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Devil's Tor
Ingrid Fleming has always believed a goddess lies buried beneath the forbidding, Devil-headed rock-pile atop Devil's Tor. But when the pile is shattered in a sudden storm, it's her cousin, Hugh Drapier, who enters the newly-revealed tomb.
Drapier has recently arrived from Tibet, where an encounter with the adventurer Henry Saltfleet and the archeologist Stephen Arsinal has left him in possession of a stolen sacred stone, the half of a broken whole, which has the power to induce visions of its arrival on Earth in the early days of primitive humanity.
Arsinal believes the stone to be sacred to the Great Mother, and key to a prophecy that will unite a chosen man and woman, and bring about the birth of a new saviour. He and Saltfleet return to England on Drapier's trail, and arrive in Dartmoor just as the machinery of a thousands-year-long supernatural fate begins its final turn...
A troubled, troubling, ambitious and difficult work that David Lindsay himself called his "monster," Devil's Tor answers the imaginative pyrotechnics of Lindsay's first novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, with a sustained maturity of insight into the intensely-felt and deeply-examined inner lives of its handful of characters, and the fate that has brought them together at the dawn of a new human era.
At times irrecoverably tangled in the attitudes of its day, Devil's Tor nevertheless builds to a transcendent final vision of the ultimate purpose of human life and suffering
Drapier has recently arrived from Tibet, where an encounter with the adventurer Henry Saltfleet and the archeologist Stephen Arsinal has left him in possession of a stolen sacred stone, the half of a broken whole, which has the power to induce visions of its arrival on Earth in the early days of primitive humanity.
Arsinal believes the stone to be sacred to the Great Mother, and key to a prophecy that will unite a chosen man and woman, and bring about the birth of a new saviour. He and Saltfleet return to England on Drapier's trail, and arrive in Dartmoor just as the machinery of a thousands-year-long supernatural fate begins its final turn...
A troubled, troubling, ambitious and difficult work that David Lindsay himself called his "monster," Devil's Tor answers the imaginative pyrotechnics of Lindsay's first novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, with a sustained maturity of insight into the intensely-felt and deeply-examined inner lives of its handful of characters, and the fate that has brought them together at the dawn of a new human era.
At times irrecoverably tangled in the attitudes of its day, Devil's Tor nevertheless builds to a transcendent final vision of the ultimate purpose of human life and suffering
487 pages, ebook
Published June 22, 2017
6 people are currently reading
125 people want to read
About the author
David Lindsay
36 books96 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where his family was from. Altho awarded a university scholarship, he was forced by poverty to enter business, becoming a Lloyd's of London insurance clerk. He was very successful but, after serving in WWI, at age forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife, Jacqueline Silver, to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920. It sold 596 copies before being remaindered. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anyone, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (e.g., Geo. MacDonald). It was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write more commercially with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than Voyage. He continued writing novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found publication increasingly difficult and spent much time on his last work The Witch, published posthumously.
He and his wife opened a Brighton boarding house. They did not prosper and their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in WWII. In his bath at the time, Lindsay never recovered from the shock. His death from infection caused by a tooth abscess was unrelated to the bomb.
A Voyage to Arcturus has been described as the major underground novel of the 20th century. The secret of Lindsay's apparent strangeness lies in his metaphysical assumptions. A gnostic, he viewed the "real" world as an illusion which must be rejected in order to perceive genuine truth. In The Haunted Woman, the two main characters discover a room which exists only some of the time. Together there they see more clearly and express themselves honestly. In The Violet Apple, the fruit is that eaten by Adam and Eve. The description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel otherwise concerned with ordinary matters.
Lindsay's austere vision of reality may have been influenced by Scandinavian mythology. After being out of print for decades, his work has become increasingly available. He is now seen as being a major Scottish fantasist of the 20th century, the missing link between George Macdonald and modern writers such as Alasdair Gray who have also used surrealism and magic realism.
Arcturus was produced as a 35mm feature film by William J. Holloway in 1971. It was the first film funded by a National Endowment for the Arts and has recently been re-released.
