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Savage Gods
* Chicago Tribune "Fall literary preview: books you need to read now"
* Vulture "The Best and Biggest Books to Read This Fall"
NORTH AMERICAN EDITION: After moving with his wife and two children to a smallholding in Ireland, Paul Kingsnorth expects to find contentment. It is the goal he has sought — to nest, to find home — after years of rootlessness as an environmental activist and author. Instead he finds that his tools as a writer are failing him, calling into question his foundational beliefs about language and setting him at odds with culture itself.
Informed by his experiences with indigenous peoples, the writings of D.H. Lawrence and Annie Dillard, and the day-to-day travails of farming his own land, Savage Gods asks: what does it mean to belong? What sacrifices must be made in order to truly inhabit a life? And can words ever paint the truth of the world — or are they part of the great lie which is killing it?
146 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 17, 2019
68 people are currently reading
1780 people want to read
About the author
Paul Kingsnorth
40 books578 followersPaul Kingsnorth is an English writer and thinker. He is a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. He lives in the west of Ireland.
He studied modern history at Oxford University, where he was also heavily involved in the road protest movement of the early 1990s.
After graduating, Paul spent two months in Indonesia working on conservation projects in Borneo and Java. Back in the UK, he worked for a year on the staff of the Independent newspaper. Following a three year stint as a campaign writer for an environmental NGO, he was appointed deputy editor of The Ecologist, where he worked for two years under the editorship of Zac Goldsmith.
He left the Ecologist in 2001 to write his first book One No, Many Yeses, a political travelogue which explored the growing anti-capitalist movement around the world. The book was published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster, in six languages across 13 countries.
In the early 2000s, having spent time with the tribal people of West Papua, who continue to be brutally colonised by the Indonesian government and military, Paul was instrumental in setting up the Free West Papua Campaign, which he also helped to run for a time.
Paul’s second book, Real England, was published in 2008 by Portobello. An exploration of the changing face of his home country in an age of globalisation, the book was quoted in speeches by the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, helped inspire the success of the hit West End play ‘Jerusalem’ and saw its author compared to Cobbett and Orwell by more than one newspaper.
In 2009, Paul launched, with Dougald Hine, the Dark Mountain Project – a call for a literary movement to respond to the ongoing collapse of the world’s ecological and economic certainties. What began as a self-published pamphlet has become a global network of writers, artists and thinkers. Paul is now the Project’s director and one of its editors.
In 2011, Paul’s first collection of poetry, Kidland, was published by Salmon. Since the mid-1990s, Paul’s poetry has been published in magazines including Envoi, Iota, Poetry Life and nthposition. He has been awarded the BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year Award and the Poetry Life Prize, and was narrowly pipped to the post in the Thomas Hardy Society’s annual competition.
Paul’s journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Le Monde, New Statesman, Ecologist, New Internationalist, Big Issue, Adbusters, BBC Wildlife and openDemocracy, for which he has also worked as a commissioning editor. He has appeared on various TV and radio programmes, most shamefully ‘This Morning with Richard and Judy.’ He is also the author of ‘Your Countryside, Your Choice’, a report on the future of the countryside, published in 2005 by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
He studied modern history at Oxford University, where he was also heavily involved in the road protest movement of the early 1990s.
After graduating, Paul spent two months in Indonesia working on conservation projects in Borneo and Java. Back in the UK, he worked for a year on the staff of the Independent newspaper. Following a three year stint as a campaign writer for an environmental NGO, he was appointed deputy editor of The Ecologist, where he worked for two years under the editorship of Zac Goldsmith.
He left the Ecologist in 2001 to write his first book One No, Many Yeses, a political travelogue which explored the growing anti-capitalist movement around the world. The book was published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster, in six languages across 13 countries.
In the early 2000s, having spent time with the tribal people of West Papua, who continue to be brutally colonised by the Indonesian government and military, Paul was instrumental in setting up the Free West Papua Campaign, which he also helped to run for a time.
Paul’s second book, Real England, was published in 2008 by Portobello. An exploration of the changing face of his home country in an age of globalisation, the book was quoted in speeches by the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, helped inspire the success of the hit West End play ‘Jerusalem’ and saw its author compared to Cobbett and Orwell by more than one newspaper.
In 2009, Paul launched, with Dougald Hine, the Dark Mountain Project – a call for a literary movement to respond to the ongoing collapse of the world’s ecological and economic certainties. What began as a self-published pamphlet has become a global network of writers, artists and thinkers. Paul is now the Project’s director and one of its editors.
In 2011, Paul’s first collection of poetry, Kidland, was published by Salmon. Since the mid-1990s, Paul’s poetry has been published in magazines including Envoi, Iota, Poetry Life and nthposition. He has been awarded the BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year Award and the Poetry Life Prize, and was narrowly pipped to the post in the Thomas Hardy Society’s annual competition.
Paul’s journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Le Monde, New Statesman, Ecologist, New Internationalist, Big Issue, Adbusters, BBC Wildlife and openDemocracy, for which he has also worked as a commissioning editor. He has appeared on various TV and radio programmes, most shamefully ‘This Morning with Richard and Judy.’ He is also the author of ‘Your Countryside, Your Choice’, a report on the future of the countryside, published in 2005 by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
April 7, 2023
**3.25 stars**
"Writers are lost people.
Nobody would write a book if they weren’t lost. Nobody would write a book if they were not in search of paradise, and nobody would be in search of paradise unless they believed it might exist somewhere, which means out there, which means just beyond my reach. Writers can see paradise, but can never touch it. Writers want to belong to a place that is just beyond their reach, because if they were to reach the place they would have to do the hard work of being in it. Writers don’t belong anywhere, or to anyone, and they do not want to. They are driven by some severance and none of them understands it. Not just writers. Painters. Musicians. Artists. Art is the search for intact things in a world in which all things are broken."
Savage Gods has one of the most promising starts to a non-fiction book I've read this year. And for a significant section from the start, it does deliver.
What motivates someone for an artistic endeavour? Or do people pursue such a travail only when they lack real-world purpose?
What creates a sense of belonging? Which is better, to belong or to be?
Is it as good to have some high-end (but achievable)ambition as people make it out to be?
What makes someone try to run away from things as soon as they start to feel comfortable? Fear of attachment or loss? If so, why strive to make yourself feel you belong anywhere?
Art without pain may be just entertainment; with pain, it may be art, but at what cost to the self of its creator?
Ideals are a pox on humanity. And currently, humanity is going through a midlife crisis.
And so on. Some of these are cliché but they form very readable prose if done just right. Combine this with a dose of melancholia, and you have this book. Most of the reviews are, however, pretty harsh. They feel like it is a chronicle of incessant whinings for someone going through writer's block, but, I for one, understand very well the feeling the author describes here, of being able to write yet feeling distant from your own words, as if they lack, or for that matter, have a completely different soul than the one you had in your mind when you started to write.
This book felt like a less-occupied mind's take on Walden. Unfortunately, midway through the book, the narrative starts falling apart, and the fragments get shorter. Even the author admits his discomfort in the acknowledgement. The fragments start losing focus: they feel like unedited excerpts from a diary and start becoming self-contradictory.
The most shocking thing I need to get out of me is the resemblance I found between the author's musings and Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar. If he was a friend of mine, as soon as I finished this book, I would have called him. He didn't seem very okay...
Book 2 of 7 Books in 7 Days
"Writers are lost people.
Nobody would write a book if they weren’t lost. Nobody would write a book if they were not in search of paradise, and nobody would be in search of paradise unless they believed it might exist somewhere, which means out there, which means just beyond my reach. Writers can see paradise, but can never touch it. Writers want to belong to a place that is just beyond their reach, because if they were to reach the place they would have to do the hard work of being in it. Writers don’t belong anywhere, or to anyone, and they do not want to. They are driven by some severance and none of them understands it. Not just writers. Painters. Musicians. Artists. Art is the search for intact things in a world in which all things are broken."
