Acquisitions (94): Hiro Arikawa

Hiro Arikawa: The Travelling Cat Chronicles (2011-12)

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Hiro Arikawa (1972- )

Hiro Arikawa: The Travelling Cat Chronicles (2017)
[Ensemble Consignment Shop, Silverdale - 8/6/2023]:

Arikawa, Hiro. The Travelling Cat Chronicles. ['Tabineko Ripouto', 2011-12]. Trans. Philip Gabriel. Doubleday. London: Transworld Publishers, 2017.

Natsume Sōseki: I Am a Cat (1905-7 / 1986)

I Am a Cat

The first line of Hiro Arikawa's novel reads as follows:

I am a cat. As yet, I have no name. There's a famous cat in our country who once made this very statement.

- Hiro Arikawa. The Travelling Cat Chronicles. 2011-12. Trans. Philip Gabriel. Doubleday. (London: Transworld Publishers, 2017): p.3.

Her narrator is, of course, referring to Natsume Sōseki's famous novel I Am a Cat, pictured above.

I am a cat. As yet I have no name. I've no idea where I was born. All I remember is that I was miaowing in a dampish dark place when, for the first time, I saw a human being.

- Natsume Sōseki. I am a Cat: Three Volumes in One. 1905-07. Trans. Aiko Ito & Graeme Wilson. 1972, 1979, 1986. Tuttle Publishing. (Tokyo / Rutland, Vermont / Singapore: Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., 2002): p.3.

Arikawa's hero continues, in somewhat lighter vein:

I have no clue how great that cat was, but at least when it comes to having a name I got there first. Whether I like my name is another matter, since it glaringly doesn't fit my gender, me being male and all. I was given it about five years ago - around the time I came of age.

Haruki Murakami: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-95 / 1999)

I guess my own introduction to all this cattiness came via Haruki Murakami, whose Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is certainly being referred to in the title of the English translation, if not the Japanese original.

That novel begins with the narrator boiling spaghetti and listening to opera on the radio (two very typical activities for Murakami characters) until he's rung up by his estranged wife and told that he needs to go and look for their missing cat. "I'm almost certain it's hanging around the empty house at the other end of the alley. The one with the bird statue in the yard. I have often seen it there."

So now I had to go cat hunting. I had always liked cats. And I liked this particular cat. But cats have their own way of living. They're not stupid. If a cat stopped living where you happened to be, that meant it had decided to go somewhere else. If it got tired and hungry, it would come back. Finally, though, to keep Kumiko happy, I would have to go looking for our cat. I had nothing better to do.

- Haruki Murakami. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. 1994-95. Trans. Jay Rubin. (London: The Harvill Press, 1999): pp.8-9.

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, dir.: Drive My Car (2021)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was the very first novel by Murakami I ever read, and I have to say the vague trippiness and self-absorption of his characters, though certainly intriguing, was probably too far from my comfort zone at the time to strike a chord.

It wasn't, in fact, till I read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985) that I really began to get on his wavelength. That one was just too brilliantly accomplished to be ignored.

I had a bit of a cooling-off period with him after 1Q84, which seemed a bit out-of-control (for him, at any rate). But I have kept up with his short story collections as well as his novels over the years.

Which meant, just the other day, watching the film above, Drive My Car, based on the short story of the same name from his 2014 collection Men Without Women.

Kôichirô Miki, dir.: The Travelling Cat Chronicles (2018)

The Travelling Cat Chronicles, too, has been made into a movie. I haven't seen it, but I bet it's not a patch on Drive My Car. For all its French nouvelle vague and Hollywood road movie echoes, it's a staggeringly effective piece of work - the first film I've seen for ages which really surprised me into feeling as if I was in the presence of a masterpiece.

I'd say the director and screen-writers are at least as responsible for this success as Murakami himself - while still definitely based on his story, it also incorporates a lot of other material from the same book, as well as from elsewhere (a greatly increased focus on Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya, for instance). It did remind me of just how good he could be, though: the reason I've collected and read his work so obsessively over the decades.

The Travelling Cat Chronicles, for all its charm, is not really in the same league. It lacks the satiric edge of Natsume Sōseki's masterpiece, as well as the weird existential gropings of Murakami's heroes and heroines. But it does seem born to be turned into a road movie: the narrative style is engaging throughout, and Nana would surely have to go down as one of the preeminent cat characters in world literature.

My interest in modern Japanese fiction used to be confined to such mid-century monoliths as Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima, and (my favourite among them) Junichirō Tanizaki. I'd like to write at more length about those old masters at some stage, but it's nice to know that Japanese fiction is alive and well and definitely headed for some very unexpected places.

Alfred Birnbaum, ed.: Monkey Brain Sushi (1991)

Alfred Birnbaum, ed. Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction. 1991. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1993.

