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darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)
Wordsworth Editions’ new collection of Aleister Crowley’s short fiction, The Drug and Other Stories, is a very mixed bag indeed. The good news is that it contains some strange and wondrous gems.
As you’d expect from even a cursory knowledge of Crowley the man, many of the stories have an autobiographical tinge and many are deeply influenced by his religious philosophy. In fact if you don’t have a much more detailed npwledge than I have of his biography and his thought system then stories such as The Stone of the Philosophers, The Wake World and Across the Gulf will be all but impenetrable.
Don’t despair. There are plenty of other stories here that don’t require a detailed knowledge of Crowley’s thought. Stories like The Ordeal of Ida Pendragon, Professor Zircon, The Vitriol-Thrower, His Secret Sin and The Testament of Magdalen Blair are bizarre, twisted, witty, disturbing and deeply strange but they’re undeniably fascinating. They show that Crowley undoubtedly did have a distinctive voice as a writer of fiction, and that his reputation in this area has been sadly neglected.
Many of these stories are previously unpublished, and very few have ever been widely available. Some are out-and-out horror, some have a gothic feel, some are just odd. Some are truly terrifying (The Testament of Magdalen Blair is certainly the stuff of nightmares).
Most people, if they’re aware of Crowley as a writer of fiction at all, are probably only familiar with his novel The Moonchild. The rather barbed wit displayed by that book is also in evidence in many of these stories. There’s also a considerable leavening of black humour.
There are plenty of misses in this collection, but in a 600-page volume that’s a minor problem. Crowley hits the target often enough to make the book worth purchasing, especially if you enjoy your weird fiction with extra weirdness.
dfordoom)Wordsworth Editions’ new collection of Aleister Crowley’s short fiction, The Drug and Other Stories, is a very mixed bag indeed. The good news is that it contains some strange and wondrous gems.
As you’d expect from even a cursory knowledge of Crowley the man, many of the stories have an autobiographical tinge and many are deeply influenced by his religious philosophy. In fact if you don’t have a much more detailed npwledge than I have of his biography and his thought system then stories such as The Stone of the Philosophers, The Wake World and Across the Gulf will be all but impenetrable.
Don’t despair. There are plenty of other stories here that don’t require a detailed knowledge of Crowley’s thought. Stories like The Ordeal of Ida Pendragon, Professor Zircon, The Vitriol-Thrower, His Secret Sin and The Testament of Magdalen Blair are bizarre, twisted, witty, disturbing and deeply strange but they’re undeniably fascinating. They show that Crowley undoubtedly did have a distinctive voice as a writer of fiction, and that his reputation in this area has been sadly neglected.
Many of these stories are previously unpublished, and very few have ever been widely available. Some are out-and-out horror, some have a gothic feel, some are just odd. Some are truly terrifying (The Testament of Magdalen Blair is certainly the stuff of nightmares).
Most people, if they’re aware of Crowley as a writer of fiction at all, are probably only familiar with his novel The Moonchild. The rather barbed wit displayed by that book is also in evidence in many of these stories. There’s also a considerable leavening of black humour.
There are plenty of misses in this collection, but in a 600-page volume that’s a minor problem. Crowley hits the target often enough to make the book worth purchasing, especially if you enjoy your weird fiction with extra weirdness.