Savage Gods has one of the most promising starts to a non-fiction book I've read this year. And for a significant section from the start, it does deliver.
What motivates someone for an artistic endeavour? Or do people pursue such a travail only when they lack real-world purpose?
What creates a sense of belonging? Which is better, to belong or to be?
Is it as good to have some high-end (but achievable)ambition as people make it out to be?
What makes someone try to run away from things as soon as they start to feel comfortable? Fear of attachment or loss? If so, why strive to make yourself feel you belong anywhere?
Art without pain may be just entertainment; with pain, it may be art, but at what cost to the self of its creator?
Ideals are a pox on humanity. And currently, humanity is going through a midlife crisis.
And so on. Some of these are cliché but they form very readable prose if done just right. Combine this with a dose of melancholia, and you have this book. Most of the reviews are, however, pretty harsh. They feel like it is a chronicle of incessant whinings for someone going through writer's block, but, I for one, understand very well the feeling the author describes here, of being able to write yet feeling distant from your own words, as if they lack, or for that matter, have a completely different soul than the one you had in your mind when you started to write.
This book felt like a less-occupied mind's take on Walden. Unfortunately, midway through the book, the narrative starts falling apart, and the fragments get shorter. Even the author admits his discomfort in the acknowledgement. The fragments start losing focus: they feel like unedited excerpts from a diary and start becoming self-contradictory.
The most shocking thing I need to get out of me is the resemblance I found between the author's musings and Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar. If he was a friend of mine, as soon as I finished this book, I would have called him. He didn't seem very okay...
Book 2 of 7 Books in 7 Days
July 31, 2019
Kingsnorth thought having access to his own patch of land would settle his very being, give him a sense of belonging, somewhere where he could be rooted for the first time. An opportunity came to acquire a smallholding in Ireland and after a lot of thought, they grasped it. The family could begin a simpler life, growing their own food, homeschooling and become more in tune with the natural world. A place that they could call home and discover contentment for the first time in a very long time.
Except it didn’t work out that way. He didn’t feel settled, nor that he belonged or had become an integral part of the landscape. Most troubling of all was the fact that the skills he had relied on for decades, the art of conjuring words into sentences, which he would then mould into a cohesive body of work were deserting him and he was at a total loss at what to do. It began to affect his outlook on life and he was starting to move closer to the abyss.
His exploration of why this happened will take him back to the first alphabets and their connections to the things around us, how as our language evolved, the process of abstraction from the natural world came in stages until the letters we write with bear no resemblance to things any more. He considers the ‘European Mind’ and how the desire to quantify everything has also contributed to the breaking of the links between us and the places we inhabit.
I regret every word that I have ever written, and every word I will ever write.
And I stand by all of it.
However, this disconnection to things that have been important to him all his life, has given us this searingly honest account of the meanders through his thoughts and feelings. The chapters vary in length from a few intense words to longer more reflective pieces. It does feel like the passages have had minimal editing too as you read what was swirling around in his mind at that very moment. He wonders where the words that were so freely flowing have gone, and if they will ever return. As well as pondering if the modern world with its relentless all-consuming consumption has robbed us all of the connections that we now need more than ever. Compelling reading indeed.
Except it didn’t work out that way. He didn’t feel settled, nor that he belonged or had become an integral part of the landscape. Most troubling of all was the fact that the skills he had relied on for decades, the art of conjuring words into sentences, which he would then mould into a cohesive body of work were deserting him and he was at a total loss at what to do. It began to affect his outlook on life and he was starting to move closer to the abyss.
His exploration of why this happened will take him back to the first alphabets and their connections to the things around us, how as our language evolved, the process of abstraction from the natural world came in stages until the letters we write with bear no resemblance to things any more. He considers the ‘European Mind’ and how the desire to quantify everything has also contributed to the breaking of the links between us and the places we inhabit.
I regret every word that I have ever written, and every word I will ever write.
And I stand by all of it.
However, this disconnection to things that have been important to him all his life, has given us this searingly honest account of the meanders through his thoughts and feelings. The chapters vary in length from a few intense words to longer more reflective pieces. It does feel like the passages have had minimal editing too as you read what was swirling around in his mind at that very moment. He wonders where the words that were so freely flowing have gone, and if they will ever return. As well as pondering if the modern world with its relentless all-consuming consumption has robbed us all of the connections that we now need more than ever. Compelling reading indeed.
September 28, 2019
Sad to say it, but this is one of those books that really should have been shelved. Kingsnorth's previous efforts have been disintegrating and the result is this series of loosely connected, egocentric musings about his ambiguous failures, his father, and his relationship with writing - none of which prove to be very interesting, if I'm being honest.
This is all very saddening and frustrating. When Kingsnorth is on, he is punchy and witty, and his drive led to Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto, which is fantastic. But in Savage Gods all that emerges is rambling nothingness masquerading as thinking. While many writers are cited on writing, on aspiration, and so on, all that these citations do is illustrate the gap between someone like Yeats, William Butler or W S Graham and Kingsnorth - whether it be Yeats' talent for aggrandizing the spirit of his times and building his talent for nostalgic mythopoeia into a career as a statesman and public intellectual or W. S. Graham's utter devotion to the penury of success and the life of experience, Kingsnorth is left grasping after either pole but never able to articulate his own measure for satisfaction. Or, better, he seems unable to find his feet on the ground, which is ironic given the context of this book.
At best, I would call this a process book - a text that helps its writer toward better understanding, but is of little use to its readers.
This is all very saddening and frustrating. When Kingsnorth is on, he is punchy and witty, and his drive led to Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto, which is fantastic. But in Savage Gods all that emerges is rambling nothingness masquerading as thinking. While many writers are cited on writing, on aspiration, and so on, all that these citations do is illustrate the gap between someone like Yeats, William Butler or W S Graham and Kingsnorth - whether it be Yeats' talent for aggrandizing the spirit of his times and building his talent for nostalgic mythopoeia into a career as a statesman and public intellectual or W. S. Graham's utter devotion to the penury of success and the life of experience, Kingsnorth is left grasping after either pole but never able to articulate his own measure for satisfaction. Or, better, he seems unable to find his feet on the ground, which is ironic given the context of this book.
At best, I would call this a process book - a text that helps its writer toward better understanding, but is of little use to its readers.
September 18, 2019
“The position I had painfully staked out in the world began to fragment. I began to fragment. I am still fragmenting, I think. Sometimes it scares me, sometimes it excites me. You have to come apart to be put back together in a different shape. You have to be reformed, or you rust up, and all your parts stop moving.”
Sometimes a book finds you at exactly the right moment. The moment when you need to know that someone else has felt what you feel. That someone shares the same questions and doubts and anxieties about life. It’s funny ... I’ve had this book for a few months, intending to read it before now, but apparently it ended up in my hands exactly when I needed it. ❤️
Savage Gods, a work of nonfiction, tells the story of the author’s move with his family to Ireland, where he hopes to find a home, a greater sense of belonging. Infused with the twinge of existentialism, Kingsnorth chronicles his battle with the words which are so important, yet elude him - his “savage gods” - as he finds himself unable to write after his move. At least, not in the same way he has written previously.
There is such a raw vulnerability to Kingsnorth’s writing, where each chapter reads almost like a separate journal entry. There is also an interesting dichotomy of feelings throughout ... an alternating between feeling lost and knowing deep down what to do, an exploration of how one changes through the phases of their life and struggles through these phases to be content. In this way, although Kingsnorth focuses on his writing, the emotions and experiences are in many ways universal. Anyone who has traveled a long road in their life, only to realize the end of the road did not hold what they expected, is likely to find value in Kingsnorth’s self-exploration.
