SirPalomides

Anyway the size of the asteroid would not achieve the desired result. It would mostly break up in the atmosphere. Sorry folks. By comparison the dinosaur-killer asteroid is estimated to have been at least 11 kilometers wide.

I grew up reading Cai Zhizhong’s illustrations of Chinese classics. He rocks.

Huh?

Some scholars writing in English have chosen to render "Xian" as "transcendent." The radicals comprising 仙 individually mean "person" and "mountain." It's tricky to generalize about Daoist cosmology- there are so many versions- but from what I've read it is not generally held that anything is eternal apart from the Dao itself, rather that everything else, including the highest deities, return to non-being at some point (though the Dao may re-emanate them later). A phrase sometimes used to describe the attainment of 仙 is "to age with the sun and moon", suggesting a very long duration but not an endless one.

Hm, the Daoist cosmos I'm aware of seems quite orderly and, even if they are maybe not the center of the universe, humans have a cosmic role to play.

For those interested, Phil Hine, chaos magic writer, published his Pseudonomicon which deals with magic related to the Cthulhu Mythos. I've read some of Hine's other work but not this so I can't really comment on its quality.

I guess the only thing I can think of remotely comparable to your unobtainable book experience for Americans would be something like the Satanic panic of the 80's and 90's where certain books and music- while not legally banned- were being fanatically suppressed at schools and, by many parents, at home. And this was of course being boosted by a national media misinformation campaign. In some places this meant any kind of fantasy literature. My parents took all my brother's D&D books and threw them out (he said they burned them but I think he was being melodramatic). I remember one of my teachers seriously forbidding The Hobbit from her classroom because it was Satanic. A far cry from Soviet censorship needless to say- it was still easy enough to obtain these materials at the average bookstore or by mail. Some rather mediocre acts even exploited the situation to get publicity for themselves- I am speaking of course of the stupid band Cannibal Corpse.

Was Bulgakov's Master and Margarita part of the curriculum in your school days or was it still being censored?

Cthulhu isn't really Luciferian. The thing about Cthulhu is that, at least in Lovecraft's view, there is no higher power it is in rebellion against. It is basically a personification of the universe's lack of purpose, meaning, etc. and the insignificance of humanity. That's Lovecraft's "cosmicism" in a nutshell. Although the fact that mere humans are able to temporarily thwart Cthulhu's rising by ramming him with a boat might raise questions about how insignificant they really are.

Moby Dick really is amazing. What a strange, beautiful, messy book. Unfortunately when a book gets put in The Canon and everyone has to read parts of it for school, a lot of people can't enjoy it properly and can't appreciate how delightfully weird a book like Moby Dick is.

Well, he invented the Necronomicon, so you like something he did. There is at least one purported Necronomicon that was published but it is a modern invention, inspired by Lovecraft (though oddly relying more on Mesopotamian mythology as I recall). His writing style is uneven. It can be dull or laughably bad but generally I like his ornate style, especially when he channels Dunsany. That’s probably why I love Clark Ashton Smith so much who is just so absurdly purple that one must either despise it or surrender (I surrender): Fritz Leiber is probably a better writer overall. It’s been a while since I read him, I have to remedy that.

Speaking of election rigging and conspiracy theories, the "October surprise" is of course a perennial favorite for Americans. The first one that can be substantiated is the 1968 October surprise, where the Nixon campaign deliberately sabotaged peace talks in Vietnam, at the cost of untold thousands of lives, to secure an election victory. A murkier case is the allegation that in 1980 the Reagan campaign colluded with the new Iranian government to delay any hostage release- hard evidence has been elusive for this, though recently some documents surfaced indicating that members of the Reagan campaign did work to derail the negotiations.

To misquote Cavafy, "Now what's going to happen to us without an asteroid? That asteroid was a kind of solution."