In the meantime, here are some bibliographical notes on the three main authors mentioned above:

1. Arikawa Hiro
2. Murakami Haruki
3. Natsume Sōseki

Books I own are marked in bold:

Hiro Arikawa: Library Wars 1. Illustrated by Kilro Yumi (2010)

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Hiro Arikawa

Arikawa Hiro
(1972- )

Novels:


1. The SDF Trilogy (2004):
   1. Shio no Machi [Wish on My Precious] (2003)
   2. Sora no Naka (2004)
   3. Umi no Soko
2. The Library War series (2006):
   1. Toshokan Sensō [The Library War]
   2. Toshokan Nairan [The Library Infighting]
   3. Toshokan Kiki [The Library Crisis]
   4. Toshokan Kakumei [The Library Revolution]
3. Raintree no Kuni
4. Sweet Blue Age
5. Hankyū Densha [The Hankyū Railway] (2008)
6. Shokubutsu Zukan (2009)
7. Freeter, Ie wo Kau
8. Soratobu Kōhōshitsu
9. Tabineko Ripouto (2011-12)
   • The Travelling Cat Chronicles. Trans. Philip Gabriel. Doubleday. London: Transworld Publishers, 2017.
10. The Goodbye Cat: The Uplifting Tale of Wise Cats and Their Humans. Trans. Philip Gabriel (2023)

Hiro Arikawa: The Goodbye Cat. Trans. Philip Gabriel (2023)

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Haruki Murakami

Murakami Haruki
(1949- )

Novels:


1. Hear the Wind Sing [Kaze no uta o kike] (1979)
   • Hear the Wind Sing. 1979. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum. 1987. Trilogy of the Rat, 1. Tokyo: Kodansha International, n.d.
   • Included in: Wind Pinball. Two Novels: Hear the Wind Sing / Pinball, 1973. 1979 & 1980. Trans. Ted Goossen. Trilogy of the Rat, 1 & 2. Harvill Secker. London: Vintage Books, 2015.
2. Pinball, 1973 [1973-nen no pinbōru] (1980)
   • Pinball, 1973. 1980. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum. 1985. Trilogy of the Rat, 2. Tokyo: Kodansha International, n.d.
   • Included in: Wind Pinball. Two Novels: Hear the Wind Sing / Pinball, 1973. 1979 & 1980. Trans. Ted Goossen. Trilogy of the Rat, 1 & 2. Harvill Secker. London: Vintage Books, 2015.
3. A Wild Sheep Chase [Hitsuji o meguru bōken] (1982)
   • A Wild Sheep Chase. 1982. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum. 1989. Trilogy of the Rat, 3. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2003.
4. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World [Sekai no owari to Hādo-boirudo Wandārando] (1985)
   • Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. 1985. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum. 1991. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2003.
5. Norwegian Wood [Noruwei no mori]. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum, 1989 (1987)
   • Norwegian Wood. 1987. Trans. Jay Rubin. 2 vols. London: The Harvill Press, 2000.
6. Dance Dance Dance [Dansu dansu dansu] (1988)
   • Dance Dance Dance. 1988. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum. 1994. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2003.
7. South of the Border, West of the Sun [Kokkyō no minami, taiyō no nishi] (1992)
   • South of the Border, West of the Sun. 1992. Trans. Philip Gabriel. 1998. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2003.
8. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle [Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru] (1994–1995)
   • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. 1994-95. Trans. Jay Rubin. London: The Harvill Press, 1999.
9. Sputnik Sweetheart [Supūtoniku no koibito] (1999)
   • Sputnik Sweetheart. 1999. Trans. Philip Gabriel. 2001. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2002.
10. Kafka on the Shore [Umibe no Kafuka] (2002)
    • Kafka on the Shore. 2002. Trans. Philip Gabriel. 2003. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2005.
11. After Dark [Afutā dāku] (2004)
    • After Dark. 2004. Trans. Jay Rubin. London: Harvill Secker, 2007.
12. 1Q84 [Ichi-kyū-hachi-yon] (2009–2010)
    • 1Q84. Books 1 & 2. 2009. Trans. Jay Rubin. Book 3. 2010. Trans. Philip Gabriel. Borzoi Books. Alfred A. Knopf. New York: Random House, Inc., 2011.
13. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage [Shikisai o motanai Tazaki Tsukuru to, kare no junrei no toshi] (2013)
    • Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. 2013. Trans. Philip Gabriel. Harvill Secker. London: Random House, 2014.
14. Killing Commendatore [Kishidanchō-goroshi] (2017)
    • Killing Commendatore. 2017. Trans. Philip Gabriel & Ted Goossen. 2018. Vintage. London: Penguin Random House Group, 2019.

