2019

Ars Necronomica 2019

In 1970, Harry O. Morris published the first issue of Nyctalops. It stood out among the small press covering H. P. Lovecraft and related writers at the time for extending the conversation to perimeters of Surrealism and The Occult (Patti Smith and Michael Aquino were two contributors for example). The publication’s art selection was equally sublime—in all that the word entails—ranging from beauty to nightmare. It has never been equaled. It is with great humility and honor then that we present the unpublished piece you see opposite by HOM (Credit due to Sam Cowan and Michael Cisco for facilitating contact).

Our own continuing dialogue started with the reanimation of NecronomiCon Providence and its attendant artist showcase Ars Necronomica. This iconographiam ranges from a Garden of Unearthly Delights choreographed by Carrie Ann Baade to Jon Sideriadis’ dreamlike Sime-scape. It lists the work of Clayton Cameron and Lupe Vasconcelos, both channeling the intensity and Automatism of Austin Osman Spare respectively. Humour is visually extracted from the mouth of HPL by Holly Carden of The Nashville Contingent| (responsible for the Cthulhu Calling art exhibitions, the first held before ours in 2013). Matthew Jaffe imparts a misty-eyed tenderness by twilight in the visualization of Caitlin Kiernan’s story. All these and other dark dreams we summon for The Divine City of Providence. And you beyond…

The Lovecraft Arts and Science Council frequently stages Arcade Asylum readings in the Westminster Arcade of Providence RI. One October the spell of these words exhorted attendees:

Sister, listen!… The King-Wolf howls!
The pack is running!… Drink down the brew,
Don the unearthly, shaggy cowls,—
We must be running too!
(“They Run Again”—Leah Bodine Drake)

Leah Bodine Drake (1904 – 1964) was foremost a poet. Her inaugural verse for Weird Tales, “In the Shadows”, debuted in the October 1935 issue, the start of nearly two dozen running in “The Unique Magazine.” Her first book of poetry, A Hornbook for Witches, was published in 1950 by  Arkham House . It is one of the rarest titles from this imprint, its small run having been said to be partly funded by Drake herself.

“Time and the Sphinx” first appeared in Lilith Lorraine’s little magazine, Different. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction reprinted it in its February 1965 issue but it has not seen print since then.

This not only changes now but with further attention to Drake on the horizon–The Song of The Sun: Collected Writings by Leah Bodine Drake, edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, slated for publication hopefully later this year from Hippocampus Press. Among other selections, the book will contain more than 100 poems never previously published, three other pieces of fiction besides the following you are about to read, bibliography, illustrations by Jason Eckhardt, etc, ETC. totaling a staggering 760 pages. As well as a refutation that she subsidized publication of Hornbook. This long overdue recognition of a great woman writer will be a major event, Never Mind The Weird!

Let the following serve as a taster then. Consider it this Memento Book’s own Arkham Sampler, a dreamlike gem somewhat lost in time, now found. Dedicated to Lord Dunsany…

“On The Thing in the Woods by Harper Williams”
“BELKNAP, accept from Theobald’s spectral Claw
These haunting Chapters of daemoniack Awe;
Such nightmare Yarns we both have often writ,
With goblin Whispers, and an Hint of IT,
Till sure, we’re like to think all Terror’s grown
A sort of private Product of our own!
Lest, then, our Pride our sober Sense mislead,
And make us copyright each hellish Deed,
’Tis ours to see what ghastly Flames can blaze
From Spooks and Ghouls that other Wizard raise!”
–H. P. Lovecraft (1924)

“I am the nursery magic Fairy,” she said. “I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don’t need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real,”—Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit (1922)

“The most incongruous things have fewer degrees of separation than we think.”
—”Curiosities: The Thing in the Woods by Harper Williams”, Stefan Dziemianowicz. Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 2000

Margery Williams Bianco (1881-1944) had her first professional publication in 1902. More than a decade later (1914), her fourth book, The Thing in the Woods, was set in Pennsylvania where she was currently living. It however was not a success even a decade after that, despite Lovecraft’s recommendation to his young correspondent Frank Belknap Long.
Two years before the Providence poesy above, in 1922, The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real was Bianco’s first major success under her own name, and she never looked back, becoming a celebrated children’s author. Other works included 1925’s Poor Cecco: The Wonderful Story of a Wonderful Wooden Dog, splendidly illustrated by Arthur Rackham. In 1971, upon the establishment of the Newberry Honor for children’s literature, her body of that work was posthumously honored.

This excerpt of Thing is taken from a revised US version, with Williams using the nom de plume “Harper Williams”. Neither Grandpa Theobald or Belknapius (Lovecraft and Long) are recorded of being aware of the writer’s gender. S. T. Joshi and others cite it as a possible influence to “The Dunwich Horror” (see quote above as well as Joshi notes to Lovecraft’s poem in The Ancient Track [Hippocampus, 2013]), including among other similar motifs it’s use of twin brothers, one more monstrous than the other. We present this then to show that possible influence and give a taste of a pulp flavor not usually found in the gentle tales of stuffed animals…

The joey Zone

ANN and JEFF VANDERMEER, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy. New York: Vintage Books, 2019. 822 pp. $25.00 tpb. ISBN: 978-0-525-43556-3

“The most painful part of the experience was reading Salvador Dali’s fiction.”
–@jeffvandermeer, 25 Sep 2018

“A night at the end of June, a child takes a walk with his mother. It’s raining falling stars. The child picks up one and carries it in the palms of his hands. At home he deposits it on the table and locks it in a reversed glass. The next morning, getting up, he lets escape a scream of terror: A worm, during the night has nibbled his star!”
–According to Dali, written by him at age 8

The above is provided as a public service in the interest of giving an even more complete survey than included in this Big Book.

Painful? We’ve read worse assuredly. While nothing is as brief as this in this volume, it would not be out of its scope. There are ninety selections, not all of which are complete narratives (Nine novels are excerpted ranging from Through The Looking Glass to The Night Land). Twelve of the authors appeared previously in The Vandermeer’s collection The Weird (2011). The Big Book in some respects presents a deeper cut of that aesthetic. One story, Hagiwara Sakutaro’s “The Town of Cats”, is in both anthologies.

Regular subscribers to this journal might first associate the term “fantasy” with a heroic narrative in a “secondary world”, either in an epic (Tolkien) or pulpier, shorter form (Howard). Both the Oxford Professor and Two-Gun Bob are in these pages. The Vandermeers define Classic Fantasy as that written “from the early 1800s to World War II, from the start of a nascent idea of “fantasy” as opposed to “folktale”.” There are folk and fairytale tropes abounding in these pages due to “the rate of fey” the editors use in establishing parameters for this collection, but many extend Beyond The Fields We Knew.

There is a preponderance of playful Comic Fantasy, the welcome example being Oscar Wilde’s delightful “The Remarkable Rocket” (a rather overdone choice on the other hand being Gustav Meyrink’s “Blamol”). Franz Blei’s “The Big Bestiary of Modern Literature” is doted on and not surprisingly, as it seems a formative influence on the anthologists’ Thackery Lambshead books and Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals.

Science Fantasy—another subdivision—is represented by Edgar Allan Poe’s “M. Valdemar” and Fitz James O’Brien’s “The Diamond Lens”. “The Masque of The Red Death” or “The Wondersmith” come to mind as more suitable examples from either however. And while this reviewer loves the writing of Bruno Schulz, “A Night of The High Season” written fantastically in style and descriptions, is not quite a fantasy per se (All of the above also goes for Herman Melville and his tale “The Tartarus of Maids”). “Too much time and energy has been expended by well-meaning editors of past anthologies invoking such arguments as the “Nathaniel Hawthorne Defense” to establish fantasy’s bona fides.” The Vandermeers then proceed to do just that themselves, recently admitting in an interview that “we speak to repatriate” the “literary” into the “fantastical”—is there a need to boost the relevance of the latter?

We must look at what this book is rather than what it is not. Jeff Vandermeer’s predilection for speculative fictions concerned with humanity’s interaction with The Natural World and its’ flora and fauna infuse an underlying flavor to this self-described “sumptuous repast”. The Will-O’-The-Wisps of the Hans Andersen story cry “…they are drowning our meadows and drying them up! What will become of our descendants?” Jasoomian Imperialist John Carter takes up long-sword in the edit from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars series to fight the “hideous”, “repulsive” plant men.

And yet. There are samples from The Worm Ouroboros or A Voyage to Arcturus to entice an uninitiated palate desiring refinement. A new encounter was with the writing of Marcel Schwob, his standout story (complete with climate change!) being “The Death of Odjigh”, reminiscent of J. H. Rosny. And any time an anthology contains a selection by Leonora Carrington it is worth a read. In summation: While not the definitive collection of fantasy—classic or otherwise—this book’s value was in relation to the amount of material that was new to me. For now, this far encompassing, albeit curated, tour will last long enough for a night at the end of June.