The Moonchild, Aleister Crowley

   Aleister Crowley's name often gets thrown into sentences with HP Lovecraft. I am not so fond of Lovecraft however. Aleister Crowley's name is famous in the occult of the previous century. He seems like a far more interesting person than Lovecraft who created cardboard characters. I hope that one day I will read a Lovecraftian book and say, 'Wow, that was amazing. My opinion on the writer is forever changed.' That would be great. I'm still waiting. In any case, Moonchild is available freely at www.feedbooks.com.
   In any case, Moonchild has far more going for it than anything I've read so far out of Lovecraft. So, I am quite happy that I read it. It was certainly a voyage into a different kind of novel than I've been into of recent months. It is a strange fiction filled with some pretty sinister imagery.
   In one of the scenes where the evil sorcerers, looking to get at the 'white magicians', it's quite an enlivening scene. "The doctor was himself the last to enter the circle. In a basket he had the four black cats; and, when he had lighted the nine small candles about the circle, he pinned the four cats, at the four quarters, with black arrows of iron. He was careful not to kill them; it was important that their agony should frighten away any undesireable spirits." It's a book, right? No actual harm came to any cats in the making up of these words. Harming actual cats would not be entertaining at all. Another particularly brilliantly dark scene involved more imaginary cats being tortured, "The hideous cries of the tortured cats mingled with the triumphant bleating of the goat and the nasal monotone of Arthwait as he mouthed the words of the Grimoire. And it seemed to all of them as though the air grew thick and greasy; that of that slime were bred innumerable creeping things, monsters misshapen..." is such a visually delightful horror. I cannot imagine a more discordant cacophony of sound than the bleating of a goat mingled with the awful cries of four tortured cats.
   Some of the politics were a bit funny. He writes, "A parliament of the wisest and strongest men in the nation is liable to behave like a set of schoolboys, tearing up their desks and throwing their inkpots at each other. The only possibility of cooperation lies in discipline and autocracy..." It would seem that he had a rather sour look on the ideals of democracy.
   There is no real main character throughout this book. Through much of it, I'm under the impression that Lisa la Giuffria is the main character. Through much of the story it is her mind we are exposed to; her thoughts; her experience being brought into magical training. She is seduced by a white magician, Cyril Grey, and persuaded into helping him in a magical battle with a black magician and his black lodge. Ultimately, all the sacrifices that she makes to assist him: joining his cult, going through a kind of willing imprisonment, ultimately gets thrown aside in an act of kindness.
   Then she is whisked away by a Turk who was in love with her. She gives birth to a child named the Moonchild. But she hates the child, as does the Turk. I am unsure if the Turk himself is the father or if she was magically impregnated or some other means of her carrying it. When she gives birth, she isn't even aware that she is pregnant. There does not seem to have been enough time for the Turk to have been the author of the pregnancy. Since this book treats magic seriously, it is well within the realm of such fiction for that to be the case. Crowley makes no effort to clear it up.
   Moonchild seems like it ought to be the first book in a series. But, as far as I can tell in the Wikipedia article, it is not. I can't help but wonder what would have happened to it.
   I recommend reading this book. But if you don't, I don't think you will have missed anything particularly amazing.

The Girl From Hollywood, Edgar Rice Burroughs

   I used to love the Tarzan series. I still enjoyed rereading the first novel in the series. I also used to love the Martian tales and some of his other works. I like the ideas, still, but his writing style is no longer of great appeal to me. It's free at Goodreads.com.
   This story reads like a tale told to warn good families against the dangers inhereint in allowing your innocent daughters to go to Hollywood. Maybe it's a fair warning. What with Weinstein's lecherousness becoming public and the inspiration behind the #metoo movement, perhaps it's not so hard to see that the cliché is as relevant today as it was then.
   Girls become victims of a strong narcotic. It kills one, and nearly kills the other. The director is the man behind it all. Though, one might make the effort to point out that he was also an addict to the drug.
   The story takes place during the Prohibition era. Shannon, the main character, manages to escape the drug and the director and finds herself in a rural area some hours drive away from Los Angeles. She falls in love with Custer Pennington.
  Somehow, as these stories go, the director manages to find her by accident while trying to film on the property of her host. He finds himself on the wrong side of a bullet due to what he had done to ruin a sister of another character Guy.
   I don't recommend reading this book. In fact, there's a really good chance that this is the last time I will read another Burroughs' book. His fiction translates well into movies and graphic novels. But I can no longer tolerate his cardboard cutout characters. It just doesn't cut it for me anymore.