Short stories:


15. Yume de Aimashou (1981)
16. The Elephant Vanishes [Zō no shōmetsu, 1980–1991] (1993)
    1. The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women [used in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle] (1986)
    2. The Second Bakery Attack (1985)
    3. The Kangaroo Communiqué (1981)
    4. On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning (1981)
    5. Sleep (1989)
    6. The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler's Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds (1986)
    7. Lederhosen (1985)
    8. Barn Burning (1983)
    9. The Little Green Monster (1981)
    10. Family Affair (1985)
    11. A Window (1991)
    12. TV People (1989)
    13. A Slow Boat to China (1980)
    14. The Dancing Dwarf (1984)
    15. The Last Lawn of the Afternoon (1982)
    16. The Silence (1991)
    17. The Elephant Vanishes (1985)
    • The Elephant Vanishes. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum & Jay Rubin. 1993. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2003.
17. After the Quake [Kami no kodomo-tachi wa mina odoru, 1999–2000] (2000)
    1. UFO in Kushiro
    2. Landscape with Flatiron
    3. All God's Children Can Dance
    4. Thailand
    5. Super-Frog Saves Tokyo
    6. Honey Pie
    • after the quake. 2000. Trans. Jay Rubin. London: The Harvill Press, 2002.
18. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman [Mekurayanagi to nemuru onna, 1980–2005] (2005)
    1. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (1983 / 1995)
    2. Birthday Girl (2002)
    3. New York Mining Disaster (1980 / 1981)
    4. Airplane: Or, How He Talked to Himself as If Reciting Poetry (1987 / 1989)
    5. The Mirror (1981 / 1982)
    6. A Folklore for My Generation: A Prehistory of Late-Stage Capitalism (1989)
    7. Hunting Knife (1984)
    8. A Perfect Day for Kangaroos (1981)
    9. Dabchick (1981)
    10. Man-Eating Cats (1991)
    11. A 'Poor Aunt' Story (1980)
    12. Nausea 1979 (1984)
    13. The Seventh Man (1996)
    14. The Year of Spaghetti (1981)
    15. Tony Takitani (1990)
    16. The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes (1981 / 1982)
    17. The Ice Man (1991)
    18. Crabs (1984 / 2003)
    19. Firefly [used in Norwegian Wood] (1983)
    20. Chance Traveller (2005)
    21. Hanalei Bay (2005)
    22. Where I'm Likely to Find It (2005)
    23. The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day (2005)
    24. A Shinagawa Monkey (2005)
    • Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Trans. Philip Gabriel & Jay Rubin. 2005. London: Harvill Secker, 2006.
19. The Strange Library [Fushigi na toshokan]: children's novella, revised from his 1982 short story 'Toshokan kitan' (2005)
    • The Strange Library. 2008. Trans. Ted Goossen. Harvill Secker. London: Penguin Random House Company, 2014.
20. Men Without Women [Onna no inai otokotachi, 2013–2014] (2014)
    1. Drive My Car
    2. Yesterday
    3. An Independent Organ
    4. Scheherazade
    5. Kino
    6. Samsa in Love
    7. Men Without Women
    • Men Without Women. 2014. Trans. Philip Gabriel & Ted Goossen. 2017. Vintage. London: Penguin Random House Group, 2018.
21. First Person Singular [Ichininshō Tansū, 2018–2020] (2020)
    1. Cream (2018)
    2. On a Stone Pillow (2018)
    3. Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova (2018)
    4. With the Beatles (2019)
    5. Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey (2020)
    6. Carnaval (2019)
    7. The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection (2019)
    8. First Person Singular
    • First Person Singular: Stories. 2020. Trans. Philip Gabriel. 2021. Vintage. London: Penguin Random House Group, 2022.

Non-fiction:


22. Walk, Don't Run [Wōku donto ran: Murakami Ryū vs Murakami Haruki] (1981)
23. Rain, Burning Sun (Come Rain or Come Shine) [Uten Enten] (1990)
24. Portrait in Jazz [Pōtoreito in jazu] (1997)
25. Underground [Andāguraundo] (1997)
26. Underground 2 [Yakusoku sareta basho de] (1998)
    • Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. 1997-98. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum & Philip Gabriel. 2000. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2002.
27. Portrait in Jazz 2 [Pōtoreito in jazu 2] (2001)
28. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running [Hashiru koto ni tsuite kataru toki ni boku no kataru koto] (2007)
    • What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Trans. Philip Gabriel. 2007. London: Harvill Secker, 2008.
29. It Ain't Got that Swing (If It Don't Mean a Thing) [Imi ga nakereba suingu wa nai] (2008)
30. Novelist as a profession [Shokugyō to shite no shōsetsuka] (2015)
31. Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa. Trans. 2016 (2011)
32. Haruki Murakami Goes to Meet Hayao Kawai. Trans. 2016 (1996)
33. What Is There To Do In Laos? [Raos ni ittai nani ga aru to iun desuka?] (2015)
34. Abandoning a Cat: Memories of My Father [Neko o suteru chichioya ni tsuite kataru toki] (2019)

Edited:


35. Birthday Stories [Bāsudei sutōrīzu] (2002)
    • Birthday Stories. 2002. Trans. Jay Rubin. 2004. Vintage. London: Random House, 2006.

