’s a passage at the end of one chapter about Des Esseintes’ relationship with a schoolboy which is missing from some versions.
Ah…found some details here:
http://www.eldritchpress.org/jkh/rebours.html
Robert Baldick’s translation for Penguin has been the standard version for many years.
Many thanks for those helpful comments, John!