Better Than Dead

This was originally released under the title The King’s Grave and reissued under the title The Lost King as a tie in to the excellent Stephen Frears movie based on this book. Ms. Langley’s fight to be taken seriously by academia and officialdom in her search for Richard III’s grave is a compelling story of a rare underdog victory. Her story is laid out in alternating chapters with historian Michael Jones’ telling of Richard’s life and milieu. It makes for a fascinating read, especially Philippa Langley’s mysterious intuition (backed by meticulous research) that led her to the unlikely final resting place of a king

It would seem that Thomas Maloney is an admirer of the novelist John Fowles and this work does have something of a lesser Fowles feel. I was a big John Fowles fan at one time though I haven’t read any of his works for decades and have no idea whether they would hold up. My tastes have changed, my life experiences have evolved. (Or devolved according to one’s POV, but this review is only tangentially about myself–as all reviews by anyone are tangentially about themselves. I’m moving on from that.) Initially I was going to give it 3 stars then thought 4 stars and bounced back and forth quite a bit.

From the start when reading The Sacred Combe (a phrase from John Fowles!) I felt it was a book from another era. Not Victorian, more recent than that, but not contemporary (though it was published in 2016). Modernist or postmodernist maybe. It’s slyly self-conscious in that pomo way. 

This is a character and setting driven novel rather than plot-driven. I’m certainly okay with that, though the characters at times seem more like set pieces than fully fleshed works of the imagination. It’s a tricksy novel, full of literary allusions, some more obvious than others. It has secrets that once revealed are more “Oh, okay,” rather than stunningly revelatory. Things seem about to happen then they don’t. The story is told in a wandering way with lush nature writing that at times walks the line of being over written.

Am I glad I read it? Well, I finished it. I no longer finish books that aren’t giving me *something.* So that tells you…something. Am I satisfied with having finished? I don’t know. It’s not only a tricksy novel but pondery with a placid surface. Perhaps I should have done more pondering before writing this review, but I’m done pondering. I woke up with the need to write down my thoughts and move on. And I suppose that, too, tells you…something.

Review (plus a personal note): Round in Circles: Poltergeists, Pranksters, and the Secret History of Cropwatchers by Jim Schnabel.

Mr. Schnabel wrote this book in the 1990s, an American post-graduate student living in England and specializing in science writing. He himself turned hoaxer after studying the phenomena and, more closely, those caught up in the excitement of the phenomena. What I really liked about this book is that he manages to show the parade of human folly and the will to believe—the need to believe—without being mean-spirited. There’s plenty of understated humor, but mostly he allows people to display their nature in their own words. He captures the awe while still showing the painful and hilarious lengths people will go to protect their pet theories (and continue to get media attention and earn dollars, to boot). Even when these theories are debunked, some still can’t let go, resorting to conspiracy theories and black magic tales to save face.

The book demonstrates, although this was probably not Mr. Schnabel’s intent, how Trickster manipulates us all. Whether that trickster is embedded in human psychology or an outside force I will leave to others to decide for themselves. Mr. Schnabel admits that there is something mysterious at work which compels people to go into the fields and make pictograms and other ephemeral art in the secret dead of night. He does quite a nice job of evoking that mystery and compulsion. And when something genuinely unexplainable happens—a tractor driver caught on film being buzzed by a mysterious metallic orb comes to mind—Mr. Schnabel doesn’t shy away from showing it and doesn’t try to explain things away with strained rationalization. Even if the vast majority of these circles are hoaxes, he allows wiggle room, a tacit suggestion that perhaps a few may have some other explanation. The cropwatchers, however, are so caught up in their own theories that it’s an all or nothing for them. Mr. Schnabel lets us draw our own conclusions, and one of those is that many of the cropwatchers were missing out on a much grander mystery: that of the human imagination.

A Personal Note

I admit: I drank the Kool-Aid back in the day. I was swept up in the wonder and awe of the crop circles. To this day, even accepting the hoaxing, even after decades of serious disenchantment with the New Age, one of my regrets is that I missed seeing this formation by only two weeks:

Formed in July, it was harvested in mid-September, and I was at Silbury Hill in late September. I didn’t find out that I’d missed it until I was already back in the States.

