V. (Ch 3) Impersonations and Dreams

[Paul Mackin]

Richard Fiero wrote:

> Paul Mackin writes:
> >The view of jbor that between Lot49 and GR. P acquired sophisticated
> knowledge
> >in a variety of religious and philosophical subjects including
> Gnosticism and
> >that this is used to astounding  effect in his mature work is
> certainly my own.
> >(Kai agrees in his post of this morning)
> >
>
> All of this stuff was in the mainstream hip culture of the 60's. It is
> not at all obscure or esoteric.
> Many many researchers were revisiting the bundle of items comprising
> the then current interpretations of folklore and myth reinterpreting,
> unravelling and rebinding with renewed clarity.
> Lawrence Durrell's 'Alexandria Quartet' ('57 to '60) seems far more
> relevant in my own view.
>

Been in the mainstream of REGULAR culture for a couple millennia. I
remember back in the early 50s being confined to a Catholic TB sanitorium
for the good part of a year. The library there had an ancient multivolumed
set of the Catholic Encyclopedia which I spent many hours pouring over. One
of the good nuns would tote them back and forth to my bedside as I finished
with them one by one. I certainly learned an awful lot about the history of
the various competing religious ideas over past two thousand years. The
Gnostics figure prominently of course. One might well have been converted
to Gnosticism from this experience. I wasn't quite however.

Yeah, I remember back in about 1960 everybody was reading Alexandria
Quartet. I still have my set--it was a book of the month club selection I
think--and I  looking at them on the shelf at this very moment. Their dust
covers are gone and I notice a rather odd thing--the cloth cover of Justine
is red but the other four are black.

                                           P.