David Lynday's "The Haunted Woman" primarily has to do with paganism, mysticism, love, and human frailty. How has this been done? Very simply, a woman and her mother are looking for a new house to live in. They come across a house in the woods. Oddly, the local legend says that the house was built on an elf's hill. Consequently, the third story of the house was taken away by the elves. The builder of the house, his name Ulf I believe, was never seen again. But this was long ago. As it stands now, the house is more like a bungalow. Everything seems to be in order. But every now and then, a person will say, "I saw the missing floor, but when I retraced my steps, it was gone again."

Incidentally, the woman buys the house. She discovers a stairwell that can only belong to the "missing level." As she ascends, her consciousness raises. She becomes more than herself. Of course, there is more to the second floor than that! I will tell no more!! When she returns to the first floor, the stairwell disappears. And she forgets all that has happened.

The story is special and original. It will send chills down your spine, not unlike the Blair Witch Project. I myself was curious as to what would happen. I wanted to know just what was up the stairs. If you want to know what is up the stairs, you will have to read this book. It is one of the most original books I have ever read, along with "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde and "Cosmos" by Witold Gombrowicz.

I found the book intense and suspenseful.

I have just finished "The Haunted Woman" and "enjoyed" it, if that is the right word, very much! I have also read Sellin's book and Wolfe's book on Lindsay recently. Sellin believed that the musician in THW was Crystalman. I don't agree. The world of the musician, who was probably Ulf in one sense, contrasted our world of convention and superficiality. The world of Ulf's tower was a step closer to Muspel light, to use words from Arcturus. I do not think that Lindsay is trying to say the exact same thing in every book. It would be easy for reviewers to look at each subsequent work through the lens of Arcturus. We have to give lindsay more credit than that. Isbel ends up moving back to what her life was before. She says if Marshall can endure her then she should be able to endure him, Lindsay's view on how most human relationships are, expressed quite succinctly. The world of Ulf's tower in "The Haunted Woman" was mysterious and powefully presented by Lindsay. In part the book is a cry against the phony conventionality and superficial nature of the world man, not Crystalman, has created. The last seventy or so pages I couldn't put the book down. It races to a heart pounding climax. It really makes you wonder about what we call real in our everyday existance with it's TV and malls and a whole host of other artificial barnacles on our short lives. "The Haunted Woman"? Yes Isbel was haunted by her experience and so shall the reader be haunted by this book. I know I shall be!

I have always been fascinated by Lindsay's "A Voyage to Arcturus", an incredible, allegory. However, a few years ago, I read his "Devil's Tor", (his final work), and found it ponderous. Not so "The Haunted Woman." It was thoroughly entertaining. This book ranks with some of the best fantasies in mood and mystery. It has been a long time since I have enjoyed a work so much.

I have read just about every book the covers the history and detail of Triumph motorcycles, and this book is the best I have seen. When you consider the unique marketing of the US distributors and the American concept of what a great motorcycle should be this is a must read for anyone working on a Triumph in the US. Detailed, colorful, and well written, with plenty of reference photos it is the guide for the restorer or anyone seeking to understand the the role Triumph played in making this a nation of motorcycle riders.

Lindsay Brooke has written the best book I've ever read on the passion, the guts and the glory that was the Triumph story. Seamless weaving anecdote and accolade, he has produced a masterwork. Sitting in bed well after midnight, papercuts covering my fingers, lips chapped from reading, I simply couldn't put it down.

Provides the descriptive timeline from the introduction of Triumph in America to present day. Great book for the novice or expert Triumph aficionado. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

I ordered this play because I had seen Fuddy Meers (also very good). David has a very unique vision of the world and that flows into his plays. I'm actually going to be directing a prodution of A Devil Inside this fall, I love this play.

I recommend highly this book as I find it to be excellently written. It has a great tour guide for each Indian casino and a great one page summary for each casino. It makes you want to take the complete tour. It also has a good introduction and history on the Indians which my wife really enjoys.

Patent Files provides a collection of treatises on patents and inventions and efforts to protect scientific discoveries, and will intrigue any interested in the world of scientific study and discovery. These take the form of case histories of individuals involved in patent struggles, surveying the applications of patents and patent protections under different circumstances. Lay audiences will find it lively reading.

