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David Rakoff and Aleister Crowley
By Psyche | February 16, 2008
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David Rakoff is an essayist and journalist; he’s written for New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vogue, and Salon. I bought his first collection of essays, Fraud, several years ago, but it sat unread until I picked up his latest Don’t Get Too Comfortable (2005) a week ago and made short work of both. He’s a fabulously entertaining writer and they provided a lovely break from Renaissance treatises on alchemy, tarot and demon relations in the contemporary psyche1.
In Fraud he’s a Canadian Jew living in New York, the city of his dreams2. His essays tend to follow an autobiographical style, his take on the assignments he’s given, or volunteers for, in various assignments, on vacation, and general musings, which range from the time he lived (and feared) in Japan, his stint at Barney’s as a Christmas Freud, an attempt to revisit the Toronto hospital caring for his sperm after receiving chemotherapy treatments, and a spontaneous vacation to Loch Ness, among other things.
Loch Ness is a a beautiful place, and, while when I visited the weather was unseasonably good, I seemed to have a better time of it that he describes in “I’ll Take the Low Road”. Due to the crazy cross-Atlantic nature of our relationship, my husband and I frequently flew back and forth from Toronto to Manchester before he finally moved here. One summer I went for two and a half months, we spent weeks just driving around England, Wales, Scotland – as far north as Inverness – and of course, stopped in for a few days to see the famous loch. We seemed to have been more amused by our experience by the mythology and Nessie kitsch than Rakoff. Perhaps it was the solitary nature of his trips, or the obsession with plagues.
However, he did spot something I missed. At one of the museums he learns that “Aleister Crowley, noted enthusiast of the black arts” maintained a house in the hamlet of Boleskine, now owned by Led Zepplin’s Jimmy Page3. It struck me as such a random thing to comment on. Which holds the greater attraction?
Rakoff opens Don’t Get Too Comfortable with an essay detailing his decision to become an American citizen – almost an apology, really – though the process was easier and more straightforward than he’d expected. He writes about the time he worked as a Pool Ambassador on assignment, fashion in Paris, and, somewhat strangely, cryogenics.
“Off We’re Gonna Shuffle” is a light piece on vague transhumanists interested in conquering death, you know, somehow. He attends a less than stellar conference, and visits a cryogenic facility. He writes, commenting on the standard office décor: “It’s not like I had been expecting the dark, heavy draperies of an Alistair Crowley decadence – ravens and human-skull wall sconces - but maybe a little chilly steeliness of Gattica might have been nice.”4
Aside from misspelling of Aleister Crowley’s name5, I found this presentation of Crowley odd. Two references in as many books, both gently mocking - I wonder at his context for Crowley?
Sure, the newspaper headlines of Crowley’s day called him the “Wickedest Man in the World” - every biography picks up on this bit of sensationalism, but what is the understanding of the average person?
The biographies also love to cite headlines littered with allusions to various practices deemed too nefarious to state outright, The Beatles included him on album art for their Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and, as cited in the Nessie museum and repeated in Rakoff’s book, Jimmy Page is quite the enthusiast.
In 2002 the BBC counted Crowley among the top 100 British heroes of all time in their series, Great Britons, where an expert on cultural icons who is based at Bath University, Helen Haste, views Crowley, “once seen as the most evil man alive for dabbling in Satanism”, and his inclusion on the list as epitomizing “British eccentricity”6. While remaining decidedly fringe, Fortean Times recently did a special issue which focused on Crowley’s life and continuing influence.
Crowley’s clearly more well known today that I would have given credit for. Indeed, the name of Aleister Crowley almost appears to be a household one7, but what is he remembered for? No longer a Satanist (we have Anton LaVey for that), rarely as a mountaineer (records long broken), and his poetry’s rarely read by his faithful, I’d hardly expect to find copies of his literary works in the average library.
Is he only invoked for whatever shock value may linger? To conjour “eccentric” images of “ravens and human-skull wall sconces”? Surely that can’t be right.
Posts Related to Crowley
- David Rakoff and Aleister Crowley
- Appreciating Crowley
- Nietzsche on Art
- Too popular?
- “You must construct your own Qabalah!”
- note the lowercase – ok, uppercase too, if we’re being frank, and Frank, at times, and – oh, let’s not get carried away… [back]
- Though how this can be when he grew up in Toronto, Centre of the Universe, is never explained to my satisfaction [back]
- Fraud, “I’ll Take the Low Road”, p. 141 [back]
- Don’t Get Too Comfortable, “Off We’re Gonna Shuffle”, p. 216 [back]
- Which is somewhat ironic after ridiculing an anonymous member of staff at a Toronto hospital for misattributing a quote by Richard Wagner to “Robert Wagner” in “I Used to Bank Here, But That Was Long, Long Ago”. [back]
- BBC News, “BBC reveals 100 great British heroes“. See the full list here. [back]
- Indeed, a Catholic uncle of mine was the first to point his image out to me on the record jacket. [back]
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February 17th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Did you read the FT special?
Namaste.
[Reply]
Psyche reply on February 17th, 2008:
No, I haven’t yet - only flipped through the article titles. Am I likely to be disappointed?
[Reply]
February 17th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
It did have a few novel takes. Although I thought it was worth the steep cover price ($14CAN), I wouldn’t pay that much for a ’standard’ issue. The pillorying of Kenneth Grant’s LAM-cult was entertaining. The article on Crowley’s penchant for unique cocktail recipes was disappointingly thin. Most of the content will be old-hat, but there were a few thin references and connections that made it worth my while. In reference to your original post, I found Gary Lachman’s article, “The Wickedest Man in the World?” largely representative of my take on the man and the legend. I didn’t notice any significant divergences from “In Search of the Great Beast”.
Namaste.
[Reply]
Psyche reply on February 17th, 2008:
My husband’s been reading it since he was in college in England, so he’s had a subscription for years, but I rarely read it unless there’s a relevant topic. I found the issue on Austin Osman Spare of interest, a few years ago. Again, nothing new, but it was nice to see his work highlighted in a reasonable fashion.
I know Dave Evans has an article in it, so it’s definitely in my reading pile, though I haven’t yet read his book on Crowley (sorry Dave! I’ll get to it, I promise!).
I suppose it will be interesting to see how he’s portrayed: what’s highlighted, what’s omitted and what conclusions are reached.
[Reply]