Aegypt [Import] [Paperback]

John Crowley (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: VGSF; New Ed edition (1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575043253
• ISBN-13: 978-0575043251
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,210,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942, his father then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 14th volume of fiction (Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land) in 2005. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He finds it more gratifying that almost all his work is still in print.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crowley's magic sparkles once again, March 15, 1999

By 

Richard G. Elen "Sounds On" (Cambridge, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Aegypt (Paperback)

Crowley's early books were definitely in the "SF" genre, but as time has gone by we more and more frequently find him in the "Literature" section of many bookstores.

If this is a compliment, it is one that is well-deserved. Crowley's writing has a magical quality that creates a unique atmosphere unlike almost any other (the nearest comparison might be Keith Roberts' "Pavane").

"Aegypt" appeared as an individual volume with virtually no clue to the fact that it had a sequel ("Love and Sleep") or that in fact these two books were the first of a four-volume set (the third, "Daemonomania", seems to have been delayed - it appeared in Books In Print in 1998 but has, according to Bantam, been "withdrawn").

The books are set in two worlds - a small-town, modern, north-east US environment and the world of Renaissance magicians like Dr John Dee. At the heart of the series is the idea that great changes of direction in human civilisation - such as the Renaissance or the advent of the Age of Reason - not only place culture on a different path into the future, but also, looking over our shoulders as it were, we see a different past. This is a concept that, in itself, has serious philosophical merit.

Thus the past of "Aegypt" is a magical, occult "alternate history of the world" with which modern materialist society has lost touch - or nearly so.

Crowley weaves the threads of both realities together in an astonishing and unique way that holds the reader in thrall, wishing it would never end.

All his books are worth reading, but this one - and its sequel(s) - especially so.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First movement of a celestial symphony, December 24, 1999

By 

Karen Bowe - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aegypt (Paperback)

In Aegypt, John Crowley creates not one, but two solid, fleshly worlds: a late seventies small town, complex enough to hold both the foolishness of failed coke dealer, scholar and desperate monogamist Pierce Moffett, and the ordinary heroic strength of newly single mother and artist Rosie Rasmussen; and the world of John Dee, court magician to Queen Elizabeth. Crowley's virtousic realism renders Dee's conversations with the angels and alchemical searching as sturdy and believable as Rose and Pierce's grocery shopping, angst, and romantic turnarounds. Both worlds can be balanced in the same book because both worlds are there to tell the same story. What is that story? What did the angels tell to John Dee? Who can catch a falling star? For all its realism, this is a book about occult knowledge. This book is an initiation. John Crowley is attempting a direct transmission of gnosis through literature. Does he succeed?

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Synchronicity, November 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Aegypt (Paperback)

Initially, Aegypt is an all-out barrage of images and information, in the midst of which it is difficult to assimilate the major themes that are developing. However, as you continue your journey along with Pierce Moffett, this mass of somewhat obscure imagery and information slowly begins to unravel. The miracle of Crowley's prose is that he guides the reader through a series of small revelations along with the main character that culminate in one entire running synchronistic metaphor. His brilliant excerpts from other sources, ie. his own fictional writer Fellowes Kraft, serve as slivers of allegory relating to Pierce and some of the other characters in the book's main story. Crowley patiently weaves a web of coincidences, of synchronicity, that serves as a sturdy metaphoric foundation to support all of the synapse-igniting ideas presented to the reader to be delineated and digested. This novel is so cleverly plotted, that I cannot help but wonder if it is somehow based on the ancient geometric principles that are discussed and reffered to throughout the book. This is not even to speak of the potential Jungian archetypes presented by the characters surrounding Pierce. Rosie as anima, Spofford animus, Pierce the ego, Fellowes Kraft the Shadow? Even these archetypes do not do the interconnectedness of the characters justice. In the Prologue in Heaven, when the skryer is looking into the stone, he sees an angel who holds another stone, in which there is a child with yet another stone, and within that stone the immense void, the eternal truth. Just as this ancient knowledge of Aegypt that Pierce is uncovering comes through himself, Kraft, Bruno, and so on. One more running metaphor to drive it all home is the reoccuring imagery of bouncing balls with stripes and stars, croquet balls colliding, and finally the dozens of hot air balloons filling the sky, again synchronicity. Crowley sets his sights high, and does not disappoint.

P.S. Pierce (Inverarity) Moffett, Rosie MUCHO. See The Crying of Lot 49. The horn from 49 and the ring symbol in Aegypt. Many similarities.