HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Endless Things (Aegypt Vo.l 4) by John…
Loading...

Endless Things (Aegypt Vo.l 4) (edition 2009)

by John Crowley

Series: Ægypt Cycle (4)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
391664,430 (4.16)16
Praise for the Ægypt sequence: "WithLittle, Big, Crowley established himself as America''s greatest living writer of fantasy. Ægypt confirms that he is one of our finest living writers, period." --Michael Dirda "A dizzying experience, achieved with unerring security of technique." --The New York Times Book Review "A master of language, plot, and characterization." --Harold Bloom "The further in you go, the bigger it gets." --James Hynes "The writing here is intricate and thoughtful, allusive and ironic. . . .Ægyptbears many resemblances, incidental and substantive, to Thomas Pynchon''s wonderful 1966 novelThe Crying of Lot 49." --USA Today "An original moralist of the same giddy heights occupied by Thomas Mann and Robertson Davies." --San Francisco Chronicle This is the fourth novel--and much-anticipated conclusion--of John Crowley''s astonishing and lauded Ægypt sequence: a dense, lyrical meditation on history, alchemy, and memory. Spanning three centuries, and weaving together the stories of Renaissance magician John Dee, philosopher Giordano Bruno, and present-day itinerant historian and writer Pierce Moffitt, the Ægypt sequence is as richly significant as Lawrence Durrell''s Alexandria Quartet or Anthony Powell''s Dance to the Music of Time. Crowley, a master prose stylist, explores transformations physical, magical, alchemical, and personal in this epic, distinctly American novel where the past, present, and future reflect each other. "It is a work of great erudition and deep humanity that is as beautifully composed as any novel in my experience." --Washington Post Book World "An unpredictable, free-flowing, sui generis novel." --Los Angeles Times "WithEndless Things and the completion of the Ægypt cycle, Crowley has constructed one of the finest, most welcoming tales contemporary fiction has to offer us." --Book Forum "Crowley''s peculiar kind of fantasy: a conscious substitute for the magic in which you don''t quite believe any more." --London Review of Books  "A beautiful palimpsest as complex, mysterious and unreliable as human memory." --Seattle Times "This year, while millions of Harry Potter fans celebrated and mourned the end of their favorite series, a much smaller but no less devoted group of readers marked another literary milestone: the publication of the last book in John Crowley''s Ægypt Cycle." --Matt Ruff "Crowley''s eloquent and captivating conclusion to his Ægypt tetralogy finds scholar Pierce Moffet still searching for the mythical Ægypt, an alternate reality of magic and marvels that have been encoded in our own world''s myths, legends and superstitions. Pierce first intuited the realm''s existence from the work of cult novelist Fellowes Kraft. Using Kraft''s unfinished final novel as his Baedeker, Pierce travels to Europe, where he spies tantalizing tracesof Ægypt''s mysteries in the Gnostic teachings of the Rosicrucians, the mysticism of John Dee, the progressive thoughts of heretical priest Giordano Bruno and the "chemical wedding" of two 17th-century monarchs in Prague. Like Pierce''s travels, the final destination for this modern fantasy epic is almost incidental to its telling. With astonishing dexterity, Crowley (Lord Byron''s Novel) parallels multiple story lines spread across centuries and unobtrusively deploys recurring symbols and motifs to convey a sense of organic wholeness. Even as Pierce''s quest ends on a fulfilling personal note, this marvelous tale comes full circle to reinforce its timeless themes of transformation, re-creation and immortality." --Publishers Weekly Locus Award finalist John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine. His most recent novel isFour Freedoms. He teaches creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He finds it more gratifying that almost all of his work is still in print.… (more)
Member:mikagami
Title:Endless Things (Aegypt Vo.l 4)
Authors:John Crowley
Info:Overlook TP (2009), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 384 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:*****
Tags:fiction, fantasy, magical realism, American Literature, 21st century

