Reading Backwards
About this book
Reading Backwards is John Crowley’s first collection of non-fiction since In Other Words was published in 2007. Like its predecessor, this new book reflects an astonishing range of interests, both literary and otherwise. Like its predecessor, it is a book that no John Crowley fan can afford to miss.The volume opens with the autobiographical “My Life in the Theater,” a memoir of the younger Crowley’s earliest ambitions, and closes with the moving and memorable “Practicing the Arts of Peace.” In between, the author offers us more than thirty carefully crafted essays, each one notable for its insight, intelligence and typically graceful prose.The opening section, A Voice from the Easy Chair, reflects Crowley’s tenure as Easy Chair columnist for Harper’s Magazine. Subjects include life under the once omni-present threat of the Selective Service Board, the enduring personal importance of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and thoughts on what it means to be truly well read. The second section, Fictional Voices, is filled with acute commentary on a wide range of books and writers, among them SF masters such as Paul Park, Ursula K. le Guin and Thomas Disch; the important, if neglected, historical novelist David Stacton (a model for the fictional Ffellowes Kraft of the Ægypt novels); classic science fiction novels of the 1950s, and much, much more. The final section, Looking Outward, Looking In, ranges freely across a wide variety of subjects and ideas, such as UFO literature, the utopian architecture of Norman Bel Geddes, the life and career of renowned theosophist Helen Blavatsky, and the nature of time.Reading Backwards is a book that can be read from beginning to end with enormous pleasure. It can also be read and enjoyed in whatever order the reader prefers. However it’s read, it’s a multifarious source of entertainment, illumination, and thought, and offers a fascinating glimpse into the intellectual life of one of the finest novelists of our time.Limited: 750 signed numbered hardcover copiesLettered: 26 signed leatherbound copies, housed in a custom traycaseTable of Contents:IntroductionPrologue: My Life in the Theater 1910—1960Section One: A Voice from the Easy ChairEverything that RisesDressed to KillRule, BritannicaA Ring-Formed WorldUniversal UseSpare the DarlingOn Not Being Well-ReadSelective ServiceAn Artist of the Sleeping WorldSection Two: Fictional VoicesA Postcard from UrsulaPaul Park’s Hidden WorldsLife Work: The Fiction of Nicholson BakerLeslie Epstein’s UproarsBen Katchor’s Cardboard SuitcaseRemembering Thomas DischJoan Aiken and the Wolves of Willoughby ChaseDavid Stacton and the Judges of the Secret CourtThe Hero of a Thousand DreamsLittle Criminals: The Fiction of Richard HughesRichard Hughes: In HazardBorn to be PosthumousThe Whole Household of ManBlossom and Fade: Herman Hesse and The Glass Bead GameNine Classic Science Fiction novels of the 1950sSection Three: Looking Outward, Looking InThe Man who Invented the 20th CenturyStranger Things: UFOs and Life on the MoonMetamorphosis: Rosamond Purcell’s Natural HistoryUnrealismMadame and the MastersThe Ones Who Walk Away from MetropolisA Few Moments in EternityWorks of MercyThe Next Future/TotalitopiaA Well Without a BottomNew Ghosts and How to Know ThemTime After TimeSqueak and GibberPracticing the Arts of Peace