But will she come in time? Oh yes just in time; whenever she comes is just in time; when we have despaired for the thousandth midnight of any such a one ever coming from anywhere, she will arrive, in a tearing hurry, breaking into or out of the last spheres of air, fire, water, earth as though throwing open the successive doors of a long corridor, down which she rushes, her hair streaming and her brow knit, her hand already beside her mouth to call into the ear of our souls Wake up.

—John Crowley, Love & Sleep

It didn’t seem to him, though, on this morning in the Faraways, such an unfortunate thing, that kind of small-town determinism. True, he had himself clambered out of it as fast as he could and into the Great World seeking growing-room and air to breathe; but he had in fact languished in the city, not growing but shrinking over time into a strange form of invisibility. Almost no one that he’d known there knew anyone else he had known, and so to each new acquaintance Pierce was able to present a separate and partial character, an ad hoc personality specially adapted to the circumstances (bar, bookstore, Brooklyn) but too flimsy to support more than a single other person at close range…

—John Crowley, Solitudes

are you trying to tell us something ry?


Crowley-6x9-72

A bit more Crowley for the week– I wanted to mention this cover for Endless Things awhile back. Books about books within books on the cover of books. Original photo from Rosamond Purcell’s Bookworm.

You don’t need a deep and comprehensive grasp of Gnosticism any more than you do to grasp The Matrix.

—John Crowley in this interview

so…we’re all set on renaming this johncrowleycult eh?


If you want to get Whartiki the $900 artist edition of Little, Big with Crowley inscribing my favorite passage, I wouldn’t say no. Maybe they have it at Crate & Barrel?


what’s yr favorite passage? I have a few ideas for mine… predictably, they all revolve around nyc.


I’ll be honest: I almost went to that crowley reading, and now I’m kind of bummed I didn’t.


Only by commiting to memory the entire universe, and casting on it a universe of images, could all the things in the universe be remembered.

—John Crowley, Solitudes

Aegypt Cycle

It looks like Overlook Press is reprinting all of John Crowley’s Ægypt Cycle. I just picked up the first book in the series, Solitudes (originally entitled Ægypt), the other evening. It’s been out of print for awhile, and I believe this is the first time they will all be published in a uniform edition. In addition they have been revised by Crowley (I found a mention on his live journal).

Speaking of bookweb 2.0, I managed to find an online version of Harold Bloom’s Western Canon online– which features the first two books of the Ægypt Cycle.

from jc’s lj:

(I am in favor of the old fashioned guillotine-style traps as the most humane: l what could be more painless and unstressful than a bar smashing your neck before you know it? One minute you’re there, the next not. (I conceive likewise that it would be no great suffering if an enemy or psychopath came up behind me and whacked me in the back of the head with a lenght of 2x4. Out like a light. This connects to my commitment as an omnivore, but more of that another time.)

I agree! altho the last time we had mice in the apt we ended up using glue traps since they were evading the snap traps.


tom disch has one too.


michael swanwick’s blogspot blog. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that authors with a background in sf/f have taken to this aspect of the internet, what with the fan/fanzine culture there.