Diary of a Madman, Nikolai Gogol

    I am always interested in strange or weird fiction. I'm not sure how I discovered this particular story or this particular author. There are numerous sources for this text. Gutenberg.org is often a favorite of mine, even though their output is more anemic than many other sources, the quality of their work is often adequate. Wikipedia writes, "...(it) is considered to be one of Gogol's greatest short stories." In any case, on to the story.
   The diary is fictitious: the main character, Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin, is a kind of protagonist whose adversary is himself, or the illness which takes hold of him. He starts off like any one of us might: a normal, underachieving bureaucrat. He is pretty much fine. What instigates the descent into madness is unknown. But it does seem to stem from unrequited love. Though, to blame that would be to ignore the fact that similar descents into madness.
   The madness would be cliche today. Perhaps it was already cliché by the time Gogol got around to writing his story. He comes to believe that he is a Spanish emperor and assumes the mantle. It reminds me somewhat of Don Quixote who suffers from a similar delusion: that of becoming a knight. His irrationality, however, does not bring him to an asylum. Quixote, of course, believes himself to be someone or something much more common than that of an emperor. Another difference is that with Quixote everything was real: what was not was the interpretation of everything. So he saw a hotel and interpreted it as a castle. For Poprishchin, he hears the dogs' conversations and intercepts their letters. 
   What separates us from this madness of believing ourselves to be someone we are not. Surely we all start at that point and either become that person or fail to become that person. Even if we become that person we might be judged to be unworthy of that title. So, someone like Neil Degrasse Tyson says he is a scientist. He has the degree. He talks about politics and science. Does he practice science or does he merely talk about it with his degree and name on a paper along with a parade of other scientists. How does he become a scientist. Is it his own perception of himself? Is it the recognition of the institution that he has graduated in a scientific field? For myself, I would say that a scientist is one who practices science, and that I have not seen any evidence that he does so. A child, who experiments, is a scientist. For, that is what a scientist is. That is my definition, which I appropriate from Picasso on his decree that everyone is born an artist, and that the challenge is how to remain an artist. Perhaps one might say the same of Poprishchin: the challenge is not to be the emperor of Spain, but rather how to remain the emperor of Spain despite the many people who would try to convince him otherwise. 
   In any event, I am sure I will be all too happy to read another of Gogol's short stories.

The Lifted Veil, George Eliot

   Adam Bede was required reading for me in my university education. It gave me a certain respect for the author, George Eliot. It's been my intention to return to another of her works. More than ten years has passed since graduation, so it's been more than ten years. A part of the reason for that is that I'm just not fond of literature which is focused on human social schema. In any case, so I happened across the novella, "The Lifted Veil," and gave that a read.
   To summarize, the main character, Latimer, has some clairvoyant abilities. He can sometimes foresee the future and read the minds of others. He foresees his marriage to Bertha, the woman he at once loves, fears, and despises. Yet, he is compelled into her as his will is quite weak.
   Over time, in his marriage to Bertha, his ability to read her mind and the minds of others weakens. The cause of this is unknown. However, it might have something to do with her taking on a maid who has her own abilities. Or, it might have to do with that he tries to avoid using it. He doesn't like reading people's minds. He would rather shut it out. Finally, Bertha tries to poison him. This, too, might be the cause of losing his ability. I suspect that this might be the case since after the discovery of the poison, he flees to another country, and his supernatural gifts return to him.
   The knowledge of the attempted murder comes about after her maid is revived momentarily by a blood transfusion. It is a somewhat odd finale to this novella.
   There's a kind of silly feminist essay about this story called, "Bertha as the Failed Hero?: Analysing The Blood Transfusion Scene in George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil." It argues that Latimer was somehow forcefully penetrating others through his use of clairvoyance. Considering how hard he tried to avoid it, and how it worked on both genders and not just the female, I don't know how well I can buy her arguments. "...man becomes the giver of life to ‘Woman’" and "Thoroughly confined to her role as Other [and apparently little above the rank of a dehumanised animal], Mrs. Archer, in her deathly state, is compelled to accept male penetration in the form of a phallic needle full of blood." It seems to me a rather tenuous relationship. Naturally, Mrs. Archer is dead. We don't know if Meunier chooses her for the experiment because she is a woman or simply out of curiosity to see if the blood can bring back the dead. There is no statistical data to examine to demonstrate whether this is an assault on femininity or a comment thereof. We have no idea if Meunier has done this to a male or female before or if he chooses females only. I wonder if the author, who leaves his (or more likely) her name as 'letitbeprinted' would consider a life saving procedure of blood transfusion from a male nurse or doctor to a female patient a form of rape or sexual assault? I love feminism, but feminism of this form is logically little better than patriarchal religion.
  We also don't know why the maid confesses at last. Perhaps a look into the void of death is a heavy prospect with knowledge of the murder in progress on her conscience. She seemed ready to take it with her to the grave one moment, but not on her second chance of parting the world with such information left unsaid.

