Patron-Only AMA #8 April 2026

I finished reading 'Shadows of the Sun' this week and I'm so glad I pushed through. Harry's poetic expression is by *far* best captured through his entries rather than his actual poetry for me. So too is his unusual humor: "...there is no privacy in [America]...even in the pantry the telephone kept ringing until I poured a cocktail down it." At one point he (or a fortune teller - it was slightly unclear) predicted that Caresse would die at 77, which she did. I forget if that was in 'Black Sun' or not, but, alongside so much in there, it adds to the mysticism around him. It's a slow read on account of the style and the small text, but through it all you get a sense of scale for his enormously full life. The lingering feeling is that he was at once mad and onto something vital.

14:18 There's a word similar (though not the same) to it coined by Tolkien, which is "eucatastrophe," a catastrophe that results in the protagonist's well-being. Another way to look at your approach to literary aesthetics is you prefer seeking literature that promises never-ending questions rather than literature that promises never-ending answers.

Love these Q and A’s man, feels like catching up with an old friend once a month