Customer Reviews

Absinthe: The Green Goddess

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3 star:		(4)
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I was expecting a book. This is more like a pamphlet. Maybe eighteen pages of text. It is definitly a short story. Not something I would expect sold on its own.

It is worth reading. Crowley makes some great comments about the mind of the prohibitionist and their ilk. It is also a view of absinthe drinkers in New Orleans and not France.

Useful for someone interested in the subject and is willing to spend money just to get the one piece. Beyond that, it seems a bit over price. (It was also interesting to see just how much packing material was used to ship it. Much more than the book actually weighed, by a factor of about ten.)

A tasty little memoir or meditation! As the author sips the liqueur favoured by so many nineteenth-century authors and artists in a New Orleans café, he muses on a variety of subjects from mystical visions of rainbows and peacocks to Prohibition and other issues of social mores. For collectors of Crowley's pioneering writing on drugs, probably a must-have. The pamphlet-like edition is somewhat marred by amateurish typography (the omission of accents in French quotations is particularly annoying), but an enjoyable read nonetheless. I found the quality of the writing to be reasonable value for my money. Cheers!

Let me begin by making it very clear that this is neither an instructional manual, historical view of absinthe, or a trashy neo-pagan text equating alcoholism with spirituality. "Absinthe" is a brief and lucid illustration of an absinthe bar in New Orleans in the early part of the 20th century. It captures the psychology of absinthe wonderfully, especially the poisonous absinthe of New Orleans, and the beautiful torment of a person enjoying its spell. The work is typical of a Crowley short story he decided to transcribe from one of his diaries verbatim, and his characteristic oscilating precision tempts the reader into experimentation. "Absinthe" is absinthe from the inside of a drinker's putrefying brain.

By no means am I discouraging the exploration of the drink. Like most things worth trying, the risk is negligible.

Worthwhile as an historical curiosity but it's both very, very brief and not too impressive in its presentation. This is a few 8-1/2" x 11" sheets of paper, possibly printed on a photocopier, folded over and stapled into a booklet. Probably worth the money if just to save the trouble of finding the ext online and typestting it myself.

Let me first startb out by saying that the book is aptly titled -- absinthe is a mysterious liquid madf e from workmwood which you can't et anymore because it's illegal not even at the piggly wiggly. Many writers ands artists and people in the early 20th century and the beginning of the 1900s drank absinthe and were divinely inspired, such as thw likes of Poe and Hemmingway and Van Gogh. Of course they all went mad, but Hemnongway was shellshocked. I drank absinthe all while reading the book, which i just finished (the book not the absinthe) to kinda get in the head of the writer and those guys and get more in tune with the book'ds message, which is that absinthe is the life-plasma of the gods and the free thinkers. You repeat things and you see things, or tend to, when drinking absinthe and they arent necessarulyt there but that DOES NOT mean they aren't there no matter what she tells you you shouldn't drive like ruthie. is this making sense of any sort? it will to the drinkers of absinthe. well, in sum, the book was amazing but not as amazing as Lady Absinthe herself and like blair witch you should definitely not read up on it before trying it, like blair witch. i found a place to get good wormwood thats fresh and potent but its throught the mail so it takes a while and is worth the wait, the lon g long wait. I can give you the address if you want but it's in belgium, like most good things. I'm running out of words abd absinthe so I need to go pouring another glass of oh the ere's a nocking at my chamber door. ut oh