Author: James J. O'Meara

3,901 words

Gordon Peter Wilson
The Prophets of Gentilly Terrace: A New Orleans Novel
Austin, Tex.: Greenleaf Publishing Group, 2023

The idea was a selfish one, and it felt a lot like blackmail, but it was an opportunity to solve everyone’s problems. Such a sensitive matter required all of the diplomatic skills he had honed over the years as Burton Clayton’s bagman.

I greeted Gordon Peter Wilson’s first, previous, novel with enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm continues with this latest one. (more…)

2,039 words

Alexander Adams
Masters of Art: Dalí
Munich: Prestel, 2023

Take me. I am the drug; take me, I am the hallucinogenic. — Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marqués de Dalí de Pubol (more…)

Mitch Horowitz

5,244 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

In his characteristic participant/observer fashion, Horowitz narrates his own encounters with the gods. He has “an attachment to the history of Rome,” and “a series of propitious events” has led him to “venture a prayer to Minerva” as a “figure of deific exploration and possibility”: (more…)

5,487 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Mitch Horowitz
Daydream Believer: Unlocking the Ultimate Power of Your Mind
G&D Media, 2022

Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

To trifle with such ideas, rather than fall to your knees and sustain them as lifelong questions, is to toy with destruction. — Mitch Horowitz, Daydream Believer (more…)

You can buy Nikolay Pavlov’s novel The White Huns of Identaria here.

4,002 words

Nikolay Pavlov
The White Huns of Identaria
Self-published, 2023

The air was heavy with a unique admixture of common nationalism, alcohol fumes and the smell of men’s sweat.

If Bronze Age Pervert wrote a novel along the lines of The Iron Dream,[1] I think it would read something like The White Huns of Identaria. (more…)

1,049 words

Now here’s a picture that tells you all you need to know about our current situation.

Biden and Bibi look like they were dressed by the same mother.

Back in the day, the saying on Wall Street was “Think Yiddish, Dress British”: i.e., have some class, or at least some taste. The strivers like Gordon Gekko were a bit “out there” — I remember the colorful suspender fetishism — but still look like Beau Brummel compared to these slobs. (more…)

4,744 words

C. A. Swann: Wasn’t that dull work? Following me around in your spare time?

Tony Wendice: To begin with . . . yes. But you know how it is. It’s like a hobby. Once you take up a hobby, the more interesting and fascinating it becomes. You became quite fascinating. There were times that I felt you almost belonged to me.

C. A. Swann: That must have been interesting. (more…)

4,935 words

The Rebel Set
Directed by Gene Fowler, Jr.
Starring Don Sullivan, Gregg Palmer, Kathleen Crowley, Edward Platt, Ned Glass, & John Lupton
Written by Bernard Girard & Louis Vittes
Cinematography: Karl Struss
Edited by William Austin
Music by Paul Dunlap
Allied Artists, 1959 (more…)

3,877 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

The Stories

But the stories! What of the stories themselves? Rather than going over the inevitable Death in Venice, the minor “Louisey,”[1] or the pseudo-story (“A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook,” which is actually an arrangement of self-contained chapters from Buddenbrooks that Searls has perhaps cobbled together in hopes of enticing the sulky reader into tackling the Big Book), I want to take a look at the remaining two stories, one of which contains some surprisingly relevant bits about The Way We Live Now, and the other gives us a kind of con-man’s guide to Positive Thinking. (more…)

Thomas Mann: breakthrough Black [sic] author?

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Thomas Mann: New Selected Stories
Translated and with an introduction by Damion Searls
New York: Liveright, 2023

“It is really curious that a life of playing games and dreaming can — if only you go on with it long enough — lead to your being treated like royalty.” — Thomas Mann, author of Felix Krull, Confidence Man

“What a royal gift the imagination is, and what pleasure it affords us!” — Felix Krull, confidence man (more…)

1,441 words

C. P. Webster
The Horror Beneath
Independently published, 2023

“Whatever the history of the house, Wingood felt confident that von Hallerstein had not been carried off by vengeful spirits. No, von Hallerstein was too substantial a man for that.”

How this excellent novella reached my hands is a story that must be told! (more…)

2,415 words

No sooner had my epic seven-part series on Hunter S. Thompson, “Father of Fake News,” wrapped up — well, maybe a few months later — than Miles Mathis, the doyen of online conspiracy research, turned his gimlet eyes onto the same hapless subject in “Hunter S. Thompson: Spook Baby.”

Cazart! Was this another conspiracy? Synchronicity? Or just a coincidence? (Sure, that’s exactly what They’d want you to believe). (more…)

4,019 words

Neville Goddard
Neville Goddard’s Final Lectures, edited and introduced by Mitch Horowitz
New York: G&D Media, 2022

Carter phoned Neville the next morning and said, “Neville you are Judas.” The teacher immediately agreed. “Judas,” he replied, “betrayed the Messianic secrets.” (more…)