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The Medieval World
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 23, 2025
This was a book I kinda grew up with! I found it dense but fluid, which was back in 1963 the norm for academic books. (I glanced up from napping on my bed late yesterday afternoon, and it glanced down at me from an honoured place on our bookshelf. Yes, 1963 was the beginning of our more fluid times!)
But now, our fluidity is on fast forward mode, 24/7. Now we want something even more fluid but even more trenchant. And it would still be dark academia anyway!
The trend now is to graphics, pop fiction and tell-all thrillers.
But as the sixties progressed I too became darkly academic. Much more so than Heer…
I never sorted out my signals. The walls retreated within - never having seen the gravitas in the dictum ‘keep it Light’, as Dad insisted sybaritically - and the only opening I had left was in the cracks in the floor.
I fell hard between them in 1969.
Awakening like Alice, the nurses abjured me to take the Chlorpromazine they profered, pdq.
I did.
So I awoke to the real world and had to forget my pursuit of White Rabbits.
On graduation I got a job, still drugged. The real world is crass. This book was Heer and Gone from my shrunken brain cells, lost in the Noise of Time.
Here in a nutshell, was my predicament: dark academia had been proven a Vanity in this new, fast flowing time and space. No more room for it in my drowning mind.
But 30 years later, burnt out by ever newer generations of neuroleptics, I started collecting my pension loot and mulling blissfully over lost books like this (when my Dad retired, I had picked them up from home again)!
I renewed revered old acquaintances and friendships in those books. And Heer’s was one I now saw with New Eyes.
For my moods of dark academia now evaporate after popping a pill.
Four stars - for a worthwhile read, if you’re still a student - anyway!
But now, our fluidity is on fast forward mode, 24/7. Now we want something even more fluid but even more trenchant. And it would still be dark academia anyway!
The trend now is to graphics, pop fiction and tell-all thrillers.
But as the sixties progressed I too became darkly academic. Much more so than Heer…
I never sorted out my signals. The walls retreated within - never having seen the gravitas in the dictum ‘keep it Light’, as Dad insisted sybaritically - and the only opening I had left was in the cracks in the floor.
I fell hard between them in 1969.
Awakening like Alice, the nurses abjured me to take the Chlorpromazine they profered, pdq.
I did.
So I awoke to the real world and had to forget my pursuit of White Rabbits.
On graduation I got a job, still drugged. The real world is crass. This book was Heer and Gone from my shrunken brain cells, lost in the Noise of Time.
Here in a nutshell, was my predicament: dark academia had been proven a Vanity in this new, fast flowing time and space. No more room for it in my drowning mind.
But 30 years later, burnt out by ever newer generations of neuroleptics, I started collecting my pension loot and mulling blissfully over lost books like this (when my Dad retired, I had picked them up from home again)!
I renewed revered old acquaintances and friendships in those books. And Heer’s was one I now saw with New Eyes.
For my moods of dark academia now evaporate after popping a pill.
Four stars - for a worthwhile read, if you’re still a student - anyway!
Displaying 1 of 1 review