2 different Crowleys

[Mark Thibodeau]

I've often wondered how many people have purchased the Aegypt books
thinking they were written by the OTHER Crowley.

A lot of people probably wondering what all the fuss was about, eh?

Jerky

On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 3:24 AM Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>
wrote:

> John Crowley quite different from Aleister Crowley.
> Or different “to”, if you’re English.
>
> Didn’t help that I forgot to use their first names.
>
> Probably obvious from context.
>
> Anybody try that Delta eight?
>  Legal (for now) even in benighted jurisdictions.
> Seems to have a little more je ne sais quoi than CBD.
>
> Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
> ________________________________
> From: Raphael Saltwood
> Sent: Monday, May 24, 2021 2:49:58 AM
> To: pynchon-l <Pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Subject: More about Crowley / Parsons
>
>
> The thesis he put forth about shaping his prose style to different
> subjects may in some respects be true, but it doesn’t constitute what I
> like about him.
>
>
> Reading Pynchon I’m more like gleaning detail about *this* world - I don’t
> escape into Vineland, for instance, no matter how much I enjoy reading it…
>
> nor does one ever want to escape into V., does one?
>
> whereas I definitely do escape a bit into Aegypt’s first book The
> Solitudes​_ -
>
> Very different read than V., despite it having a trio of important
> characters similar to Profane/Stencil/V in V.:
>
> Pierce the scholarly and very slightly picaresque protagonist (who serves
> as a whimsical, gentle Benny Profane);
>
> the novelist Fellowes Kraft, (whose oeuvre of historical novels certainly
> reminds me of Stencil’s research a bit);
>
> and Giordano Bruno, the subject of one of Kraft’s novels, who gets about
> as much attention in Little, Big as V gets in V. Although you also get some
> John Dee ( more in the other 3 sequels ) and enough classy ruminations on
> history to, well, not choke a horse, but certainly enough to intersperse in
> a most satisfying manner with the details of the pastoral retreat being
> beaten by Pierce…
>
> Side note - does it make it better or worse to read,  having a character
> with a similar name to yours? (Kraft e.g.)
> I was bemused when the Tourette’s sufferer in Jonathan Lethem’s
> _Motherless Brooklyn_ kept saying, “Eat me, Bailey!” and it made reading it
> more fun.
> The movie was also good; for the first time I got why people think so
> highly of Edward Norton
>
> Anyway - if Pynchon is more or less proclaiming & educating (very
> inadequate description & only for comparison with Crowley) - that makes him
> more of an extrovert - stylewise
>
> Whereas if Crowley is trying to draw one in (I think it’s on purpose) he’s
> stylistically more an introvert.
>
> I would like to rave on about Little, Big but maybe it’s better I can’t
> think what to tell you.
>
> I learned about Parsons the rocket scientist from getting partway into the
> OTO (Crowleyan organization) - leafing through a Crowley book in the UCF
> library in the early 80s where someone had put his name & phone number with
> an invitation to learn more. Wound up meeting & becoming friends with a
> young dude named Ed who was deep into Crowley. I was more of a Robert Anton
> Wilson fan, but got intrigued enough to hang with Ed. We went to see Baba
> Ram Dass  - which was totally different territory, but a pretty nice
> lecture. He shepherded me out to the woods near UCF to cut a willow branch
> to use for a magic wand.
>
> I forget exactly how we grew apart but it didn’t take very long. Crowley’s
> philosophy has a significant downside and perhaps Ed realized I wasn’t
> really of a like mind for his cohort, when I did not hesitate to mention
> not appreciating elitism, a taste for warfare, and the many casualties
> along Mr Crowley’s path. Including Parsons.
>
> Never really did get that Willow wand consecrated nor learn to use it, my
> friend Tony who died last fall found it in my closet back in 1982 or so, he
> grabbed it, I wrested it from him…not many days later I felt guilty and a
> little dumb about being so possessive, and even a bit uneasy (more than a
> bit, if I’m honest) about the whole occult project, so I broke it and threw
> it away.
>
> Crowley, though, did write some pretty enjoyable stuff. I ended up
> thinking, if he’d only been a bit nicer! Robert Anton Wilson - who wrote
> some
> even more enjoyable stuff - had a line referencing that credo “do what
> thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and discovering one’s True Will:
> he said something like, the True Will of most Crowleyans he met seemed to
> be to act like pompous asses.
>
> I liked Ed, but not what he was trying to draw me into.
>
> But the other Crowley, John, has a much cooler thing going on by far!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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