Turtle Was Gone A Long Time Vol.3: Anaconda Canoe

Turtle Was Gone a Long Time #3

by John Moriarty

Anaconda Canoe concludes a remarkable spiritual journey undertaken in volumes one and two, in which Turtle dives to the floor of the abyss to recover hidden intuitions about the world in a journey from ignorance to knowledge, darkness to light, from paradise lost to paradise regained. This third and final volume derives from an Amazonian myth in which, on the first morning of the world, a woman of defining importance for religion and culture ascends the primeval river in an Anaconda Canoe. As she ascends it we cannot but acknowledge her as a kind of Cortez, Ishmael, Kurtz or Jonah, come to challenge us in our most fundamental beliefs about ourselves and our universe. From the classical-Christian shores of Europe and the Mediterranean, to the farther reaches of Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas, John Moriarty trawls the deeps of world literatures, mythology and sacred texts. The metaphoric richness in which his work is elaborated lends Anaconda Canoe, and this entire trilogy, its power to arouse and re-open the road to civilization and culture, establishing Moriarty as a major contemporary figure in Irish literature. As Thomas Mann said of The Magic Mountain, ‘This is a book of departure, its service is to life, its will is to health, its goal is the future’.

244 pages, Hardcover

First published September 11, 1998

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

JOHN MORIARTY was born in North Kerry in 1938 and educated at Listowel and University College Dublin. He taught English literature at the University of Manitoba in Canada for six years, before returning to Ireland in 1971. He is author of Dreamtime (1994), and the trilogy Turtle Was Gone a Long Time: Crossing the Kedron (1996), Horsehead Nebula Neighing (1997) and Anaconda Canoe (1998).

Obituary with information: http://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/...