Books 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34 of 2019

Latest reads: 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29

The latest books: 21 so far in 2019

Just reading books by Jung or Jungians or memoirs of the individuation process by those who work with Jungians causes me to have delicious and mysterious dreams. I've been doing a lot of dreamwork with the Shadow, Anima, and Mother archetype lately.

The best bits of this book are those which use Biblical stories and religious symbols to explain Jungian concepts. And the best of those is the discussion of Job. Probably only interesting or useful if you're fairly deep in the Jungiverse.



There are several reviewers on Amazon who trashed this book because it's called "AMERICAN" short stories but there's a lot of stories about Africans, Asians, gray parrots, etc. Make the Best American Short Stories the Best Again! Whatever. I used to read these annuals religiously but stopped about 20 years ago; thought I should see what was happening with the short story lately.

I found this collection was excellent and interesting BECAUSE it didn't feature the painfully empty interior lives of a series of alienated suburban white people who had never even heard of Marx or Sartre or Chomsky and were unable to find a theorist to diagnose their malaise in US Weekly and People magazines. And the story about the parrot, narrated by a parrot, is an all-time great I can use with my middle school students. One of the classic devastating last lines!

 

Having met James Ellroy, and having spoken with him about JFK conspiracy books and novels, and having watched him scrawl "Blood rage rules!" in my copy of his American Tabloid, and having enjoyed several of his books, I thought I'd give the latest prisoner turned literary darling a shot. Cherry is a worthy first effort. Sometimes the narrator's voice is searing, clear, and white-hot, and that voice carries you along and surprises you with what captures the narrator's attention, and the curious tidbits he knows about literature and history sprinkled into the junky talk and soldier lingo. There is a lot of blood rage here, or at least blood hunger.

But other times the voice is clumsy and the narrator becomes a familiar type (I lived in West Baltimore for years--I saw these guys and gals daily. The reality of this "familiar type" is quite real to me). If you've read or seen The Corner you have heard this story. If you read Russell Banks's Rule of the Bone you've heard this story and met this character. You need some humor to sustain the plot, the way Trainspotting is just fucking awful and then awfully funny and then just awful again. Cherry has a lot of the awful but loses its sardonic humor at some point.

I dunno why I'm nitpicking a pretty strong first novel--it just feels like I've read this before, and done better. But the descriptions of the Iraq War and its consequences and the attitudes of the soldiers are top-notch. The first half of the book is very strong. Something about the narrator and the characters just can't sustain the second half.

 

Just great. Points out the resurgence of Native American population numbers, and while the well-documented and notorious facts of centuries of ethnic cleansing and genocide are noted and examined here, the book is mostly concerned with celebrating survival--and despite the grim data, a great deal of success. A really fantastic historic overview of government policy and indigenous response, of activism and combat, of submission and fealty and betrayal. The Epilogue is some deep shit.

Recent Reads

I've been reading Ramsey Campbell since about 1985. I first found him in the Little Professor Bookshop in York, PA. They had a copy of The Inhabitant of the Lake, which was HPL mythos juvenalia he sold to August Derleth at Arkham House, but which was pretty good. This recent trilogy revisits that universe.

It's an uneven series. I thought the first volume showed a lot of promise, but as we progress through the years with the main characters the story was less convincing, and the central character became more of a bore.

The original horror from the Inhabitant of the Lake is back, and is influencing the prophet of a new Church which claims to teach the True Gospel. This Church also uses a meditative technique to spread its message, and the meditative technique is effective at helping children who have seizures and who are "on the spectrum." The narrator of the series discovers as a young boy that one of his teachers is trying to re-awaken an eldritch horror, and combating this becomes his life mission. After volume 1, which is somewhat reminiscent of better Campbell novels (like Incarnate), the story gets looser but I maintained enough interest to see it through.

I'm seriously pleased one of my fave writers is still plugging away, more often good than not. And the idea that he would even attempt a trilogy is great.

Though the recent trilogy is uneven, this collection of new short fiction shows Campbell is still a master of that form. Campbell has always had the knack for taking reality and twisting it just enough to make it creepy AF. His prose is as mysterious and engaging as ever, and his poor protagonists suffer merciless fates.