Work Information

Endless Things by John Crowley

None
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 16 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 6 (next | show all)
After re-reading for the umpteenth time two all time favorite Crowleys: Engine Summer (wrongly, I think, considered the last of his minor books instead of the first of his major ones), and the almost universally acclaimed Little, Big, I was still hungry for more. Sadly, I can't love what I've now read of the Aegypt quartet with the same passion as ES and LB; there are too many languors, too many tropes that are just a little too twee (all those heavily symbolic car names and fanciful place names, all that portentous italicization) and IMHO the unengaging, benighted intellectual Pierce Moffitt is simply not up to the job of central consciousness for this massive work (we do get breaks from him, thankfully, but not enough). And yet, all that said, Crowley still has the power to transfix with his narrative skills, his complex arcane histories, his epiphanies that arise believably out of the things of this world, and the often astoundingly lovely lyricism of his prose. He comes to the inevitable writer's conclusion that only stories offer the real possibility of transforming this world; it's his final abandonment of the mystery and magic he's so capable of calling into being that has disappointed a lot of readers of Aegypt--and while I get the rationale, I'm one of them, I hate to say. ( )
1 vote CSRodgers | May 3, 2014 |
A coda and wrap-up following the turbulent Demonomania, this is a meadering wistful reminder that Crowley wrote the cycle over 20 years, and aged alongside his characters and his concerns. ( )
  adzebill | Jun 1, 2011 |
"Endless things" is certainly an appropriate title for this, the 4th book of the Aegypt cycle and the culmination of 30 years of Crowley's work. This is the most self-conscious and self-referential of the four books: all along, the reader has had the sense that the unfinished book by Fellowes Kraft and the unstarted book by Pierce Moffet are actually the books of the Aegypt cycle, and Endless Things confirms that suspicion, even offering some criticism of itself. And, like the unfinished books within the book and like the lives of the characters in the book, it doesn't really have an end as such. We have had four volumes of Crowley's amazing writing to get to know the characters in depth. They seem so real that it would be corny if their story came to a story-book conclusion with a happily ever after. Instead of ending, with a conclusion that wraps everything up and makes sense of the previous four volumes, the story simply stops at a relatively settled and peaceful moment in everyone's lives.

I was hoping that this volume would make sense of the previous three books, and tie together their rambling and desperate plot-lines into a more unified whole. It doesn't, but I don't think I'm disappointed by that. Crowley's writing is such a delight to read: he uses simple vocabulary and simple sentences, and yet he can pack more meaning and emotion into a simple turn of phrase than any other author I know. Over four volumes, he has managed to tell us so much about Pierce and the other characters, and to make them so real: it is like getting to know a really close friend and learning their entire life history. I found the whole series incredibly enjoyable, even if I wasn't sure what (if anything) Crowley was trying to say.

I think, like all of Crowley's books, I need to re-read these over the years. I think I will uncover more and more layers of complexity the more I revisit them. ( )
2 vote Gwendydd | Jun 20, 2010 |
  georgematt | Oct 23, 2009 |
A very disappointing, and nonmagical, conclusion to a beloved series. It's as though Prospero not only burned his books but denied that magic ever existed. ( )
  MuseofIre | Jul 6, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 6 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review

Belongs to Series

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
"But then," I said, feeling a bit bemused, "would we have to eat again from the Tree of Knowledge, in order to fall back into the state of innocence?"
"Of course," he answered. "That is the final chapter of history of the world."—Heinrich von Kleist, "On the Marionette Theatre"
Dedication
First words
Y-tag was the designation that Hitler and the German High Command gave to the day—it was September 2, 1939—on which they had determined to send their forces across the border into Poland.
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

