BOOK REVIEWS
I have dispensed with my 'Books of the Year' postings which covered the years 2009 and 2010, and now attempt to review a selection of books that I have read both good and bad, in editions old and new. Much of what I buy is often based on suggestions by others, or some train of thought that makes me think "maybe I should try..." so they are not necessarily all strange/supernatural fiction.
With many small press books costing around £35-£40 each, and some seemingly worthy tomes changing hands on the second hand market for many times that, these reviews may also give the potential purchaser some indication of what they might receive for their money. Needless to say, my opinions should not be given any great value as I bring my own foibles to every review and these may change at any time.
Aleister Crowley
'The Drug and other Stories'
'The Drug and other Stories'
(Wordsworth 2011)
608 pages (under £1 from Amazon)
'How many words and how many quid?' I asked him as a business poet should. Fifty pounds, said he; I'll trust you to do your best; your wit must tell you how long to make it.
Some readers of my other reviews may think that I have implied that some books are a little slim for the outlay- a criticism that can scarcely be applied to this bumper tome. So thus there is no room for complaint? Ah well...
Crowley needs no introduction but his fiction is relatively unknown bar some tales appearing in anthologies by the likes of Peter Haining and Michel Parry. This gathers together virtually everything he wrote in the field including a stash of unpublished works but (sadly) excluding his psychic detective 'Simon Iff' tales.
If there are books in which the maxim "less is more", applies then this is definitely a candidate. Whilst there are some good (for few are really great) tales such as 'The Testament of Madalaine Blair', 'At the Fork In The Roads'(both occult tales), 'Only a Dog' (a strange poignant offering), 'The Bald Man' (a WWI story) much the remainder is pure hack work and shows Crowley at his worst.
By this I mean that some editorial pruning both of the prose and/or the plotting (though in some tales there is no plot of much sort to prune) would have made the individual stories stronger, and thus made the collection as a whole more readable. I struggled through some of his early mystical/allegorical tales and almost lost the will to live as I plodded through the overlong and seemingly meandering novella 'Atlantis'. The famous Crowley wit seems pretty absent from this collection, unless you count the pastiches of various personalities such as A. E Waite who he had scores to settle with, or are amused by the jolly jape of his naming of an Austrian General 'Graf von Donner u. Blitzen'. Even accounting for the fact that many of the tales were written during WWI and thus; one assumes, intended to be marketed as morale boosters, Crowley comes over as a misogynist and snob. Germans are dull beasts and all Americans are slaves of Mammon, whereas your British are square jawed heroes of Empire more often than not Oxford men of 'good breeding'. I could imagine some cunning academic undertaking a thesis to prove that Crowley is actually satirizing the society that he was born into but one gets the sense that Crowley, in his fiction as well as his life, didn't want to bite the hand that feeds him too hard; and there is that 'fifty pounds' payment to consider...
And yet there are moments when he turns a neat phrase or the undoubted vigour with which he writes is honed and refined, perhaps shown to best advantage in 'Felo de Se' in which the narrator (Crowley himself) engages with a young man contemplating suicide. Sadly it is immediately followed by the tripe of 'The Argument that Took the Wrong Turning' which takes some of the joy out of 'Felo...' as one realizes that ,once again, we are back to the chaff that is sadly the majority of this book.
The introduction by William Breeze is good and there are some useful end-notes to the tales themselves but Crowleys reputation would be far better served by a 'best of' volume though one can scarcely begrudge this volume on cost. But in comparison to the similar priced Le Fanus' 'Wylders Hand' which I review here, this falls far short of an enjoyable read and I know where I would put my money.
(from 'Robbing Miss Horniman')
Some readers of my other reviews may think that I have implied that some books are a little slim for the outlay- a criticism that can scarcely be applied to this bumper tome. So thus there is no room for complaint? Ah well...
Crowley needs no introduction but his fiction is relatively unknown bar some tales appearing in anthologies by the likes of Peter Haining and Michel Parry. This gathers together virtually everything he wrote in the field including a stash of unpublished works but (sadly) excluding his psychic detective 'Simon Iff' tales.
If there are books in which the maxim "less is more", applies then this is definitely a candidate. Whilst there are some good (for few are really great) tales such as 'The Testament of Madalaine Blair', 'At the Fork In The Roads'(both occult tales), 'Only a Dog' (a strange poignant offering), 'The Bald Man' (a WWI story) much the remainder is pure hack work and shows Crowley at his worst.
By this I mean that some editorial pruning both of the prose and/or the plotting (though in some tales there is no plot of much sort to prune) would have made the individual stories stronger, and thus made the collection as a whole more readable. I struggled through some of his early mystical/allegorical tales and almost lost the will to live as I plodded through the overlong and seemingly meandering novella 'Atlantis'. The famous Crowley wit seems pretty absent from this collection, unless you count the pastiches of various personalities such as A. E Waite who he had scores to settle with, or are amused by the jolly jape of his naming of an Austrian General 'Graf von Donner u. Blitzen'. Even accounting for the fact that many of the tales were written during WWI and thus; one assumes, intended to be marketed as morale boosters, Crowley comes over as a misogynist and snob. Germans are dull beasts and all Americans are slaves of Mammon, whereas your British are square jawed heroes of Empire more often than not Oxford men of 'good breeding'. I could imagine some cunning academic undertaking a thesis to prove that Crowley is actually satirizing the society that he was born into but one gets the sense that Crowley, in his fiction as well as his life, didn't want to bite the hand that feeds him too hard; and there is that 'fifty pounds' payment to consider...
And yet there are moments when he turns a neat phrase or the undoubted vigour with which he writes is honed and refined, perhaps shown to best advantage in 'Felo de Se' in which the narrator (Crowley himself) engages with a young man contemplating suicide. Sadly it is immediately followed by the tripe of 'The Argument that Took the Wrong Turning' which takes some of the joy out of 'Felo...' as one realizes that ,once again, we are back to the chaff that is sadly the majority of this book.
The introduction by William Breeze is good and there are some useful end-notes to the tales themselves but Crowleys reputation would be far better served by a 'best of' volume though one can scarcely begrudge this volume on cost. But in comparison to the similar priced Le Fanus' 'Wylders Hand' which I review here, this falls far short of an enjoyable read and I know where I would put my money.