But my awe didn’t need to actually witness one of these for myself to be caught up in the sensation of it all. Especially after this beauty appeared in a field near Alton Barnes in 1990 (a village I visited in 1988) and was broadcast all over the world:

The phenomena was evolving! The messages were getting more complex! I even incorporated a part of this one in some of the artwork I was making at the time:

And therein hangs a tale. Because it turns out most of the crop circles were all about art. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two 60-somethings, finally came forward and admitted they had started the craze and were doing circles as far back as the 70s “for a laugh” and for the pure joy of making large folk art in the fields. They never claimed to have made all the circles, although the newspaper that broke the story said they did, but D&D showed it was possible to hoax even the complex shapes that crop circle aficionados claimed (and still claim, some of them) could not have been done by the hand of man.

And that’s what catches Schnabel himself up in the hoaxing craze: the pure joy of being out in the English countryside in the darkness and making something bigger, grander, more magical than his individual self. And therein hangs another tale. These lovely things don’t need to be made by UFOs or earth spirits or fairies because all of those things live inside us, we complexly-layered human beings who often respond emotionally to things our intellects can’t grasp entirely. Trickster ties threads to our hands and feet, making us dance in the fields with crop stompers and think it’s all our idea.

Sure, it’s our idea. On the surface. But beneath the swirled grain of our imaginations lies a whole chthonic realm where other forces call the dance.

The Crop Circles

Round and round in a circle,
but not a circle: a cipher—
blank, yet potent with meaning,
universal and profoundly personal.
Each eye that falls on the corn
sees their own life rippling
through the wind in the fields:
their deceit, the circles deceit;
their pain, the circles pain;
their joy, their sorrow,
their wonder and fear
all caught in the circles’ round
and etched in the corn.
And what is the true meaning
of the patterns in the fields?
Only the same meaning
that each day brings:
I know that I do not know.

—PJ Thompson

(If any of you are interested in seeing more of that metalwork piece, I’ve put the pictures beneath the cut.)

(more…)

Chuck Kinder may be a metafictional wonder boy, but this book often tried my patience. I didn’t give up on it, though many times I wanted to. I would put it down, sometimes for weeks at a time, but I’d always circle back because I couldn’t quite give up on it. And these days, when I’m notorious for abandoning books because “life is too short” that’s something of a backhanded compliment.

You see, this book is what Chuck Kinder calls “faction”—that is, a memoir that’s even more loose with the facts than most memoirs. Mr. Kinder states repeatedly that he’s a storyteller above all else and never lets the facts of his life get in the way of a good story. Born and raised in West Virginia, he pays loving and cynical attention to his quirky home state, speaking of its history and its legends, everything from Matewan to Mothman. As fast and loose as he plays with the facts of his own life, when he’s talking about history and legends (as far as I can tell) he plays it fairly straight. Oh, he may insert himself into the headspace of the historical actors —which makes the narrative come alive in quite wondrous ways sometimes, if I’m honest—but he does tell the story down to its bones. In these days of the internet, it’s easy to call his bluff there, and some of these oddball characters have presences you can even look up on YouTube (Jessico White, for one).

I was good with all of that. Enjoyed that part of the ride. What Mr. Kinder had to say in these passages was often beautiful and heart-wrenching; or oddly, spookily, legendarily interesting; or downright funny. A lot of funny. When he talked about the history and legends of West Virginia (“Planet West Virginia” as he referred to it), you could feel his love for the place and its people and the craziness he grew up with.

Unfortunately, he frequently interspersed these bits with references to his own bad boy past and present, and those passages smelled of stale testosterone. I am so over reading about bad boys and posing tough guys, whether they are teenagers or fifty-somethings. He often doesn’t name the people in his life, or only by pseudonyms and nicknames—either to protect their innocence or to turn them into characters he can fudge facts about. Again, I wouldn’t have minded the faction about his relatives, but his wrenching everything back to stories about his bad boy status got tiresome, and interrupted the flow of the rest of the narrative. And that, as the saying goes, got on my last nerve.

But I did finish Last Mountain Dancer, so there is that.