Harold Bloom has also been interested, even obsessed, with Lindsay's life and career, going as far as to publish The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage and deep revision of Arcturus,/i>. Bloom admits his late-comer imitation is overwhelmed by Lindsay's great original.
Bibliography:
A Voyage to Arcturus, 1920
The Haunted Woman, 1922
Sphinx, 1923
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, 1926
Devil's Tor, 1932
The Violet Apple & The Witch, 1976
A Christmas Play, 2003
Further reading:
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay: An Appreciation by J. B. Pick, E. H. Visiak & Colin Wilson, 1970
The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, 1983
David Lindsay's Vision by David Power, 2005
David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where his family was from. Altho awarded a university scholarship, he was forced by poverty to enter business, becoming a Lloyd's of London insurance clerk. He was very successful but, after serving in WWI, at age forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife, Jacqueline Silver, to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920. It sold 596 copies before being remaindered. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anyone, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (e.g., Geo. MacDonald). It was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write more commercially with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than Voyage. He continued writing novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found publication increasingly difficult and spent much time on his last work The Witch, published posthumously.
He and his wife opened a Brighton boarding house. They did not prosper and their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in WWII. In his bath at the time, Lindsay never recovered from the shock. His death from infection caused by a tooth abscess was unrelated to the bomb.
A Voyage to Arcturus has been described as the major underground novel of the 20th century. The secret of Lindsay's apparent strangeness lies in his metaphysical assumptions. A gnostic, he viewed the "real" world as an illusion which must be rejected in order to perceive genuine truth. In The Haunted Woman, the two main characters discover a room which exists only some of the time. Together there they see more clearly and express themselves honestly. In The Violet Apple, the fruit is that eaten by Adam and Eve. The description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel otherwise concerned with ordinary matters.
Lindsay's austere vision of reality may have been influenced by Scandinavian mythology. After being out of print for decades, his work has become increasingly available. He is now seen as being a major Scottish fantasist of the 20th century, the missing link between George Macdonald and modern writers such as Alasdair Gray who have also used surrealism and magic realism.
Arcturus was produced as a 35mm feature film by William J. Holloway in 1971. It was the first film funded by a National Endowment for the Arts and has recently been re-released.
Harold Bloom has also been interested, even obsessed, with Lindsay's life and career, going as far as to publish The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage and deep revision of Arcturus,/i>. Bloom admits his late-comer imitation is overwhelmed by Lindsay's great original.
Bibliography:
A Voyage to Arcturus, 1920
The Haunted Woman, 1922
Sphinx, 1923
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, 1926
Devil's Tor, 1932
The Violet Apple & The Witch, 1976
A Christmas Play, 2003
Further reading:
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay: An Appreciation by J. B. Pick, E. H. Visiak & Colin Wilson, 1970
The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, 1983
David Lindsay's Vision by David Power, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 1, 2016
Halfway through Devil’s Tor, one of its characters summarises the more sensational events that have taken place so far: “Forbidden Tibet, and a raid on a Buddhist monastery, and a stone of unnatural potency, and a mysterious death on a foggy moor!” Which might make it sound like H Rider Haggard, or Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone — only, two of those events are over before the book begins (and never get described), while the third takes place behind the scenes. No, the action of David Lindsay’s fifth published novel is almost exclusively limited to quiet drawing rooms, in intense examinations of characters’ motives and inner musings on fate. Dense and often difficult (Gary K Wolfe has said it sometimes reads “like a Henry James translation of Kant”), Lindsay himself described the book as his “monster”, a ponderous, self-tortured thing that lumbers slowly but unstoppably towards its ineluctable doom-laden end. But, if you’re a Lindsay reader, it’s his weightiest and most intensely felt book since his first, A Voyage to Arcturus, building on and refining the rather dour conclusions of that book, and attempting to apply them to this world rather than the alien weirdness of Tormance.
