O'Meara is an acquired taste. For me the mash of Lovecraft, Wagner, Walker, with a dash of Evola just didn't gel.

A great intro to the works of James O'Meara.

I've found it a little bit hard to read. James O'Meara is too edgy somethings. I recommend it only to his followers.

James J. O'Meara is my favorite critic of literature, film, and culture in general. He brings a masculinist, New Right, and Traditionalist perspective to bear on both high and low culture. His trademarks are discerning surprising metaphysical depths in ephemeral pop cultural artifacts, establishing connections between far flung realms of culture, and a sense of humor that is sometimes zany, sometimes wry. This collection contains some of his best essays on topics ranging from Evola, Lovecraft, and Henry James to Olaf Stapledon, the film of Kiss Me Deadly, and composers Harry Partch and Richard Wagner -- as well as architect Ralph Adams Cram, economist Thorstein Veblen, singer Scott Walker, and the novels of Andy Nowicki. Forget George Steiner or Susan Sontag. Forget the unreadable Leftish whinging that passes for cultural criticism today. James O'Meara is further proof that all free-thinkers and creative minds today are on the Right.

James J. O'Meara is a talented writer who takes a look at pop culture, high artistic works, horror fiction, and other matters and filters these items through a traditionalist lens. In the work, O'Meara's fondness towards upper class WASPS, good looking and well fitting clothes, and homoerotic male bonding that is more Philia than some sort of LGBT nonsense really comes through.

The book itself is a series of essays originally published on counter-currents.com. While a book of essays has the potential to take the narrative in out of scope directions, this is certainly not the case in this work. The entire book is a consistent application of O'Meara's take on literature (such as H.P. Lovecraft) that is familiar to most people. His writing is really rich and one should really read the essays several times to catch the nuance within. Additionally, O'Meara is funny. There are numerous lines which made this reviewer laugh out loud.

The book itself is finely edited and published. It includes footnotes and an index.

A Review of 'The Eldritch Evola' by James J. O'Meara

For the unitiated, James writes from a masculinist perspective outlined in his prior two works mentioned in the blurb above, enmeshed into a right-of-the-right theorising of radical (or primordial) traditionalism. For those reeling from that salvo of a sentence, you can begin to understand my problem as a reviewer.

The required grounding alone is a hurdle for those not already familiar with the above terms. Hs prior work as it is covered in passing when relevant, which is useful as the expanse of topics here makes focus impossible - The strength of this book is in the conversational, lofty and unthreatening way that difficult topics are broached. This book is, despite its flaws, is a good introductory volume for those not yet seated on what I call the humble right, mainly embodied by Counter-Currents and other commentators at the Occidental Observer. I am taking for granted here that you as a reader are already of the right mileu in general, or at the least have an intellectual curiousity that has been piqued by James' engaging prose.

Why humble? Well, O'Meara spears the opposition with his own scathing satire on the West; 'Faustian man knows only one direction - Onwards! Examining premises? That's for sissies!'. Braving Sissyhood, James takes the viewer on a submarinal exploration of the subtexts of cultural materials and examine them almost archeologically, using them as proofs against our basic assumptions of the present day. He has a knack for spotting lateral associations between fiction, music, pop-culture, anthropology, and classical works (Lovecraft, Wagner, etc) and packaging them together in breezey, explanatory tracts. O'Meara is hugely knowledgeable, but never intimidating - The book opens with a self depreciating preface that follows up his suffering of the The Gilmore Girls with a excerpt of the Bhagavad Gita expounding the necessity of new book.

For example, anyone typing 'Jewish X' into Google will be confronted with extensive essays of historical atrocities committed against the Germans in the aftermath of World War II, or potentially The Daily Stormer yelling at them about Jewish this and Jewish that. James, in contrast, never forces a viewpoint or agenda, but examines the attitudes present in literature prior to our existing post- WWII hegemony. In this case, he deals with the topic gently by presenting character interplay between White & Jewish Americans from a 1903 book, where the differences in character between the two peoples were taken for granted. It's all very nuanced, as opposed to propelling oneself into a chamber of paranonia. O'Meara follows the the thread of historical through to the present, here the Winklevoss twins and the film The Social Network, bringing the reader to understand the authentic rightist viewpoint in a contemporary context and meaningful way, and does uses this approach throughout the best and most informative essays of the book. The Wagner series and explanations about music tonal systems are worth the price of admission alone for the consistent insight and demonstration of how the West has lost its way in adoption of various cultural defaults.

That's O'Meara at his best - When he explains his source text and viewpoint substantially. Even then, there are some slips and elsewhere, a lot (and I mean a lot) is asked of the reader in terms of prior reading or background, which prompts the question - Is James writing this for his readers, or for himself? I would say The Eldritch is an incomplete work, not half because there are simply no explanatory footnotes to go with this. Partly this is because it is a Kindle-format version of existing Counter Currents essays (constant readers will not find a whole lot new here), and all the in-text links, pictures, Youtube embeds, etc, are removed. I muddled my way through 'Eldritch' - Having never read Lovecraft and not having an interest in it, the title is pretty meaningless and lost on me, and the Web Original has said multimedia content that makes it at the least readable to someone who is not familiar with the source texts. This is in contrast to the awesomely expansive footnotes in something like "Fighting for the Essence" by Pierre Krebs (an essential purchase for any budding European Traditionalist) which frequently run to filling over half the page. Given that Kreb's is work is a translated French and hard going, I felt pretty demeaned that I didn't have assistance in coming to understand Eldritch, especially when James is a native English speaker and the prose fluent and crisp.

Finally, why spend actual money on something you can already look up most of online? Firstly, because the longer essays that don't require the web-enrichment are much, much better in matt, eBook readability instead of the distraction infused, eye-bleeding backlit web browser window. Secondly, because I believe there is some exclusive content here, even if I'm not sure what or how much. And thirdly, because there aren't too many writers on the right of the right, and there's nothing else quite like it out there. I recommend picking and choosing a start point that interests you from the contents page allowing the thematic arrangement guide you through the rest. Some essays I have simply skipped because I know nothing about the source, and noones paying me to write this.

A tentative four out of five stars. If you own a Kindle and like O'Meara, it’s probably worth buying.