{"id":6377,"date":"2014-04-05T18:15:10","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T00:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6377"},"modified":"2014-04-06T10:37:28","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T16:37:28","slug":"there-thats-done-almost-also-john-cowper-powys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6377","title":{"rendered":"There, That’s Done, Almost. Also John Cowper Powys"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, destroyed at the orders of Henry VIII (Wikimedia Commons).<\/p><\/div>\n

Where did the week go?<\/p>\n

It seems like setting up the AAR<\/a> sessions \u2014 two solo for Contemporary Pagan Studies<\/a>, two co-sponsored, and one “quad” (four sponsors) \u2014 that plus a little snow, some fire department maintenance work, and some chainsaw issues that don’t belong here totally exhausted all my psychic energy. Just need to line up one more panel respondent.<\/p>\n

When it is completed, I will publish the line-up of papers.<\/p>\n

For refuge, I have fled to Glastonbury, not the real town but a close relative, John Cowper Powys’ massive novel A Glastonbury Romance<\/em>. <\/a><\/p>\n

As the explorer\/writer Lawrence Millman said in a 2000 Atlantic<\/em> piece<\/a>, “One doesn’t read Powys so much as enlist in him.” (Of course, if you read all of A Song of Fire and Ice<\/em><\/a>, you have “enlisted” in George R. R. Martin. Most people watch the TV series<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

This is all the fault of Carole Cusack, who in a recent blog interview on Albion Calling <\/em><\/a>pronounced that “the entire oeuvre of John Cowper Powys should be of crucial interest to contemporary Pagans, but I suspect that he is almost unread these days, to everyone\u2019s detriment, not just the Pagans.”<\/p>\n

I took that as a challenge, and the helpful inter-library loan librarian quickly produced not just A Glastonbury Romance (1933) but Powys’ Autobiography<\/em> (1934), which I read first. I could write more about the Autobiography<\/em>. It’s frank enough, but repetitious \u2014 a good editor could have cut it by 40 percent without cutting meat. To quote Millman,<\/p>\n

It is a record not of Powys’s achievements but of his various inadequacies. In it he described his manias and phobias, his “idiotic” mouth and “Neanderthal pate,” and particularly his sexual failures. He discussed “the sickening moments of dead sea desolation that came to me from my ulcerated stomach” and his chronic constipation. He called himself a “scarecrow Don Quixote with the faint heart of Sancho.” And yet the mood of the Autobiography<\/i> is not gloomy or self-pitying. After all, this book was written by a man who treasured being “ill-constituted.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was surprised, therefore, how good A Glastonbury Romance<\/em> is, if you are willing to give it time. Robert Altman<\/a> would have struggled to direct a hypothetical movie version, there are so many interlaced stories going on.<\/p>\n

Some of them are pure soap opera: Will Sam admit that he is the father of Nell’s baby? Will John and Mary be happily married even though they are first cousins? Will Mad Bet’s magical working against Mary destroy her marriage? Will the Communists destroy Philip’s factory? What is the nature of the esoteric books that Sam is getting from Owen the Welsh antiquary? And what is the Holy Grail?<\/p>\n

Add the (feeble) influence of the dead, the palpable influence of The Past, the wind that blow through people’s dreams, and the all-out astral-plane battles between different factions trying to determine the future of Glastonbury. It’s really quite complex.<\/p>\n

You might say that I have enlisted and will see it through to the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where did the week go? It seems like setting up the AAR sessions \u2014 two solo for Contemporary Pagan Studies, two co-sponsored, and one “quad” (four sponsors) \u2014 that plus a little snow, some fire department maintenance work, and some chainsaw issues that don’t belong here totally exhausted all my psychic energy. Just need to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,21,216,5],"class_list":["post-6377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-england","tag-literature","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1ER","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10707,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10707","url_meta":{"origin":6377,"position":0},"title":"All the Books Set in Glastonbury","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 10, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"From\u00a0 Vicki Steward's\u00a0 blog Normal For Glastonbury: Life in the Oddest Town in England, a list of all the novels set in Glastonbury. There some Phil Rickman titles there that I had missed, possibly because they were categorized as YA and published under a different name. Marion Zimmer Bradley, of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, destroyed at the orders of Henry VIII ","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/640px-Glastonbury_Abbey_ruins_c1900-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/640px-Glastonbury_Abbey_ruins_c1900-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/640px-Glastonbury_Abbey_ruins_c1900-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":12202,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12202","url_meta":{"origin":6377,"position":1},"title":"Invoking Gods and Elves","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I am thinking of starting a series called \"What You Can Do with a Master's Degree,\" such as be a lecturer or start your own online school. There was a time, pre-television, when well-known authors went on lecture tours, city to city, speaking to local literary societies, school groups, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8041,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8041","url_meta":{"origin":6377,"position":2},"title":"Normal for Glastonbury, Normal for Boulder","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I love snarky local blogs. Unfortunately, the one for my little mountain county seems mostly devoted these days to attacking one county commissioner candidate, so I will spare you that. But thanks to a Facebook friend, I was introduced to Normal for Glastonbury, which contains such nuggets as these about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4862,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4862","url_meta":{"origin":6377,"position":3},"title":"Secret Doings in Glastonbury","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Santa showed up with a bottle of Glenlivet and Phil Rickman's novel The Bones of Avalon. It's a sort of typical Rickman-ish set-up \u2014 there are places on the land where certain hidden earth-forces are concentrated and influence the inhabitants in not necessarily good ways, especially when they are awakened\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/a\/aa\/Glastonburyabbey.jpg\/200px-Glastonburyabbey.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13693,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13693","url_meta":{"origin":6377,"position":4},"title":"20 Years of British Paganism: Free Zoom Lecture with Glastonbury-based Writer Liz Williams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 21, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"UPDATE: This event has been postponed. I do not know why -- I just got the email from \"The Zoom Team.\" I will post when it is re-scheduled. Sad. Liz Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Glastonbury, England, where she is co-director of a witchcraft supply\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1093,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1093","url_meta":{"origin":6377,"position":5},"title":"Learning on the Ground","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This is what online \"learning\" cannot do.A writer from the Guardian accompanies some British secondary students on a field trip to Glastonbury. (I happen to know the teacher.)The object, for Jamison, is not to deconstruct the stories and myths of Glastonbury. \"The point is for them to experience the story,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"education\"","block_context":{"text":"education","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=education"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6377"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6392,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377\/revisions\/6392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}