Ille argues that art should express spiritual truths, not worldly observations. Rhetoricians and sentimentalists, according to him, cannot be artists, because the artist is always an outsider, a holy hermit living, as Yeats says in Per Arnica, ‘on the threshold of the sacred house’
Susan Johnston Graf, W B Yeats Twentieth Century Magus: An In-Depth Study of Yeat’s Esoteric Practices and Beliefs, Including Excerpts from His Magical Diaries [Amazon, Bookshop, Abebooks, Local Library]
Munchen, Minnesota is a place that may be of interest to you in your travels. This upcoming series being developed by Christine Borne (who is also apparently working on a YA novel about Krampus!) and Justin Glanville is planned to debut in April 2014 and centers around a fictional town, its residents, and their outsider, esoteric, supernatural and weird stories. It’s a little early to know much more about this project, but it certainly sounds promising to me, and perhaps to you as well.
“Hello, and Welcome to Munchen, Minnesota!
Like a lot of older industrial cities in the Midwest, Munchen (pronounced ‘Munchin’) has fallen on hard economic times. As people and businesses have moved away, many of the town’s neighborhoods have emptied, leaving old houses vacant and crumbling. Crime is rampant. The public schools are in disarray.
But Munchen’s got an even more serious problem: It’s on the verge of a supernatural invasion. The threat seems to loom ever larger as the town declines. And the only people with the power to save it are a geeky teenage girl, her gay librarian father, and an ambitious city planner who didn’t have a clue what he was in for when he transferred from the East Coast.
This blog is a platform that Christine and Justin developed for launching our series about Munchen and its unlikely heroes. It is our Sunnydale, if Sunnydale were in flyover country and overcast 267 days of the year. We’re both attracted to the mystique that place holds for certain people — whether for good or ill. Munchen is as much a character in our story as any of our humans (or non-humans).”
“We’re planning to launch Munchen as a serial, though right now we’re still experimenting with format. Will it be a web comic? A series of e-books? A full-cast audio production? Surely the answer will come to us in a dream, or leap out from behind a door when we least expect it.
Meanwhile, we’re going to chatter at you about writing, weird fiction, creatures with sharp teeth, and the forgotten places at the far corners of the psyche. Oh and also TV.” [via]
Love is the Law by Nick Mamatas is a forthcoming book, due Oct 8th, 2013. It is currently being made available for people to request review copies.
“In 1989, punk-rock girl ‘Golden’ Dawn has crafted an outsider’s life combining the philosophies of Communism and Aleister Crowley’s black magic.
One fateful day she finds the dead body of her mentor in both politics and magick shot in the head, seemingly a suicide.
But Dawn knows there’s more going on than the Long Island cops could ever hope to uncover. In setting out to find the murderer herself, she will encounter dark and twisted truths for which no book, study, or basement show could have prepared her.
Award-winning prose author Nick Mamatas crafts a raw, hilarious, original mystery!” [via]
Honestly, I was intrigued by the title and the protagonist’s name enough to almost click the request button myself, but then I read the phrase “Aleister Crowley’s black magic” and was suddenly far less impressed. But, maybe someone else will take the hit and risk of potential brain cell loss to find out if this is better than it appears on second glance and let me know for sure.