For a short book (125 pages), there is so much more that could be said about this one. I find myself struggling to adequately capture the impact the writing had on me, so please reach out if you’d like to discuss this one more! Many thanks to Two Dollar Radio for the gifted ARC. Savage Gods is available today!
Sometimes a book finds you at exactly the right moment. The moment when you need to know that someone else has felt what you feel. That someone shares the same questions and doubts and anxieties about life. It’s funny ... I’ve had this book for a few months, intending to read it before now, but apparently it ended up in my hands exactly when I needed it. ❤️
Savage Gods, a work of nonfiction, tells the story of the author’s move with his family to Ireland, where he hopes to find a home, a greater sense of belonging. Infused with the twinge of existentialism, Kingsnorth chronicles his battle with the words which are so important, yet elude him - his “savage gods” - as he finds himself unable to write after his move. At least, not in the same way he has written previously.
There is such a raw vulnerability to Kingsnorth’s writing, where each chapter reads almost like a separate journal entry. There is also an interesting dichotomy of feelings throughout ... an alternating between feeling lost and knowing deep down what to do, an exploration of how one changes through the phases of their life and struggles through these phases to be content. In this way, although Kingsnorth focuses on his writing, the emotions and experiences are in many ways universal. Anyone who has traveled a long road in their life, only to realize the end of the road did not hold what they expected, is likely to find value in Kingsnorth’s self-exploration.
For a short book (125 pages), there is so much more that could be said about this one. I find myself struggling to adequately capture the impact the writing had on me, so please reach out if you’d like to discuss this one more! Many thanks to Two Dollar Radio for the gifted ARC. Savage Gods is available today!
September 5, 2020
Ohh... This one went really deep with me.
If you are in a particular place in life after a big storm that left you a changed person and you are trying to figure out what the hell had just happened or if you are trying to push against something but reality just wont cave in - this book is for you and for your inner demons and gods. The synopsis mentions that its about/for writers but I am not a writer and I still got so much out of it.
I will be re-reading this slim book again and again.
I would usually add quotes to the review but this book was one big quote all the way through and it felt so personal that it probably wont be very impressive out of context.
I purchased this book in a hardcover format and I must say that the paper quality is outstanding. Very thick and heavy, snow-white, it was such a pleasure to touch.
Thank you Paul for writing it and thanks to the publishers for publishing it in such a well made format (or whoever is responcible for some books coming out as such well made precious objects).
If you are in a particular place in life after a big storm that left you a changed person and you are trying to figure out what the hell had just happened or if you are trying to push against something but reality just wont cave in - this book is for you and for your inner demons and gods. The synopsis mentions that its about/for writers but I am not a writer and I still got so much out of it.
I will be re-reading this slim book again and again.
I would usually add quotes to the review but this book was one big quote all the way through and it felt so personal that it probably wont be very impressive out of context.
I purchased this book in a hardcover format and I must say that the paper quality is outstanding. Very thick and heavy, snow-white, it was such a pleasure to touch.
Thank you Paul for writing it and thanks to the publishers for publishing it in such a well made format (or whoever is responcible for some books coming out as such well made precious objects).
April 8, 2019
Writers are lost people. Nobody would write a book if they weren’t lost. Nobody would write a book if they were not in search of paradise, and nobody would be in search of paradise unless they believed it might exist somewhere, which means out there, which means just beyond my reach. Writers can see paradise, but can never touch it.
This is a parable of a book, a journey that's gradually told via Ireland, fables, gods, and family. I've not read Paul Kingsnorth before, but he strikes me as a quite elusive man in his mid-forties, used to writing, prone to recollect without nostalgia.
Perhaps the following lines say most about this book:
I am a writer. Writing has controlled me and now perhaps it has become me. Writing has been put, always, before everything else, because if you don’t pay obeisance to the god then the god will abandon you.
Communicating is an earthed way of trying to be god. One scratches at paper or a computer and hopes to have wrought out a more-than-passable line, and also trembles in lieu of anybody to speak with about what you've produced.
There are quite a lot of short sentences in the book, of which many are familiar and some seem like attempts to stay forever, but after a while I thought, wait, they just seem that way; it's a matter of the author struggling with his raison d'être, at least as a writer, or something that nags at his soul, a banshee of sorts that he's trying to exorcise with words, perhaps as he, around two thirds into the book, heavily starts using deities.
Other times, Kingsnorth's just funny:
I’m a writer, which means that I aim myself at all of those things but fall short at all of them most of the time. Writers fall short at everything except creating sentences. This is what we really like to do: put words in an order which can conjure something real but unseen in the air around us, and around you when you read what we have put down. Really, this business of sentences is the only thing we can do and the only thing that motivates us. All the rest—the stories, the characters, the metaphors, the morals and the messages—they come later, with varying degrees of success. Everything is built on the sentences. We just love sentences, and we can’t get proper jobs.
I feel that words are savage gods and that in the end, however well you serve them, they will eat you alive.
This book strikes me as a whole middle-age crisis, other times as a quite existential view of how humans mostly work: most things aren't straightforward, and we're quite complex, yet simple beings. We're isolated, yet very intertwined.
It's a good book to read, short, savoury, and sweet, and I would like to read another autobiography by the author, in circa 30 years.
September 9, 2019
An ode to overthinking, to minutiae.
Author as bastardized construct,
proof-proof:
In tandem with oblivion causal ratios, I calculate,
quantifying hierarchical tasking rates in the frontal lobe.
#poem
Chris Roberts, God Once Again
Author as bastardized construct,
proof-proof:
In tandem with oblivion causal ratios, I calculate,
quantifying hierarchical tasking rates in the frontal lobe.
#poem
Chris Roberts, God Once Again
October 7, 2019
These are contemplative monologues and introspections on the inspiration to life, in general, to the writing process, in particular. Most sections resonated with me and others I just let pass. Overall, it’s an interesting read, needing certain frame of mind (Zen-like meditative mood). Themes include self-identity via belonging to a place (and people). There is this dichotomy of struggles between belonging and being an outsider. Which one provides literary creativity! I liked most excellent analogies, of Campbell, on Sexes; Life; and Civilization; oscillating between Fire & Water (book-cover sketches). But I didn’t much care for the sections on skepticism and negativism (not thought out fully). Such as – ‘In Nature animals do what they are programmed for unlike human who’d think about doing and then communicate via language (pg. 116)’. So how does that make human inferior animal than the rest? In the same vain, arguments on ‘talk talk talk’ – isn’t the futility a bit overblown? Pulling down what apparently seems illogical may be romantic but hardly realistic! Here are few highlights from the book:
About creative writing; pg.13 – “The creation comes from the pain of the grinding. It is the heart being ground. It is the longing that creates the art, or the attempt of art… From the pressure, from the pain of the contradictions you carry and embody, from the wrenching of the oppositions that tear you, comes the energy that bursts into words, comes the flood, comes the pouring.” And restlessness (pain) of place/people as inspiration for creativity. Pg. 14 - “I want to sit always outside the ring of people and observe them, alone.” Railing against ideals: pg.24 - “Ideals are a pox on humanity: if you have ideals, you will go out into the world as a destroyer.”
Power of writing transcending life: pg. 93 - “… I’d have to admit that writing has always felt more real to me than life. More real and more interesting. The patterns you can make from what you see out there are better than what you actually see out there, because they are yours.” Pg. 58 - “Everything I am writing in this book is an attempt to strip something away and see what is underneath it, and that is also what fiction does at its best and what poetry has to do all the time.”