I don't judge Lovecraft too harshly but the "product of his time" defense only goes so far. He was relatively well-traveled and there were certainly contemporaries who knew better. He certainly had plenty of opportunity to interact with working class immigrants of various origins- many of whom were his readers. African-American literature was readily available and the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing in the 20's. He was fond of Richard Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights so the idea of an accomplished non-European civilization wasn't lost on him (though, of course, the Arabian Nights are themselves cartoonishly racist in their own way). As for Aesop's fable, as far as I can tell, Aesop did not see "Ethiopians" as mankind's "grotesque echoes of its own darkness" (Achebe). Granted, the Greek attitude toward "Ethiopians", as toward other "barbarians" of any color, was an all-encompassing snobbery that persisted even after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.

Lovecraft has a range of moods, from bleakly nihilistic (Call of Cthulhu) to darkly whimsical (his dream cycle). It's interesting to talk about authors who had repugnant views or (in the case, e.g. of Marquis de Sade, repugnant deeds to match) yet whose work nevertheless appeals to apparently decent people. I was reading Chinua Achebe's critique of Joseph Conrad a while back and was struck by how some of it applied to Lovecraft (I have bolded the parts I think particularly relevant): Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as "the other world," the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant beastiality. The book opens on the River Thames, tranquil, resting, peacefully "at the decline of day after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks." But the actual story will take place on the River Congo, the very antithesis of the Thames. The River Congo is quite decidedly not a River Emeritus. It has rendered no service and enjoys no old-age pension. We are told that "Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world." Is Conrad saying then that these two rivers are very different, one good, the other bad? Yes, but that is not the real point. It is not the differentness that worries Conrad but the lurking hint of kinship, of common ancestry. For the Thames too "has been one of the dark places of the earth." It conquered its darkness, of course, and is now in daylight and at peace. But if it were to visit its primordial relative, the Congo, it would run the terrible risk of hearing grotesque echoes of its own forgotten darkness, and falling victim to an avenging recrudescence of the mindless frenzy of the first beginnings. These suggestive echoes comprise Conrad's famed evocation of the African atmosphere in Heart of Darkness . In the final consideration his method amounts to no more than a steady, ponderous, fake-ritualistic repetition of two antithetical sentences, one about silence and the other about frenzy. We can inspect samples of this on pages 36 and 37 of the present edition: a) it was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention and The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. Of course there is a judicious change of adjective from time to time, so that instead of inscrutable, for example, you might have unspeakable, even plain mysterious, etc., etc. The eagle-eyed English critic F. R. Leavis drew attention long ago to Conrad's "adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery." That insistence must not be dismissed lightly, as many Conrad critics have tended to do, as a mere stylistic flaw; for it raises serious questions of artistic good faith. When a writer while pretending to record scenes, incidents and their impact is in reality engaged in inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery much more has to be at stake than stylistic felicity. Generally normal readers are well armed to detect and resist such under-hand activity. But Conrad chose his subject well -- one which was guaranteed not to put him in conflict with the psychological predisposition of his readers or raise the need for him to contend with their resistance. He chose the role of purveyor of comforting myths. I think Achebe's takedown of Heart of Darkness is dead-on, yet I nevertheless continue to love the book. Likewise with Lovecraft. There is much to criticize in these authors but if we think of literature as a dialogue, with more or less agreeable interlocutors, then repugnant opinions don't need to concern us so longer as there is a response. It seems like this Lovecraft Country is one such response, much like Tayeb Salih, VS Naipaul, and Chinua Achebe himself all had their own responses to Conrad.