Got Fluffy Bunnies of Doom? No? May I recommend the tarot as seen through the eyes of F-Bod Studios:

This is a funny wall calendar representation of 12 scenes from the Major Arcana—but it also reproduces many of the key elements of the Rider-Waite deck. As filtered through the fluffy bunnies of doom, that is. A few of my favorites (sorry for the blurry copied-from-a-thumbnail-on-the-website quality of the images):

Here’s the URL for this calendar: https://www.cafepress.com/fbod.156871009

But there are other funny and arty calendars to be found here: https://www.cafepress.com/fbod/3622034

And the main shop with many irreverent t-shirts and “weird crap,” as F-Bod puts it, can be found here: https://www.cafepress.com/fbod

This post is long and a mixed bag of things. If you’re only interesting in Hellier, you can skip everything past the picture of The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies.

I did a marathon watching of all ten hours of Hellier Season 2 on Friday—as after cooking two large meals that week and housecleaning, I wasn’t up for much more than viewing and eating leftovers. It’s currently available for free on Amazon Prime (as is Season 1), and in a couple of weeks will also be available for free on YouTube.

I rather wish I had watched it at a more leisurely pace because I got rather tuckered out there at the end. I’m still trying to process it (and have been rewatching it slowly for the past few days) and I might have processed it better if it had been in smaller chunks. Or maybe not.

I did manage a brief Amazon review:

Season One of Hellier was a perfect little gem of high strangeness, evoking that tumbling feel of falling into a storm of the synchronicities. That storm continues in season 2, tumbling harder and stranger. It has the authentic feel of lived experience rather than staged paranormal TV. We ride along with the participants, feeling their puzzlement and insecurities, their disbelief and belief, and watching as things shift and shift again. If you are looking for pat answers and highly manipulated content, this may not be the series for you. But if you have realized that asking questions is the most important thing, Hellier will give you that thrill of late-night discussions with friends trying to figure out the mysteries of the Universe.

My head’s so full of Major Stuff that I can’t talk about because, spoilers. I may post again in a couple of weeks after people have had a chance to watch. For now, I’ll just say that at the end of episode 9 I used some sweetgrass oil, just in case, and drew a protective sigil on my TV screen before watching episode 10. Also, as soon as those damned tones started I got nauseated. You’ll know the tones I mean if you watch it. The same thing happened with a recent “Haunted Salem Live” sigil experiment done by Greg and Dana Newkirk. So. Mass initiation or suggestibility? I’m still not sure. And that’s in the true spirit of Hellier, I think. Questions are more important than answers.

There are very mild spoilers in the following. Skip to *** if you don’t want even that.

I will say this, and with all due respect to Tyler Strand, I do believe the carving he saw on the tree was not a green man but Odin. Which suggests an entirely different focus of worship in North Carolina than in…that other place. And does nothing, of course, to negate the strangeness he experienced. And speaking as a geezer, if some odd young man showed up at my door going on about strange things in the woods, I might also have called the police. It doesn’t mean abominable practices were going on there, just that whatever or Whoever they worship, they probably figured it was none of his gods damned business.

***Okay, it’s safe now.

After viewing Hellier 2 there were many books I wanted to read and reread. I already had, and had already read, many of the ones they recommend: Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallee, The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen, Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies by the Reverend Robert Kirk (written in the 17th c. and widely referred to in paranormal circles), and others. I thought it might be time to reread Kirk again, since it’s really just a tract, not a long book, and it fit in with some of the research I’ve been doing lately for my current novel. Somewhere in this house I have a 1991 reprint of Kirk edited by RJ Stewart but of course I couldn’t find it. I once had a very neat filing system for my books, but that was before the chaos of the last house move and the caregiving years that followed, alas.

I notice that you can even buy this Andrew Lang edition as a Kindle book now. I love living in the digital age. But since I spent beaucoup $ in the 70s xeroxing this at the UCLA Research Library, I don’t think I’ll spend anymore money on it. I’d forgotten that I’d filled it up with pink highlighter. It was interesting to see that I didn’t find all those passages relevant anymore, although some overlapped.

