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4.0 out of 5 stars
Brief but fascinating exploration of the works of one of the great neglected SF writers, Sep 12 2009
By Muzzlehatch - Published on Amazon.com
An absolutely essential primer for those few individuals who have encountered, or are interested in the work of David Lindsay, the great writer/mystic behind "A Voyage to Arcturus" (1920) and other even more obscure works of philosophy and fantasy. Wilson describes his own difficulties in reading Lindsay (1876-1945) the difficulties that he (and probably anyone) will find with the author's sometimes-torturous language, and a short thesis on Lindsay's philosophy -- the heart of what his novels are about -- and its relationship to earlier European philosophers, particularly Nietzsche. I particularly like Wilson's division of writers over the past century into "high flyers" (those concerned with a world beyond our own - which include not just Lindsay but also figures such as Peake, Lawrence, Kafka and Dostoevsky) and "low flyers" (those concerned very much with the mundane nature of man - Joyce and Hemingway for instance).
Note that the largest chunk of space is devoted to "Arcturus" which is the most written-about of Lindsay's works (but still not much studied or talked about to begin with), with significantly less space devoted to the later works: "The Haunted Woman" (1922), "Sphinx" (1923), "The Adventures of M. d. Mailly" (1926 - barely mentioned as it's a potboiler of little interest to those interested in Lindsay's philosophy), "Devil's Tor" (1932) and the posthumous "Violet Apple" and "The Witch" (1976). The book only runs 60 pages total, so there's no space for really in-depth discussion let alone anything like textural analysis.
A terrific intro both to Lindsay and to Wilson as a critic, this small paperback also appears as part of an anthology on Lindsay with longer pieces by JB Pick and EH Visiak that, like this little volume, is sadly long out of print and nearly impossible to find. My copy of this book is the Borgo Press paperback dated 1979, which ought to be findable with some patience, these Borgo paperbacks (I have one on H.P. Lovecraft by Darrel Schweitzer also) do turn up from time to time.
