I read this book because it's by Dorothy Bryant who wrote the excellent The Confessions of Madame Psyche. I read it even though my mom read it and didn't care for it much. I didn't care for it much. In the book, the protagonist dies and goes to another world. Unlike John Carter of Mars, when he dies he doesn't go to a world of action and adventure. Instead he goes to a world where people live communally and simply and achieve enlightenment by paying attention to their dreams and....
This book is copyright 1971. It was a time when some people were trying to strip away the bullshit of materialistic consumer-ish lives. That's a good thing. But finding a compelling narrative underneath all that... it ain't easy. I'm not saying that I could do it better than Dorothy Bryant did. I'm just sayin' it ain't easy, and I don't think it happened here.
Labels: barbaric, book, filthy hippies
Lack of conflict and reasonable behavior makes for dull fiction. If Othello had said, "That Iago, he's always messing with my head. I'm defriending him immediately," well, it would be pretty short and dull.
Perhaps that's a good guide to life behavior: Don't act like people in tragedies.
mahlen