For more than forty years, S. T. Joshi has been a presence in the weird fiction community. Initially focusing on the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft, Joshi later expanded his interests to study such writers as Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, Ramsey Campbell, H. L. Mencken, and others.
In this expansive and elegantly written memoir, Joshi reflects on the major facets of his life. Born in India in 1958, he came with his family to the United States in 1963, settling in the Midwest. Joshi tells of his childhood friends, his early immersion into American culture (he became a devotee of football and rock ’n’ roll), and his early schooling. His deep love of classical music began at the age of nine, when he started playing the violin.
Joshi hit his stride in an Indiana high school, where he first read Lovecraft’s books from the public library. He began writing weird and detective fiction in great quantity, but gradually moved to literary criticism. Joshi luckily was accepted as an undergraduate at Brown University, where he not only learned Greek and Latin but explored the vast resources of the Lovecraft Collection at the John Hay Library.
By 1982, Joshi was already recognised as a leading authority on Lovecraft, and his preparation of corrected texts of Lovecraft’s fiction for Arkham House helped to launch a revolution in the study of the dreamer from Providence. Joshi also assisted in the planning of the H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference at Brown University in 1990.
In the decades that have followed, Joshi has expanded his range to cover the entire history of weird fiction, as well as such fields as atheism and left-wing politics. Among his 250 books are bibliographies of leading weird writers, monographs, histories and biographies, and even a few works of fiction.
What Is Anything? speaks with disarming frankness of Joshi’s relations with friends and colleagues (among them Ramsey Campbell, T. E. D. Klein, Marc Michaud, Robert M. Price, and David E. Schultz), as well as his two wives. Joshi’s moves across the country—from the Midwest to New England to New York to Seattle—are chronicled in detail, as are his non-literary interests, from music to cats to sports. This memoir, enlivened with many photographs of Joshi and his friends and family, provides unprecedented insights into the worlds of Lovecraft scholarship and many other related subjects.
S. T. Joshi is the author of The Weird Tale (1990), I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010), Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (2012), and other critical and biographical studies. He has prepared annotated editions of the work of H. P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, and many other writers, and has written treatises on atheism and politics. He lives with his wife in Seattle.
WHAT IS ANYTHING? features Smyth-sewn signatures and illustrated dust wrappers, with each copy individually shrink-wrapped. All Hippocampus Press limited editions are printed on 60# white offset paper, acid free and elemental chlorine free.
This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 05 April, 2018.
