- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 471
It seems redundant to write "Autobiography of..." and then the name of the Author, but - really, upon reading this I had the distinct feeling that I was cheated of a few hundred pages. In any even, this was written some 20+ years before his death, and before his reason became suspiciously abstracted.
Noting his childhood peculiarities, certain synesthete properties, his OCD, his sense of Childhood Invention and Inquiry frequently discouraged by parents and teachers, his experience of Crows after his repeated murdering of them, his realization that instinct transcends knowledge (but only when a certain remedial level of knowledge is reached, otherwise we arrive a peak Dunning-Kruger), the hyper-acuity of his senses, sight, hearing, body, and other more extra-sensory phenomena.
A curious childhood, but if we all could recall as accurately as he and were as encouraged (I know I previously said discouraged, but he was perhaps less discouraged than most of us) we might all lay claim to some such.
Then comes his genius, his subsequent exploitation by Edison - and, notice, he is careful in this not to slander he former employers or benefactors, upon reading his focus and obsession is always technology.
Noteworthy, he anticipates building a hydro-electric damn at Niagara Falls some 30 years before he was to do so, which recalls other such famous incidents: (the experience of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn anticipating his singing at the ... Mosque, Nelson from Nelson picturing his perfect house as a child, Henry Sugar, The Secret, An Experiment with Time, too many other's to list...).
His unconscious method of turning from insurmountable problems to allow them to solve themselves "on their own" while he worked on other things, (mine own, although it took me some 20 years to perfect and I'm not sure now that I'm just not avoiding getting anything done) and his remarkably (for the time) democratic views on Race.
And finally, his ability to foresee the future - the interconnectedness of technology, of text, voice, picture, he's was an optimist working for the benefit of mankind, and - I have to wonder, if he could step forward a hundred years, how impressed he'd be with the progress we'd made, and the ends we put it to?
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 355
A curious late Victorian read that for a long time was more popular than Dracula.
Abandoning the forward, which threatened to wring any joy I might get from the book itself with analysis of events I had yet to read. An afterword would be suitable, but these forwards that presume you read the book (!!) and seek to destroy it with their socio-political analysis, spoilers on plot points, etc, etc. Highly annoying.
Anyways, back to the book - a homeless man breaks into a house, and encounters a sinister and quite possibly supernatural force that has made it's way to London for unholy vengeance upon a certain esteemed politician.
A dark secret slowly unfolding, the mystery slowly is teased out through the 5 main narrators, melodramatic, themes of electricity and science driving out the Old Gods of Infinite Terror, of Xenophobia and the fear of the conquered other, of occult and ancient cults that kidnap English Christian Maidens, subject them to orgies of unimaginable cruelty before burning them alive as a sacrifice to ISIS, ...
Well, too much more and you won't want to read it. An interesting and curious read, which if you're at all inclined you can do so here:
LINK: The Beetle - Richard Marsh VIA PROJECT GUTENBERG
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 340
A collection of short stories by Anais Nin, some more intriguing than others.
I have some prejudices against her rather hedonistic lifestyle (as if I'm in a position to throw stones, but I do nonetheless...), but she can write and evoke some curious ideas. I might revisit her diaries some day, as I've now read enough Miller to know her better, and the internet might provide me some context as to their relationship. I recall watching "Henry and June" once upon a time, but was only then familiar with Henry Miller, and slightly.
Perhaps time for a little digging, adventure in the literary world, but not today.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 331
After Blood Meridian I was curious as to his other writings, and so found this.
I should have been warned off by the "Oprah's Book Club" label.
So, set in an indefinite future after a (presumably Nuclear Holocaust) has completely quieted all life on earth a father and son travel along a road heading westward through a landscape bereft of all life - plant or otherwise.
Only people, and the people are the same as in "Blood Meridian", pederasts, sodomites, cannibals, people at wits end trying to survive the end of days, and the freezing landscape of ash and rain and the invariably violent encounters with raiders and it's "touching" ending...
It got a lot of praise. Heaps of it. Only he paints in one colour, that of his sado-masochistic view of humanity, of the hopelessness of the human condition, of violence and death and worst of all even life.
I was on to him, the second book I've read of his, having read the first I was impressed with the narrative flow and voice, but - the second book, the same tricks repeated ad-nauseum and if he's still alive I'm pretty sure he's out somewhere at a Trump Rally and really, given the state of the world, I've had enough.
"Blood Meridian" was excellent, or I at least enjoyed the prose, characters, situations, but here he was largely exploiting my ignorance of the history of the "Old West"; in this I had little ignorance left to be exploited and so saw through the tricks, despite the consistent praise it's a vile book that offers no hope for the human condition and seemingly in the authors mind he rejoices in the despair he brings to paper.
A little too obvious and monochromatic for my taste, and I hastened to return it to the bookstore today. Not my cup of tea.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 393
In a way, like "Fanny Hill" in which the author finds a thousand ways to describe the most basic act of love.
Only, with Cormac McCarthy, the act is not love but Violence, on a Biblical, Apocalyptic scale, Ostensibly about a kid from Tennessee who joins the "Glanton Gang" and does the grand tour of the Old West, hunting down Apaches, Indians, Niggers, who-have-you, it's an over the top ode to violence, rape, murder, torture, sadism, the cruelty of man, an obscene diatribe on mankind's theology, of blackened ears and scalps worn as trophies around the neck, of mans relations to animals and men and the universe in general.
It's bleak, but written with a rhythm and prose that carries you along like soldiers themselves, silhouetted on the blood-red horizon at the ends of the world, being carried forward always to a bloodier future where neither and never law nor order applies...
Brilliant, after it's fashion, and I will have to track down some of his other novels. It's always a pleasure to discover a new (to me) author, and he's a few I can follow up with. The themes, vile, visceral, but the prose becomes poetry and bears you along...