John Cowper Powys
John Cowper Powys is the lost genius of my literary ancestors. His fiction, and most likely his non-fiction, are of the lost art. To weave stories as this man once did is to weave the realities between all that is seen and not seen and implied and not implied by both. His work goes deep! Be Warned!
Autobiography
Named Autobiography but the furthest from it. Autobiography reads more like an eccentric progression of personal philosophy. Hooray for John Cowper Powys’ life-illusion! The Part of the Magician was written a third-way through.
A Glastonbury Romance
This immense book is more than any one book could ever be. Somewhere I read that this book is difficult for some people to even begin, yet I found I turned the 1000+ pages quickly and with an ever increasing pleasure. This my introduction.
Morwyn
As I wrote in the above linked post, I do not recommend Morwyn to anyone who has not tried and liked John Cowper Powys before. Perhaps the strangest book by him I’ve read, more like a manifesto against vivisection stirred together with his odd sexuality. Yet the imaginative span of Morwyn is highly entertaining.
Porius
Porius has been called the Romance of the Dark Ages, though I find that name quite mundane. Porius at once defied what I thought it would and grounded John Cowper Powys into me forever. Here are my first impressions. Here is a rather long quote.
Weymouth Sands
Reading Weymouth Sands through Thailand and Vietnam was unexpected, oddly it was discovered on a used shelf in Chiang Mai. On Ko Phayam I the setting became extremely pertinent, and in other places John Cowper Powys was as always, eerily entertaining.
Wolf Solent
It was this book, perhaps his most well known, that I began with. The man, the character, Wolf Solent, made a brilliant introduction! This is my second reading.
Morine Krissdóttir has written an excellent biography: Descents of Memory, which unearths almost everything any devoted reader would want to know.
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