The plot centres on a small group of characters drawn to Devil’s Tor in Dartmoor. Young Ingrid and her mother’s cousin Hugh are visiting the Tor when a storm breaks out. Lightning strikes the devil-shaped rock at the top, shattering it and revealing the entrance to a tomb Ingrid had always felt to be there. Hugh has recently returned from a trip to Tibet, where a couple of archeologist-adventurers, Saltfleet and Arsinal, handed him a supposedly holy stone they’d just purloined from a lamasery, to get it out of the country. Hugh has since become fascinated by the stone — when studied in low light, you see stars and clouds moving across its dark surface — and isn’t keen on handing it over, though he knows Saltfleet and Arsinal must turn up soon, on its trail. Venturing into the tomb on Devil’s Tor the next day, he drops his torch and, scrabbling about in the darkness, picks up what he doesn’t realise at the time is that stone’s twin half, which Fate — or the Great Mother Goddess — is working to bring together. And one of those archeologist-adventurers, Arsinal, has uncovered a prophecy foretelling how the reunion of the two half-stones will also bring together a man and a woman, whose offspring will be a new messiah.
A supernatural force bringing together, as soul-mates, a man and woman has been a constant theme throughout David Lindsay’s post-Arcturus novels, but it’s only here it bears such prophetic weight. The main bulk of each of these novels is about the difficulties involved in the two soul-mates actually recognising each other, and then overcoming the resistance of acquaintances, existing fiancés, and other social restrictions, to come together — if they manage it at all. With Lindsay, it usually ends in tragedy, though more and more (culminating in The Violet Apple) it also takes on a feeling of (difficult) resurrection and spiritual rebirth. Here, Lindsay combines and intensifies both the tragedy and the rebirth. It’s a hard read, which can only be appreciated if you take the time to work past Lindsay’s often Yoda-ish, infelicitous prose. The ending is powerful but bleak, and of an equal power — though of a greater human depth — than that of Lindsay’s far better known first novel.
A difficult book to recommend, but if you’re a Lindsay reader, it’s essential.
The plot centres on a small group of characters drawn to Devil’s Tor in Dartmoor. Young Ingrid and her mother’s cousin Hugh are visiting the Tor when a storm breaks out. Lightning strikes the devil-shaped rock at the top, shattering it and revealing the entrance to a tomb Ingrid had always felt to be there. Hugh has recently returned from a trip to Tibet, where a couple of archeologist-adventurers, Saltfleet and Arsinal, handed him a supposedly holy stone they’d just purloined from a lamasery, to get it out of the country. Hugh has since become fascinated by the stone — when studied in low light, you see stars and clouds moving across its dark surface — and isn’t keen on handing it over, though he knows Saltfleet and Arsinal must turn up soon, on its trail. Venturing into the tomb on Devil’s Tor the next day, he drops his torch and, scrabbling about in the darkness, picks up what he doesn’t realise at the time is that stone’s twin half, which Fate — or the Great Mother Goddess — is working to bring together. And one of those archeologist-adventurers, Arsinal, has uncovered a prophecy foretelling how the reunion of the two half-stones will also bring together a man and a woman, whose offspring will be a new messiah.
A supernatural force bringing together, as soul-mates, a man and woman has been a constant theme throughout David Lindsay’s post-Arcturus novels, but it’s only here it bears such prophetic weight. The main bulk of each of these novels is about the difficulties involved in the two soul-mates actually recognising each other, and then overcoming the resistance of acquaintances, existing fiancés, and other social restrictions, to come together — if they manage it at all. With Lindsay, it usually ends in tragedy, though more and more (culminating in The Violet Apple) it also takes on a feeling of (difficult) resurrection and spiritual rebirth. Here, Lindsay combines and intensifies both the tragedy and the rebirth. It’s a hard read, which can only be appreciated if you take the time to work past Lindsay’s often Yoda-ish, infelicitous prose. The ending is powerful but bleak, and of an equal power — though of a greater human depth — than that of Lindsay’s far better known first novel.
A difficult book to recommend, but if you’re a Lindsay reader, it’s essential.
