This very short but wonderful book charts out the author's experiments with consciousness and out of body states of mind.
Daumal, though he died very young in his late thirties, was throughout his life curious about the mind and pursuing states of consciousness that might lead to a higher state of being. This is a great introduction to the fundamentals of one of the world's little known great thinkers.

Daumal never completed Mont Analogue, sadly, since he died while in the middle of the fifth chapter... in fact the book ends in the middle of a sentence. But the main ideas are presented in what does exist of the book, which is both entertaining and provocative. The basic idea is that a group of adventurers sets out to find and explore "Mont Analogue," the mountain which connects our human world with things beyond it. Metaphor becomes reality, and vice versa.

Dumaul was French surrealist who was equally interested in language and mysticism. Like Artaud, he sometimes seemed to view human existence as ghostlike, trapped as a brain in a skull like a fish in a tank. Agonizing and fascinating.

Nicely written and beautifully illustrated children's fable. Everything you want in a children's book. I'm giving it to my grandaughter!

This book is wonderful! I read it all the time.Why I give this book 5 stars is because this book is really fun to read and I think that children might like this book too.The ant talks about how he might eat it when he is jut so small.

This small, unfinished work is packed with wonderful ideas and a spirituality that appeals to both the head and the heart. Daumal's characters have the conviction that the mythical mountain that reaches from earth to heaven must actually exist, so they do the only reasonable thing -- they mount an expedition. A beautiful book.

I first had the opportunity to read this book following a mountaineering course run by the National Outdoor Leadership School. One of our group, named Dave, had been passing the book on and everyone who read it wrote in the cover and sent it to the next person to read. NEVER a bad review. Helps you to understand how everything ties together in the world. Not too deep but just enough to make you think. Don't let the fact that the author died before completing the book throw you. Read it and you'll understand. Excellent!

This is a book that is wise . . . see if you can finish it. I use it as a text in my outdoor recreation classes. Daumal discuses the adventure of life.

I first read 'A Night' for a lit class in high school, and saved my copy, as it is one of the books that I re-read occasionally. It is such a wonderful, dense piece of satire, that it warrants a review occasionally to pick up or notice something new. With the turn of the century, I returned to the everlasting night of drinking again, and found that the Figeters, the Fabricators of useless objects, and the Clarificators are still among us, or us among them, as we soberly go through our world. As a good satire, the reader should see themself in the text, and I can't go through it without that happening (I'm a Clarificator). So, pick it up, read it, re-read it, and try to figure out if the author is an observer of patient in his allegorical world.

A NIGHT OF SERIOUS DRINKING is an amazing, short novel written by Rene Daumal in French in 1938 and translated into English in 1978. It has now been reissued thanks to the vision of TUSK IVORIES, a publishing house committed to restoring classic books from Europe, Asia, and Latin America, books that are profoundly important but happen to disappear off the shelves of bookstores.

Rene Daumal was a poet, writer and philosopher who preceeded the Beat Generation by twenty some years, writing about the absurdity of life as we are leading it. His title "Night.." refers metaphorically to the thirst we have to make sense of a world of endless intoxication. He introduces characters/types who drown themselves in alcohol in order to expound on fantasy ideas of the meaning of life. He then takes us on a "utopian tour" of life as a fantastical house dismembered and reassembled in a bizarre series of levels of sci-fi porportions - an artificial Paradise which peels away to a Kafkaesque, rotten core. He finally addresses the pie-in-the-sky concept of mythology and religion as a means of purification/evolution only to call forth his fellow drinking partners to wake up to the possibility of change. For all the surreal maelstrom of his intoxicated revelation of society as we are living it, Daumal makes his narrator introduce hope 'seeing the myriad atoms of possibility'.

This is a profound little book that is richly written, understands the use of metaphor, and calls us to step out of the dark hole of depression to view the 'available light' in the future. Not a one-read book, this little treasure asks to be re-visited frequently. And now, thanks to Tusk Ivories, we can.

When I stumbled across this book twelve years ago at a used bookstore in Berkeley, I had no idea what I was in for...I was simply drawn to the title, and I had certainly never heard of Daumal at the tender age of 21. My favorite quote from the novelette: "There are only three exits here: madness and death." It is impossible for me to fathom that you, too, will not cherish this book beyond any other. Never before had I identified so readily with an author's depiction of the absurdity of modern humanity. Truly a treat. Out of print! Get it while you can!

This is a classic Upfield mystery, although Upfield's not at his best here. Bonarparte is sent to a bustling mining town, but doesn't do much of his usual bushman's work. Upfield portrays the life in this town well, but the murderer's motive is pretty weak this time.

Arthur Upfield's Bony books are a wonderful mixture of Australian life, natural history, and subtle humor. The Bachelors of Broken Hill is typical of his stories, though it is set in a remote mining town as opposed to his usual outback settings. Everyone where I live who reads one book reads them all. We pass copies back and forth as many are out of print and reread them aloud to each other. I keep a map of Australia handy to follow each story and have visited some of the places mentioned in his books. He brings alive a sense of intellectual curiousity as you follow Bony's clues to put enough evidence together for an iron clad verdict.