A Momentary Taste of Being

from "The Whisperer in Darkness" H. P. Lovecraft I hope--devoutly hope--that they were the waxen products of a master artist, despite what my inmost fears tell me. Great God! That whisperer in darkness with its morbid odour and vibrations!  Sorcerer, emissary, changeling, outsider. . . that hideous repressed buzzing. . .  and all the time in that fresh, shiny cylinder on the shelf. . . poor devil. . . "prodigious surgical, biological, chemical, and mechanical skill" . . .  For the things in the chair, perfect to the last, subtle detail of microscopic resemblance--or identity--were. . . H. P. Lovecraft is one of the greats.  This is one of the four or five major canonical stories--but each tale has its own compelling interest.  And if only for his influence on major writers of our own day, one should take time to peruse the occasionally florid, sometimes purple prose of HPL and get a glimpse of the cosmic horrors he made his metier.

First the good news--Deborah Lawrenson gives us a remarkable and well-written first novel.  I was a little afraid upon reading the first twenty or so pages that I had stumbled into another example of borgeous writing--but it was not so.  The writing is superb, beautifully balanced, well-handled.  The descriptions both germane and adding to the overall effect of the book.  It really is a delightful novel. Ms. Lawrenson gives us a gothic in the fashion of Daphne DuMaurier (whose Rebecca is mentioned by name, and who is further honored by the name of our hero's first wife--Rachel).  We have a house in Provence that may be haunted, a romance doomed by an impassioned first marriage and divorce, perhaps a few ghosts--although it takes a long while for this element to be resolved, a nosy neighbor constantly issuing cryptic warnings, and a serial killer in southern France.  At least these are the elements on the surface.  They are brought together into...

Aftertime is an interesting, powerful, and confusing book.  It is published by Luna Press which is a division of Harlequin Romances and this occasionally shows, though not to the detriment of the work overall.  Aftertime is an apocalypse-quasi-zombie novel.  Note, I have deliberately avoided saying a Zombie Apocalypse novel because in fact, that is the innovation Ms. Littlefield has introduced.  The plague of horrific zombie-like creatures is a result of the actions that bring about the apocalypse in the novel.  To say more would be to detract from some of the more interesting revelations along the way. Ms. Littlefield has served up several variations on the typical zombie novel. The creatures in this book, called beaters, are, in fact, not dead.  They are victims of a fever induced by. . . well, that would be telling.  They retain human characteristics but have acquired a taste for human flesh. Because of the effects of the fever, they are largely ...

The most merciful thing in the world, I think is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. H. P. Lovecraft--the open of "The Call of Cthulhu"

Yep, my brain has slumped into a summer reading mode which is likely to include a lot of light-weight fiction.  You might encounter the odd The Secret Agent or other more notable piece of fiction in among the fray--but don't count on a lot of it. This one was an anomaly.  I picked it up in the bookstore and started reading and was hooked by the road trip of a werewolf and a vampire wandering through the desert Southwest and nearly running out of gas as the coast into Mel's All Night Diner.  When they get out of the car, they face the restaurant's owner battling it out with a horde of zombies (more the haitian type than the apocalyptic type) and the action escalates from there through zombie cows, ghouls, graveyard guardians, and a slight encounter with the Elder Gods through the aegis of a 17 year old which and her trusty (and lusty) assistant. Yes, the teenage practitioner of magic plans to open the gate and allow the great old one through.  And of course Mel'...

The Anything But Kindly Ones reviewed Repulsive, abhorrent, deeply wrong--this book sounds like a candidate for the surrealist manifesto prize.

"How to Train Your Gargoyle" A review of Fr. Longenecker's The Gargoyle Code, a book in the vein of C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters , Peter Kreeft's The Snakebite Letters , and Randy Alcorn's Lord Foulgrin's Letters. These are most helpful not when one is smugly observing all the sins of one's neighbors, but rather when one is being pinned to the display board oneself.