Interesting quotes: pg. 111 - “The author of the Dao De Jing knew this 2500 years back (should be year not years!). ‘He who knows does not speak,’ he wrote. ‘He who speaks does not know.’ Every generation forgets this, I suppose, and the next one has to learn it again.” Pg. 31 - “None of this is real. The Scots pine is real… the birds are real, the solidity of the Earth is real and the words are nothing… All humans do is talk. Talk talk talk and out come the sounds and like poetry they change nothing but we talk talk talk in any way and we mistake the sounds for meaning or action, and the trees stand there silently and we just talk.” Illogical conclusions (what of winds) on speech!
“In traditional Botswana, says Campbell, men are fire and women are water… If the sexes are divided by elements… so are the two halves of our lives… the first half of our lives is fire, the second water… humanity might be experiencing a midlife crisis. We have been fire… built and controlled and expanded and triumphed… suddenly we feel we can’t understand… What was the point?” - Pgs. 32 -33. “…if there is a difference between the grasses and the human who sits sometimes on the grasses, it is the human who doesn’t just get on with his work, he thinks about getting on with his work.” – Pg.116. So, what’s your point?
About creative writing; pg.13 – “The creation comes from the pain of the grinding. It is the heart being ground. It is the longing that creates the art, or the attempt of art… From the pressure, from the pain of the contradictions you carry and embody, from the wrenching of the oppositions that tear you, comes the energy that bursts into words, comes the flood, comes the pouring.” And restlessness (pain) of place/people as inspiration for creativity. Pg. 14 - “I want to sit always outside the ring of people and observe them, alone.” Railing against ideals: pg.24 - “Ideals are a pox on humanity: if you have ideals, you will go out into the world as a destroyer.”
Power of writing transcending life: pg. 93 - “… I’d have to admit that writing has always felt more real to me than life. More real and more interesting. The patterns you can make from what you see out there are better than what you actually see out there, because they are yours.” Pg. 58 - “Everything I am writing in this book is an attempt to strip something away and see what is underneath it, and that is also what fiction does at its best and what poetry has to do all the time.”
Interesting quotes: pg. 111 - “The author of the Dao De Jing knew this 2500 years back (should be year not years!). ‘He who knows does not speak,’ he wrote. ‘He who speaks does not know.’ Every generation forgets this, I suppose, and the next one has to learn it again.” Pg. 31 - “None of this is real. The Scots pine is real… the birds are real, the solidity of the Earth is real and the words are nothing… All humans do is talk. Talk talk talk and out come the sounds and like poetry they change nothing but we talk talk talk in any way and we mistake the sounds for meaning or action, and the trees stand there silently and we just talk.” Illogical conclusions (what of winds) on speech!
“In traditional Botswana, says Campbell, men are fire and women are water… If the sexes are divided by elements… so are the two halves of our lives… the first half of our lives is fire, the second water… humanity might be experiencing a midlife crisis. We have been fire… built and controlled and expanded and triumphed… suddenly we feel we can’t understand… What was the point?” - Pgs. 32 -33. “…if there is a difference between the grasses and the human who sits sometimes on the grasses, it is the human who doesn’t just get on with his work, he thinks about getting on with his work.” – Pg.116. So, what’s your point?
February 8, 2020
Well-written meditation by a middle-aged writer struggling with a kind of midlife writing crisis (but not writers' block). I suppose that I liked it, but it doesn't actually matter - he didn't write it for an audience, really, and I don't think he'd care too much whether his ruminations were profound to me, much less gave me "pleasure." Probably won't read his novels because it sounds as if they are immersive experiences (no windowpanes): e.g.,"Beast plunges [the reader] into a world ..." - which is not really my thing. But I will recommend Kingsnorth's fiction to friend who likes novels that cause him to forget to eat and sleep.
January 3, 2024
Rather than doing psychedelics, read this instead. It's roughly the same experience. Except Paul Kingsnorth is better at articulation than you'd be if you were tripping.
Also, I'd be curious to know whether Kingsnorth converted to Christianity during the time he was writing this. It seems like he was close, getting closer to it as the book went on. His account of his conversion is incredible, written here: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2...
Also, I'd be curious to know whether Kingsnorth converted to Christianity during the time he was writing this. It seems like he was close, getting closer to it as the book went on. His account of his conversion is incredible, written here: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2...
November 25, 2024
Very rarely have I experienced media that cuts to the core of my being so precisely and resonates with me so profoundly, joining the likes of Synecdoche, New York and The Poisonwood Bible.
Many will probably find this book pointless, aimless, and boring. But if you feel aimless in a world without meaning, you might find something in here that makes you feel fully seen for the first time in a long time.
Many will probably find this book pointless, aimless, and boring. But if you feel aimless in a world without meaning, you might find something in here that makes you feel fully seen for the first time in a long time.
November 8, 2025
bardzo przyjemny, łatwy w odbiorze egzystencjalny esej o języku, pisaniu (i z zastojem pisania), przynależności czy kulturze
December 21, 2020
Kingsnorth is already polarizing in some circles, and this book, from what I've seen, isn't gonna help with that. And, I get it, I understand why some people are turned off by him and this book, but I'm not gonna waste my time defending Kingsnorth on the internet. I'll just say I'm a fan. His book, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist is one of my favorite books I've read in the past ten years. I also enjoyed listening to the audiobook versions of his two novels, Wake and Beast. All this to say that I'm biased. I'm a fan and it's easier for me to look past some of the more cringe worthy passages in Savage Gods. Luckily, there's only a few. And, he makes up for it by offering a lot of interesting thoughts about the creative process and being a mid-career artist entering middle age. Maybe this book should come with a warning: this book should only be consumed by practicing artists. What might sound narcissistic, egotistical, overly dramatic, or romantic to a lay person, will, to a serious artist, be relatable.
March 8, 2020
God this was a struggle to read. That in itself is so disappointing, as I've really enjoyed Kingsnorth's previous books. Savage Gods just comes across as extremely self-indulgent navel-gazing... a particular scene where he flays himself over his inability to properly appreciate birdsong comes to mind.
DNF at p. 65.
DNF at p. 65.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 23, 2021
this was a 3.5 stars for me. loved the writing style and enjoyed the stream of consciousness but it ended up being a bit repetitive. i think it has some really good moments but at times i was like.....you've said this already.
March 25, 2024
reading this book has been a really interesting experience. at times i feel like it's amazing and i reread a page a bunch of times because i feel like it's so profound and meaningful. other times i get through entire sections of the book and feel like i just wasted all of that time. i think there is a central theme to this book, which is that nothing is black and white. lots of daily language is declarative i.e. this is the best x, x is good, x is bad, etc. really, though, everything is a little bit of the opposite, and it's super easy to get lost in that dichotomy. i think this book is a symbol of that contradiction and its and i think there's lots of interesting thoughts in here, but ultimately ones that probably have no answer. i think the enjoyment gained from this book will depend on the degree to which you believe it is still useful to ponder questions that have no answers. i think it can be interesting, but i can also see exactly why people would read this and feel like they got absolutely nothing out of it.
June 17, 2024
This reminded me of Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” (indeed the author eventually mentions Rilke in the middle of the book). However, whereas Rilke’s letters can be likened to lighting an interior fire to push one forward, Kingsnorth’s memoir/meditations seem to be stoking embers of a creative flame that is undecided if it’s dying or just about to burn even brighter. Ultimately, I’m convinced the effect is the same for any creative facing a crisis of purpose and direction in their art — endure, let go, and let the obstacle be the way.
I plan to read this again at least once every year or two. Highly recommend for any creative, especially during those (inevitable) times when one hits the proverbial wall in one’s work.