Praise for the Ægypt sequence: "WithLittle, Big, Crowley established himself as America''s greatest living writer of fantasy. Ægypt confirms that he is one of our finest living writers, period." --Michael Dirda "A dizzying experience, achieved with unerring security of technique." --The New York Times Book Review "A master of language, plot, and characterization." --Harold Bloom "The further in you go, the bigger it gets." --James Hynes "The writing here is intricate and thoughtful, allusive and ironic. . . .Ægyptbears many resemblances, incidental and substantive, to Thomas Pynchon''s wonderful 1966 novelThe Crying of Lot 49." --USA Today "An original moralist of the same giddy heights occupied by Thomas Mann and Robertson Davies." --San Francisco Chronicle This is the fourth novel--and much-anticipated conclusion--of John Crowley''s astonishing and lauded Ægypt sequence: a dense, lyrical meditation on history, alchemy, and memory. Spanning three centuries, and weaving together the stories of Renaissance magician John Dee, philosopher Giordano Bruno, and present-day itinerant historian and writer Pierce Moffitt, the Ægypt sequence is as richly significant as Lawrence Durrell''s Alexandria Quartet or Anthony Powell''s Dance to the Music of Time. Crowley, a master prose stylist, explores transformations physical, magical, alchemical, and personal in this epic, distinctly American novel where the past, present, and future reflect each other. "It is a work of great erudition and deep humanity that is as beautifully composed as any novel in my experience." --Washington Post Book World "An unpredictable, free-flowing, sui generis novel." --Los Angeles Times "WithEndless Things and the completion of the Ægypt cycle, Crowley has constructed one of the finest, most welcoming tales contemporary fiction has to offer us." --Book Forum "Crowley''s peculiar kind of fantasy: a conscious substitute for the magic in which you don''t quite believe any more." --London Review of Books  "A beautiful palimpsest as complex, mysterious and unreliable as human memory." --Seattle Times "This year, while millions of Harry Potter fans celebrated and mourned the end of their favorite series, a much smaller but no less devoted group of readers marked another literary milestone: the publication of the last book in John Crowley''s Ægypt Cycle." --Matt Ruff "Crowley''s eloquent and captivating conclusion to his Ægypt tetralogy finds scholar Pierce Moffet still searching for the mythical Ægypt, an alternate reality of magic and marvels that have been encoded in our own world''s myths, legends and superstitions. Pierce first intuited the realm''s existence from the work of cult novelist Fellowes Kraft. Using Kraft''s unfinished final novel as his Baedeker, Pierce travels to Europe, where he spies tantalizing tracesof Ægypt''s mysteries in the Gnostic teachings of the Rosicrucians, the mysticism of John Dee, the progressive thoughts of heretical priest Giordano Bruno and the "chemical wedding" of two 17th-century monarchs in Prague. Like Pierce''s travels, the final destination for this modern fantasy epic is almost incidental to its telling. With astonishing dexterity, Crowley (Lord Byron''s Novel) parallels multiple story lines spread across centuries and unobtrusively deploys recurring symbols and motifs to convey a sense of organic wholeness. Even as Pierce''s quest ends on a fulfilling personal note, this marvelous tale comes full circle to reinforce its timeless themes of transformation, re-creation and immortality." --Publishers Weekly Locus Award finalist John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine. His most recent novel isFour Freedoms. He teaches creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He finds it more gratifying that almost all of his work is still in print.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
This is the fourth novel—and much-anticipated conclusion—of John Crowley's astonishing and lauded Ægypt sequence: a dense, lyrical meditation on history, alchemy, and memory. Spanning three centuries, and weaving together the stories of Renaissance magician John Dee, philosopher Giordano Bruno, and present-day itinerant historian and writer Pierce Moffett, the Ægypt sequence is as richly significant as Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet or Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time. Crowley, a master prose stylist, explores transformations physical, magical, alchemical, and personal in this epic, distinctly American novel where the past, present, and future reflect each other.
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (4.16)
0.5
1
1.5
2 4
2.5
3 7
3.5 3
4 16
4.5 3
5 24

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,187,068 books! | Top bar: Always visible