April 29, 2010
This is a great work.
It is written in order to express ideas that could not otherwise be expressed. It was obviously meticulously written and rewritten over many years and as a result the reader cannot expect to understand why many sections were written at the first reading.
I would recommend at least three readings, which is quite a lot of reading - its not a small book.
Don't worry if you can't work out why he writes three chapters about a pause in a conversation - it'll come to you if you stick at it.
This book reveals a lot about Lindsay's attitude to art and is proper magnificent.
It is written in order to express ideas that could not otherwise be expressed. It was obviously meticulously written and rewritten over many years and as a result the reader cannot expect to understand why many sections were written at the first reading.
I would recommend at least three readings, which is quite a lot of reading - its not a small book.
Don't worry if you can't work out why he writes three chapters about a pause in a conversation - it'll come to you if you stick at it.
This book reveals a lot about Lindsay's attitude to art and is proper magnificent.
October 18, 2020
Mind-blowing. A slow pace but builds to a stunning metaphysical packed
ending - like a great symphony!
ending - like a great symphony!
July 7, 2014
Earlier I reviewed Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus, giving it five stars and high praise. For balance, I feel right about mentioning one of his worst novels, a book lacking the powerfully effective parabolic turn-around device of Voyage and depending too much on the usual elements of fiction, namely plot, character and dialogue, none of which Lindsay was particularly good at.
Lindsay was some sort of Aryan supremicist or wanna-be Teutonic knight. That is the disappointing conclusion I came to finishing this all-too-long work. Unlike Voyage, it comes to this level of pettiness and ill-feeling. This is unfortunate because, hey, National Socialism and Fascism were, lest we forget, powerful ideologies throughout the world until the war made them, and the roots of their popular appeal, unspeakable. Voyage helps one understand the "enemy" by finding it within. Tor trivializes the boogey and makes it laughable.
Lindsay was some sort of Aryan supremicist or wanna-be Teutonic knight. That is the disappointing conclusion I came to finishing this all-too-long work. Unlike Voyage, it comes to this level of pettiness and ill-feeling. This is unfortunate because, hey, National Socialism and Fascism were, lest we forget, powerful ideologies throughout the world until the war made them, and the roots of their popular appeal, unspeakable. Voyage helps one understand the "enemy" by finding it within. Tor trivializes the boogey and makes it laughable.
November 9, 2021
David Lindsay listed the themes of Devil's Tor in a letter to Putnams:
"...Fate made visible, the Great Mother, the mystic stones belonging to a world of other dimensions, the part of the Northern races in history, the supernatural bringing-together of a chosen pair for the uplifting of humanity, the purpose of the creation of the universes..." Lindsay has used various storylines in his books including a journey to another planet, celtic myth, a dream recording machine, Adam and Eve, ancient goddess worship, and a witch. These elements or even some of the philosophy in the books are not the key to the genius of Lindsay. He uses everything to create a bridge to the numinous and help the reader to a hint of supernatural experience. He succeeds well with the numen at the tor. This depiction of an ancient goddess at Devil's Tor, along with the other visions seen by people there, give a strong sense of another dimension. Lindsay had also done his homework on ancient goddess worship. Many facts presented in the book check out with current archaeology. Behind all of Lindsay's books is the emphasis on individual contact with something that is very like the Chinese concept of the Tao. Something existent before religion, before gods and goddess. Lindsay calls this muspel (norse myth), in one book and names it the ancient in Devil's Tor. Contact with this ancient brings authentic life in a world that Lindsay often sees as sham. Devil's Tor can be a slow read because Lindsay makes use of interior monologue to let us see inside his characters. The characters engage in endless arguments and discussion which can make for tedious reading at times.
This line from the book describes sundown at the tor: "Only in the vertical line of the sun's descent a lozenge of darkest, quietest crimson hung over the horizon, as it had been a goblin window..." With Devil's Tor Lindsay has opened a goblin window on the numinous.
