The week we tackle The Street and then strangle it to death with our bare hands. Matt Burriesci, Executive Director of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs at George Mason University, joins us this week as guest host and talks to us about some of the other writers doing their thing in the 20′s and 30′s.
- This episode features a short selection from Chloe: Song of the Swamp as recorded by Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orchestra.
Next Week: Double feature! Poetry and the Gods and Celephais!
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Hi!
Unfortunatly I wasn’t able to hear the “Street” podcast so far, but I will do this in the next days. Did you know, that there is a similar story (actually it is a “Maerchen” or fairy tale (but with no fairies in it)) named “Die Stadt” written by the famous Hermann Hesse, authorof “Steppenwolf” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse. Hesse’s story is about a town that rises and finaly decays. It’s very similar to Lovecraft’s “The Street” but -of course- without this racial issue. I am not quite sure, but Hesse’s story “die Stadt” was written and published about 1919. In late 1919 HPL wrote “The Street”. As far as I know, there is no mention of that fact of coincidence. I promise to research. Perhaps it’s all false alarm, but I asked myself if you guys heard anything about this similarity wich is quite interestering if we keep in mind that HPL wrote “Polaris” before he read Lord Dunsany and nevertheless quite wrote it in a Dunsanian style. What about Kafka? There are brief mentions about similarities in topic and theme.
Lot has been said about HPL, but there is more to come, I hope.
Sincerely yours
Mirko Stauch
Hi guys,
I did some of my homework and found out that Marco Frenschkowski mentions “Die Stadt” by Hesse in context with “The Street” in a foreword thar appears the “Gesammelte Werke” (i.e. Collected Works) Vol. I, published by Edition Phantasia, 1998,1999. Here Frenschkowski, who is a famous scholar in Germany, says, that Hesse wrote his story in 1910 and that it is -of course- a coincidence “Zufall”.
Greetz
Mirko Stauch
Once again, it’s me….
Okay, the show was brillant and Matt Burriesci’s comments about Lovecraft and the modern american literature was an eye(or ear)opener. I just read essays by Joshi in wich Lovecraft’s close reading of modern publications ist mentioned, too. This proves the “legend” of the old recluse to be wrong. But there are more legends to be proven.
In addition I learned something about Sherwood Anderson. I didn’t know that. So it has been a pleasure to listen to this episode, but it always is
Yours
Mirko Stauch
Tall beaver– just a hat, lads. http://people.ucsc.edu/~kfeinste/history.html
Hell yeah Lovecraft is influential! Lovecraft and Robert Howard are the biggest influences on my writing style.
I was just listening to Ep. 40 of Dan Carlin’s history podcast and he was discussing the Communist scare. The year this story was written, the attorney general panicked the nation with a warning that there was going to be a wave of terrorist activity from communists on May Day. And then absolutely nothing happened. Is it possible that HPL was trying to be funny with this story?
I believe a tall beaver is a tall hat made with beaver fur.
Tall beaver link moved to
http://people.ucsc.edu/%7Ekfeinste/beaverhat/Main.html
your velcome.