0 Reactions

The Solitudes (novel)The Solitudes (originally titled �gypt contrary to Crowley's wishes) is a 1987 modern fantasy novel by John Crowley. It is Crowley's fifth published novel and the first novel in the four-volume �gypt series. The novel follows Pierce Moffett, a college history professor in his retreat from ordinary, academic life to pastoral life of Faraway Hills. While in the area, Pierce comes up with a plan to write a book about Hermeticism, in the process finding several parallels with his own project and that of the nearly-forgotten local novelist Fellowes Kraft.

The novel takes place in two time periods and features three main protagonists; that of Pierce's in the late twentieth century, and that of John Dee, Edward Kelley and Giordano Bruno as from the historical novels of Kraft in the Renaissance. The difference is marked stylistically by dashes indicating dialogue for events that happened in the Renaissance and events in the twentieth century marked by dialogue in quotation marks.

The novel was nominated for the 1988 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the 1988 World Fantasy Award.

Plot
The novel begins, like Goethe's Faust, with a "Prologue in Heaven", depicting John Dee and his scryer Edward Kelley�who Dee as yet only knows as Edward Talbot�watching Angels in a crystal. Suddenly, to their dread, the angels scatter and a child appears in the glass, "holding a space" Doctor Dee knows to be absolutely immense, into which both feel their souls being drawn. During a "Prologue on Earth" immediately following, a young Pierce Moffett, preparing to serve as an altar boy reads a novel about Giordano Bruno (later revealed to be by Fellowes Kraft), the sixteenth century Dominican Friar, and finds himself sharply identifying with the narrator.

The novel proper begins under the sign of Vita, with Pierce now in middle age, taking a bus to apply for a job at Peter Ramus College. Along the way he is reading a new translation of Las Soledades of Luis de G�ngora. The bus stops in the Faraway Hills, where Pierce meets Spofford, a previous student of his. Impulsively, Pierce decides to forget the interview and leave with Spofford for the town of Blackberry Jambs nearby.

While there, Pierce comes to conceive of a novel combining his vast knowledge of history along with speculations about Hermetic philosophy, his interest in Giordano Bruno, as well as local author's Fellowes Kraft's unfinished series of novels involving Bruno and John Dee. In the meantime, he is drawn closer to Rosie Mucho. At the same time Rosie moves the painful first steps of divorcing her husband Mike. Interspersed throughout the novel are scenes from Kraft's novels, involving John Dee's first experiments with the occult, and his first meetings with other figures including William Shakespeare and Edward Kelley, as well as a second novel, featuring Giordano Bruno's education, rise to fame, and ultimately to his wandering years under the threat of death from the Church.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

Load Full (0)