I read this book about 10 years ago. I was looking for any by or about David Lindsay, the author of Voyage to Arcturus. The haunting quality of the book made me puzzle about what it all meant! John B. Pick's book clears up a lot of confusion about David Lindsay. Loren Eisely's forward to my copy of Voyage claims that Lindsay died young; not true! Another website confuses him with another David Lindsay who wrote a Scottish morality play. Since Lindsay's books are hard to find, aside from "Voyage," this book does a real service by talking about each book and describing Lindsay's life. He is still a somewhat mysterious character, but such meaning as can be obtained is outlined in this book. For those like myself intrigued by Lindsay, I highly recommend this book

The only reason that "A Voyage to Arcturus" is classified as a science fiction book is that it takes place on another planet that required a rocket ship for our hero to reach it.

The fact is Tormance, the planet revolving around the binary star Arcturus, could have easily have been another "realm" or "dimension" that could have been accessed by a looking glass or a pair of ruby slippers.

This story is basically a philosophical parable is which Lindsay's hero, Maskull, journeys through the world of Tormance in search of the truth. During his travels, he meets several interesting individuals, each of whom represent a different lesson. And as Maskull meets these people, he goes through a series of spiritual transformations that sometimes manifest themselves as physical changes to his body.

Lindsay skillfully uses the philosophies of Calvinism, Shamanism and Buddhism (and probably some others, too) to set up some interesting questions. And like all good philosophers, he leaves it to us to determine our own answers.

I found his ideas on gender relationships, truth, nature and good and evil to be very thought-provoking.

I also had fun trying to read into some of the names he gave his people and places. For instance, a character whose core philosophy is based on self-loathing is called "Hator" ("hater"?). Could "Tormance" refer to a series of "torments" that one must go through to find the truth? Only the author, who passed away many years ago, knows for sure.

Word of warning: I have to agree with the reviewer who complained about this particular edition's proof-reading. There was at least one typo on every other page. Most of them are easy to spot..."me" is typed as "mc"..."far" comes out as "fat"...etc. But it does make me wonder if any of the errors were subtle enough to change the meaning of the story.

This is an enjoyable book that tells an imaginative story and encourages you to think. and I highly recommend it...if you like that sort of thing.

David Lindsay's "A Voyage to Arcturus" is difficult to categorize. The book has been labeled "Science Fiction/Fantasy," but it is much more. The novel's hero/Everyman Maskull starts out on a journey to the planet Tormance, but is quickly separated from his two traveling companions. Maskull's journey takes him on an unusual search for the discovery of the truths of the planet and of his own being. He meets several unusual but memorable characters who are so interesting they could each become the subjects of their own novels. The entire book deals with a search for the truth and the struggle between good and evil...and it's not always easy to distinguish which character is on which side.

This is a vast over-simplification of the story. The novel is rich, bold, and imaginative. The reader has absolutely no idea what is about to happen next as the story moves. I found the unpredictability (especially in light of current novels) very refreshing. Several reviewers are hoping for a film version of the book. Some novels should never reach the screen and this is one of them. First, no studio could produce the special effects necessary to bring the novel to the screen without cheapening the story. Second, I don't want to see George Clooney running around attempting to contemplate the meaning of life while playing a caricature of Maskull. Don't wait for the movie...read the novel and enjoy.

David Lindsay is one of the twentieth century's greatest and least appreciated geniuses. This, his first book, is also his best known, although it's debatable whether the science-fiction/Tolkien-fantasy crowd, into whose hands it has generally fallen, quite have the measure of its overarching ambition and audacious vision. Tormance, a planet of the star Arcturus, is a young world where raw particles of life flow and are trapped in the creations of Crystalman, the god of the visible world. Maskull, a human being, comes to Tormance from Earth and embarks upon an epic journey towards Muspel, the source of all genuine life, which is in constant danger from Crystalman's vulgar machinations. Maskull meets a succession of characters whose various philosophies and points of view represent the stages of his own spiritual progress, until finally he sheds his "Maskull" (mask, shell) self and awakes to the truth which Crystalman's world keeps hidden. The fight goes on, a fight in which pain is an ally and "nothing will be done without the bloodiest blows." This summary cannot begin to convey the complexity of this work nor do justice to its vast scope or the astounding variety of its invention. As he travels through the book's epic landscapes Maskull constantly mutates, growing new eyes, new arms and new organs, seeing new colours and encountering a member of a third sex. Almost everyone he meets soon dies, killed either by Maskull himself or by their own inability to evolve as he does - bloodiest blows indeed. Lindsay's prose is pedestrian and often clumsy, but always clear and never verbose; the story moves quickly, its most complex ideas given concrete shape rather than conveyed through abstract discussion. A Voyage to Arcturus is neither science fiction nor fantasy, but a vision in words, as raw, bleak and powerful as a Scottish mountain. The problems it raises are deathly serious and forever immediate.