The Invisible Girl, Mary Shelley

   "The Invisible Girl" is a romance tale by Mary Shelley.
   She, the invisible girl, Rosina, is an orphaned girl who falls in love with the son of the widower father that adopts her. Peter, the son, waits to declare his love for Rosina until she approaches an appropriate age.
   This brings to question: what was his age, what was her age? What does "lovers in after days" mean exactly? The ages between the two is not clear. However, it cannot be so different, since they were 'companions in childhood...' But, there must be some difference since, if they were of the same age she would mature faster than he would, and he would not be waiting for her to come of age. At that time it was not uncommon for men to marry very young girls, even fewer years than 12. So I cannot help but wonder about that.
   In any case, unlucky for them all, the father's sister's husband dies, and she joins the family. She does much mischief and has Peter sent away and Rosina banned from the house and made homeless. She was a bitter woman, perhaps. Perhaps she had Peter's best interests in heart: what is an orphan doing with the son when the son should be married to a wealthier family. Whatever her intentions were is not made clear. She is merely described as a nasty woman.
   When Peter comes back, he finds that Rosina is gone. He thinks that she is dead. One evening, during a storm, a light shines and shows him the way to shore. The light saves his life. When he looks to solve the mystery of this fairy light, he discovers Rosina half starved. They reacquaint and marry.
   It's not a bad story. However, many of her qualities are those of the docile and submissive girl. This is not the type of character I expect from a writer famed for her early feminist politics. Having recently read The Last Man, I can say it is not the only book which lauded such aspects of submissive nature to a girl. On the other hand, this story may simply be her reporting on a story she discovered from a painting, as she mentions earlier in the story. However, this sort of thing, a fake back story, is not so uncommon. So, real back story or not, I cannot tell.

The Last Man, Mary Shelley

   I have a tremendous amount of respect for Mary Shelley. While there are arguments and evidence to state that she was not, ultimately, the original founder of science fiction, there are none who argue that she is not the first to write one natively in English. Further, her novel might be construed as the earliest science fiction work still in print today. The other thing that is rather outstanding about the author is that she was an early feminist. One might not see that in either of her novels. Neither of them feature a prominent or particularly strong, or even important, female character.
   The story itself is true to the title, as far as the narrator knows. He is the last man. How this was brought on exactly isn't exactly known. It rises from the defeat of some Muslims in Constantinople. Were they the creators of their own destruction, or did they merely see it coming? They were not the only ones, as the conqueror himself felt the ominous fate breathing at his back. Though, he would not face the plague, he would be crushed by the wreckage caused by an explosion, he thought plague would bring about his end.
   How exactly this plague was brought about is an unsolvable mystery. However, there are a few suggestions. When a ship lands on England's shore from America, there were "strange sights ... averred to be seen at night, walking the deck, and hanging on the masts and shrouds." But the next passage which describes the cause has given me a great deal of thought concerning Shelley, and has perhaps damaged my remembrance of her forever when the narrator saw "...a negro half clad, writhing under the agony of disease, while he held me with a convulsive grasp... he wound his naked festering arms round me, his face was close to mine, and his breath, death-laden, entered my vitals." I don't know if these were supposed to be demons or a representation of disease, but obviously it instigates heavy suspicion that Shelley, for all of her good qualities, was a racist. It isn't quite as painful as reading The Deerslayer so recently where racist ramblings were frequent and severe. It's also not absolute, as there might be some other meaning that I cannot penetrate. But, whatever excuse I make for it seems like a thin veil.
   Some other things that gave me trouble was the hard romance or romanticism of the novel. The characters are overly good in a way that I find distasteful and boring. Their feelings of pure love were difficult to get through. There were so many pages of them that I had almost set down the book to never return. It wasn't until I read a partial review that I decided to go back to finish what I had started.
   There is also this notion of having read about a whole life. This story starts with the narrator as a boy and follows until the year 2100. This, of course, means that the story was set in the not so distant future (though I will probably be extinct myself by the time that number is the calendar of 'now').
   It is easy to poke holes through the naiveté of Shelley: there are horses, no machines. There are no cell phones. There are no technologies that one might associate with a science-fiction story. There is only a plague far from Shelley's lifetime.
   The plague kills everyone, except for those closest to him. Those two he loses to a storm at sea. Then, he is utterly alone save for a sheep dog.
   One noticeable absence is that Shelley fails to consider that in a Europe without men, the populations of predators would rise, and quickly. Bears, boar, and wolves would quickly become major problems to survivors. Though, they are never seen. Even lions would return to Europe if humanity were suddenly gone.
   Despite its failings and despite my dislike for some of the sentimentality that became tedious for me, her craftsmanship on this novel is at times quite amazing and by far more masterful than her Frankenstein. As some have said, this novel was 'a forgotten treasure.'