(urth) Crowley and mystery

[Son of Witz]

that makes sense.
I've started Gravities Rainbow twice, gotten 200 pages in and thought, why the hell am I reading all these psychedelic lists of details.  At least with Burroughs, the psychedelic listing is entertaining.  Everyone tells me I have to get past 300 pages with Rainbow.  I guess I didn't like LoTR untill about page 300, so one day I'll probably try again.
~witz

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Lebling [mailto:dlebling at hyraxes.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 04:08 PM
>To: 'The Urth Mailing List'
>Subject: Re: (urth) Crowley and mystery
>
>I've read all of the Jerusalem Quartet books, and Quinn's Shanghai 
>Circus, which has a similar style but is more-or-less unrelated. They 
>actually remind me more of Pynchon than Wolfe or Vance or Crowley, 
>though it's hard to articulate why. Probably because the whole quartet 
>has an overarching theme and some consistent macguffins but is mostly 
>episodic. I like them, but then I like Pynchon, and Flann O'Brian, and 
>other strange more-or-less modernist types. Wolfe tells stories with 
>plots, but tells them obscurely. Pynchon's books, and Whittemore's, have 
>plots but they are at least in my opinion secondary to the desire to 
>produce effects. Wolfe is in many ways a very traditional writer on the 
>surface.
>
>Whittemore was out-of-print for a long time, but recently (the last 
>couple years) his books were all republished in rather nice trade 
>paperback editions.
>
>-- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha
>
>Son of Witz wrote:
>> anyone read Edward Whittemore's Sinai Tapestry.
>> that's a strange sort of puzzle.  Odd book. One of those ones where I didn't like it until about a month later, when, not having thought about it since closing the pages, the symbols jumped out and started making sense.
>> very curious work.  I'm not sure if it's scifi or not.  The cover would lead you to believe it, and many elements.  I suppose New Sun fans might find a lot worth pondering. Jerusalem, repeating Anchors in history, time paradoxes. I just found out it's the first of the Jerusalem Quartet. I suppose I should read the others.  very strange.  the blurb on the cover compared it to LOTR, which left me scratching my head big time.
>> ~witz
>>
>>   
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Zvi Gilbert [mailto:zvi at vex.net]
>>> Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 02:38 PM
>>> To: urth at lists.urth.net
>>> Subject: (urth) Crowley and mystery
>>>
>>>     
>>>>> It's just probably not the sort of stuff that inspires me to get online
>>>>> and try to hash out what the hell is going on with some other readers.
>>>>>         
>>>> For that, I would recommend John Crowley, especially _Engine Summer_ and
>>>> _Little, Big_.
>>>>       
>>> I don't find either of those books particularly confusing. Wonderful, 
>>> brilliant, and exquisite, yes; but they're not New Sun-like. I suspect a 
>>> discussion of it for me would devolve into quoting favorite lines and 
>>> swooning.
>>>
>>> However, Crowley's long and complex four novel series Aegypt (The 
>>> Solitudes, Love & Sleep, Daemonomania, Endless Things) is something that I 
>>> would love to hash over with interested parties. As many of its 
>>> characters and situations are drawn from history (John Dee, Giordano 
>>> Bruno, and so forth), I would just like some particularly erudite person 
>>> to lecture at me about the source material -- I suspect I would learn a 
>>> lot that way.
>>>
>>> --Zvi
>>>
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>