I plan to read this again at least once every year or two. Highly recommend for any creative, especially during those (inevitable) times when one hits the proverbial wall in one’s work.
June 26, 2022
Kingsnorth's off-the-cuff existential musings, about himself as a writer, about his wrestlings with spirituality, his grasping into the wind, his searching, his angst, his philosophizing, his need for silence and for something...
Interesting to read even as a precursor to the author's conversion to Orthodox Christianity! Thankful for it.
Interesting to read even as a precursor to the author's conversion to Orthodox Christianity! Thankful for it.
November 28, 2022
Plenty to make you think! But as always, Kingsnorth tries to avoid too many conclusions. Someone needs to send him a copy of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
December 20, 2022
asked a lot of questions I have asked (about words and belonging etc), but I found his process more fraught than curious
Read
May 1, 2025One of my favorite new authors of the past several years
September 21, 2022
man has midlife crisis, reads too much yeats and john zerzan, flirts with ecofascism, wonders whether writing is worth it or not, writes anyway
March 27, 2023
A book written from the vantage point of a man who is leading a life, at least on the surface, that is very much like one I would like to be leading in 20 or 25 years: married, with kids, on a glorified hobby farm, writing edgy words about how the world is in a spiritual crisis, missing something fundamental, devoid of meaning, etc. However, he is not content, and seems to think he never will be. This is hard to hear, as someone who gets much of his motivation from the idea that one day, I will be in a similar situation, and I will be content. The writing style is a little off putting at times, and I think gets in the way of the content, but otherwise thought-provoking stuff.
August 10, 2025
What is there to say about this book that each man hasn’t, in the quiet hollows and river cuts of his heart, said to himself? Truly, there is nothing a walk in a meadow, a pondering of a mountain veil, or a hot coffee by a campfire can communicate that Kingsnorth doesn’t capture in this beautiful, aggravating, haunting, pre-Christian book. You can see the cracks in his Naturalist armor as he encounters the rocky and watery face of Christ in the Irish countryside and it’s beautiful to see and to experience.
This is a book to take slowly, to eat ponderously, and to enjoy bit by bit.
This is a book to take slowly, to eat ponderously, and to enjoy bit by bit.
December 21, 2020
Kingsnorth is haunted by the alienation of modern life (being part of the "Machine") and has a strong urge to root himself and his family, get closer to nature. He moves to Ireland, buys a farm and some land, and practices Zen meditation. His memoire is an honest examination of the changes that he undergoes in the process. The outcome is very different from what he envisaged. He initially feels homesick for his formerly settled life in England; he feels that he begins to "fragment"--that he no longer feels that he knows who he is; he discovers that returning to the land is not going to "save him" in the way he had hoped. But rather than judging the move a failure, he discovers that something is urging him to further change his life, that he is undergoing some sort of spiritual metamorphosis. The wonder of this memoire is his willingness to write about the process even as it is ongoing and when he does not know the outcome.
In reading Kingsnorth's memoire, Dogen's Mountains and Rivers Sutra came to mind:
"Thirty years ago, before I began the study of Zen, I said "Mountains are mountains, waters are waters." After I got insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, I said "Mountains are not mountains, waters are not waters." But after having attained the abode of final rest (that is, Awakening), I say, "Mountains are really mountains, waters are really waters." (Eihei Dogen, circa 1240, Mountains and Rivers Sutra.)
Dogen can be interpreted as speaking to the nature of reality and selfhood. Before studying Zen, we view the outside world simplistically and at a remove: "that is a mountain, that is a river". Through Zen meditation, we discover the ever-changing nature of all things and the boundary between ourselves and the outside world softens. From this perspective, a mountain cannot be simply a mountain, because it is too complex, too wonderful, too evanescent to pin down. Is the silent mountain under a foot of snow the same as that when the bracken fronds are unfurling in Spring? And when we stand in a mountain valley, breathing in the clean air or wade in an icy stream, and as we glimpse the union between ourselves and nature, how can we speak of the mountain as an objective, external thing? Over time, these complications simplify themselves and dissolve and we can say: yes, the mountain exists, even though we know that its existence is contingent and ever-changing; and while our senses tell us that the mountain is separate, we know of the deeper unity between it and ourselves.
Kingsnorth seems to be in the middle of this transition. His sense of a separate self--distinct from nature--has begun to fragment; he feels like he is being "cracked like a nut, split in the sun and left to dry", and that "a person is a process, not a thing". And he is getting a sense of the roiling, ever-changing nature of the world:
"We tell stories of "nature" all the time, and one of those stories is that there is something called "nature" Out There, beyond the human, beyond civilization, which is another story. "Nature" is often somewhere we go to find peace: this is what it was for me for so long and still is. The green stillness. I can find great peace, great stillness in my field, but the field is never still. Everything is busy. The grasses and the trees are photosynthesizing, the insects are searching for nectar, the birds are nesting, chasing food, finding mates, fighting, the streams are ever-flowing, even the air currents are always moving."
At the same time, Kingsnorth starts to doubt the purpose and effectiveness of his writing. His success as a writer has been based on his ability to stake out a personal position, develop arguments, find a satisfying storyline that links the introduction to a book with its conclusion. But as he starts to see his self of personal identity dissolve, argumentation and exhortation lose their appeal, no longer seem to speak his personal truth. And so, faced with Lao Tzu's teaching, he asks whether knowing and speaking (writing) are compatible.
"He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know." (Lao Tzu, reputed author of Tao Te Ching, circa C6th-C4th BC.)
Kingsnorth wrote Savage Gods from a place of spiritual insecurity and searching, not knowing whether he would find solid ground. For me, this is a high risk, existential project. Inevitably, for an avid reader and a compulsive thinker like Kingsnorth, it was difficult to forego philosophizing and some sections are less convincing than others (e.g., his imagined conversations with the Norse god, Loki). But, overall, a wonderful read. I look forward to his next book, when he has realized that "Mountains are really mountains, waters are really waters."
In reading Kingsnorth's memoire, Dogen's Mountains and Rivers Sutra came to mind:
"Thirty years ago, before I began the study of Zen, I said "Mountains are mountains, waters are waters." After I got insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, I said "Mountains are not mountains, waters are not waters." But after having attained the abode of final rest (that is, Awakening), I say, "Mountains are really mountains, waters are really waters." (Eihei Dogen, circa 1240, Mountains and Rivers Sutra.)
Dogen can be interpreted as speaking to the nature of reality and selfhood. Before studying Zen, we view the outside world simplistically and at a remove: "that is a mountain, that is a river". Through Zen meditation, we discover the ever-changing nature of all things and the boundary between ourselves and the outside world softens. From this perspective, a mountain cannot be simply a mountain, because it is too complex, too wonderful, too evanescent to pin down. Is the silent mountain under a foot of snow the same as that when the bracken fronds are unfurling in Spring? And when we stand in a mountain valley, breathing in the clean air or wade in an icy stream, and as we glimpse the union between ourselves and nature, how can we speak of the mountain as an objective, external thing? Over time, these complications simplify themselves and dissolve and we can say: yes, the mountain exists, even though we know that its existence is contingent and ever-changing; and while our senses tell us that the mountain is separate, we know of the deeper unity between it and ourselves.
Kingsnorth seems to be in the middle of this transition. His sense of a separate self--distinct from nature--has begun to fragment; he feels like he is being "cracked like a nut, split in the sun and left to dry", and that "a person is a process, not a thing". And he is getting a sense of the roiling, ever-changing nature of the world:
"We tell stories of "nature" all the time, and one of those stories is that there is something called "nature" Out There, beyond the human, beyond civilization, which is another story. "Nature" is often somewhere we go to find peace: this is what it was for me for so long and still is. The green stillness. I can find great peace, great stillness in my field, but the field is never still. Everything is busy. The grasses and the trees are photosynthesizing, the insects are searching for nectar, the birds are nesting, chasing food, finding mates, fighting, the streams are ever-flowing, even the air currents are always moving."
