David Lynch – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 814

Kull of Atlantis—The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune by Ned Dameron for Kull (1985) by Robert E. Howard. Via.

• Jeremy Allen reviews the latest reissue of The New Worlds Fair by Michael Moorcock and The Deep Fix, describing the album as “a fascinating and quixotic document from the time it was made, deserving to be taken seriously in its own right”.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Short Fiction, a small collection of early stories by Clark Ashton Smith.

• New music: Geometry of Murder: Extra Capsular Extraction Inversions by Earth x Black Noi$e; Live At Nonseq by WNDFRM.

The book is not just loaded with words or tongues. Its also loaded with genres, or more accurately, different modes of literature. And one of the modes I particularly enjoyed this time around is, appropriately, the Weird. In ways long noted on forlorn and unspeakable subreddits, there is a decidedly Lovecraftian dimension to Melville’s Whale, which the Master of Providence did read and enjoy months before writing his game-changing “Call of Cthulhu.” We begin the novel with a sick soul, who may or may not be named after an Old Testament outcast, wandering through a macabre and fetid New England whale-town, following grim portents that lead him on towards a cursed ship doomed to confront a monster who sleeps or at least feeds, and presumably dreams, at the bottom of the sea. And that’s just the first couple of chapters.

Erik Davis on the pleasures of re-reading Moby-Dick, in a piece which makes me want to read the novel again

• At the BFI: Phil Hoad on David Lynch’s efforts to keep making films in an industry resistant to his kind of art.

• Exploration Log 12: Adam Rowe on the best retro science fiction art collections.

• At Public Domain Review: The Nine Birds of Jacques de Fornazeris (1594).

• Winners and finalists for the 2025 Ocean Art Contest.

• Mix of the week: A mix for The Wire by Hilary Woods.

• The Whale (1977) by Electric Light Orchestra | Don’t Kill The Whale (1978) by Yes | School For Whales (1980) by Marc Barreca

Weekend links 807

Poster art by Nicholas Kouninos for Procol Harum / Pink Floyd / HP Lovecraft at the Fillmore, San Francisco, 1967.

• Take a break from so-called reality with Gruesome Shrewd, more queasy psychedelia by Moon Wiring Club. MWC’s Ian Hodgson described his intentions to Simon Reynolds in a Reynolds roundup which notes the 20th anniversary of the Ghost Box project. The label is apparently on hold for the moment but I have to admit that my interest waned some time after the 10th anniversary, when it became increasingly apparent that the ghost had fled the box. Reynolds ends his piece with a list of favourite GB recordings which I mostly agree with, although I’d shuffle the order and swap some entries with Pye Corner Audio.

• “‘You know that feeling you get when you’ve just gotten back from the dry cleaners a pair of slacks, Dacron slacks, and you reach your hand in a pocket and you feel those fuzzy sandwiches with your fingers? Well, that’s the feeling I’m looking for.’ I just nodded and replied, ‘OK, Dave, I know exactly what you mean.’” Barry Gifford remembers David Lynch.

• Aschenbach’s Last Journey: Lesley Chamberlain, the most recent translator of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, approaches the text by following the progress of its doomed protagonist from Brioni to the Venetian Lido. Related: Polly Barton describes to Katy Whimhurst some of the difficulties involved in translating Japanese fiction to English.

• From The Shout to Bait: Darran Anderson on the uses of sound in cinema. Rupert Hines’ soundtrack to The Shout has just been released by Buried Treasure.

• Video footage of modular synthesists Arc (Ian Boddy & Mark Shreeve) performing Arcturus live in 2004: part one | part two.

• At Aeon: “Black holes may be hiding something that changes everything,” says Gideon Koekoek.

• At the BFI: Michael Brooke selects 10 great Hungarian films.

• Steven Heller’s font of the year is Fillmore.

• Shout The Storm (1984) by :Zoviet:France: | Shout At The Devil (2002) by Jah Wobble & Temple Of Sound | Shout (2005) by Tod Dockstader

Weekend links 806

Cover art by George Wilson for The Twilight Zone #45, September 1972. Via.

• At Public Domain Review: Thea Applebaum Licht on the history of art within art, or cabinets of curiosity and paintings within paintings.

• The final 2025 catalogue of lots for the After Dark: Gay Art and Culture online auction. Homoerotic art, photos, historic porn. etc.

• At Smithsonian Mag: See the “Mona Lisa of Illuminated Manuscripts,” a 600-Year-Old Bible covered in intricate illustrations.

