Re: Forthcoming Books
 

I admire all the work Joshi with his Lovecraft scholarship and his dedication to getting weird fiction classics in print. That said I don't think his editorial taste is *that* brilliant. Weird fiction scholarship has grown beyond the point when his appraisal of various stories and writers is taken as the de facto truth - he knows this and is desperately trying to maintain power.

I would note that Joshi has displayed the uglier part of his character attitude, that bullying pomposity coupled with sub-intelligent criticism or plaint pejorative, in his atheist writings and atheist off-topic rambling for decades. I don't recall anyone taking him up on it then. No alarm bells went off when he indulges in his little giggling hate seasons with Price. I take it that the reason for this is that people remained silent for fear of being thought Christians if they weren't.

(Joshi of course is no atheist philosopher only an edgy New Atheist type with aspirations of Harold Bloom-hood. A simple heuristic: if an atheist calls themselves a 'sceptic', that term being treated synonymous with atheism, then they are probably not worth paying attention to)

Re: Forthcoming Books
 

I don't think his opinion holds much weight given the growing critical reputation of Barron, VanderMeer and Hill. I don't think this book will do even nearly as well as his one on the classic weird writers. We are all grateful for his work as a Lovecraft curator, but, well, this area isn't limited to 90s fan culture any more, and being a reactionary sceptic online is deeply boring. If we can't even trust the opinions he holds then why buy a book of them? The 'humorous' digs at writers aren't even funny and are just faintly depressing as he's embarrassing himself.

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A slight quibble/question: a huge number of people read those Penguin editions, including people who might like Lovecraft but arent invested in the fandom and people who dont even particularly like Lovecraft but from the sounds of it appear to have taken Joshi's notes onboard, including the frequent "weird fiction" classification and anti-Derleth interpretation of the mythos.
I have to wonder how much weird fiction would have got into Penguin Classics without him. Particularly the Dunsany and CASmith. Dunno about Shiel. Joshi suggested someone else do the MR James books but Penguin insisted he had to do it.

I think good honest critics are probably more valuable than ever now, when the writing community is so close and everyone is afraid to offend each other. Science Fiction has a number of good quality, honest and incisive critics (including fiction writers like Christopher Priest, Ian Sales and Adam Roberts who can be quite abrasive) but weird fiction lacks that.

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People such as China Mieville, Neil Gaiman and those of the same generation of fantasy authors others took Lovecraft's use of the term and further pushed it into the mainstream. Their cultural reach obviously far exceeds that of anything Joshi has done, including introductions to Penguin editions of British horror writers. The M. R. James Penguin books aren't even the most popular editions of his stories. The (badly edited) Machen edition is still pretty obscure. I don't really get where this idea they're influential cultural milestones is coming from?

Lovecraft was already steamrolling into popularity for decades by the time Joshi arrived on the scene. Of course HPL's fans were using the term he himself used for the genre by then, which had been further spread among fandom by Leiber, Bloch, Derleth and people who actually knew him. To give Joshi credit for this makes less than no sense to me. 'Weird Tales' is literally the title of the pulp magazine HPL, REH and other fantasy giants are most famous for.

Joshi has done some great work removing some of the misconceptions around Lovecraft and making sure the unexpurgated version of his vision sees prominence, but he can't be credited for popularising the term weird fiction any more than he can be championed for popularising the term cosmic horror.

Re: Forthcoming Books
 

New book announcement from Tartarus, possibly worthwhile to those interested in French Gothic literature.

"Pauliska, or, Modern Perversity"

by Jacques-Antoine Révéroni, baron de Saint-Cyr
Translated by Erik Butler

This is the first English translation of Saint-Cyr’s Pauliska, or Modern Perversity (1798), a minor classic of the French Gothic. It concerns a noble young mother buffeted by misfortune, flying from one disaster to the next, only to fall victim, time and again, to seemingly supernatural depravity. . . . In the course of her adventures, Pauliska traverses the greater part of Europe and winds up in the clutches of mad scientists, libertines, political conspirators, smugglers, counterfeiters, and more.

Pauliska is very much a part of the roman noir genre, which countered the optimistic mood of the Age of Enlightenment with a fatalistic vision of individual and communal life at the mercy of ancestral curses, unspeakable secrets, and dark desires. Despite its debt to de Sade’s Justine, its contradictions, sensationalistic title and generic traits, Pauliska displays genuine originality and gusto.

Jacques-Antoine Révéroni, baron de Saint-Cyr (1767-1829) belonged to a family of Italian extraction that followed Catherine de’ Medici to France. He interspersed writing with an undistinguished military career. Failing to gain a foothold in the republic of letters, Révéroni ultimately went insane and died more or less forgotten.

http://www.tartaruspress.com/saint-cyr-pauliska.html

Re: Forthcoming Books
 

I cannot remember if I pofted about this, so please excuse any senile repetition. David Barker and I have just had our collaborative novel, WITCHES IN DREAMLAND, publish'd by Hippocampus Press. Some early chapters take place in Arkham and Sesqua Valley; but ye majority of the book is set in Lovecraft's dreamlands, a wonderful setting for supernatural fiction because ANYTHING can happen there. I was lucky to spend time with David earlier this month at ye H. P. LOVECRAFT FILM FESTIVAL & CTHULHUCON in Portland, where our book had its debut.

My next book, due out soon (I suspect early next year, but maybe it will yet see publication late this year) is a new hardcover collection from Centipede Press, AN ECSTASY OF FEAR AND OTHERS.

Both books benefited greatly by ye editorial talents of that wonderful Lovecraftian gent, and the best friend I've ever had, S. T. Joshi.

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It came out in May but I think it should be noted that RA Lafferty's Reefs Of Earth is in paperback as his work is notoriously difficult to collect. Some Centipede books came out a while ago but they are super expensive and some ebooks came out but only in certain territories.

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More Lafferty news. an omnibus called Three Great Novels came out recently. And next year a Best Of collection comes out with intros and forewards by a ton of famous people.

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The new hardcopy of Stenbock's "Of Kings and Things" (Strange Attractor) arrived in today's mail.
Looking forward to delving into it this evening!