Secondary:


36. Rubin, Jay. Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words. 2003. Vintage Books. London: Random House, 2005.

Haruki Murakami: 3 Books You Must Try

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Damian Flanagan: The Hidden Heart of Natsume Sōseki (2016)

Natsume Sōseki
[Natsume Kinnosuke]
(1867-1916)

Fiction:


1. I Am a Cat [Wagahai wa Neko dearu] (1905)
   • I am a Cat: Three Volumes in One. 1905-07. Trans. Aiko Ito & Graeme Wilson. 1972, 1979, 1986. Tuttle Publishing. Tokyo / Rutland, Vermont / Singapore: Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., 2002.
2. The Tower of London [Rondon Tō]. Trans. 2004 (1905)
3. Kairo-kō [Kairo-kō] (1905)
4. Botchan [Botchan] (1906)
5. The Three-Cornered World [Kusamakura] [aka The Grass Pillow] (1906)
   • The Three-Cornered World. 1906. Trans. Alan Tuney. 1965. An Arena Book. London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1984.
6. The Heredity of Taste [Shumi no Iden] (1906)
7. The 210th Day [Nihyaku-tōka]. Trans. 2011 (1906)
8. Nowaki [Nowaki]. Trans. 2011 (1907)
9. The Poppy [Gubijinsō [aka Field Poppy] (1907)
10. The Miner [Kōfu] (1908)
11. Ten Nights of Dreams [Yume Jū-ya] (1908)
12. Sanshirō [Sanshirō] (1908)
13. And Then [Sorekara] (1909)
14. The Gate [Mon] (1910)
    • The Gate. 1910. Trans. William F. Sibley. Introduction by Pico Iyer. New York Review Books Classics. New York: nyrb, 2013.
15. Spring Miscellany [Eijitsu shōhin] [aka Long (Spring) Days, Small Pieces]. Trans. 2005 (1910)
16. To the Spring Equinox and Beyond [Higan Sugi Made] (1912)
17. The Wayfarer [Kōjin] (1912)
    • The Wayfarer [Kōjin]. 1912-13. Trans. Beongcheon Yu. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967.
18. Kokoro [Kokoro] (1914)
    • Kokoro. 1914. Trans. Ineko Kondo. 1941. Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1970.
    • Kokoro. 1914. Trans. Meredith McKinney. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2010.
19. Grass on the Wayside [Michikusa] (1915)
20. Inside My Glass Doors [Garasu Do no Uchi]. Trans. 2002 (1915)
21. Light and Darkness [Meian] (1916)

Non-fiction:


22. Recollections / Random Memories [Omoidasu Koto nado]. Trans. Maria Flutsch. 1997 (1910)
23. My Individualism [Watakushi no Kojin Shugi] (1914)

Natsume Sōseki

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• category - Japanese Literature: Prose: Modern

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Acquisitions (34): S. T. Joshi

H. P. Lovecraft: Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition (3 vols: 2015)


H. P. Lovecraft: Collected Fiction (Revisions and Collaborations) (Vol. 4: 2017)

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S. T. Joshi (b.1958)

H. P. Lovecraft: Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition,
ed. S. T. Joshi (2015-17)

[Ordered 1/12/19 - Amazon.com]:

H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Fiction, Volume 1 (1905-25): A Variorum Edition. Ed. S. T. Joshi. 3 vols. 2015. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2017.

H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Fiction, Volume 2 (1926-1930): A Variorum Edition. Ed. S. T. Joshi. 3 vols. 2015. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2017.

H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Fiction, Volume 3 (1931-1936): A Variorum Edition. Ed. S. T. Joshi. 3 vols. 2015. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2017.

H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Fiction, Volume 4 (Revisions and Collaborations): A Variorum Edition. Ed. S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2017.

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

The Astonishing S. T. Joshi

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the sage of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote approximately seventy stories over a period of a few decades, from 1905 to 1935. A great many of these would have to be seen as juvenilia: Dunsanian fantasy tales, and short experiments in poetic diction.

This leaves a depressingly short list of late, major stories - albeit including such classics as 'The Shadow over Innsmouth,' 'At the Mountains of Madness' and 'The Shadow Out of Time' - to explain his immense, and apparently still growing, posthumous literary reputation.

I've recounted, in a 2018 blogpost on The Imaginary Museum, my experience of asking a shop assistant in a local mall if they stocked his books way back in the early seventies:

only to be solemnly informed by the shop assistant that not only did they not, but that she doubted the very existence of such books. I recall the slightly roguish expression on her face when I brought out the dread syllables 'Love-craft,' and the distinct impression she gave that I was on some kind of subterranean quest for porno. ... To add insult to injury, I'd seen those very books in that same bookshop only a month or two before. So her denials were, to say the least, somewhat disingenuous.