The Contemplative Journey of Franz Liszt A friend sent me this link.  Franz Liszt is one of my very favorite classical composers--I love the Etudes after Paganini and the Mephisto Waltzes, the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, amongst other wonderful pieces. An excerpt: Both Franz Liszt's piece, "Benediction de Dieu dans la Solitude," and St. John's poem revel in their rich and ecstatic language, daringly extreme in their attempts to depict a state of spiritual bliss, the highest form of which was pointedly called the spiritual marriage by many saints The first-time listener or reader would have been unwittingly on target in his intuitive, instinctive reaction. Both the composer and poet realized (the former through aspiration and reading, the latter though inspiration and burning experience) that Christian contemplation is meant to be a love affair; that human love, even at its pinnacle, is a mere shadow of that love with which God created us and to which he...

The Dispossessed- -Ursula K LeGuin reviewed Many like Left Hand of Darkness better.  As with much of the fiction from that time, I found it too heavily laden with agenda to be a worthy work.  It's a shame because the central notion is so compelling, but that's how I viewed/view it.  The Dispossessed on the other hand while still agenda-laden, stands out from the concerns of the agenda and manifests as a complete and interesting novel.

The Rainbow reviewed I have to admit to a profound deficiency with regard to D. H. Lawrence.  I've only read some short stories, too much poetry, a few essays, and Sons and Lovers .  I read at Lady Chatterly's Lover which so profoundly bored me that I made no further attempt at Lawrence though I knew I ought to have at least Women in Love and The Rainbow under my belt.  Perhaps this will stir enough interest that I can take it up again and read.  Or perhaps not.  Those of you who are Lawrence fans--any suggestions to reignite interest?  Or is there such a thing as a Lawrence fan?

Genre: Literary Fiction/Translation 2011 Having much enjoyed t he previous effort by Lianke that I read, I was looking forward to this book.  To put your minds immediately at ease, I was not disappointed.  Indeed, if anything, this was an even better novel. Dream of Ding Village tells the story of Ding village and three generations of the Ding family.  The father of the narrator is a schemer who is always looking for an angle to make money.  He starts his career as a "blood-head" making a fortune purchasing and selling the blood of the townspeople.  Naturally, he fails to practice even the most rudimentary hygienic and safety precautions and in due time the every family in the town has at least one family member who has succumbed to or presently has HIV/AIDS.  This not being enough for Ding Hui, he spends the rest of the book involved in various schemes. Grandpa is deeply shamed by Ding Hui's conduct and begs him to make restitution to the town....

The C.S. Lewis Bible via Books Inq. Not, as you might think, a compendium of facts, snippets, and information about Mr. Lewis, but rather a Bible annotated (if the examples serve) with seemingly every idle thought that crossed Mr. Lewis's mind regarding the Bible.  The problem here is not Mr. Lewis so much as the question of what the majority of these jottings can add to a person's understanding.  This might be considered a piece of fabricated marginalia--and interesting merely from that point of view--but it does continue a long line of Bibles fabricated for nearly every interest--Bibles that add little to the essential understanding, but much to the thick literature of bible studies;  I anxiously await The Charlie Sheen Bible. That said, if we regard the work as I suggested, I do have a keen interest in what it would tell me about Mr. Lewis--not so much what I would learn from it about the Bible.  Not that Mr. Lewis is not instructive in that fashion--but in ...

"Lost Translation" found A work thought to have been lost in a bonfire a year after Lewis's death has been uncovered and is to be published.  I think I got this link from Books Inq.

How is a novelist like a spelunker? Find out in this interview with Chang-rae Lee.

"To Build a Fire," Jack London If you haven't already encountered it, I would consider this one of your "must read" stories.  Like several others I may make of point of later, this is a staple of the literary reader.  Much has stemmed from it and it is just a darned good story.

A short piece by Abraham Lincoln

A review of The Fish Can Sing

Christians are gaining in numbers, not atheists (and I ask, is it really a numbers game?  Who cares how many?  If someone is wrong, they are no more right with many people agreeing, and if right, they are right if they are the only one to hold the view. Not that this really has anything to do with a very interesting article--just seemed a place to say it.) Ignorance of C.S. Lewis Ayers's near death experience

I somehow missed these before: Kim Stanley Robinson Red Mars I Red Mars II The Dispossessed Ursula K. Leguin Compared with Ayn Rand's Anthem .  To be honest, I did not notice the similarity before and I've always loved this book above other highly touted Leguin.  So I'll have to pay more attention.  Am I secretly imbibing at Ayn's well--if so it must stop.

At the Mountains of Madness --the graphic novel