Strange Attractor Press – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 735

The Adventure of the Giant Squid (c.1939) by NC Wyeth.

• Mix of the week is a superb XLR8R Podcast 860 by Kenneth James Gibson. Elsewhere there’s DreamScenes – July 2024 at Ambientblog, and Deep Breakfast Mix 267 at A Strangely Isolated Place.

• A trailer for a restored print of Time Masters (1982), the second animated feature by René Laloux, with character designs/decor by Moebius. Now do Gandahar.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: Music From Elsewhere: Haunting Tunes From Mythical Beings, Hidden Worlds, and Other Curious Sources by Doug Skinner.

Not only a prolific lyricist, Lovecraft considered his main vocation to be poetry. And at its best, his verse can be judged an apt expression of his philosophical vision, in which cosmic horror embodies the predicament of all sentient beings in a meaningless universe. That Lovecraft’s poetry never reaches the heights attained by such Modernists as T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound should not diminish the fact that his is verse that, in the most archaic of ways, advances a startlingly modern metaphysic, a poetic encapsulation of what Thomas Ligotti in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race describes as an affirmation that the universe is a “place without sense, meaning, or value.” Lovecraft, with his antiquated prosody and his anti-human ethics, presented readers with a type of counter-modernist poetry. Ironically, he is the radical culmination of William Carlos Williams’s injunction of “No ideas but in things;” he is an author for whom there are only things. Graham Harman in Lovecraft and Philosophy describes Lovecraft as a “violently anti-idealist” who “laments the inability of mere language to depict the deep horrors his narrators confront.” Unpleasant stuff, for sure. It is verse that at best exemplifies something that controversial poet Frederik Seidel called for in the Paris Review: “Write beautifully what people don’t want to hear.”

Ed Simon on The Unlikely Verse of HP Lovecraft

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, by HP Lovecraft.

• At Spoon & Tamago: An ethereal bubble emerges from a Japanese townhouse.

• New music: The Head As Form’d In The Crier’s Choir by Sarah Davachi.

• Mabe Fratti’s favourite albums.

• Bubble Rap (1972) by Can | Bubbles (1975) by Herbie Hancock | Reverse Bubble (2014) by Air

Weekend links 709

Guardian Angels (1946) by Dorothea Tanning.

• “If photographs can outlive their subjects, and memory works like photography, do images somehow endure in the brain after death? Could these undead memories be recovered with the right technologies?” Speculative fiction from 1899 in Dr Berkeley’s Discovery by Richard Slee and Cornelia Atwood Pratt.

• Mix of the week: Astral Loitering: Excursions In New Age, 1970–1989: 210 minutes of well-chosen selections that continue where I Am The Center left off. In a similar zone, albeit more recent, there’s the regular monthly report from Ambientblog, DreamScenes—January 2024.

• At American Scientist: The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate: “The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth”. An article from 2006 that you’d think would be more widely known today.

• The Anomalist: “World News on UFOs, Bigfoot, the Paranormal, and Other Mysteries at the Edge of Science”. Too many of the links lead to worthless tabloid filler but the headlines can be fun.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: Two-Headed Doctor: Listening for Ghosts in Dr John’s Gris-Gris, a book by David Toop which analyses the Doctor’s voodoo-themed debut album.

• At Unquiet Things: Beyond The Shadows Of The Labyrinth: Exploring the Groovy Kaleidoscope of Ted CoConis’ Art.

• DJ Food unearths a batch of Portuguese Hauntology via Prisma Sonora Records.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: John Waters Day (restored/expanded).

• New music: Moon by Retep Folo & Dorothy Moskowitz.

• New Age (live) (1969) by The Velvet Underground | New Age (1980) by Chrome | 1966 – Let The New Age Of Enlightenment Begin (2014) by Sinoia Caves

Weekend links 693

Imaginary (no date) by Sidney Sime.

• Victor Rees was in touch this week to alert me to a one-off screening of The Gourmet (previously), a cult TV drama from 1986 written by Kazuo Ishiguro and directed by Michael Whyte. The screening, which will take place at Swedenborg House, London, on 16th October, is one of a series of retrospective events based around an exhibition from 1974, Albion Island Vortex, by Brian Catling and Iain Sinclair. The film, which is connected to Sinclair’s oeuvre by its use of one of the Hawksmoor churches, will be followed by a Q&A session with Sinclair and Michael Whyte. The screening is free but places are limited so prior booking is required.

• “Alongside his thieves and vagabonds, Hotten includes religious slang, public schoolboy slang, pirate slang, equine stable slang, phrases coined by Dr. Johnson, the slang of softened oaths, workmen’s slang, stagehand slang, shopkeeper’s slang, and dozens of other argots.” Hunter Dukes on A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words (1860) by John Camden Hotten.

• The Night Land, William Hope Hodgson’s “Dying Earth” doorstop, is republished in an abridged version as part of MIT Press’s Radium Age series, “proto–science fiction stories from the underappreciated era between 1900 and 1935”. All the reprints come with new introductions, the one for Hodgson being by Erik Davis.

• “My partner wanted me to stop buying lava lamps. It was an expensive hobby, and we were running out of room in our apartment.” Nora Claire Miller on the lure of the lava lamp. I only own a single one but I appreciate the obsessive attraction.

• Rambalac takes his roaming camera for a walk through teamLab Planets, Tokyo, a labyrinthine exhibition featuring plenty of water (and wet feet), and a moss garden filled with large silver eggs.

