Weird Studies/Lovecraft

17 Apr 2022 - 16 Dec 2022
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    • Nice side-by-side comparison of PKD and Lovecraft, except for the stupid "Dicklove" name.
    • PF described a category of fiction that sort of reaches out of the page and warps you, PKD being the archetype...this sounds a lot like Erik Davis theory.
    • Ghost stories vs. Weird fiction – the former present an intrusion of the supernatural into a stable world (which is eventually banished generally). The latter present a character discovering that the world he inhabits is fundamentally strange at its foundations. Ghost stories suture the wound, the weird writer leaves you bleeding (or gives you an infection).
    • Weird fiction doesn't actually have or emphasize narrative, given they are trying to describe this timeless thing. So not much distance between pulp and avant garde.
    • Sloterdijk's immunology and cancer...cancer as a betrayal from within, no buffering will help you. In Lovecraft, the buffer collapses.
      • What is cancer? Crabs are monstrous, also a symbol of the unconscious because they walk sideways and seem so inhuman...so cancer is a Great Old One (OK, now I'm going to think of PICI as Charles Stross Laundry, where nerdy wizards deploy math weapons against eldritch monsters).
    • Nyarlathotep
      • Based on Tesla? Interesting