(urth) Crowley and mystery

Allan Anderson rubel at goosemoon.org
Wed Dec 17 17:00:50 PST 2008


J. Crowley sounds great! thanks for another book recommendation, folks.

I also had a couple of false starts with Gravity's Rainbow, but like so 
many folks, when I finally got into it, it got its hooks deep in me and 
I enjoyed it immensely. Just another person nudging you to read it at 
some point. Of course, I've also still got the Long and Short Suns 
waiting for me...

Son of Witz wrote:
> 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.
>>>>         




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