I've just read these books... fact and fiction, all in a jumble.
R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple in Man (1949)... an essay interpreting the Egyptian temple of Luxor as an esoteric library in stone. I got some wisdom out of it... about as much as I did from John Anthony West's Serpent in the Sky (1979), which tries to explain Lubitsch's book. Worth the effort if you have some esotericist foundation, otherwise this pair will be Greek to you.
Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan (1894)... a horror novel that influenced Lovecraft... Machen's novel is a bit slow and cumbersome, yet it was rather challenging when it came, intimating Pagan numinosities. This novel is mostly of historical interest but it does live in a kind of mythopoetic grey area... it has potential, it has flashes of brilliance. Available on Project Gutenberg here.
H. Beam Piper, Omnilingual (1957)... a short about explorers of Mars, searching through ruins of a bygone civilization... in focus is the decoding of its language... absolutely tops, succinct and rich in detail, meaning, and mimesis... available on Project Gutenberg here.
Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister (1949)... a succession of meaningless LA mileus and sleazy characters, nevertheless it kept me hanging on till the end. When Chandler avoided preaching, avoided diatribes of how bad life is he wrote with flair... that is, when the "active nihilism" comes to the fore it's a nice ride. One memorable scene is near the end, when a B-movie star named Dolores Gonzales arrives in a Mercury convertible and wants Marlowe to come along and rescue a common friend... I will say no more, this scene (which is merely a build-up to a dramatic denoument) has got it all... mostly in the form of understated dialogue... and the car, the Merc... a luxury car for its era... this just tops it off... Chandler liberally gives us names of the make of cars, that's a huge plus for atmosphere... the novel came out in 1949 but it must have been written somewhat earlier, given the usual magazine publishing before novelization... so I guess it was something like a 1946-48 Merc she drove... like the one in the pic.
Related
Rigorism (2022)
Target: Mars
SF Seen From the Right
Pic: Mercury 1948
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