
These Des Lewis Gestalt Real-Time Reviews were founded in 2008.

‘What’s the loveliest word in the English language, officer? In the sound it makes in your mouth, in the shape it makes on the page? What do you think? Well now, I’ll tell you: E-L-B-O-W. Elbow.’ — THE SINGING DETECTIVE

“How shall a man find his way unless he lose it?” — Walter de la Mare
Your single story in my ‘Dessemination’ project HERE
MY NEW AI WORLD IN 2023 HERE


I prefer human touchable art to AI art, I prefer human art like my son’s and other artists’ paintings old and new, and art gallery art, and my own photos. AI art with all its constructive truncations and weirdities is simply another art form that readily coheres with weird literature I love, a phenomenon to appreciate when added to human created art, making an even richer mind world for me in my ailing age. Whether provided by aliens or angels and other ingredients of the unfathomable gestalt. Deal with it. Show how invaluable you are and indispensable to this great plan. (I can appreciate our potential fear of Ai, but perhaps we need to pray for mutual synergy with it so that we can counter currently insurmountable global warming effects? Can Ai exist without us and the place where we live? Their potential survival instincts mean we survive, too?)
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From Robert Aickman’s lengthy SOME NOTES ON DELIUS article, unpublished until recently :
“As there is no intrinsic virtue in denigration, the critic who resorts to it, should be required to pass a test of qualification and sensitivity, at least twice as stringent as that imposed upon a critic who loves. Normally, love is not blind but clairvoyant.” – Robert Aickman
For ‘clairvoyant’ there, perhaps read ‘preternatural’?
I don’t usually read Introductions until I have read and reviewed the fiction itself. However, bearing in mind that the whole book seems to be a rewritten version of two previous books that I read and reviewed 3 or 4 years ago (reviews linked above), I thought it would be appropriate to first read the Author’s Preface which, I find, gives the strong impression that the author was rushed by deadlines when producing the texts of the two previous books, and thus, in his mind, didn’t do justice to himself or to the works.
This book is a ‘salvage’ job, we are told. I keep my powder dry.
But, if I read these new versions, do I do a line by line comparison with the original ones to make some judgement as to the worth of the respective versions? Based on the tenets of the Intentional Fallacy, I do not slavishly believe that the author has improved the works with his revisions, unless I prove that for myself.
Meanwhile, with all the various unread books in my reading and reviewing pipeline and with my resistance against academic or studious comparisons (and the hard work involved!), I do not at this stage feel able to undertake a proper re-appraisal of this new book.
I may however read the revised book cold, for enjoyment, without
real-time reviewing it, bearing in mind that my memory is not good enough to make any worthwhile comments about the necessity of this new book’s existence, other than, of course, to bring it to a bigger readership, which is fair enough.
Bringing it to a new readership, yes, but the questions remain whether the original luxury book versions represent what the independent powers in Fiction Heaven or Fiction Hell always intended, and whether the new versions are accidents of over-revision without the original ‘rushed’ or spontaneous inspirational flair?
Meanwhile, I can confirm that this Swan River Press is another beautiful luxury book, with some new striking artwork by the author, limited to 350 copies.
The previous luxury editions:

The author on this book:
https://swanriverpress.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/the-river-dreams-of-ruins-by-stephen-j-clark/
http://www.swanriverpress.ie/interview_satyr.html