How times have changed!

Back then, the situation seemed pretty self-explanatory: the collected stories were available either as three (or four) rather eccentric-looking hardbacks:

H. P. Lovecraft: The Dunwich Horror and Others: The Best Supernatural Stories, ed. August Derleth (1963)


H. P. Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, ed. August Derleth (1964)


H. P. Lovecraft: Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, ed. August Derleth (1965)

H. P. Lovecraft et al.: The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, ed. August Derleth (1970)

Or, alternatively (the form in which I first read them), as six garish paperbacks:

H. P. Lovecraft: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1970)


H. P. Lovecraft: The Haunter of the Dark and Other Tales (1970)


H. P. Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (1973)


H. P. Lovecraft: The Lurking Fear and Other Stories (1973)


H. P. Lovecraft: Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1973)


H. P. Lovecraft: The Tomb and Other Tales (1974)

Wonderful, aren't they? And irresistible to a mind like mine. There's a pulpy exuberance about them which seemed to say: 'You won't be able to put me down.' And so it proved. I dutifully ticked off the titles on the list of stories included in one of the early volumes until it seemed that I had obtained them all.

And then, as a final flourish, I purchased (and read) L. Sprague de Camp's pioneering biography of the author.

L. Sprague de Camp: Lovecraft: A Biography (1975)

Case closed, it seemed. What more could one find to say about the elusive Mr. Lovecraft? Apart from the usual steadily growing number of ponderous tomes of academic commentary, that is.

Mind you, there is one more unquestionable monument in H. P. Lovecraft studies: his selected letters, edited over a period of a dozen years by his loyal acolytes at Arkham House, a publishing firm started with the express purpose of getting his scattered body of work into print:

H. P. Lovecraft: Selected Letters (1964-76)

Lovecraft, H. P. Selected Letters. Ed. August Derleth, Donald Wandrei & James Turner. 5 vols. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1964-76.

• Volume I: 1911-1924 (1964)
• Volume II: 1925-1929 (1968)
• Volume III: 1929-1931 (1971)
• Volume IV: 1932-1934 (1976)
• Volume V: 1934-1937 (1976)

H. P. Lovecraft: Selected Letters (1964-76)

And so it was, and so it seemed likely to remain:

Lovecraft and Lovecraft's work lay hid in night:
God said, Let Joshi be! and all was light.

― Alexander Pope (slightly paraphrased).

S. T. Joshi (2002)

Enter Sunand Tryambak Joshi, an Indian-born, American-educated 'scholar interested in weird and fantastic fiction.'

As he himself puts in the autobiography included on his author's website:

At the age of thirteen I discovered the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Immediately taken with Lovecraft's evocative prose, I began both to learn more about the Providence writer and to engage in writing myself.

From an outsider's point of view (rather appropriate to any discussion of Lovecraft, I guess, given the fame of his story of that name), Lovecraft studies should really be divided into two eras: BJ and AJ - Before Joshi and After Joshi.

He began modestly enough, with an edition of Lovecraft's Uncollected Prose and Poetry, co-edited with Marc A. Michaud (Necronomicon Press, 1978). This was followed by the more thorough-going anthology H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism (Ohio University Press, 1980). After that the floodgates opened.

In 1979 I began editing the scholarly journal Lovecraft Studies for Necronomicon Press. Aside from many editions of Lovecraft's obscurer writings, I have written several scholarly works and compilations for Necronomicon Press, including Lovecraft's Library (1980; rev. ed. Hippocampus Press, 2002), An Index to the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (1980; rev. 1991), Selected Papers on Lovecraft (1989), and An Index to the Fiction and Poetry of H. P. Lovecraft (1992). I also edited Sonia Davis' The Private Life of H. P. Lovecraft (1985) and Donald Wandrei's Collected Poems (1988).

All this besides his annotated bibliography of H. P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism (Kent State University Press, 1981; rev. ed 2003), and a slew of other books and editions on Lovecraft and his contemporaries - together with other writers such as Ambrose Bierce, M. R. James, Arthur Machen, and Clark Ashton Smith - which continues to this day. You can find a full list of his output here.

From the point of view of my interest in him, though, the really important facts are here:

In 1982 I met James Turner, managing editor of Arkham House, and we discussed the prospect of publishing corrected editions of Lovecraft's stories. I had, since the winter of 1976-77, begun the task of collating Lovecraft's texts with surviving manuscripts and early printed appearances, and had found thousands of errors in the standard editions of his fiction, essays, and poetry. After long negotiations with Arkham House, I finally agreed to edit the new editions, and they have now appeared in four volumes: The Dunwich Horror and Others (1984), At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (1985), Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1986), and The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1989). These corrected texts have served as the basis for new translations into Italian, German, and Japanese.

