Discussion of Books on Crowley: split from: To buy or not to buy?

Lillie

Symmonds book is really good.

It's interesting.
It's the best book about Crowley I ever read.
The rest were boring in comparison.

Oh yeah, you should buy the Greenie.

Kenny

Lillie said:
Symmonds book is really good.

What book is this one?

Goat of Mendes

Kenny said:
What book is this one?

John Symonds biography of Crowley, The Great Beast. I agree with Lillie that it is an interesting and exciting book, in the same way that a tabloid newspaper full of gossip and lies is interesting and exciting.

There are much better bio's out there these days. Maybe more boring but more factual and contain actual research instead of rumours.

Abrac

Goat of Mendes said:
I agree with Lillie that it is an interesting and exciting book, in the same way that a tabloid newspaper full of gossip and lies is interesting and exciting.

I have read reviews that say the same thing, but after reading the book, I didn't find it to be akin to tabloid journalism at all. To me it is a straightforward account of the facts which, in Crowley's case, are sensational enough already. Granted he gives his opinion a lot, but it is an educated opinion and he gives reasons for it. What is it exactly about the book that you found untrue?

Goat of Mendes said:
There are much better bio's out there these days. Maybe more boring but more factual and contain actual research instead of rumours.

Can you name a couple? If there is something better, I would be interested in reading it.

Goat of Mendes

Abrac said:
What is it exactly about the book that you found untrue?

Try this: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/7069/symonds.html

I'm not a big fan of G.M.Kelly, but his detailed criticism of "The Great Beast" is worth a read. Although Symonds did include a lot of factual information in his book he always seems to twist it so that it shows AC in the worst possible light. And then to top it there is Symonds supposedly "informed opinion", that is little more than slander and contempt disguised as commentary.

Abrac said:
Can you name a couple? If there is something better, I would be interested in reading it.

The best AC bio I have ever read is "PERDURABO: The Life of Aleister Crowley" by Richard Kaczynski Ph.D. [ISBN 1-56184-170-6]
Detailed and balanced throughout. And very importantly, Kaczynski is a practitioner of magick. With only two exceptions, Israel Regardie and Gerald Suster, all of the biographies written about Crowley have been written by people ignorant of magick. They have all been outsiders looking in. Magick was the central core of Crowley's life. If you don't understand that you don't understand Crowley, period!

Can you imagine reading a bio of the Dalai Lama where the author claimed that they didn't have a clue what Buddhism was, but they suspected it was a load of superstitious crap anyway. Why is a similar situation deemed acceptable when it comes to AC's life?

Israel Regardie's, "The Eye in the Triangle: An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley" [ISBN 1-56184-054-8] is worth a look. One of Regardie's main motivations for writing the book was Symonds hack bio. Like Kaczynski, Regardie was a practicing magician.
One area of the book that is not entirely satisfactory is Regardies attempt at psychoanalysis. The results are mixed but still worth reading.

There have been a few bio's published over the last few years, but they suffer from many of the same faults as Symonds work.

"Do What Thou Wilt" by Lawrence Sutin is average at best. He has no real understanding of magick and thus has to occasionally resort to sensationalism to fill the pages.

"A Magick Life" by Martin Booth is again average. The late Martin Booth was a poet himself and an admirer of Crowley's poetry and tried to present Crowley as an unfairly ignored literary figure. But he openly admits his ignorance of magick.

"The Beast Demystified" by Roger Hutchinson is little more than hostile tripe!

I believe that Colin Wilson's "The Nature of the Beast" has recently been republished. Wilson really let himself down with that one. More tripe.

"The Legend of Aleister Crowley" by Regardie and Stephensen, and "The Legacy of the Beast" by Gerald Suster were written in defence of Crowley. So they are not unbiased.

EDIT: I forgot to mention Francis King's, "MEGATHERION: The Magical World of Aleister Crowley". King was not completely ignorant about magick. His short biography is not the best I have ever read but it is a long way from being the worst.

Goat of Mendes

It's ironic that the best Crowley bio, PERDURABO, is currently out of print and practically unobtainable, unless you are prepared to pay a ridiculously high price for a second hand copy.

I believe that Blue Equinox Oasis - OTO, privately print and sell hardback copies of PERDURABO. I will try to find their website.

Failing that, public libraries and a request card can sometimes be wonderful things.

Abrac

Goat of Mendes said:
Can you imagine reading a bio of the Dalai Lama where the author claimed that they didn't have a clue what Buddhism was, but they suspected it was a load of superstitious crap anyway. Why is a similar situation deemed acceptable when it comes to AC's life?

Symonds dedicated a rather lengthy and tedious chapter to the Paris Working and quite a bit of other material to magick. So even though he may not have been a practitioner himself, he did a good job of relating what happened based on Crowley's own record and putting it all in context. He may not have been able to fully explain it, but he wrote an interesting book about what happened and then left it to the reader to dig deeper if so inclined. Sometimes it's good to have a disinterested view. A person looking with fresh eyes can often see things others have missed.

It didn't seem to me that Symonds went out of his way to paint Crowley in a favorable light, yet at the same time I don't see how he bent over backwards to smear him either. My main complaint, as with all the books I've seen about Crowley so far, is the lack of information about the creation of his Tarot deck.

Thanks for the info on PERDURABO. It sounds like it should be pretty good, if I can find it! The last time I looked, Symonds' book was getting pretty scarce and a bit pricey. I found a so-so paperback locally and got it at the bargain price of $20!