Map of Sherlock Holmes's London.

A link on Pinterest got me wondering if there were a more authoritative map. Looks like this one is a nice start.

Time to revise.

I received news of provisional acceptance of my Lovecraft/detective fiction paper, which is good, and I have comments from reviewers to take under consideration. Everything is due to the editor on Hallowe'en, which is a nice touch.

Three months, shouldn't be a problem.

Too many things, not enough brain.

I'm done with the Schultz/Joshi text. Excellent read, informative and thought-provoking essays. Lots of notes.

Next: reread journals two through six; update the TOC for journal five; plan what to start working on.

Done with An Epicure in the Terrible (Schultz/Joshi). Quite useful to have read. Also, now on journal six.

A post shared by Heather Poirier (@mensan98th) on May 20, 2018 at 1:55pm PDT

How do I capture all this?

Getting it all down in a coherent way seems like it'll take a long time.

Advice given to me by one of my master's thesis advisors: "Just get the fucking thing written." She'd put that onto a banner in her dorm room when she was writing her dissertation.

“Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.”
― Chuck Wendig, 500 Ways to Be a Better Writer

I've gotta figure out a way to shake all this stuff apart and use it. So much to say, and it's all running parallel. #100dayproject #the100dayproject #thekinginyellow #Lovecraft #writing #detectivefiction

A post shared by Heather Poirier (@mensan98th) on May 11, 2018 at 3:29pm PDT

Twenty-one years.

At age 26, Lovecraft observes:

If one must weave cobwebs of empty aether, let them supply a decorative element to those cosmic spaces which would otherwise be an ambiguous and tantalizing void. (SL 3.147)

Twenty-one years. That's all we got beyond this statement. He died at 47.

Catch-up on notes.

Stefan Dziemianowicz's chapter in Schultz/Joshi has been revelatory. I find that my thoughts run in similar ways to his, at least as captured in this article, and that's like an oasis. Many, many notes from the evening of 5 May.

I know I keep posting this, but soon I've got to review what I have gathered the past few years, then think carefully about where to go next.

Catch-up post on recent notes. So much to think about. #Lovecraft #detectivefiction #thekinginyellow #the100dayproject #100dayproject

A post shared by Heather Poirier (@mensan98th) on May 7, 2018 at 5:07pm PDT

Four more chapters in Schultz/Joshi.

I thought I'd quit Schultz/Joshi after the St. Armand chapter, but because my FOMO is largely confined to specific texts, I feel compelled to read four more chapters.

Four more chapters christ it will never end. #100dayproject #Lovecraft #writing #detectivefiction

A post shared by Heather Poirier (@mensan98th) on May 1, 2018 at 4:15pm PDT

Game idea.

Game title: "Blood on the Scarecrow."

I've got nothing beyond that.

Zodiac, Sherlock Holmes.

Tonight's notes are on the film Zodiac, with a reminder to get to work on including Robert Downey Jr's Sherlock Holmes. Taking on a specific iteration of Holmes is a tricky matter, but this one is in the artist-investigator tradition.

This is also on my Instagram account (@mensan98th).

Re: Zodiac, I'm sorting out how Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) moves from the fringe to the center of the investigation, and how as he does so, his life moves from a normal, ie, societally centered, one to an existence on the fringe, with no family beside him, no job, and no interests other than sorting out who the Zodiac is. I'm working on how his aesthetic sense as an artist makes this possible for him. It's not simply that he's the only one able to keep working on it; that would make it merely a matter of time, the devotion of 10,000 hours as recommended by Malcolm Gladwell. It's his vision of the world that's different from both the police and the reporters.

I've got a bit on Paul Avery, but it mostly has to do with his connection with Graysmith.

Once I get the skeleton of the Graysmith section in place, I'll start working on Robert Downey Jr's Sherlock Holmes and how he fits in with the artist-investigator idea.

Things I'm thinking about; things I need to read.

World enough and time. I've got a separate post for the 2007 film Zodiac, which I just saw recently, and which is a godsend.

Things I'm thinking about:

Moving forward on that Blade Runner 2049 article I keep threatening to write.
How I'm ever going to get my office organized (clean will require hazmat).
Borges and Lovecraft.
What the third chapter I start will be.
How 2018 is going to play out.

Things I need to read:

These essays by Thomas de Quincey. Specifically,

MURDER, CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS

SECOND PAPER ON MURDER

which are simply terrific essay titles.

Fakery in high culture.

Classical sources in Blade Runner 2049.

Common patterns in Borges and Lovecraft.

Keats and negative capability.

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats.

And I need to finish An Epicure in the Terrible, which has been helpful in multiple ways even though I've skipped the chapters that aren't clearly related to the current book. 

Dear Santa:

For Christmas, and preferably starting this afternoon, I'd like to stop obsessing over whether my article will be accepted for publication.

Devotedly,

Heather

Photo credit: George Wesley Bellows, Dance at Insane Asylum, 1907; Art Institute of Chicago

Oh, PMLA.

You know we all love you, and for the most part, we are in line with your observations.

But good lord.

It takes a long time to sift through your chaff to find the wheat.

To be honest, I don't want to know what you think of Lovecraft. Not because it's inaccurate, but because it's been done, and you aren't aware of the prior publications and presentations. You think, as so many do, that you're the first to launch the accusations.

You're not.

I'd apologize, but I'm not sorry.

Smooch. Come back when you've reached adulthood.

Heather

Today's reading: "The Parents of Howard Phillips Lovecraft."

I'm still in the Schultz/Joshi collection and am finishing Kenneth Faig's essay on Lovecraft's parents. It's interesting and a good read, not something I'd necessarily quote in my own work (at this point, anyway), and I recommend it.

The most interesting thing about it is something that isn't obvious at first. We know much, much more about Lovecraft's mother than we do about his father, which is not how these things normally go. My understanding is that, for example, Victorian women's obituaries would quickly turn to details about their husbands or fathers. The fact that we have so many details about Susie Phillips Lovecraft is both interesting and a boon to our understanding of Lovecraft himself. Winfield Scott Lovecraft, his father, was a traveling salesman and thus left little in the way of a mark on the world.

I doubt either of them would have fully understood the mark their son left with us.

#100DayProject

This year, I'm doing the #100DayProject, as I did last year and in 2016. It's going to be more reading and, possibly, another chapter developed.

I've read some of the essays in here in other collections. The introduction is a fine one, written by Joshi. More to come.*

*I tried posting this from the Blogger app last night but no luck. It's my day one post.

Update and reading material.

I got the conference paper from last year's NecronomiCon PVD revised and to the editor on deadline, which was 3 February. I'm less happy with the draft than I wanted to be, but unfortunate family events* kept me from working on it as much as I would have otherwise.

Today's reading material:

...oh, god, I just fell into the MLA wormhole and joined for a year, all because I pulled out the 8th edition handbook.

....aaaaand MLA Humanities Commons profile page is timing out, so no adding info THANKS, OBAMA.

Anyway, what I'm reading today is underneath this green Crown Royal bag containing a brown Blanton's bag containing a small statuette of Cthulhu; two necklaces; a set of gaming dice; a very nice metal spinner that I will never use; a Mythos challenge coin (a sigil is on the reverse) that signifies that I'll be buying all the drinks, given that Cthulhu doesn't exist; and a small handcrafted piece of Mythos art designed to be a menacing octopus.

Adams, Donald K., editor. Mystery and Detection Annual 1972. Castle Press, 1972.

Let's go.

(*) Munch, one of our beloved basset hounds, was diagnosed with and died of lymphoma in the span of 11 days in early January. That was hard, and still is.