Customer Reviews

The Journal of Albion Moonlight

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This "novel" is more of a primitive, surreal, hallucinatory, dream-like rage against WW2 & mankind's hatred in general than a standard book. Form gets tossed out the window, and this does make the book a bit of a struggle at times, but that's just the point. It shouldn't be easy to understand another man's feelings & it isn't easy getting Patchen's. This book is definately not for everyone, and I'd almost say "read the last half of the book first if you wanna get it from the get-go." It took me a few weeks to read this, reading several other things while mulling over parts of this "journal", but I'm glad I stuck with it & kept thinking about it. It's a very powerful work that crackles like a thundercloud. Just don't expect a straightforward novel. That ain't what this is...

This novel contains some of the most compelling images I have ever read. It is a measure of Patchen's courage that he wrote it at the height of WWII--not a popular time for anti-war activism. The depth of his thinking about pacifism emerges in this novel on every level. Patchen was a lifelong scholar and student of the works of William Blake and it shows: "Moonlight" challenges us not only in content but in form as well, using metaphor and image to create a powerful non-linear world of story and thought. Kenneth Patchen's work is beginning to experience a resurgence, and I would suggest buying this novel (along with Kenneth's love poetry) if you want to discover this great American poet.

This book changed my life. I can't tell you exactly how, but I wasn't the same afterward. I had never seen a book written with such searing honesty, such naked vulnerability, such savage and wild howling at the insanity that was engulfing the planet in 1940.

Get this book. If you love poetry, if you love language, if you love passionate expression and beauty...get it. Patchen was like no one else. That's why Henry Miller wrote about him in an essay called "Kenneth Patchen: Man of Anger & Light."

This book provides an intense and personal revolution that can only be spread by opening a page to the person next to you. Insanity and purity bind the book and the reader together by the solipsistic nature of percpetion. Patchen will make you see and think about things differently. Jonathan Lethem's "Amnesia Moon" and Richard Farina's "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me" are aspects of "Journal of Albion Moonlight" focused down into a keen discernable light. It has what the scholars told me I should have gotten out of "Ulysses".

Imagine you could look directly into the subconscious mindsoul of possibly the most creative and moral writer who ever lived...You can: just read this anti-novel. If you're average or less than in terms of seeking truth, then I suggest you stick to the sports page instead.

The most surreal thing ever written. And I use surreal in the very real sense of the word, not the new pop use. If you are interested in a conscious transfusion that will cause you to see your minutes a little less than normal, try to read this. It's thick, but enebriating.

Hands down one of the best books I have ever read. Every narrative convention is completely challenged. It is impossible for any two readers to read this novel the same way. Comical and impossible to understand yet steeped in meaning and depth. A tape recorded conversation of Hitler and Jesus in a taxi, murder, the invasion of the United States during World War II (which at the time of composition was a reality), ...what's not to like? "The Journal..." is a work of art and challenges you. There are readers who seek to open their minds with the unpredictable results of experimentation and there are readers who seek to reinforce the familiar (=boring) objects of shallow and spiritless minds.
This work created in a time when artists made art and put their energies into more than "appearing" as an artist.
Quit being a p!@#$* and read it.

Recently came across a copy of Albion's Journal, signed and dated by his wife Miriam. So this made the re-reading more personal, somehow. I work as a bookpricer for a Friends of the Library group; someone donated the book to us.
I'd read Albion Moonlight once or twice before, never in its entirety (an intriguing impossibility -- unless you are fond of lists, and outlines of possible books, and marginalia to the max).
The journal as a journal pretty much disappears as a structure after about 50 pages -- but then later comes back -- and goes away -- and the dates proceed for a while, then sort of recycle. May to June and on, but you never get past August. And then you're back, somehow, to May again.
Taken as a whole, the work seems more an artifact, or art object -- even a stunning one -- but also then something to look at and admire for its conception, rather than read. That's true of the last half or possibly as much as two-thirds of the work.

Yet, all in all, I enjoyed meeting again with Albion and his rag-tag gang. The book is probably more over-hyped than any other "literary" title I've ever come across -- nonetheless, it remains engaging.
I've read plenty of other "odd" novels, not always with pleasure. (OK, I'll confess, I seek them out.) I didn't care much for Nabokov's "Pale Fire" -- but loved many of Julio Cortazar's parables and novels, including "Hopscotch." Gunter Grass' "Dog Years" remains an all-time favorite. Neither of those have much to do with traditional, progressive narrative time-lines. Yet that's very much part of what makes each one, in very different ways, effective.
However, Patchen's rejection of narrative, or distaste for it, a love and hate affair working through the journal -- for me, this got very wearying.
Moonlight is hilarious, did I say that? It has parts which are uproarious, and at places it is shockingly funny -- disturbingly so. These often very brief sections may be where it's most effective.
But there's plenty of vile stuff, too. And and and ... is he preaching against murder or advocating it? Again and again he explains how he seeks to murder "murder." Then he says he lied. Or that God (Roivas) made him lie when he said that. And so on.
Patchen plays with making as many contradictory statements as possible, then makes contradictory statements about contradiction itself. This same sort of perverse persistence goes on with other themes and literary tropes. Often what makes the work live is the wild inventiveness present, but the invention then dies away with this tedious repetitiveness.
So -- read with caution, but do read.

A wide variety of material is in this book. The interview between Christ and Hitler should not be missed. Much play of typography. Entire short novels are written in the margins. The book is discontinuous but always picks you up and takes you in a new direction. Don't miss Chrystal,( the girl-Christ) or H. Roivas. (Roivas is Savior spelled backward.) A lot of semi-religious outcries in a basically secular book. It is as if the author can't shake off the religiosity of his culture and so gestures through it. He is no doubt some sort of Theist, but literary expression takes precedence.

I've read and reread this book for almost twenty years now, I always find it amazing.