 
Wow. This is not a collection of horror stories, but the stories are as viscerally disturbing as any horror. Every story is just wrong in only the most delightful and harrowing ways. Definitely Shirley Jackson level shit, and the characters, the plotting, the craftsmanship are at a very high level. But oh man, hold on to your hat.

 

Dude riffs on what we can know about the world of Odysseus from Homer and other writers and current archaeology. Chapters on manhood and traditions and hierarchy and economics. Appendices which destroy all the Troy bullshit accepted as fact since Schliemann.

  

Look at the cards. Try to visualize them. Read the chapters. Let your unconscious do the rest. The Teacher will appear when the student is ready.

 

One of my all-time faves. I read everything he releases. His short stories make me so happy. These are no exception. He can keep writing them until he can't and I'll keep reading them until he stops or I do.

 

Our task is to integrate all the autonomous parts of our Psyche into Unity. The Ego wants to think it rules the roost, but the other elements will fuck up your shit if you don't take a backseat sometimes. The Self wants the Ego to balance unconscious and more eternal elements of the Psyche, and in the Unseen Partner we get one woman's experience of the individuation process, through her spontaneous poetry, associated art works, and blurbs about the Jungian ideas behind it all.

Recent Books

Perhaps the most interesting, challenging, and wide-ranging book I've ever read. It's a book about Tarot, but it's also a magnificent overview of the Western Esoteric Tradition. It's a book about Tarot but it's also a close examination of the theological underpinnings of Christian symbols and their relationship to older traditions. It's a book about Tarot but it's also a mesmerizing discussion of philosophical schools and historic moments and individual mages, sages, mystics, and magicians. It's a book about Tarot but it's also an examination of the importance of Steiner and Jung and others of the sort. I wanted to start reading it again as soon as I finished it.



The best haunted house novel I've read since Jackson's Hill House. A good haunted house novel knows that such houses are merely amplifiers for the weaknesses and character flaws of those within reach of malign spectral influence. In this novel one character who has bitter class resentments and a very small history with the mansion is unwittingly used by the house to destroy its inhabitants one by one. Like Eleanor in Hill House, whose resentment of her mother and whose passion for Montague and whose blinkered naivite result in her own self-destruction and imprisonment in the house, the protagonist of The Little Stranger is absorbed into Hundreds before he realizes the reality of the situation.

England is no longer the world's largest Empire. As American intelligence cowboys face off against their Soviet counterparts on the global stage, English agents bicker and stew and lose their mission. Evidence that English intelligence has been compromised brings George Smiley and some old friends out of retirement. Will they solve the mystery before the Cold War is lost?



A lot of what has been written about Montezuma and Cortes was spectacular bullshit propaganda. Because this propaganda has been repeated for centuries, it became TRUTH and is enshrined in many ways in popular imagination and in history departments. But post-colonial historians are chipping away at the myths and trying to get closer to the reality of this brutal meeting of two great civilizations. Like Mexico itself, this history is layered and rich and complex. Was Montezuma duped by Cortes? Or was Cortes merely a specimen added to Montezuma's famous zoo? Was Cortes a military genius or was he a pawn of other Aztec/Mexica leaders who wanted to challenge the existing status quo? How much of this truth is forever unknowable?



An acerbic, hilarious, and totally unique voice in short fiction. Oh my God, I laughed too hard at some of these stories.



Exactly what is the flame? And who keeps it alive? The pyramids are denuded, their casings used to build Cairo. The intent of these initiation centers has been forgotten and they are called tombs. Manly Hall tries to keep the flame burning, and provides useful guideposts for those with eyes to see, and ears to hear.


The Dalai Lama shows off his mad exegesis skills on some ancient poetry. Along the way he drops hints and truth bombs about mindfulness/meditation techniques and deepening a spiritual practice.



The philosopher Godfrey-Smith uses octopods to explore the development of consciousness and how we learn, remember, experience the world, and interact with our physical bodies and environment. Along the way he details the peculiar and engaging behavior of these alien beings in labs and in the deep sea.