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Endless Things (Aegypt Cycle)

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After finishing Daemonomania (volume 3 of the Aegypt Cycle), I thought I had some idea of how this tetrology would end. What foolish, foolish thinking! This is Crowley, where the shortest distance between Point A and Point B is not a straight line. In fact, it may be impossible to get from A to B. But - if you could somehow get to B, it may be possible to get to A.

There are those things in life which we are sure are true - sometimes they really are. There are those we hope are true - sometimes they really aren't. There are those that aren't true but should be - sometimes we only dream.

Through the four volumes we've followed a nebulous storyline, and hoped for understanding. Sometimes understanding is just out of reach. But even if this written story is over, the journey it laid out for us doesn't have to end. This one will stay with me.


Oh, Sam, what happened to that shiny .... (Is the Cycle really done?)

In the last month or so, I've read all of the books in the Aegypt cycle. It's been a bit of a chore. The book spirals through time, characters and storylines, changing the past, present and future. Or perhaps it is a major river (starting Y-shaped) with many streams, brooks, creeks, rivulets trickling forth.

Crowley knows the strangeness of his plot structure well, and addresses it in a passage about halfway through Endless Things where Pierce (I shall resist a near-obligatory pun on the implications of his name) is reviewing and editing the last, unpublished book by his favorite author, Fellowes Kraft:

"The book itself, Kraft's original, had turned out to be even less complete in some ways than Pierce remembered it being. As the pages had silted up Kraft had seemingly begun making the worst of fictional errors, or ceased correcting them: all those things that alienate readers and annoy critics, like the introduction of new major characters at late stages of the story, unpacked and sent out on new adventures while the old main characters sit lifeless somewhere offstage, or stumble to keep up. New plot movements, departing from the main branch of the story for so long that they *become* the main branch without our, the readers', agreement or assent. All of it inducing that sense of reckless haste or -- worse -- droning inconsequence that sooner or later causes us -- us, the only reason for any of it, the sole feelers of its feelings, sole knowers of its secrets -- to sigh, or groan in impatience, or maybe even end (with a clap) the story the writer seems only to want to keep on beginning."

Post script: I would also like to know what happened to John Dee's crystal ball and what is the deal with the weird animal car names.

The Solitudes (The Aegypt Cycle)Love & Sleep (Aegypt)DAEMONOMANIA (Aegypt Cycle; Vol. 3)John Crowley's Aegypt Cycle is a major achievement in literature. It not only stands up to several re-readings but resolves its themes appropriately and completely. Part fabulist, part historical, and part philosophical, the whole cycle stands as one of the great literary achievements of our time, perhaps the greatest. Yet it's no dry English major's novel; the characters, their stories, and their fates keep us turning the pages long after the bedside reading light should have been turned off. It works so well on so many levels. Writing this comment makes me want to pick it up again.