Leslie S. Klinger: The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft (2014 & 2019)

One notes a certain diffidence in other editors when they refer to Joshi's bibliographical labours on Lovecraft's text. Both Peter Straub, in his 2005 Library of America edition of Lovecraft's Tales, and Leslie S. Klinger in his two-volume Norton New Annotated Lovecraft, are careful to acknowledge Joshi's aid in establishing an accurate text of the stories they include, but still fall a little way short of according him full academic honours:

Lovecraft: Tales. Ed. Peter Straub. The Library of America, 155. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2005.

The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft. Ed. Leslie S. Klinger. Introduction by Alan Moore. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2014.

The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham. Ed. Leslie S. Klinger. Introduction by Victor LaValle. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2019.

Why is that? Is it academic jealousy? Resentment of a somewhat bumptious younger rival? Envy at his sheer productivity? It's hard to know, really - especially from this distance. Certainly Joshi has a tendency to claim complete primacy in each field he enters, and his textual labours do seem to have a way of requiring endless revision and readjustment in successive banks of editions of the same basic material.

H. P. Lovecraft: The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works (2013)

Does that sound a little bitchy? There are 65 separate items listed in the section of Joshi's bibliography devoted to 'Editions of Works by H. P. Lovecraft.' These include (besides his four-volume 1984-89 revision of the Arkham House editions of Lovecraft's complete fiction): three volumes of Uncollected Prose and Poetry (1978-82); over 20 volumes of letters to a range of correspondents; many, many individual volumes of poetry, culminating in The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works (2001; rev. ed. 2013); five volumes of Collected Essays (2004-7); and a number of different 'annotated editions' of the Master's work, two from Dell (1997-99), three from Penguin Books (1999-2004), one from Hippocampus Press (2000; rev ed. 2012); and two from Arcane Wisdom (2011-12). It's safe to say he's been a busy boy.

All of this has culminated (for the moment, at least) in his sumptuous 'variorum edition' of Lovecraft's Collected Fiction:

Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition. New York: Hippocampus Press, [August] 2015.

• Volume I (1905-1925)
• Volume II (1926-1930)
• Volume III (1931-1937)

Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition, Volume IV (Revisions and Collaborations). New York: Hippocampus Press, [August] 2017.

H. P. Lovecraft: Collected Stories: Variorum Edition. Ed. S. T. Joshi (2015)

But what exactly is a 'variorum edition' when it's at home? Here's a page from Joshi's edition - included on his publisher's website - to give you some idea:

Hippocampus Press (1980)

Is this overkill? Lovecraft's prose, a bit cack-handed at the best of times, surely doesn't merit this level of attention. 'Variorum' editions, ones which record every textual variant in every published edition pf a work, are usually reserved for major poets (Yeats, Shakespeare, Hardy) rather than prose writers. Not even Dickens or Henry James have hitherto attained this dizzying height ...

Russell K. Anspach & Peter Allt, ed. The Variorum Edition of the Complete Poems of W. B. Yeats (1957)


Horace Howard Furness, ed. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare (1871-1913)


James Gibson, ed. The Variorum Edition of the Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy (1979)

Nonsense, yes - did we really need to know that 'lost' in the second sentence of Lovecraft's 'The Beast in the Cave' originally had a dash after it rather than a comma? - but (as my old father was wont to say) magnificent nonsense.

H. P. Lovecraft: Collected Essays (Vol. 2: 2004)

Does it do any harm to record the minutiae of his texts in this way? No, none at all. I suspect that I'm certainly not the only lunatic Lovecraftian to relish the prospect of tracking every bizarre bit of verbiage to its ultimate source ...

H. P. Lovecraft: Collected Essays (2004-7)

So I have to say that, on balance, I approve of S. T. Joshi. Certainly he can get a bit doctrinaire at times, but (as you can see below) the best of his work has greatly advanced the cause of fantastic fiction quite a lot, I'd say - and he's certainly kept Lovecraft and the state of his texts in the public eye!

Mary, S. T., & Paolo the cat

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Virgil Finlay: H. P. L.

Sunand Tryambak Joshi / Howard Phillips Lovecraft
(1958– ) / (1890–1937)

1. Lovecraft, H. P. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. Ed. S. T. Joshi. 1999. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2011.


2. Lovecraft, H. P. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories. Ed. S. T. Joshi. 2001. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002.


3. Lovecraft, H. P. The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories. Ed. S. T. Joshi. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005.


4. Joshi, S. T., ed. The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft. 2001. Rev. ed. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2013.


5. Lovecraft, H. P. Collected Essays: Volume I (Amateur Journalism). Ed. S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004.


6. Lovecraft, H. P. Collected Essays: Volume II (Literary Criticism). Ed. S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004.


7. Lovecraft, H. P. Collected Essays: Volume III (Science). Ed. S. T. Joshi. 2005. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2006.


