3,605 words

The sounds are strange to the Western ear, but undeniably, humanly compelling — a fact borne out by the hundreds of people who flock to Seattle from far flung locales just to hear these instruments.[1] (more…)

Christopher Ventris as Palestrina in the 2009 Bavarian State Opera production of the opera.

1,693 words

Hans Pfitzner
Palestrina
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, conducted by Rafael Kubelík
Deutsche Grammophon, 1989

Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina is one of the unsung masterpieces of twentieth-century opera. (more…)

Hermann Hesse with Thomas Mann and Jakob Wassermann in the Swiss Alps, 1931.

5,315 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Here is where Hesse meets up with Evola: the two post-First World War writers share a number of themes, though what Evola would have called their “personal equation” gave them decidedly different interpretations. Demian, for example, treats of initiation, paganism, esoteric knowledge, and construction of elites, in ways comparable to Evola’s personal investigations with the UR group;[1] but apart from Hesse’s overall Jungian lens, his war-derived pacifism would have disgusted Evola. And his Buddha “is certainly not the one depicted by Hermann Hesse in his novel [Siddhartha].” (more…)

Hermann Hesse with Miguel Serrano.

4,862 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

“It is fortunate you are not a historian,” Jacobus commented. “You tend to let your own imagination run away with you.”[1]

“Unfortunately, the deep writer and poet Hermann Hesse was falsified and vulgarized by a world in decline. He needs to be re-read today by the same eyes that were once shaken by his mystery.”[2] (more…)

2,016 words

A. E. Ellis (Derek Lindsay)
The Rack (Restored Edition)
Introduction by Alan Wall
Ashgrove Publishing Ltd, 2016

Constant Readers will no doubt recall my enthusiastic review of Valancourt’s re-issue of this somewhat forgotten masterpiece of midcentury British fiction.[1] There I concluded that

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6,352 words

Ludwig Klages
The Biocentric Worldview: Selected Essays and Poems of Ludwig Klages
Translated and introduced by Joseph Pryce
London: Arktos, 2013

Ludwig Klages
Cosmogonic Reflections: Selected Aphorisms from Ludwig Klages
Translated and introduced by Joseph Pryce
London: Arktos, 2015  (more…)

Michael Pacher, The Devil showing St. Augustine the Book of Vices, ca. 1480

3,892 words

Alan Judd
The Devil’s Own Work
London: HarperCollins, 1991
New York: Knopf, 1994
Richmond, Va.: Valancourt, 2015; with an Introduction by Owen King and an Afterword by Alan Judd

Oh boy, another weird novella unearthed and republished by the folks at Valancourt![1]

Well, not really unearthed, as The Devil’s Own Work is a 1991 novella by Alan Judd which won the Guardian Fiction Award. (more…)

3,094 words

Alfred Rosenberg
Memoirs
Ostara Publications, 2015

According to Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, who covered the executions for the International News Service, Rosenberg was the only condemned man who, when asked at the gallows if he had any last statement to make, replied with only one word: “No.”

If only he had kept his mouth shut in the first place! (more…)

6,139 words

A. E. Ellis (Derek Lindsay)
The Rack
London: Heinemann, 1958; Richmond, Va.: Valancourt, 2014 (with a new introduction by Andrew Sinclair)

Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! He hates him much
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer. — King Lear, 5.3.314

(more…)

3,443 words

Michel Houellebecq
The Elementary Particles
Translated from the French by Frank Wynne
New York: Knopf, 2000

“I get my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.”[1]

“The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. . . . And human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movements of the elementary particles.” — Michel Houellebecq, (more…)

2,075 words

Andy Nowicki
Beauty and the Least
Chicago: Hopeless Books, Uninc., 2014

Well, I’m certainly glad that someone out there in alt-Right Land has heeded my call to cultivate what Henry James called “the dear, the blessed nouvelle” in preference to another 300-400 page block of text about how life sucks

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4,320 words

Part 3 of 3

While smiling a lot, the colonists in Odd John don’t talk much at all, which just adds to their creepiness.

(more…)