"...Fate made visible, the Great Mother, the mystic stones belonging to a world of other dimensions, the part of the Northern races in history, the supernatural bringing-together of a chosen pair for the uplifting of humanity, the purpose of the creation of the universes..." Lindsay has used various storylines in his books including a journey to another planet, celtic myth, a dream recording machine, Adam and Eve, ancient goddess worship, and a witch. These elements or even some of the philosophy in the books are not the key to the genius of Lindsay. He uses everything to create a bridge to the numinous and help the reader to a hint of supernatural experience. He succeeds well with the numen at the tor. This depiction of an ancient goddess at Devil's Tor, along with the other visions seen by people there, give a strong sense of another dimension. Lindsay had also done his homework on ancient goddess worship. Many facts presented in the book check out with current archaeology. Behind all of Lindsay's books is the emphasis on individual contact with something that is very like the Chinese concept of the Tao. Something existent before religion, before gods and goddess. Lindsay calls this muspel (norse myth), in one book and names it the ancient in Devil's Tor. Contact with this ancient brings authentic life in a world that Lindsay often sees as sham. Devil's Tor can be a slow read because Lindsay makes use of interior monologue to let us see inside his characters. The characters engage in endless arguments and discussion which can make for tedious reading at times.
This line from the book describes sundown at the tor: "Only in the vertical line of the sun's descent a lozenge of darkest, quietest crimson hung over the horizon, as it had been a goblin window..." With Devil's Tor Lindsay has opened a goblin window on the numinous.
July 12, 2020
A Voyage to Arcturus is one of my three favorite books in existence (see my review). I also really liked The Haunted Woman. This book is not only not nearly as good, but it's so bad that it actually retroactively diminishes my admiration of Arcturus. It has me doubting my own previous judgment of a book by the same author.
The premise is actually unique and compelling enough - Lindsay's typical combination occult mystery and spiritual treatise - that you could get over the egregious bloat, if not for that pesky white supremacist race science. And oh lord is that race science right up in your face for most of the novel.
It starts out forgivable, something you can pass off as "just a product of his era" casual white supremacy: passing references to Nordic lineage, a weird insistence that a character's similar bone structure to an ancient Roman general means he must be noble of spirit. This "just a product of his era" label is what I'd apply for instance to his casual sexism throughout, any time he starts bloviating about feminine v. masculine natures.
But unlike the sexism, the eugenics-lite bilge becomes an actual important plot point, as apparently our Great Mother came to earth from the stars to create a new, advanced race. But not just advanced, but also blonde! All large, fair-skinned blonde people are her descendants (and responsible for all of the great advances in civilization). All of the smaller, dark-skinned/-haired people descended from savages and, while Lindsay's gracious enough to acknowledge they have contributed to civilization, he is careful to point out that all contributions were more "communal" in nature (as opposed to "individual," which is just plain better, because... reasons).
So now, because our female protagonist has very evident Nordic lineage, she is to become the Great Mother incarnate and usher in a new era of super-humans with the help of her Roman General-jawed sperm donor. I'm not exaggerating here. It really is this ludicrous and blatantly Nazi-esque. The publisher even seems aware of it, as the back cover's synopsis acknowledges that it is "at times irrecoverably tangled in the attitudes of its day." That's like saying McDonald's is irrecoverably tangled up in the obesity crisis. Even "irrecoverably" is a bizarre word choice for those paying attention (i.e. for those who don't simply perceive it as "irrevocably," as I first did). if it's "not recoverable," why did you "recover" it by, you know publishing it for mass consumption?
Lindsay has always been an author who wears his beliefs on his sleeves, i.e. he doesn't even bother to mask his own spiritual beliefs as exposition that his characters are working through. It's pretty disturbing to be reading his characters pontificate about the "noble race" and realize that this is what Lindsay actually believed. As I alluded to above, whenever I read Arcturus again, I'll inevitably be seeking out these sentiments there as well. The experience of one of my all-time favorite novels has now been "irrecoverably" tainted.
