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Endless Things
May. 15th, 2007 10:26 amI've finished reading John Crowley's Endless Things. For those who haven't drunk the kool-aid (and if you haven't what the hell is wrong with you!) this is the fourth, and last, book in his Aegypt series which first begun in 1987 when I was in high school. So this is a series I've been reading my entire adult life (sort of mirroring in some ways the life of the main character Pierce).
The Aegypt series involves the search, the dream quest of Pierce that there is a story that will uncover an alternate reality or a secret history where magic is possible. Pierce's pursuit of magic, alchemy, and other Gnostic systems of knowledge is less concerned with acquiring supernatural abilities and more preoccupied with a very natural longing for a lost romanticism, a philosophy of hope which will instill meaning and significance into Pierce's own great work, a palimpsest of half-forgotten memories and half-remembered stories. Along the way we glimpse Prospero, Dee, Shakespeare, Rudolph, Bruno, and even Dame Yeats (as a guardian angel of sorts).
Endless Things is really a love story about books and reading and romance. Lyrical and poetic, it is hard not to read in one giant gulp and savor for its complexity. If you’ve been following along with Aegypt at any point in the last 20 years go and read this. If you haven’t find the first book and embark on the journey with Crowley as your psychopomp, it is richly rewarded. And luckily the first book is coming back into print later this year, but you can find it at most libraries.
The Aegypt series involves the search, the dream quest of Pierce that there is a story that will uncover an alternate reality or a secret history where magic is possible. Pierce's pursuit of magic, alchemy, and other Gnostic systems of knowledge is less concerned with acquiring supernatural abilities and more preoccupied with a very natural longing for a lost romanticism, a philosophy of hope which will instill meaning and significance into Pierce's own great work, a palimpsest of half-forgotten memories and half-remembered stories. Along the way we glimpse Prospero, Dee, Shakespeare, Rudolph, Bruno, and even Dame Yeats (as a guardian angel of sorts).
Endless Things is really a love story about books and reading and romance. Lyrical and poetic, it is hard not to read in one giant gulp and savor for its complexity. If you’ve been following along with Aegypt at any point in the last 20 years go and read this. If you haven’t find the first book and embark on the journey with Crowley as your psychopomp, it is richly rewarded. And luckily the first book is coming back into print later this year, but you can find it at most libraries.