Back in the ancient days when I was a student at UCLA, they had two original copies of The Secret Commonwealth, the original 1815 imprint from his 17th c. manuscript, and the 1893 Andrew Lang one, in the open stacks of the Research Library—a holdover from the days when Thelma Moss ran a paranormal research program there. Research libraries were the only places you could find these back then.

I’ve thought about those books since and wondered if anyone had the sense to put them in the restricted access area of the library or if, Rev. Kirk-like, they have subsequently been kidnapped by the fairies. Or other beings of more malicious intent. Somebody I know may have mentioned their rarity to one of the librarians, who didn’t seem that interested. Probably thought that someone a pedantic busybody or just another arsehole student trying to tell her what to do. I appreciated having easy access to them, but also know it’s a very sharp 2-edged sword: not even the Library of Congress can protect against theft, individuals deciding their wants are more important than access to that cultural heritage for the rest of us.

Ah well.

Below are some notes and quoted passages from the current reread. Some are relevant to Hellier 2, some relevant to my current research, but I thought someone might find them interesting.

• The Rev. Kirk says that females rarely have the second sight. That’s a 17th century male elite conceit, I believe. If women spoke of having second sight back in that day they would likely be burned.

Christine Wicker’s book, Lily Dale: The Town That Talks to the Dead covers some of the same territory as Spook by Mary Roach—although I think, at the end of the day, Wicker’s book was more genuine. I liked reading both, and Roach is very funny, but she went into her skeptical deep dive exploration of the paranormal with the goal of mocking. She did quite a lot of that in Spook, sometimes to funny effect, but other times to her detriment as a reporter.

Wicker also went in skeptical but was genuinely interested in exploring the lives of the people she encountered. She approached them with respect and a reporter’s eye towards following where the story led, rather than leading the story. I won’t say she became a true believer by the end of the book, but she did emerge from the story changed by what she’d experienced.

Even Roach had to admit that she could not come up with rational explanations for everything she encountered. Yet she clung to the rock of her disbelief like any true acolyte of scientism. And that’s fine with me. I don’t require anyone to drink the Kool-Aid. Some people need to disbelieve no matter the evidence to the contrary, just as some need to believe despite rational explanations. As Ms. Wicker said so eloquently in her quote of the day, below.

See my full review of Christine Wicker’s book here.

Okay, this book. Every negative thing you’ve heard about it is true. Larsson is a bad fiction writer, fond of long infodumps and a lot of telling-not-showing, head hopping, and muddy character motivations. Especially for women, who are always falling in-love with Blomquist and jumping into bed with him for no apparent reason. Also, Larsson, a crusading journalist who bucked the system, has created a male fantasy role for himself—Michael Blomquist, the crusading journalist who’s always bucking the system and, additionally, beds a lot of women.

And there are a number of rapey salacious bits thrown in for no good reason. Oh yeah, some of them are supposed to be character motivation, but I thought they were lingered on a bit too lovingly sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, I like noir fiction but this was just, as I said, lovingly salacious. Which is curious for a book which claims to be a feminist triumph. The original Swedish title of the book translates as “Men Who Hate Women.” I don’t believe Mr. Larsson hated women, and Michael Blomquist doesn’t hate women, but I don’t think Larsson’s feminist cred extends quite as far as he would have us believe.

And Lizbeth Salander. Yes, she is a unique female character, a powerhouse. However, much of her role in this book is revenge fantasy. This is very much Michael Blomquist’s book.

BUT, I wound up finishing the book instead of throwing it across the room because…the central mystery of Harriet Vanger at the heart of the book is very good. Very well constructed and laid out well. I believed in the carefully-crafted investigation as it unfolded and it kept me turning the pages. But it took a bit for me to get to that point. I bounced hard off this book twice before because I couldn’t get past the opening infodumps. But a person whose taste I trusted told me to keep going so I did.

However, I don’t think I’ll go on to the other books in the series. The blurbs I’ve read, the sample chapter, show me that it will be more of the same and I really don’t want to deal with anymore Larssonland.

Random quote of the day:

“In organized crime, victims never survive because they will get revenge. In book reviewing, victims invariably survive and ‘bide their time.’”

—Joyce Carol Oates, Twitterfeed, May 30, 2013

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.