Journal of Albion Moonlight

Like many reviewers here, I also read this book a LONG time ago. Yet there is one idea from this book that has stuck with me all these years. As a creative person, it has sustained me, encouraged me, and got me going again whenever doubt crept in: "If you are a maker, you will know that somewhere the thing you would do has already been done, and you will set about quietly to do it." That said, file my latest effort,Shake That Brain: How to Create Winning Solutions and Have Fun While You're At It,under "books on creativity."

This novel contains some of the most compelling images I have ever read. It is a measure of Patchen's courage that he wrote it at the height of WWII--not a popular time for anti-war activism. The depth of his thinking about pacifism emerges in this novel on every level. Patchen was a lifelong scholar and student of the works of William Blake and it shows: "Moonlight" challenges us not only in content but in form as well, using metaphor and image to create a powerful non-linear world of story and thought. Kenneth Patchen's work is beginning to experience a resurgence, and I would suggest buying this novel (along with Kenneth's love poetry) if you want to discover this great American poet.

This book provides an intense and personal revolution that can only be spread by opening a page to the person next to you. Insanity and purity bind the book and the reader together by the solipsistic nature of percpetion. Patchen will make you see and think about things differently. Jonathan Lethem's "Amnesia Moon" and Richard Farina's "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me" are aspects of "Journal of Albion Moonlight" focused down into a keen discernable light. It has what the scholars told me I should have gotten out of "Ulysses".

it's a dangerous book. but it had to be. it is of the utmost importance to know how you hold your hands in sleep.

I've read and reread this book for almost twenty years now, I always find it amazing.