• At Strange Flowers: An examination of the connections between the self-mythologising Marie Corelli and her fictional counterparts in the Mapp and Lucia novels of EF Benson.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: Cabarets of Death, a book about the otherworldly cabarets of Montmartre by Mel Gordon, edited by Joanna Ebenstein.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The Secret Glory by Arthur Machen.

• 10 essential Japanese reggae releases selected by Kay Suzuki.

• Mix of the week: A Fact Mix by Venus Ex Machina.

• Modern Art in Mid-Century Comics.

• RIP Michael Gambon.

• Planet Caravan (1970) by Black Sabbath | Planet Queen (1971) by T. Rex | Oszillator Planet Concert (1971) by Tangerine Dream

Weekend links 684

Playing cards designed in 1977 by Taro Okamoto.

• “This practice of looking does not prioritise academic or historical perspectives on art. It is divorced from the artist, the industry and the formal study of the arts. By paying attention to the form, title and other perceptible ‘clues’ in the work, this practice is primarily interested in using the intuitive, sensory, suggestive and aleatory to engage in conversation with a creative work. The point is not to develop an answer, an interpretation that ‘settles’ the ‘question’ of the painting, or to intellectualise the work in terms of form, style, history or the concerns of the artist. Rather, in this practice, a piece of art or writing becomes a test or opportunity for working one’s imagination—an exercise in making associations.” Aparna Chivukula on choosing art over wellness apps.

• “But with the discourse about the limitations of moralizing steadily growing, the question of an alternative naturally arises. The critics of self-righteousness and trauma mongering are for the most part not calling for a return to the amoral ironism that governed the Nineties and early Aughts—the sensibility that surely gave rise, at least in part, to the overgrowth of didacticism that followed. But if not this, then what? Where do we go from here?” Anastasia Berg on “the aesthetic turn”.

• “…by choosing ordinary creatures, the fabulist naturalises the stories in a world that is close to hand, which helps the writer communicate opinions that are often subversive.” Marina Warner on Kalilah wa-Dimnah and the animal fable.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: Austin Osman Spare, a revised and expanded edition of Phil Baker’s excellent biography of the artist/occultist.

• At Rarefilmm: The Marat/Sade (1967), Peter Brook’s film (previously) of the 1965 Broadway production of Peter Weiss’s play.

• New music: Hostile Environment by Creation Rebel, and Tone Maps by Field Lines Cartographer.

• Mixes of the week: Isolatedmix 122 by Mary Yalex, and XLR8R Podcast 810 by Zaumne.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Pierre Clementi Day.

• Sade Masoch (1968) by Bobby Callender | On Sadism (1979) by Material | Sadistic (1995) by Stereolab

Comps

The month in complimentary copies. In publishing you often get sent at least one copy of something you’ve worked on although there are plenty of occasions when this doesn’t happen. This trio turned up while I’ve been waiting for two other books to arrive, both of which I’d contributed to (one of them even has my name on the cover) but still had to request from editors. It’s always a quandary when this happens. You feel reluctant to add to somebody’s working day by making a petty request for a copy of that thing you provided some artwork for a year ago; on the other hand, one of the books I’ve been waiting for is published by an international company with a 70-year history who nevertheless didn’t have a budget to pay for all the artwork they were using. The comp was supposed to be my payment for their use of a single picture. It looks like I’ll be buying this one myself.

Great Work of Time is a book I’ve already mentioned here, being a hardcover reprint of an award-winning novella by John Crowley. I designed the interior and the cover which has been beautifully printed by Subterranean Press on textured paper. The interiors feature two-colour printing, with various details picked out in magenta ink. A handsome edition that’s also one of the best time-travel stories I’ve read.

Everything Keeps Dissolving: Conversations with Coil has also been mentioned here before. This is Nick Soulsby’s collection of interviews with Coil, a book that rescues from obscurity and potential loss a wealth of interview material—magazine features, fanzine profiles, video and tape transcripts—which chart the group’s career. I assisted in a very small way with this one, letting Nick see some of my written correspondence with John Balance. I’m also mentioned in one of the interviews which was a surprise to discover after all this time. This is a very large book which will be essential reading for all Coil cultists.

Fifth Quarter: Derek Jarman, Keith Collins and Dungeness is a collection of personal responses to the films and art of Derek Jarman. The book has some slight relation to the Coil volume via the pictures that resemble the Jarman piece used on the cover of How To Destroy Angels. Fifth Quarter has been published by the Subtext record label to accompany Fifth Continent, an album by Alexander Tucker and the late Keith Collins, Jarman’s former partner and custodian of Prospect Cottage. I didn’t contribute to the book but I’ve done a lot of design work for Subtext who have been releasing avant-garde music now for almost 20 years. Book publishing is a new venture for them. The list of contributors to Fifth Quarter is an impressive one: Barry Adamson, Jennifer Lucy Allan, Sarah Bade, Derek Brown, Keith Collins, Garry Clayton, Peter Fillingham, William Fowler, Dan Fox, Elise Lammer, Matthew R. Lewis, James Mackay, Frances Morgan, Garrett Nelson, Stephen O’Malley, Paul Purgas, Damien Roach, Howard Sooley, Mark Titchner, Alexander Tucker, Peter Tucker, Luke Turner, Simon Fisher Turner, and Cosey Fanni Tutti.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Great Work of Time
• Man is the Animal, issue three
• Derek Jarman album covers