At the same time, Kingsnorth starts to doubt the purpose and effectiveness of his writing. His success as a writer has been based on his ability to stake out a personal position, develop arguments, find a satisfying storyline that links the introduction to a book with its conclusion. But as he starts to see his self of personal identity dissolve, argumentation and exhortation lose their appeal, no longer seem to speak his personal truth. And so, faced with Lao Tzu's teaching, he asks whether knowing and speaking (writing) are compatible.
"He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know." (Lao Tzu, reputed author of Tao Te Ching, circa C6th-C4th BC.)
Kingsnorth wrote Savage Gods from a place of spiritual insecurity and searching, not knowing whether he would find solid ground. For me, this is a high risk, existential project. Inevitably, for an avid reader and a compulsive thinker like Kingsnorth, it was difficult to forego philosophizing and some sections are less convincing than others (e.g., his imagined conversations with the Norse god, Loki). But, overall, a wonderful read. I look forward to his next book, when he has realized that "Mountains are really mountains, waters are really waters."
Read
March 1, 2022I have so much to say about this book!
First, my friend--a TOTAL book reader--gave it to me, so I was gonna read it, even if I had never heard one thing about it. This was the same friend who, at one time, I considered "my first reader" of my own work, who gave me my first Ferrante, who makes her kids read great books . . . So, yeah, I'm gonna do it!
Second, Mark Rylance wrote a blurb for it. I LOVE Mark Rylance!! (The Smiths also write the epigraph.)
Third, it's published by Two Dollar Radio, an indie press that I think looks good. I kinda wanted them for my stuff. Never happened.
Fourth, a weird moment of kismet . . . The author, publishing this in 2019, briefly--like, tangentially--mentions an encounter at at the nearby college (in Ireland). He attends a guest lecture by Colin Campbell, a 50-ish year-old white Botswanan SANGOMA (like an herbalist, faith healer, witch doctor) who lived in South Africa. I heard this . . . I looked him up . . . The photos: I examined them. . . Well, at 27 or 28, whenever it was, I was one of this silly American expatriates traveling in the Transkei region of post-Apartheid South Africa. I went on an overnight hike with some other expats--led by a white sangoma from Botswana who lived in South Africa. He'd be 50-ish now.
I haven't actually dug up my old photos, which would likely solve this mystery. My guess: it's him. . .
The book. Yeah, interesting--but I think not. Many, many great quotes on writing and the writing life. Memoir?
Some issues . . .
The entire book is pretty counter to the tenet both used and abused, but valid nonetheless: "show, don't tell." The bulk of the book is highly esoteric, TELLING. There is little showing, minimal use of scene, not a memoir that puts philosophy into action. It's a book of ideas. It's like watching someone sit in the most beautiful surroundings (the Emerald Isle) while clutching his temples and crying, WHY CAN'T I WRITE!!!! WHY? WHY? WHY?
So, I'd be hesitant to call it a memoir--though everyone does. I think of memoir as showing a slice or multiple slices that reveal ideas in concrete experiences. I'd glean bigger truth from watching that white Sangoma do his stuff at 50+ rather than actually hearing his stuff . . .
My other big beef: I think he's mildly a nihilist. Ultimately, I think he's saying that he struggles to write if there really only is silence? In the face of meaningless, we stop writing. I strongly, whole-heartedly believe that writing is an existential act, an esoteric but concrete one: we write to affirm meaning. I'm not quieted!!!!!
But here's the head-spinning part, the What-The-Hellness part: Maybe he's not saying this, but I think he is?
I did find many, many great quotes on writing. Here are some:
“It's the blazing - the burning. It's the intensity of being: of love, of sorrow, joy, grief, brokenness, loss. It's the aching of all that is short and will soon be washed away. You have your one, brief, tiny, life. You have your pen. Can you convey the heat of it?”
“I feel that words are savage gods and that in the end, however well you serve them, they will eat you alive.”
"I'm a writer, and to me this has always been a calling, a duty. . . I have built my life around it: what the writing needs, the writing gets, and all else is secondary . . The writing needed me to stay on the edge, to stay burning, to stay ahead. The writing needed me, at some level, always to be unhappy."
"Really, this business of sentences is the only thing we can do and the only thing that motivates us."
And this quote by Czeslaw Milosz: "When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished?"
Did I miss the point of this book?????
September 26, 2021
I only became aware of Kingsnorth after hearing him speak in an interview with Jonathon Pageau. His story intrigued me enough to go out and pick up a couple of his books. Something about his journey resonated with the questions and struggles I was carrying with me in my own heart and mind and spirit.
From the early pages it becomes clear that this is someone bearing the weight of personal regret. Savage Gods functions as a kind of autobiography (although he is not actually that old), looking back at and taking stock of his career as a writer, as an activist (of sorts), as a husband. Much of his focus revolves around reflections of space and time, wrestling with how it is that we find meaning in what often feels meaningless. Certain things push him forward, other things hold him back. And some things do both at the same time.
This emphasis on space and time reverberates through reflections on history in light of the present, finding him unsettled with modernity in its tightly bound exorcism of the old gods. He is disenchanted, a growing problem within much of modernity. This comes out especially as he tries to contemplate his past as an environmental activist. He finds a sense of irony and conflict with the notion of something that was expressed in a posiitvely religious sense in a world that no longer has the words and language to make sense of religion. He pines for some sense of the Divine while at the same time persistantly drawn to nature itself, lost in the emptiness that seems to sit in the middle. At the heart of his story is a very specific decision on where to live, which eventually brings him back to Ireland. He is a wrestless soul who craves newness and change, and yet so much of his life has been left in uncertainty in his resistance to actually settling and growing in a particular space and time.
As the book moves forward we see him wrestle more and more with his sense of self. If I have one gripe with this book it is with the familiar path this treads towards his most definiive expression of what you might call a belief system. Although to be fair he holds this lightly. All of this existential struggle eventually lands him (recently at the age of 40) in Zen Buddhism, an entirely Westernized iteration of an Eastern practice. I say this is familiar because Zen Buddhism has a particular allure for people in his position, those who find themselves disenchanted with modernism and looking for something to feel the void left by the exorcism of the old gods. It offers a form of spirituality detached from the religious, and often in its Westernized version detached from the Divine, or God. His articulated version of this practice in his own life outlines clearly its aim and trajectory- the loss of self and desire and the move into non-existence.
Now don't get me wrong. I believe Truth can be found everywhere, but here is where I struggle. I don't think the loss of self and desire and this move towards non-existence as true liberation from the muddiness and suffeiring and struggle of this world actually gives us a way to confront and deal with the problems Kingsnorth is facing in his own life and journey, much of which I share and deeply resonate with. While it can certainly lead people to greater altruistic concern, I think when it is pared back and examined the solution of the abandonment of self and desire ultimately comes back around in its own to an elevation of self and desire. You can see this in the final third of the book where, in the absence of Truth and existence any hints of a clear path forward for Kingsnoth, as clouded as it still is (he revels in the uncertainty, the lack of answers), leads him to be content with simply being the illusion shaped by the unknown. He longs to write, and therefore speak and sing, with the silence of the trees and in the ways of the old myths, however he misplaces and neglects a necessary element of these myths that the Modern age has long forgotten- that they anhcor us in history as well as language and imagination and story. They aim necessarily at Truth. The qeustion with Truth is not that we know for certain (I resonate with Kingsnorth on this front), but that we can rest in it, grow in it, trust in it, and be shaped by it. Not in the scientific sense of truth, which can only ever demonstrate the funcionality of an idea, but in the deeply formed knowledge of our existence that becomes revealed in our participation within it. Truth is merely the conviction that this knowledge does in fact exist even where we don't yet fully see or know it. This is where I do get frustrated with tedencies to see liberation as the loss of Truth (be it the self, desire, illusions, God, existence). That to me feels empty, which Kingsnorth might, if I read him correctly, say is the point. Emptiness. A part of what draws me to my own faith in the Christian story, which shares much with the interests of Zen Buddhism on many levels, is that it calls us towards the opposite- a greater awareness of self, desire, Truth, existence, God. In this way we are enabled to become fully formed persons even within the necessary uncertainty.
