greetings. i am a 37-year-old man currently living and working part
time in eugene, oregon. i have been declaring for some years now that
david lindsay is my favorite author. this seems to have the effect of
guaranteeing that whomever i tell it to will never read a book by him.
that, and the fact that his books are so hard to find. not that i've
ever known anyone who actually looked for one, except for a friend who
lost my copy of 'the haunted woman,' and sweetly replaced it for me. it
is one of the few books i still own, having lived in a van for several
years now, and having shed many of my worldly possessions during that
time. i have read 'voyage' and 'sphinx' twice through each. i plan to
read 'voyage' again soon. i've read 'the haunted woman' once through
myself, and about a third of the way through out loud to a friend of
mine who apparently would rather i didn't read him any more. he
expresses some interest in reading it by himself, but i'm hesitating to
loan him my copy because reading it together has been so much fun for
me, that i'm reluctant to give it up so easily. but i suppose that
would be selfish.
i also was priviledged to read 'the violet apple' once through, oh,
maybe 5 years ago, now. i got it from the library in provo, utah, and
kick myself for not stealing it when i had the chance, as i have never
encountered another copy since. and i have looked, strenuously.
for a long time, 'the violet apple' was my favorite of his works.
i read 'voyage' before i read 'the violet apple,' and was somewhat put
off because of its awkward style. that, and it is so full of ideas,
that you have to stop and think about it a lot, or at least, i do. it
is definitely not easy reading.
what i love about 'sphinx,' 'the violet apple,' and 'the haunted
woman,' is how they all revolve around a man and a woman sharing an
experience of non-ordinary reality. lindsay never balks at explaining
exactly what they experienced and what they learned from these
experiences. the image from 'the violet apple' that sticks with me the
most is how the male character decides that it should have been 'veils,'
and not 'aprons,' that adam and eve fashioned for themselves. 'that
finely shrinking organ,' i believe was the phrase he used to describe
the face. amazing. fantastic. bringing the everyday into the realm of
the fantastic. the man and woman always seem to share something they
think to be love as a result of these forays into the non-ordinary, and
yet the relationship is always doomed because the feeling cannot be
sustained outside of the extraordinary circumstances.
in 'the violet apple,' it was the effect of eating the apple
itself. in 'sphinx,' it was the experience of the playback of the dream
recorder, and in 'the haunted woman,' it was the phantom staircase, and
the rooms to which it led. all similar themes, metaphors for what?
shared psychedelic drug experiences, perhaps? that would explain why
though they derive benefit of a sort from the experiences in the form of
fantastic realizations about existence, they always end up messed up and
falling apart or dying.
in any case, he does seem to have simplified things after 'voyage,'
perhaps coming to the realization that a book like that is just too much
for the average reader to assimilate. how i would love to get my hands
on copies of 'devil's tor,' and 'the witch,' not to mention another copy
of 'the violet apple.' thank you for starting this site. i believe
that the function of true art is to provide insight into our being, and
to communicate, dare i say, truth. i do not hold with the idea that
truth is relative. i believe we will all eventually agree about pretty
much everything, but that vision is obscured by imperfect communication.
david lindsay cut through that darkness like no other author i have ever
read. it's no wonder he died young and unrecognized, as the world seems
to thrive on confusion and chaos.
i, myself, have some difficulty maintaining my grasp upon this
mortal coil. while i wouldn't say i have any specific phobia of
dentists in particular, i make nowhere near enough money to be able to
go to a dentist, and the possibility of developing a fatal tooth
infection is very real for me, as it was for mr. lindsay. i suppose i
could control such an infection, should i develop one, with antibiotics,
but in recent years, i often ask myself, 'why bother?' it's just a
long, downhill slope from here anyway, as my body begins to fail bit by
bit on its way to the big drop.
feel free to drop me a line if you like. e-mail is one of the 6 or
7 main activities of my life these days.
Copyright 1998 by milk weed and the Muspel Home Page