{horror} – Page 143 – { feuilleton }

Cain’s son: the incarnations of Grendel

Beowulf wrestles with Grendel, Lynd Ward (1939).

There’s nothing new in pointing out Hollywood’s crimes against literature, the film business has been screwing up book adaptation since the earliest days of silent cinema. But sometimes the wound is so grievous you can’t help but speak out, in this case against Roger Avary’s Beowulf which is released next month. This is another CGI-heavy confection along the lines Polar Express, with the actors being given digital bodies via motion-capture, and it’s something I’d probably have ignored until I saw this picture of Grendel, the story’s principal monster. Beowulf is one of the earliest surviving Anglo-Saxon poems and Grendel, the bloodthirsty creature which Beowulf battles, is one of the ur-fiends of English literature, along with his equally monstrous, lake-dwelling mother and the dragon which fatally wounds the hero. The trio give us a peek back into the dark imagination from a time before recorded history and Grendel especially has always had something raw and primal about its character. So when you see a beast with such a history portrayed as little more than a diseased muppet you wonder what’s going on. Are the creators inept? Ignorant? Were studio restrictions at work? How does an industry with the talent to give splendid life to the trolls and Balrog of Lord of the Rings, or Davy Jones and crew in Pirates of the Caribbean, screw up so badly?

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New things for October

“Mirage in time—image of long-vanish’d pre-human city.”

A couple pieces of news to catch up with here, both Lovecraft-related which is very apt for the month of Halloween. The first is the work I gave a teaser view of in August, a commission for Maison d’Ailleurs, the Museum of Science Fiction, Utopia and Extraordinary Journeys in Yverdon-Les-Bains, Switzerland. The brief for An Exhibition of Unspeakable Things: Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book was to choose an entry from HP Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book, his source of story ideas. The entry I chose implies some of the alien architecture which is a feature of At the Mountains of Madness although I’ll admit that the final result is debatable as architecture.

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Strange cargo: things found in books

The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects by Alexandra David-Neel & Lama Yongden, City Lights Books (1972).

One of the additional pleasures of buying old books besides finding something out-of-print (or, it has to be said, something cheap) occurs when those books still possess traces of their previous owners. A recent posting on The Other Andrew’s page concerned book inscriptions, something any book collector will be used to seeing. Less common are the objects which slip from the pages when you’ve returned home. There are several categories of these.

1: Bookmarks

I have a substantial collection of bookmarks proper, from embossed strips of leather to the more mundane pieces of card of the type that bookshops frequently give away. But I also make a habit of using odd inserts to mark a place as did the previous owners of these volumes. The City Lights book (above) came with a very fragile leaf inside it which may well be as old as the book. Another City Lights book I own, the Artaud Anthology from 1965, included a newspaper article about Artaud. Newspaper clipping inserts are discussed below.

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Hugo Steiner-Prag’s Golem

Der Golem, first edition (1915) and Dover reprint (1986).
Illustrations by Hugo Steiner-Prag.

Before leaving Prague (for the time being), it’s worth mentioning the lithograph illustrations by Hugo Steiner-Prag (1880–1945) for Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem. These atmospheric drawings always remind me of the production sketches Albin Grau created for Murnau’s Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens in 1922. Grau was an occultist as well as a horror aficionado and would certainly have read Meyrink’s book which was a Europe-wide bestseller when first published. The success of the novel inspired Paul Wegener’s first Golem film (now lost) which in turn helped fuel the demand for horror films that led eventually to Nosferatu.

Nosferatu poster by Albin Grau (1922).

There’s little of Steiner-Prag’s work available on the web but the Dover paperback above contains all the illustrations. The novel has been re-translated recently but I’ve yet to read one of the more recent editions to see how it compares with Dover’s 1928 Madge Pemberton version.

The Golem by Hugo Steiner-Prag (1915).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Nosferatu
• Barta’s Golem

Shriek: The Movie

Not to be confused with animated junk that’s long outstayed its welcome, this is a short film based on Jeff VanderMeer‘s fantasy novel Shriek: An Afterword. I helped design Jeff’s City of Saints and Madmen, his first book concerning the city of Ambergris. Shriek is set in the same city and is just as sophisticated a piece of fiction as its predecessor and with a similarly unique flavour. Shriek: The Movie is more than a promotional device, it’s a self-contained narrative that does a great job of introducing some of the atmosphere of Ambergris without spoiling things by being too literal.

A city at war with itself. A night beyond imagining. And… aftermath. A short indie film about memory and transformation by Finnish director J.T. Lindroos, from a screenplay by Jeff VanderMeer, with an original soundtrack by the legendary art-rock band The Church. The film opens with Janice Shriek typing up her memoirs from the backroom of a bar, and being interrupted by bar patrons (played by Steve Kilbey and Tim Powles from The Church!). Influenced by early surrealist films. Set in Jeff VanderMeer’s fantastical city of Ambergris.

Voice cast includes Kathleen Martin as Janice Shriek and Steve Kilbey & Tim Powles from The Church. With character images by Elizabeth Hand and Rick Wallace, and art by Scott Eagle, Steve Kilbey, and others.