From the early pages it becomes clear that this is someone bearing the weight of personal regret. Savage Gods functions as a kind of autobiography (although he is not actually that old), looking back at and taking stock of his career as a writer, as an activist (of sorts), as a husband. Much of his focus revolves around reflections of space and time, wrestling with how it is that we find meaning in what often feels meaningless. Certain things push him forward, other things hold him back. And some things do both at the same time.
This emphasis on space and time reverberates through reflections on history in light of the present, finding him unsettled with modernity in its tightly bound exorcism of the old gods. He is disenchanted, a growing problem within much of modernity. This comes out especially as he tries to contemplate his past as an environmental activist. He finds a sense of irony and conflict with the notion of something that was expressed in a posiitvely religious sense in a world that no longer has the words and language to make sense of religion. He pines for some sense of the Divine while at the same time persistantly drawn to nature itself, lost in the emptiness that seems to sit in the middle. At the heart of his story is a very specific decision on where to live, which eventually brings him back to Ireland. He is a wrestless soul who craves newness and change, and yet so much of his life has been left in uncertainty in his resistance to actually settling and growing in a particular space and time.
As the book moves forward we see him wrestle more and more with his sense of self. If I have one gripe with this book it is with the familiar path this treads towards his most definiive expression of what you might call a belief system. Although to be fair he holds this lightly. All of this existential struggle eventually lands him (recently at the age of 40) in Zen Buddhism, an entirely Westernized iteration of an Eastern practice. I say this is familiar because Zen Buddhism has a particular allure for people in his position, those who find themselves disenchanted with modernism and looking for something to feel the void left by the exorcism of the old gods. It offers a form of spirituality detached from the religious, and often in its Westernized version detached from the Divine, or God. His articulated version of this practice in his own life outlines clearly its aim and trajectory- the loss of self and desire and the move into non-existence.
Now don't get me wrong. I believe Truth can be found everywhere, but here is where I struggle. I don't think the loss of self and desire and this move towards non-existence as true liberation from the muddiness and suffeiring and struggle of this world actually gives us a way to confront and deal with the problems Kingsnorth is facing in his own life and journey, much of which I share and deeply resonate with. While it can certainly lead people to greater altruistic concern, I think when it is pared back and examined the solution of the abandonment of self and desire ultimately comes back around in its own to an elevation of self and desire. You can see this in the final third of the book where, in the absence of Truth and existence any hints of a clear path forward for Kingsnoth, as clouded as it still is (he revels in the uncertainty, the lack of answers), leads him to be content with simply being the illusion shaped by the unknown. He longs to write, and therefore speak and sing, with the silence of the trees and in the ways of the old myths, however he misplaces and neglects a necessary element of these myths that the Modern age has long forgotten- that they anhcor us in history as well as language and imagination and story. They aim necessarily at Truth. The qeustion with Truth is not that we know for certain (I resonate with Kingsnorth on this front), but that we can rest in it, grow in it, trust in it, and be shaped by it. Not in the scientific sense of truth, which can only ever demonstrate the funcionality of an idea, but in the deeply formed knowledge of our existence that becomes revealed in our participation within it. Truth is merely the conviction that this knowledge does in fact exist even where we don't yet fully see or know it. This is where I do get frustrated with tedencies to see liberation as the loss of Truth (be it the self, desire, illusions, God, existence). That to me feels empty, which Kingsnorth might, if I read him correctly, say is the point. Emptiness. A part of what draws me to my own faith in the Christian story, which shares much with the interests of Zen Buddhism on many levels, is that it calls us towards the opposite- a greater awareness of self, desire, Truth, existence, God. In this way we are enabled to become fully formed persons even within the necessary uncertainty.
February 18, 2025
A fascinating, intimate, sometimes mystic reflection on writing and meaning from a former political activist turned farmer near the River Shannon.
Savage Gods is a challenging book to review because of its nature: it is a meditation, or perhaps a rumination, by the author on his continuing search for meaning and the role of writing and the word in that search. Paul Kingsnorth fell in love with Nature from an early age and got into the green movement owing to his love of its beauty; in his twenties, he was a firebrand activist, writing for The Ecologist magazine and in the habit of chaining himself to things to stop their being bulldozed for parking lots and the like He traveled the world meeting people who were also fighting back against — what was it? Globalization, corporate rule, McWorld, industrialism? Something he could see but not yet define, though later he would call it The Machine. He realized in his long visits with traditional societies, though, that there was something missing in the West, some life had gone out of it completely: the West was desecrated, dehumanized, and so he decided to retreat to create a more human life for himself, his wife Jyoti, and their children. They found a rural cottage in Ireland and began trying to live a plainer life.
It is there that Paul writes these meditations, telling part of that backstory even as he ponders at length over the power words and writing have over him — how they demand he serve them even as he wonders if the abstract nature of the written word, of language, separates him to some degree from reality, even as it gives him the capacity to understand and think about it. There’s a lot of mysticism in this: Paul, despite being raised thoroughly secular, is God-haunted, and he conveys some of his interior arguments as dialogues between himself and the Norse gods Loki and Freya. I don’t know what I would make of this if I stumbled upon it by itself: as someone who knows Paul’s story, though, I found it incredibly interesting to view him in a transition point. I know that Paul’s journey will lead him further away from the material to the transcendent — from Buddha to Wicca to eventually to an Eastern Orthodox monastery in Ireland, where suddenly The Word will become all the more interesting as a concept. This is a strange book, the thoughts of an artist in anguish because he longs to write but finds he can’t quite catch the wind in his sails, the thoughts of an activist who is now turning trying to restore earth rather than “set the world on fire“, as the against me! song put it. As someone who is just a little younger than the age Paul was, but who has already gone through that transition from ideologue-warrior to someone seeking meaning through stewardship and creation instead of politics, I found it compelling despite its strangeness. This is a fascinating piece, but it’s not for everyone.
Savage Gods is a challenging book to review because of its nature: it is a meditation, or perhaps a rumination, by the author on his continuing search for meaning and the role of writing and the word in that search. Paul Kingsnorth fell in love with Nature from an early age and got into the green movement owing to his love of its beauty; in his twenties, he was a firebrand activist, writing for The Ecologist magazine and in the habit of chaining himself to things to stop their being bulldozed for parking lots and the like He traveled the world meeting people who were also fighting back against — what was it? Globalization, corporate rule, McWorld, industrialism? Something he could see but not yet define, though later he would call it The Machine. He realized in his long visits with traditional societies, though, that there was something missing in the West, some life had gone out of it completely: the West was desecrated, dehumanized, and so he decided to retreat to create a more human life for himself, his wife Jyoti, and their children. They found a rural cottage in Ireland and began trying to live a plainer life.
