Crowley, then ...

Craig Brewer · 28 Jul 2003, 13:57 · from urth-v0307.mbox · original

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From: Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Crowley, then ...
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 06:57:19 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <urth-v0307-3768 at digest.urth.net>
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"Alice K. Turner" supposed:

> It is partly a sort of mood thing. a state of mind
> that people who read Victorian children's
> literature, or loved the fairy paintings of the
> period, when they were young can slip into easily,
> picking up on the many allusions that come along
> and the light literary parodies. It is partly a kind
> of 60s thing, especially among New Yorkers.

I'd have to agree with most of this and add that LB is
the kind of book that I could only enjoy now after
having read a lot of other stuff that's become more of
a literary memory than something fresh. I personally
enjoyed it because of the strains of Renaissance
philosophy (ie., Bruno and neoplatonism) that ran
through it.

I read in an interview that Crowley began LB as a kind
of a "concept book," intending to just write a book
about a family with their own private religion. And
the fairy stuff began as just a way to make that
private religion more accessible to readers. But then
the fairy motifs took over. In the same interview (I
think), Crowley admitted that it was a book which
didn't have the same universal scope as he tried to
get in his Aegypt series - it was something that was
more of a playing out of a minor personal obsession.

The real reason I so love that book, though, is that
as a kid I was always hunting for fairy hills and
circle dances...which I always felt were just around
the corner. And if the end of that book is any
indication, I may have been right...

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