I'm about done here, but as a night-cap I'll circle back to that bloat I mentioned. Probably a full third of the book could have been cut, if not an entire half: 1/10 of it is race science; 1/5 of it is characters just thinking, about either femininity (from a 1920s perspective) or what other characters must be thinking, when we already know what those characters are thinking (it's apparently important for Lindsay that we see his characters working it out on their own); and probably another 1/5 is characters conversing circuitously around their actual desires, while distracting themselves (and us) by reading ulterior motives into each others' statements.
So yeah. It's bad. I wish I hadn't read it and I don't think anyone else should either. It's disturbing that the top 3 reviews here don't even mention the Aryan Supremacy that permeates it. Maybe 10 years ago (when these reviews were mostly written), it was acceptable to just overlook such things. Not anymore. On the plus side, I can confidently do some paring of my to-read list, by removing The Violet Apple and The Witch.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
The premise is actually unique and compelling enough - Lindsay's typical combination occult mystery and spiritual treatise - that you could get over the egregious bloat, if not for that pesky white supremacist race science. And oh lord is that race science right up in your face for most of the novel.
It starts out forgivable, something you can pass off as "just a product of his era" casual white supremacy: passing references to Nordic lineage, a weird insistence that a character's similar bone structure to an ancient Roman general means he must be noble of spirit. This "just a product of his era" label is what I'd apply for instance to his casual sexism throughout, any time he starts bloviating about feminine v. masculine natures.
But unlike the sexism, the eugenics-lite bilge becomes an actual important plot point, as apparently our Great Mother came to earth from the stars to create a new, advanced race. But not just advanced, but also blonde! All large, fair-skinned blonde people are her descendants (and responsible for all of the great advances in civilization). All of the smaller, dark-skinned/-haired people descended from savages and, while Lindsay's gracious enough to acknowledge they have contributed to civilization, he is careful to point out that all contributions were more "communal" in nature (as opposed to "individual," which is just plain better, because... reasons).
So now, because our female protagonist has very evident Nordic lineage, she is to become the Great Mother incarnate and usher in a new era of super-humans with the help of her Roman General-jawed sperm donor. I'm not exaggerating here. It really is this ludicrous and blatantly Nazi-esque. The publisher even seems aware of it, as the back cover's synopsis acknowledges that it is "at times irrecoverably tangled in the attitudes of its day." That's like saying McDonald's is irrecoverably tangled up in the obesity crisis. Even "irrecoverably" is a bizarre word choice for those paying attention (i.e. for those who don't simply perceive it as "irrevocably," as I first did). if it's "not recoverable," why did you "recover" it by, you know publishing it for mass consumption?
Lindsay has always been an author who wears his beliefs on his sleeves, i.e. he doesn't even bother to mask his own spiritual beliefs as exposition that his characters are working through. It's pretty disturbing to be reading his characters pontificate about the "noble race" and realize that this is what Lindsay actually believed. As I alluded to above, whenever I read Arcturus again, I'll inevitably be seeking out these sentiments there as well. The experience of one of my all-time favorite novels has now been "irrecoverably" tainted.
I'm about done here, but as a night-cap I'll circle back to that bloat I mentioned. Probably a full third of the book could have been cut, if not an entire half: 1/10 of it is race science; 1/5 of it is characters just thinking, about either femininity (from a 1920s perspective) or what other characters must be thinking, when we already know what those characters are thinking (it's apparently important for Lindsay that we see his characters working it out on their own); and probably another 1/5 is characters conversing circuitously around their actual desires, while distracting themselves (and us) by reading ulterior motives into each others' statements.
So yeah. It's bad. I wish I hadn't read it and I don't think anyone else should either. It's disturbing that the top 3 reviews here don't even mention the Aryan Supremacy that permeates it. Maybe 10 years ago (when these reviews were mostly written), it was acceptable to just overlook such things. Not anymore. On the plus side, I can confidently do some paring of my to-read list, by removing The Violet Apple and The Witch.
