On the next to last Friday of the year, I've finished reading another book. This is one that took me quite some time to get through as I tried to savor it's brilliance. At this point in my life, there are fewer and fewer pieces of art that truly amaze me, be it literature, film, music, or otherwise. That isn't to say I've lost my sense of amazement, simply that my experiences have exposed me to the vast underground of forgotten art and there remains very little stones to be unturned. But there are still hidden gems out there and when I find them now, my enthusiasm for the discovery is even greater.
The Journal of Albion Moonlight by Kenneth Patchen(New Directions, 1961)
Originally published in 1941, this is a post-modern novel before the term really existed. It's clearly twenty years ahead of it's time and reads like a foundation for books by Burroughs and Pynchon and the French new novel movement of the '50s, though shockingly American in every way.
Set against the backdrop of WWII and the rise of fascism, this surrealist novel examines the war that takes place endless within the psyche, both of the individual and society. It breaks all conventions of plot and narrative structure as it attempts to break open the conventions of novel writing, which Patchen (primarily a poet) seems to hold in low regard.
In many ways, this feels like an accessible Finnagan's Wake in that it is a love of language, a tribute to the written word liberated from the weight of plot and character development. Anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-conventions, this is still a profound novel almost 80 years after it's publication, so I can just imagine the total shock it caused when it debuted.
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