A fearless faith in fiction — Employing, since 2008, a Kantian or Jungian sensibility and an ‘intentional fallacy’ consciousness — Various passions of the reading moment — Walter de la Mare, ELizabeth BOWen, ROBERT aiCKMAN and many others old and new — Please click my name below for this site’s navigation and my backstory as intermittent photographer, writer, editor, publisher & reviewer.
4 thoughts on “The Account of David Stonehouse, Exile”
POSSIBLE SPOILERS
I am defeated.
Today, I was determined to transcend this aesthetic book with its fine artwork by Steve Santiago. I knew straightaway that it was not the sort of text I could treat with my normal gestalt real-time review process following a single episodic reading, as I have consistently done since 2008. True, it is expressed in accessible beautiful prose, it is a delight to read, and I was compelled to read it in one sitting. No greater praise can I give any book.
I sense it was written in some spirit of driven religious passion, the foundling Stonehouse found at the stone house and now, later, with his feral foundling lion-dog, Judah; Jerusha the girl-woman who found him or was given him, their shared journal, later relationship, the acrostic clues as to who and what hovers in the shadow of this journal, the Angels and a Christian richness of the backstory that is not a backstory at all; the landscape’s wilds of beast, blood, dolls house as pumpkin, and mountains, wolves, pits, derelict house as his shelter, and Christ’s passion, the ghost of the soul of the Cross, all this and more intensely pervades my mind from this utterly inspired prose. I choose my words carefully.
But I have fallen short.
One year from today, I shall pick this book up again. This represents a unique watershed in my approach to books. Remind me if I forget. Or if I resist returning to this text, because, somehow, I feel I am in denial – because I FEAR THIS BOOK.
Without pretentious hyperbole, such honest fear of mine borders on reverential awe.
The book itself as Jerusha’s pumpkin?
This book, probably beyond its own intention, is my version of ‘the curse’ in my reading cycle, But what exiles what for a year, who exiles whom, this book or its reader?
The Des Lewis Gestalt Real-Time Reviews 
POSSIBLE SPOILERS
I am defeated.
Today, I was determined to transcend this aesthetic book with its fine artwork by Steve Santiago. I knew straightaway that it was not the sort of text I could treat with my normal gestalt real-time review process following a single episodic reading, as I have consistently done since 2008. True, it is expressed in accessible beautiful prose, it is a delight to read, and I was compelled to read it in one sitting. No greater praise can I give any book.
I sense it was written in some spirit of driven religious passion, the foundling Stonehouse found at the stone house and now, later, with his feral foundling lion-dog, Judah; Jerusha the girl-woman who found him or was given him, their shared journal, later relationship, the acrostic clues as to who and what hovers in the shadow of this journal, the Angels and a Christian richness of the backstory that is not a backstory at all; the landscape’s wilds of beast, blood, dolls house as pumpkin, and mountains, wolves, pits, derelict house as his shelter, and Christ’s passion, the ghost of the soul of the Cross, all this and more intensely pervades my mind from this utterly inspired prose. I choose my words carefully.
But I have fallen short.
One year from today, I shall pick this book up again. This represents a unique watershed in my approach to books. Remind me if I forget. Or if I resist returning to this text, because, somehow, I feel I am in denial – because I FEAR THIS BOOK.
Without pretentious hyperbole, such honest fear of mine borders on reverential awe.
The book itself as Jerusha’s pumpkin?
This book, probably beyond its own intention, is my version of ‘the curse’ in my reading cycle, But what exiles what for a year, who exiles whom, this book or its reader?
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And my reply today.
COMPLETED: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/10/23/among-the-lilies-daniel-mills/#comment-23327