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Things are not brilliant in the personal health regime of the Gestalt Real-Time Reviewer, so please excuse any delays in whatever I do. (from June 2021)
GESTALT REAL-TIME REVIEWING
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And Click: HERE for full Navigation, Stop Press & Backstory.
Träumerei: Co-Vivid Dreaming
DFS LEWIS: Reading Aloud
Available DFL books: HERE
The Three Ages of D.F. Lewis
0. 1948-1985 — Poems / Zeroist Group (1960s), The Visitor (Novel) 1973, Agra Aska (novella) 1983.
1. 1986-2000 – Over 1000 fiction publications in magazines and anthologies, some selected for the Prime Books D.F. Lewis collection ‘Weirdmonger’ (2003). Work once in Stand, Iron, Panurge, Orbis, London Magazine….
I was awarded the BFS Karl Edward Wagner Award.
2. 2001-2010 – Publishing multi-authored ‘Nemonymous’.
3. 2008-
GESTALT REAL-TIME REVIEWING (www.nemonymous.com),
Plus one novel NEMONYMOUS NIGHT (Chômu Press), a story collection and two novellas entitled THE LAST BALCONY (InkerMen Press), and a novella entitled Weirdtongue (InkerMen Press), and my reprint of Agra Aska that was originally published in 1998 by Scorpion Press,
Plus three originally created multi-authored anthologies that I published,
Plus two books from Mount Abraxas Press, and an Eibonvale chapbook called The Big Headed People. And a book collection from Eibonvale: DABBLING WITH DIABELLI,
Plus, in July 2020, a past story selected for THE BIG BOOK OF MODERN FANTASY edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.
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THE LAST BALCONY: HERE
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After many satisfying years of gestalt real-time reviewing, it now feels really special to see one of my own old stories showcased here!
My detailed review of this Big Book: HERE
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The ultimate expression of Gluey Zenoism from an author who wrote The Demon Lover in one of the Aickman Fontana Ghost Books:
“‘I’ll tell you something, Clara. Have you ever SEEN a minute? Have you actually had one wriggling inside your hand? Did you know if you keep your finger inside a clock for a minute, you can pick out that very minute and take it home for your own?’ So it is Paul who stealthily lifts the dome off. It is Paul who selects the finger of Clara’s that is to be guided, shrinking, then forced wincing into the works, to be wedged in them, bruised in them, bitten into and eaten up by the cogs. ‘No you have got to keep it there, or you will lose the minute. I am doing the counting – the counting up to sixty.’ . . . But there is to be no sixty. The ticking stops.”
From ‘The Inherited Clock’ (1944) by Elizabeth Bowen
MASK
The Ha of Ha above.
Late Labelling:
“Des Lewis obviously needs no presentation to the wayward fantasts. Even if I have enjoyed reading his fine volumes for Dan Watt’s press and the one for Chomu Press two volumes I recommend I feel like there is still space and reasons to discover D.F. Lewis. It is no easy feat to break Mr. Lewis’s Code. His work is constructed like a house, almost like a living mausoleum, according to his particular way of thinking. In other words: astonishing and uncomprehending. There is no key to this house, although there are a lot of doors. Everything is available, everything is waiting to be plucked but few dare knock at the door. Caution is good. Running away is even better. You don t read Des Lewis to understand and enjoy his works. That’s not the point. You read him because you have to believe in something, after all.” (EOP)
AORNOS by Avalon Brantley
Pages 9 – 21
“Sheeeeeeeeeeeee!”
As narrated in the form of a Greek Chorus by Dionysus and in the enviably rich wine-dark style of John Gale – we are led enticingly, entrancingly into a verse-like drama that rings of Swinburne, depicting the incidents and characters involved in the tale of Alektor and his loved one, her death and his vow to travel down to the Realm of the Dead to find her again, seeking the help of Circe to accomplish this. You will sense I guess that Dionysus is not a disinterested party in this his own tale he tells by means of the verse drama he introduced as a third party.
I am already captivated.
Pages. 21 – 29
“…the frogs of this secret lagoon cant then a rhythmic ‘Brekekex’, while the Chorus of Cicadas again crones of ‘she’!”
This perhaps is not verse drama – it just appears like verse on the tall narrow stiff-textured pages of this book. But it enters my reading-mind as verse! And thus enters my heart, as verse. It and its ‘dreaming beans’. Alektor debates his mission with Circe from within Dionysus’ omniscient (?) interpolations – and one of Alektor’s co-travellers is replaced by an ‘all-black he-lamb’ as make-weight. The very words are lines of insects silently screeching…
This is like a silhouette show of forms seeking a meaning – of Alektor as Alexander the Great – and Dionysus? A masculine/feminine duality? That’s me thinking aloud before having the thoughts!
my photo taken yesterday
Pages 31 – 41
“You do not know / What echoes say before you utter, / What voices rise from shadow.”
By pungent-languaged dint of haggish Oracle or Sybil, Alektor and his two companions (Three Men in a Boat with the lamb as the dog?) ply their quest down to the Realm of the Dead – under flying creatures (not exactly doves) and more… A Lovecratian sense, too….
“….snatching looks at the momentary motions of abhorrent forms which flit or falter through these mephitic surroundings. Some, hound-like, slip liquidly through the trees. Others shuffle by, always at some unknowable distance in the mist: shambling semblances of men.”
How can anyone possibly resist such language?
Pages 41 – 49
“…its sudden noise startles flocks of sleeping water birds, […] others, strange to see, soar upside-down across the lake, continuing on into billowing nothingness.”
Others have NO SOAR.
This book of a ‘play’ gets even better, its rich and heady speeches even more irresistible as a special ‘language’ of the soul, with visions, flocks, ‘child-brides’, (Mahler’s?) ‘dead children’, ‘filamentous’ forms, more talking, hissing, screeching Cicadas and pipers and Syringes – and then bloody sacrifice. Ahhhhhh! And the intense feel of Greek mythology — within some apparently stilted and florid speech-making between man and actual dead father, man and so far imagined dead lover — amazingly comes to life on the stiff-textured page, with all the subtle repercussions of humanity’s age-old interactions with Eschatology for the modern reader.
“Who or what art thou, desiccated thing?!”
Page 51 – END
”And he, with light questing fingers, touched my throat, my breasts, my very omphalos!”
I think I need say no more. The ending is perfect, with plot twists (that I shall keep to myself) regarding the earlier sacrifice and Alektor’s love. It is a genuine original masterwork, with much to provoke philosophies of thought and gales of Aristophanic laughter. No praise is high enough, in my book. [A book like a rock, an Aornos word that means rock or ‘the air or heaven (aor) of us (nous) soaring’ or ‘an artery (aorta) as bone (os)’? Whether or not Alektor is meant to represent Alexander the Great is a moot point.]
”Sheeeeeeeeeeeee!”
But what happened to Dionysus?
The author provides some very interesting information: http://www.ligotti.net/showpost.php?p=95440&postcount=1336
Being a long-term adherent of Wimsatt’s Intentional Fallacy, I feel impelled to link below to an article on the Alexander the Great and Dionysus India connection. 😉
http://hcbss.stanford.edu/event/alexander-great-and-dionysus-india-greek-interaction-early-buddhist-art
Pingback: Amazingly lovely review of Aornos from D.F. Lewis at this link | news for Avalon Brantley
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