Copyright 1941. Photo of Kenneth Patchen supplied by Marcus Williamson."Inspired by one of the finest lyrics in the English language, the anonymous, pre-Shakespearean Tom O'Bedlam :
'...By a knight of ghosts and shadows"Kenneth Patchen sets off on an allegorical journey of his own in which the far boundaries of love and murder, madness and sex are sensually explored. His is the tale of a disordered pilgrimage to H.Roivas (Heavenly Savior) in which the deranged responses of individuals point up the outer madness from which they derive in a more imaginative way than social protest generally allows.
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world's end--
Methinks it is no journey...'
"A chronicle of violent fury and compassion, written two decades ago when Surrealism was still vigorous and doing battle with psychotic 'reality', The Journal of Albion Moonlight is the American monument to engagement . Like Camus, Kenneth Patchen is anti-cool, anti-hip, anti-beat. He is involved with Man's tormented soul -- it is his! -- and with the abusive and destructive purposes to which it succumbs. Possessed by a wild, mordant humor and an agonized pity, he protests the war-mad years of the Forties and, unluckily, his work has gained rather than lost its timeliness. Mankind's chaotic follies and Patchen's stature combine to assure the Journal a permanent place in literature." [jacket blurb, US pbk, 1961]
"The Journal of Albion Moonlight is a work of unmistakable genius. Nothing like it has been written... in all English literature it stands alone... I know of no other American writer capable of giving us such a...truthful, fearless, and harrowing account... Albion Moonlight is the most naked figure of a man I have encountered in all literature". --Henry Miller.
Highly recommended.