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
December 24, 2023
Dense, ponderous, shows disturbing developments of Lindsay's thought post-Arcturus. Artistically infelicitous (think Da Vinci code + Nietzsche only not beautifully written + some ponderous Victorian drawing room drama). Philosophically hugely ambitious, interesting on things like the role of art, the reason for suffering (suffering is in Lindsay's thought, as far as I can tell, one of the noblest and best things), nobility, the nature of Christianity. Also proudly about the birth of a new savior who will found a super-race that is supposedly superior to white people as white people supposedly are superior to everyone else from the most Nordic possible of characters.
June 12, 2012
Reading ‘A Voyage to Arcturus’ as a youth I find myself indebted to Lin Carter the American author of science fiction and fantasy: although I always liked his work mostly I am indebted to his erudition and his editorialship. If the Ballantine edition of ‘A Voyage to Arcturus’ had not been made readily available by Mr Carter my life would be immeasurably the poorer. Similarly I have to thank Resonance Books for their good sense in making relatively cheap copies of Devil’s Tor, The forgotten Lindsay Classic, available to the general public.
I have very little to say about this book. It is expertly and intuitively reviewed here by Murray Ewing. The only thing I would like to add is that I might have been continually reading for thirty five years or so since the discovery of Lindsay’s work. Only having read Devil’s Tor have I been struck again with the same passion and sense of wonder. The book is simply a work of genius. You will never read anything like it again.
Science fiction and fantasy aficionados will indubitably be aware of the name Gollancz. Imagine how many wonderful manuscripts this prolific editor had the pleasure of reading for the first time: here’s what he said about Lindsay.
I am an indurated publisher. I have read hundreds of novels, but it affected me as profoundly as when I was an impressionable youth and read Poe for the first time!
— Victor Gollancz, quoted in The Strange Genius of David Lindsay, p. 95-96
But Devil’s Tor extends far beyond any genre. It is a singular disgrace to those who had responsibility for the safe keeping of Scottish Literature that Lindsay was not recognized as a genius in his own life time; perhaps his vision was too mercurial and perhaps they can be forgiven. However, it is unforgivable that even now his work is only on the fringe of Scottish Literature, acknowledged but not generally extolled. Go to any good bookshop in Scotland and you will find a fairly extensive list of classic Scottish literature – much of merit – but the Devil’s Tor, a book a magisterial magnificence, will not be found.
It’s time to wake up.
I have very little to say about this book. It is expertly and intuitively reviewed here by Murray Ewing. The only thing I would like to add is that I might have been continually reading for thirty five years or so since the discovery of Lindsay’s work. Only having read Devil’s Tor have I been struck again with the same passion and sense of wonder. The book is simply a work of genius. You will never read anything like it again.
Science fiction and fantasy aficionados will indubitably be aware of the name Gollancz. Imagine how many wonderful manuscripts this prolific editor had the pleasure of reading for the first time: here’s what he said about Lindsay.
I am an indurated publisher. I have read hundreds of novels, but it affected me as profoundly as when I was an impressionable youth and read Poe for the first time!
— Victor Gollancz, quoted in The Strange Genius of David Lindsay, p. 95-96
But Devil’s Tor extends far beyond any genre. It is a singular disgrace to those who had responsibility for the safe keeping of Scottish Literature that Lindsay was not recognized as a genius in his own life time; perhaps his vision was too mercurial and perhaps they can be forgiven. However, it is unforgivable that even now his work is only on the fringe of Scottish Literature, acknowledged but not generally extolled. Go to any good bookshop in Scotland and you will find a fairly extensive list of classic Scottish literature – much of merit – but the Devil’s Tor, a book a magisterial magnificence, will not be found.
It’s time to wake up.
July 22, 2025
Well, it's good to know that I have the ability to read very long books when I put my mind to it. This seems to be something like a 'testament ' book, a work into which the writer put his most heartfelt and earnest sentiments. And they're not what we would currently call politically correct ideas (such as the British people being the most highly evolved humans in Europe). It is a rather interesting fact that writers reveal much more about themselves than they intend.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews