Great Books podcast: “The Call of Cthulhu”

The National Review magazine’s Great Books podcast is this week Episode 199: ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ by H.P. Lovecraft

John J. Miller is joined by Paul LaFarge of Bennington College to discuss H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”.

Who is LaFarge? He turns out to be the author of a complex ‘what if?’ Barlow-as-character novel The Night Ocean (2017). Another one I missed in the Tentaclii hiatus, then. The only non-Amazon / non-paywall full review I can immediately find by search is by The Hysterical Hamster. Warning, the review has lots of plot spoilers.

Lovecraft in the Argentine

Michel Houellebecq’s early Lovecraft essay is now available in translation in Argentina, and this triggers a local newspaper to note that a copy of the Necronomicon once resided at the University of Buenos Aires, and that the nation’s favourite son Jorge Luis Borges was influenced by Lovecraft. The translation gets colloquially fuzzy from that point on, but seems to imply that Borges once faked and placed a library card for the Necronomicon in the national library card catalogue (libraries used to be indexed with long wooden boxes of paper-cards, kids). What follows then appears to be an amusingly scattergun Borgesian attempt to link Lovecraft with the apparently well-known local pop-singer Gustavo Cerati, so perhaps the article is not quite to be taken at face value.

Save the Ancient Ones

SASA Masterclass

The Save Ancient Studies Association will be hosting a discussion with a leading Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, who will explore how the ancient world inspired the work of horror author H.P. Lovecraft.” 30th October 2021.

Sounds good. Hopefully they’ll post a recording on their YouTube channel.

Also, Save Ancient Studies seems a very worthy cause, and worth supporting and promoting if it’s within your orbit.

Miskatonic Missives

Miskatonic Missives, a spin-out paper publication from the Voluminous podcast…

each issue of Miskatonic Missives serves as an ideal companion guide for exploring one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most fascinating letters. Every issue includes a reproduction of the full text of the letter in question, supported by a variety of relevant reference material, including contemporary and modern fiction, academic writing, poetry, and artwork.

Hmmm, “contemporary and modern fiction”? I presume that must be new unpublished work then?