Journal of Albion Moonlight

Rating:
Summary: Liked the book very much, had a lot of impact on me.
Review: 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.

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Summary: religion is that i love you.
Review: it's a dangerous book. but it had to be. it is of the utmost importance to know how you hold your hands in sleep.

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Summary: Great Art As A Plea And A Warning.
Review: Kenneth Patchen is among the great artists of the 20th century who have been largely rejected by academia at its own peril. He is one of the handful of artists who gave me as a teenager strength to push on in a spiritually dying society.
I believe that it is no doubt convenient, but misleading, to refer to the Journal Of Albion Moonlight as a novel because to do so could blind the prospective reader to one of its essential qualities. I think it is better to say that it is a reflection by Patchen on the novel art form; and it is a reflection on a novel suggested in The Journal but never written because the novel form per se simply can not contain or reveal Patchen's vision. The Journal is a sort mirage of a novel that turns out to be something quite different when approached closely. What Patchen offers is a tremendous original work that rejects the novel as an art form and the civilization that created it. In the book we are in a sort of poetic vision of the world as a place where World War II never ends, it is like a dream from which one can not awaken. Throughout the book the narrator is constantly creating and de-creating his narrative, he is constantly drawn away from it by things he needs to say to the reader that clash with the very idea of a fictional narrative because what he wants at bottom is to obliterate the gulf between art and life, he wants to wake up from the nightmare of history. For Patchen, conventional literary art is too readily used as a means by the world to remain blind to itself. Instead of approaching this problem by creating a very realistic work, in a conventional sense of that term, which to him would only be the maximal deception, he creates a very 'unreal' work that taps into the the deep recesses of the readers resistance. He never lets the book take a form that can be used by the reader as a means of distraction from his own consciousness. The book is constantly directing the reader's consciouness back into the reader so there is a sort of dialogue going on between the reader and the narrator and in the course of this extended exchange the 'novel' is never written. This dialogue is a sort of nightmare and this nightmare is a reflection of the world itself.
Patchen had no confidence that art would be willingly used to actually change the condition of the world. He was quite aware that even radical art such as Melville's monumental Pierre or The Ambiguities was simply ignored by America, rendered into a safe and harmless subject of scholarly study rarely finding its way off the library shelves. Patchen wrote his book during the early years of World War II and he feared deeply that the human race had descended hopelessly into darkness. He thought that art had no chance of meaning anything in the face of this unless it was so impacting that it could eat away at the black corrosion that was consuming human feeling and consciousness. In a way The Journal is Patchen's attempt to create a dream-like experience so intense that it could force the reader to wake up into the reality of life. (He wrote another great work actually called Sleepers Awake that is very unfortunately out of print.) This is a rather sizable challenge, but the The Journal is a tremendous and amazing book if you allow yourself to openly experience it and not wonder why it is not like a conventional novel. It is not a novel at all. It is a visionary poetic plea and a fiery warning to humanity to turn from its self-destructive insanity. The book is as relevant as it was in the 40's. But like Melville, Patchen is mostly ignored by America because he always refused to turn his light away from its corruption. Patchen has been championed by Henry Miller, Kenneth Rexroth, Charlie Parker and Tony Glover who saw him for the genius and courageous man that he was. He is, outrageously, an academic footnote. But like the Melville who wrote Pierre, Patchen will have his day whether it be in this world or another.

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Summary: Moonlight revisited
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Patchen Destroys "Books"
Review: 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...

Rating:
Summary: Patchen Destroys "Books"
Review: 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...

Rating:
Summary: Kibosh the dead angel
Review: 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".

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Summary: This is the BOOK.
Review: 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.