It’s amazing, the number of people out there who love everything about queer life except for queer sex, who would prefer that sex and sexual orientation live in entirely different zip codes, that they exist as non-overlapping magisteria; it’s so much safer that way. Who wants gay sex polluting their enjoyment of the abstraction that is Being Gay?

That is what gay love is, now, in the collective imagination of American commerce: a set of identity relations projected onto bored and indifferent celebrities who will half-heartedly play along with the idea because doing so moves units and, anyway, what does it cost them? The more that sexual orientation slouches to the point of pure abstraction, the less effort it takes. Anyone and anything can be gay, now, because gay is just a set of pompous liberal cultural signifiers that have no earthly material relation to homosexuals.

“I miss when homoeroticism was erotic,” says Freddie deBoer. I’ve made similar complaints myself over the years. For some genuinely erotic homoeroticism, see the latest auction link above.

• At Ultrawolveunderthefullmoon: Illustrations for Edmund Weiss’s Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt.

• DJ Food’s latest harvestings of psychedelic ephemera may be seen here.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Bruce Connor’s Day.

• The Strange World of…David Lynch.

• RIP Udo Kier and Tom Stoppard.

• Atlanta Surrealist Group

• Menergy (1981) by Patrick Cowley | Eros Arriving (1982) by Bill Nelson | Erotic City (“Make Love Not War Erotic City Come Alive”) (1984) by Prince & The Revolution

Weekend links 790

Set design by Vladimir Pleshakov for the Ballets Russes’ The Firebird (1923).

• The latest book from Swan River Press is A Mystery of Remnant and Other Absences, a collection of fictions by the late B. Catling. Copies include postcards with accompanying texts by Alan Moore and Catling’s friend and regular collaborator, Iain Sinclair.

• New music: The Loneliness Of The Hollow Earth Explorer Vol. 1 by Arrowounds; The Eraserhead: Music Inspired By The Film Of David Lynch by Various Artists.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The Purple Cloud by MP Shiel.

• A catalogue of lots at another After Dark: Gay Art and Culture online auction. Homoerotic art, photos, historic porn. etc.

• At Colossal: Laser-cut steel forms radiate ornate patterns in Anila Quayyum Agha’s immersive installations.

• Photographs by Man Ray and Max Dupain showing at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.

• Mix of the week: Isolatedmix 134 by Artefakt.

• At Dennis Cooper’s it’s Anna Karina’s Day.

• Three Imposters

• Purple Haze (1967) by The Jimi Hendrix Experience | Pilots Of Purple Twilight (1981) by Tangerine Dream | Purple Rain (live, 1985) by Prince & The Revolution

Weekend links 782

Ushiwakamaru and Benkei (2015) by Paul Binnie.

• “Gohatto depicts homosexuality within a very specific subset of society. Kubi explores further than that, depicting homosexuality between equals, and between bosses and subordinates. It tries to depict the relationship between power and authority, and how sexuality is used to maintain that authority.” Takeshi Kitano talking about Kubi, his film about sex among the samurai, which is receiving a belated release in the UK.

• “De Rome later said he’d never felt persecuted for his sexuality, and it’s this sense of the carefree that’s reflected in the lightness of his filmmaking.” Luke Turner on Peter De Rome’s homoerotic films which are currently being screened at the Barbican, London.

• At Public Domain Review: Helen Haiman Joseph’s A Book of Marionettes (1920), “The first comprehensive history of marionette artistry in the English language.”

• Mixes of the week: Isolatedmix 132: Psilocybin Therapy Protocol v1.22a by Matt Xavier, and DreamScenes – June 2025 at Ambientblog.

• At Sight and Sound: Backwards through the backwoods: music editors Dean Hurley and Lori Eschler on David Lynch and Twin Peaks.

• Dennis Cooper’s favourite fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, art, and internet of 2025 so far. Thanks again for the link here!

• New music: Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea by Pan American & Kramer, and Modulations IV by Ian Boddy.

• At The Quietus: Peer Review: Peter Strickland interviews Cosey Fanni Tutti…and vice versa.

• Cosmic Dawn: A feature-length NASA documentary about the James Webb Space Telescope.

• RIP Sly Stone and Brian Wilson.

• Les Marionnettes (1991) by Zbigniew Preisner | Sword Of The Samurai (2006) by Lisa Gerrard | Seven Samurai (Ending Theme) (2012) by Ryuichi Sakamoto