S.T. Joshi

Sunand Tryambak Joshi (b. 22 June 1958 in Pune, India) is an Indian American literary scholar, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors. Besides what some critics consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 1996), Joshi has written about Ambrose Bierce, Henry Louis Mencken, and Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, and has edited collections of their works.

His literary criticism is notable for its emphases upon readability and the dominant worldviews of the authors in question; his The Weird Tale looks at six acknowledged masters of horror and fantasy (namely Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Dunsany, M. R. James, Bierce and Lovecraft), and discusses their respective worldviews in depth and with authority. A follow-up volume, The Modern Weird Tale, examines the work of modern writers including Shirley Jackson, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti, T.E.D. Klein and others, from a similar philosophically-oriented viewpoint. The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) includes essays on Dennis Etchison, L. P. Hartley, E. F. Benson, Rudyard Kipling, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, Poppy Z. Brite and others.

Joshi is the editor of the small-press literary journals Lovecraft Studies and Studies in Weird Fiction.

At the time of writing, Joshi is working towards the publication of the collected work of Clark Ashton Smith and George Sterling, and Lovecraft’s Collected Essays.

Social criticism

In addition to literary criticism, Joshi has also edited books on atheism and race relations, including Documents of American Prejudice (1999), an annotated collection of American racist writings; and Atheism: A Reader (2000), which collects atheistic writings by such people as Antony Flew, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, Gore Vidal and Carl Sagan among others. Joshi is also the author of God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They are Wrong (2003), an anti-religious polemic against various writers including C.S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, William F. Buckley, William James, Stephen L. Carter, Annie Dillard, Reynolds Price, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Guenter Lewy, Neale Donald Walsch and Jerry Falwell.

In 2006 he published The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong, which criticised the political writings of such commentators as William F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, David and Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, William Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving and William Kristol, arguing that, despite the efforts of right-wing polemicists, the values of the American people have become steadily more liberal over time.

Personal life

Joshi, who lives with his wife in Moravia, NY, has stated on his website that his most noteworthy achievements thus far have been his biography of Lovecraft, HP Lovecraft: A Life and The Weird Tale.

Bibliography

• H. P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981).
• H. P. Lovecraft (Starmont Reader's Guide 13) (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1982).
• The Weird Tale (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
• H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990).
• Lord Dunsany: A Bibliography (with Darrell Schweitzer) (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1993).
• Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995).
• The Core of Ramsey Campbell: A Bibliography & Reader's Guide (with Ramsey Campbell and Stefan Dziemianowicz) (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1995).
• H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1996).
• Documents of American Prejudice (edited) (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
• Atheism: A Reader (edited) (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, [October] 2000).
• The Modern Weird Tale (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, [March] 2001).
• Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, [June] 2001).
• God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, [June] 2003).
• The Evolution of the Weird Tale (New York, NY: Hippocampus Press, 2004).

External links

The Official S. T. Joshi Website

Original Wiki source: Wikipedia