8. Lovecraft, H. P. Collected Essays: Volume IV (Travel). Ed. S. T. Joshi. 2005. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2006.


9. Lovecraft, H. P. Collected Essays: Volume V (Philosophy; Autobiography and Miscellany). Ed. S. T. Joshi. 2006. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2007.


10. Lovecraft, H. P. Collected Fiction, Volume 1 (1905-25): A Variorum Edition. Ed. S. T. Joshi. 3 vols. 2015. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2017.


11. Lovecraft, H. P. Collected Fiction, Volume 2 (1926-1930): A Variorum Edition. Ed. S. T. Joshi. 3 vols. 2015. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2017.


12. Lovecraft, H. P. Collected Fiction, Volume 3 (1931-1936): A Variorum Edition. Ed. S. T. Joshi. 3 vols. 2015. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2017.


13. Lovecraft, H. P. Collected Fiction, Volume 4 (Revisions and Collaborations): A Variorum Edition. Ed. S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2017.


14. Lovecraft, H. P. Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters. Ed. S. T. Joshi & David E. Schultz. 2000. Rev. ed. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2019.


15. Joshi, S. T. I am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft. 2 vols. 2010-11. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2012.




S. T. Joshi: I am Providence (2010-11)

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• category - Occult & Supernatural: Fiction

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Acquisitions (14): Herman Melville

Herman Melville: The Complete Shorter Fiction (2012)

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Joseph Oriel Eaton: Herman Melville (1870)

Billy Budd, Sailor (2017)

[Acquired: Thursday, 18 January, 2018]:

Herman Melville: Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Uncompleted Writings (2017)]

1. Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Uncompleted Writings: Billy Budd, Sailor; Weeds and Wildlings; Parthenope; Uncollected Prose; Uncollected Poetry. Ed. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, Robert A. Sandberg & G. Thomas Tanselle. Historical Note by Hershel Parker. The Writings of Herman Melville: the Northwestern–Newberry Edition, vol. 13. Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 2017.


2. Melville, Herman. The Complete Shorter Fiction. Introduced by Jay Parini. Illustrated by Bill Bragg. London: The Folio Society, 2012.


3. Melville, Herman. Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Tales & Billy Budd. 1852, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1922 & 1924. Ed. Harrison Hayford. The Library of America, 24. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1985.


4. Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative). Edited from the Manuscript with Introduction and Notes. 1891 & 1924. Ed. Harrison Hayford & Merton M. Sealts, Jr. 1962. A Phoenix Book. Chicago & London: The University Of Chicago Press, 1970.

Herman Melville: Complete Fiction (Library of America, vol. 3)

Today I bought a beautiful Folio Society Edition of Herman Melville's Complete Shorter Fiction in Devonport. Earlier this month I received the last remaining volume of the Northwestern Newberry edition of Melville's complete works in the post, vol. 13, his unpublished works. These supplement the earlier versions of Billy Budd and the Piazza Tales which I had in the 1962 Hayford/Sealts edition and the Library of America, respectively.

Herman Melville: Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) (1962)

Do I need all of them? Well, clearly the three-volume Library of America edition of his complete fiction is indispensable. But then so are the various supplementary volumes of the Northwestern-Newberry edition of his poetry, letters and journals, which I list below. The Hayford/Sealts edition of Billy Budd is a landmark, the first really authoritative attempt to make sense of a very complex, unfinished manuscript. So, yes, I need that, too (even the Northwestern-Newberry editors have not departed very far from the Hayford/Sealts text - though they have expanded on it in some respects). What about the Folio Society edition of the short stories? That will have to get by on its sheer beauty. Textually, it represents no advance on the presentation of the stories in the Library of America.

The Writings of Herman Melville. The Northwestern–Newberry Edition. Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 1968-2017.

1. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1968)
2. Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1968)
3. Mardi, and a Voyage Thither (1970)
4. Redburn: His First Voyage (1969)
5. White Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War (1970)
6. Moby Dick, or The Whale (1988)
7. Pierre, or The Ambiguities (1971)
8. Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1982)
9. The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860 (1987)
10. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1984)
11. Published Poems: Battle Pieces; John Marr; Timoleon (2009)
12. Clarel: a Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1991)
13. Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Uncompleted Writings (2017)
14. Correspondence (1993)
15. Journals (1989)

[I've marked in bold the ones I have]

The Writings of Herman Melville: Northwestern-Newberry edition (15 vols: 1968-2017)

1. Mardi, and A Voyage Thither. 1849. Ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker & G. Thomas Tanselle. The Writings of Herman Melville: the Northwestern–Newberry Edition, vol. 3. Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 1970.


2. The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860. 1856. Historical Note by Merton M. Sealts, Jr. 1981. Ed. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle et al. The Writings of Herman Melville: the Northwestern–Newberry Edition, vol. 9. Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 1987.