One obvious reason is the well-known track record for mendacity by politicians, journalists, and appointed experts of all stripes, and the fact that, yes, conspiracies do happen, and that powerful people with common interests are naturally going to collude to protect those interests. Sometimes these conspiracies are brought to light in mainstream reporting or declassified documents, though usually well after the actors can be held accountable and the damage has been done. That's life. In countries where the politics are relatively stable and appear to follow the stated rules, conspiracy theories might seem unnecessary but if you're in a place where assassinations, coups, and blatant rigging are a normal part of politics then it is perfectly natural to speculate about hidden actors and agendas behind every move. However even in these seemingly stable, transparent democracies of the West, where politicians often openly collude with the rich (or simply are the rich) it's not unreasonable to assume that not everything is as it seems. Of course that doesn't mean that the official narrative is always a lie or that any theory contradicting the official narrative is correct. I for one dismiss out of hand any kind of theory that ascribes superhuman levels of competence, unity, and coordination to a more or less secret elite. That kind of thinking goes well beyond informed speculation into the elaboration of a new, almost metaphysical worldview (I remember someone arguing that David Icke's talk about lizard people was actually an elaborate gnostic parable!). While there might be powerful individuals we don't hear much about, the blocs of interests are not hidden and their cards are mostly on the table. Then there are "astroturf" conspiracy theories, planted or encouraged by wily operators, which are actually designed to reinforce some segment of the elite by arousing violent fear among the base who can then be deployed against enemies if necessary. QAnon seems to be working quite well that way. Another attraction of conspiracy theories- especially for the wilder ones- is the false sense of empowerment they give. In a society where the power or potential social impact of an individual seems more circumscribed than ever, if I can be one of those wise few who have unlocked the secret, who have exposed the whole rotten façade, then I am like a new Prometheus, or at least like a Winston Smith, threatening to the order (though hopefully not enough to be actually double-crossed, imprisoned, and tortured). (I said "false sense of empowerment" though I do think there is a degree of real power- perhaps infinite power- albeit not political power, in being able to make a world of one's own. I think this is better accomplished in poetry, art, love, games.)

As much as I admire Buddhism, one thing that's been a snag for me is the assumption that all Buddhas are male. Among the 32 characteristics of a Buddha is the "well-retracted male organ". This is illustrated, for instance, in the Devadatta chapter of the Lotus Sutra, where the Dragon princess instantly becomes a Buddha but in doing so necessarily assumes a male form. Likewise, Amitabha's 35th vow promises that women who aspire to be reborn in the Pure Land will do so as men. Sometimes these passages are cited as evidence of equality in Buddhism but IMO they really argue the opposite, that is, while women may become Buddhas, and attain Buddhahood in this life, they must do so as men. I am aware of some countervailing tendencies, e.g. the existence of female Buddhas in the Vajrayana tradition, and the feminization of Guan Yin in the Sinosphere, but I feel like these don't really rub away what seems to me a misogynistic substrate. I want to be wrong about this, I really do, and if someone can convince me, I would be grateful. Since I am particularly attracted to the Pure Land tradition, if someone can argue from within the view of that school that would be a bonus.

This little story by Leonora Carrington: https://sulfursurrealistjungle.com/2020/07/18/the-sand-camel-by-leonora-carrington/

I don’t dismiss the possibility of hauntings but I think if the principle of “bad things happened here, so it’s haunted by restless spirits” held true in all cases, places like Flanders fields and Volgograd should be swirling vortexes of horror.

I tried reading in my teens, didn’t make it through the first book. Though oddly I remember liking what I read. I think I was overly depressed at the time and didn’t have a good attention span. On a side note I have a copy of The Hunting of the Snark with Mervyn Peake’s illustrations and they’re great.

I read a fair amount of young adult/ kid literature, there’s quite a lot of good stuff out there that holds up for adults. However the Narnia series does not IMO.

Never heard of the Malazan series, looks fascinating

On the subject of hard-to-get-into fantasy classics, if anyone has had trouble getting through the Iliad, I highly, highly recommend John Dolan's funny, rambunctious, highly entertaining prose translation.

Ah, thank you. Yes, he said something about how the crews of the submarine were somehow horrifyingly monstrous. The whole concept sounded so wonderfully strange.

I loved Dune but I would not say Frank Herbert is a fine prose stylist. His writing is... functional. His imagination and attention to detail in his world are superb and that's what makes the book worthwhile for me.