It is there that Paul writes these meditations, telling part of that backstory even as he ponders at length over the power words and writing have over him — how they demand he serve them even as he wonders if the abstract nature of the written word, of language, separates him to some degree from reality, even as it gives him the capacity to understand and think about it. There’s a lot of mysticism in this: Paul, despite being raised thoroughly secular, is God-haunted, and he conveys some of his interior arguments as dialogues between himself and the Norse gods Loki and Freya. I don’t know what I would make of this if I stumbled upon it by itself: as someone who knows Paul’s story, though, I found it incredibly interesting to view him in a transition point. I know that Paul’s journey will lead him further away from the material to the transcendent — from Buddha to Wicca to eventually to an Eastern Orthodox monastery in Ireland, where suddenly The Word will become all the more interesting as a concept. This is a strange book, the thoughts of an artist in anguish because he longs to write but finds he can’t quite catch the wind in his sails, the thoughts of an activist who is now turning trying to restore earth rather than “set the world on fire“, as the against me! song put it. As someone who is just a little younger than the age Paul was, but who has already gone through that transition from ideologue-warrior to someone seeking meaning through stewardship and creation instead of politics, I found it compelling despite its strangeness. This is a fascinating piece, but it’s not for everyone.
November 14, 2022
Savage Gods is a book about writing and a book about being stuck and a book about trying to figure things out. Kingsnorth writes about how he and his wife, Jyoti, bought a house and some land in Ireland because he wanted to feel connected to a place, and because he thought "that the work of being in a place would still [his] unquiet mind" (7). As it turns out: wherever you go, there you are, and if you're a writer with a tendency to be very much in your head, you will probably still be very much in your head even if you are also doing the physical work of planting trees and tending to fields and growing food. Kingsnorth fantasizes, sometimes, about a bigger change of place, a bigger change of self: "I would like to live on the Grand Canal. I would like to drop all of this and move to Venice with Jyoti and change my name and wear a linen suit every day and wander the streets and drink strange orange drinks in little bars down crumbling alleyways and gaze up at huge Tintorettos in dark old churches, forever" (96). But he doesn't, or at any rate hasn't yet. What he has done is written this book, which is partly about the specifics of his life (his sense that his old way of writing no longer serves him, his reactions against his father and his father's values, when he was younger, and how he feels when his dad eventually takes his own life) and partly about how he conceptualizes the mid-life moment he's in, which he describes in the context of a talk he heard by Colin Campbell about the idea, in Botswana, that "the first half of our lives is fire, the second water" (32).
My husband read this book a few years ago and loved it, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it, too, though it wasn't exactly what I expected. I was expecting more about Kingsnorth's daily life in Ireland, and I liked the moments when he writes specifically about the place he's in and his experience of it—like at the start of the book when he talks about the field he's sitting in and describes it as "a long, thin field, grass and dock and plantain and ground ivy, hedged in with thorn and sycamore and elder" (4). Or when he talks about trying to "resist the impulse to catalog" but admits that he's "been making a list for three years of all the birds that visit our land in the course of the year" and then gives us the "edited highlights": "Wagtail. Bullfinch. Dunnock. Wren. Collared dove. Robin. Long-tailed tit. Goldfinch. Swift. Swallow. Blackcap. Coal tit. Willow warbler. Sparrowhawk. Fieldfare. Pheasant. Heron" (28). But I ended up liking the other aspects of the book, too, in part because Kingsnorth's writing, at the sentence/phrase level, is really really satisfying.
My husband read this book a few years ago and loved it, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it, too, though it wasn't exactly what I expected. I was expecting more about Kingsnorth's daily life in Ireland, and I liked the moments when he writes specifically about the place he's in and his experience of it—like at the start of the book when he talks about the field he's sitting in and describes it as "a long, thin field, grass and dock and plantain and ground ivy, hedged in with thorn and sycamore and elder" (4). Or when he talks about trying to "resist the impulse to catalog" but admits that he's "been making a list for three years of all the birds that visit our land in the course of the year" and then gives us the "edited highlights": "Wagtail. Bullfinch. Dunnock. Wren. Collared dove. Robin. Long-tailed tit. Goldfinch. Swift. Swallow. Blackcap. Coal tit. Willow warbler. Sparrowhawk. Fieldfare. Pheasant. Heron" (28). But I ended up liking the other aspects of the book, too, in part because Kingsnorth's writing, at the sentence/phrase level, is really really satisfying.
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December 11, 2022Words are unreliable.
Savage Gods by Paul Kingsnorth speaks to me.
The author explores his own paralyzing inability to feel connected to or find purpose in his writing. He’s moved to a beautiful rural area in Ireland, and for all his efforts, he fails to feel rooted, to feel a sense of home. Life is split in two phases, the first half defined as fire, the other half water. Fire emphasizes our passion and urgency to express, create. To be seen, heard and felt by the world. The fire drives us to make our mark on the world. The water eventually draws us in with time. We eventually surrender our hotheadedness and give ourselves over to the water.
Kingsnorth has lived in many different places, always wrestling with a restless creative spirit, and yet never felt truly connected to a physical place in his life. His frustration with the obvious, immovable truth reminds me of my own creative struggles. I feel like a transplant in someone else’s space, never comfortable anywhere I inhabit. As I’ve aged, my ability to reach for words, the one thing I considered reliable, has become more a fight, more a struggle than a willful cleansing. Words have begun to haunt me in places it used to smile. Now they only jeer tauntingly.
This book explores the complexities of humanity, existence and what you do with the rest of your life once you realize you’re not living the life you thought you’d have. I can relate to this struggle as I begin the second half of my thirties. The rest of my life looms before me, platoons of questions marching ever-closer to an unknown future.
Savage Gods explores the depths of writer’s block, the alarming helplessness of identity crisis and the hopelessness that surrounds finding oneself and one’s place in a world that is growing darker and colder as the years go by. This book came to me at a time I needed it most, and I wholeheartedly appreciate my local library for carrying it. It spoke to the brokenness in me, even to wounds I was not previously aware of before.
I'd recommend this book to writers, artists and humans alike that feel their backs are against the wall, to anyone questioning themselves and life in general, to anyone who still feels they've been swept up in a storm that has yet to relent. This book may not be for everybody, but perhaps it is for you.
Savage Gods by Paul Kingsnorth speaks to me.
The author explores his own paralyzing inability to feel connected to or find purpose in his writing. He’s moved to a beautiful rural area in Ireland, and for all his efforts, he fails to feel rooted, to feel a sense of home. Life is split in two phases, the first half defined as fire, the other half water. Fire emphasizes our passion and urgency to express, create. To be seen, heard and felt by the world. The fire drives us to make our mark on the world. The water eventually draws us in with time. We eventually surrender our hotheadedness and give ourselves over to the water.
Kingsnorth has lived in many different places, always wrestling with a restless creative spirit, and yet never felt truly connected to a physical place in his life. His frustration with the obvious, immovable truth reminds me of my own creative struggles. I feel like a transplant in someone else’s space, never comfortable anywhere I inhabit. As I’ve aged, my ability to reach for words, the one thing I considered reliable, has become more a fight, more a struggle than a willful cleansing. Words have begun to haunt me in places it used to smile. Now they only jeer tauntingly.
This book explores the complexities of humanity, existence and what you do with the rest of your life once you realize you’re not living the life you thought you’d have. I can relate to this struggle as I begin the second half of my thirties. The rest of my life looms before me, platoons of questions marching ever-closer to an unknown future.
Savage Gods explores the depths of writer’s block, the alarming helplessness of identity crisis and the hopelessness that surrounds finding oneself and one’s place in a world that is growing darker and colder as the years go by. This book came to me at a time I needed it most, and I wholeheartedly appreciate my local library for carrying it. It spoke to the brokenness in me, even to wounds I was not previously aware of before.
I'd recommend this book to writers, artists and humans alike that feel their backs are against the wall, to anyone questioning themselves and life in general, to anyone who still feels they've been swept up in a storm that has yet to relent. This book may not be for everybody, but perhaps it is for you.
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