3. Published Poems: Battle Pieces; John Marr; Timoleon. 1866, 1888 & 1891. Ed. Robert C. Ryan, Harrison Hayford, Alma MacDougall Reising & G. Thomas Tanselle. Historical Note by Hershel Parker. The Writings of Herman Melville: the Northwestern–Newberry Edition, vol. 11. Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 2009.


4. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. 1876. Ed. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, Hershel Parker & G. Thomas Tanselle. The Writings of Herman Melville: the Northwestern–Newberry Edition, vol. 12. Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 1991.


5. Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Uncompleted Writings: Billy Budd, Sailor; Weeds and Wildlings; Parthenope; Uncollected Prose; Uncollected Poetry. Ed. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, Robert A. Sandberg & G. Thomas Tanselle. Historical Note by Hershel Parker. The Writings of Herman Melville: the Northwestern–Newberry Edition, vol. 13. Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 2017.


6. Correspondence. Ed. Lynn Horth. The Writings of Herman Melville: the Northwestern–Newberry Edition, vol. 14. Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 1993.


7. Journals. Ed. Howard C. Horsford & Lynn Horth. The Writings of Herman Melville: the Northwestern–Newberry Edition, vol. 15. Evanston & Chicago: Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 1989.

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Herman Melville: Clarel (1959)

Another interesting Melvillean endeavour is the sadly incomplete, but still impressive, Hendricks House projected edition of his complete works. Of this, Malcolm Cowley remarked in 1982:

In my review of the first four impressive volumes of The Library of America (April 25), I quoted a statement made 30 years ago by Edmund Wilson. "It is absurd," Wilson said, "that our most read and studied writers should not be available in their entirety in any convenient form. For example, the only collected edition of Melville was published in England in the twenties and has long been out of print." I should have added that Wilson might have revised his statement if he had made it a few years later. Hendricks House of Putney, Vt., a small publisher with high aspirations, had undertaken to issue Melville's complete works. Many volumes in the Hendricks House edition have appeared at intervals over the years, and ''Mardi'' is next on the list of those to be published. To issue a complete Melville is an admirable venture, and I wish the project a lasting success.

MALCOLM COWLEY
Sherman, Conn.

Wikpedia's Herman Melville Bibliography page is rather more circumstantial on the subject:

Beginning in 1948, independent publisher Walter Hendricks recruited scholars to edit annotated editions of Melville's works, beginning with a volume of his poetry. Produced under the general editorship of Howard P. Vincent, the series was originally projected to include 14 volumes but in the end no more than 7 appeared.

Those seven appear to have been as follows (the ones I own are marked in bold):

Herman Melville: Collected Poems (1947)

1. Collected Poems. Ed. Howard P. Vincent. Hendricks House, 1947.


2. The Piazza Tales. Ed. Egbert S. Oliver. Hendricks House, 1948.


3. Pierre; or, The Ambiguities. Ed. Henry A. Murray. Hendricks House, 1949.


4. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Ed. Howard P. Vincent & Luther S. Mansfield. Hendricks House, 1952.


5. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. Ed. Elizabeth S. Foster. Hendricks House, 1954.


6. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Ed. Walter E. Bezanson. Hendricks House, 1959.


7. Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas. Ed. Harrison Hayford & Walter Blair. Hendricks House, 1969.

Herman Melville: Collected Poems (1947)

You can find further details on this page on the Melvilleana website.

Mind you, judging from various library catalogues, it appears that there was, eventually, a Hendricks House edition of Mardi, edited by Nathalia Wright, and published either in 1987 or 1990, depending on who you believe. I haven't been able to find any images of it except the below, however:

Herman Melville: Mardi and a Voyage Thither (1990)

So of the projected 14 volumes of the Hendricks House Complete Works of Herman Melville, it appears that only eight were ever published. Presumably they gave up on it as the juggernaut of the Northwestern-Newberry edition grew ever more imposing and dominant.

Raymond Weaver, ed.: The Complete Works of Herman Melville (16 vols: 1922-24)

Raymond Weaver, ed. The Works of Herman Melville. 16 vols. London: Constable, 1922-24.

1. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)
2. Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847)
3. Mardi: And a Voyage Thither (1849)
4. Mardi [vol. 2]
5. Redburn: His First Voyage (1849)
6. White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850)
7. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) [1]
8. Moby-Dick [vol. 2]
9. Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852)
10. Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855)
11. The Piazza Tales (1856)
12. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857)
13. Billy Budd and Other Prose Pieces (1924)
14. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876)
15. Clarel [vol. 2]
16. Poems (1924)

As far as alternatives go, then, you're left with Raymond Weaver's pioneering 1922-24 Constable edition, above, or the beautifully concise four volumes of the Library of America (1982-2019).

Herman Melville: The Complete Shorter Fiction (2012)

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• category - North American Fiction: Authors

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