This script keeps you on the edge of your seat--each line is a new discovery. The characters are touching, well-defined, and certainly amusing, and through them Lindsay-Abaire explores humanity with much insight. After reading, I can't help but imagine all the potential this script has to become a great production.

"Fuddy Meers", there's no denying, is a vastly diverting stage piece, but upon reflection, except for its perception that amnesia may be the American drug of choice, it's pretty void of meaning. Yet at its premiere, its author was unduly proclaimed a playwright of genius for merely demonstrating considerable skill in stagewriting. Happily, Lindsay-Abaire comes into his own, fulfilling his promise in his most recent work, "Kimberly Akimbo," which does to the contemporary American family what perhaps should be done to the contemporary American family. Existing outside of time or history, devoted to adolescent board games, SUV's, Frosted Flakes, and wished-for visits to kiddy theme parks, the family is presented as a collection of unwittingly solitary individuals who maintain for as long as possible the pretense of "caring" for one another. The heroine of this work, a kind of maimed Nora from "A Doll's House," hilariously and movingly finds she too at the end must walk out (though here accompanied by a geeky boyfriend) if only to an uncertain and precarious future. The "comic genius" said to be in evidence in "Fuddy Meers" is in fact clearly and happily realized in this work, which just received its world premiere at South Coast Rep in Southern California.

This is one of the funniest and most touching plays I've read in a long time. I only wish I could've seen it performed in New York. It's off-the-wall silly, and then suddenly becomes surprisingly poignant and real. A very unique play, hard to categorize, but so worth the read. I really enjoyed it.

Like most people, I own a stack of Stephen King books, and for some reason I've never gotten around to review the ones I liked best, which makes me sort of ashamed of myself, since I keep saying that the quality of King's writing is often underrated. This is not the usual Stephen King book, this one is actually pretty mellow, compared to Carrie, for example, (that was the first of his books I read, and I hadn't read anything that gory before), but it still has its share of scary stuff, like The Ten O' Clock people, and The Moving Finger (after I read that one I really felt kind of nervous about the bathroom sink for a few days). I only could't get through the essay at the end, Head Down, because I don't understand absolutely anything about baseball. My favorites were Dedication, The End of the Whole Mess, The Ten O'Clock people, The House on Maple Street, and Popsy (oddly funny if you think about it). I suppose hardcore fans of King's horror will be sort of confused by this book, but I think any lover of short stories, like me, is bound to enjoy it.

i like SK particularly as a short story writer. if he has a good story he never fails then. considering his other collections, this was not as inventive as the two previous. not as matheson-like as the first. this was a great collection. a bit mixed. the end of the whole mess and umney's last case seemed to be the most inventive ones. but his other horror stories were good too. there are even some crime stories here, they are actually pretty good. although SK delivers, his collection is all in all very readworthy, his writing style good, this collection marks the sad decline of SK. some of the stories are great, true. some of the stories, however, are only good in the hands of a master. and some of the stories are completely uninteresting. it's very enjoyable, but don't expect too much.

As an enormous fan of King, this book was warmly welcolmed in my arms. I wasn't dissapointed. As always, when it comes to King, I was sold. There's also a particular reason why I welcomed this book so much: In various books about King, I learned about many of those early and hard to find King stories, all the uncollected ones, and the rare ones. I was a bit sad about realizing that maybe I would never ever own these oddities. Then, finally, a new collection of King-stories showed up, mostly containing some of those old and hard to find stories. I was happy! And the book also featured a few new ones. Again, with Night Shift and Skeleton Crew, I liked all the stories, even the teleplay Sorry, Right Number (I haven't seen the adaptation yet), the Brooklyn August-poem and the Head Down-essay. I loved The Night Flier, The Moving Finger, Chattery Teeth, You Know They Got a Hell of a Band, Home Delivery, Crouch End, Rainy Season. My Pretty Pony really touched me. I don't know a hang about baseball (I am Danish, sorry!), but King makes it interesting. All I can say is that any true King fans must read this book. There's also a Sherlock Holmes-mystery involved. I only wished that King had included stories like The Cat from Hell, Man With a Belly, Pinfall, and some others of those hard to find. What about this story "The King Family and the Farting Cookie" that he wrote for his children some years ago? That could have been major fun to own that gem!

'Devil's Tor' is Lindsay's magnum opus -- a great, sprawling monolith of a novel. The basic premise is brilliant --- two parts of a supernatural flint are brought together after millennia of separation by a man and a woman who are destined to be the progenitors of a new race (homo superior). Unfortunately, Lindsay's prose style at the end of his writing career had deteriorated badly, clouding his 'vision' (compare 'Devil's Tor' to the relative simplicity and directness of 'The Haunted Woman'). The result is not the towering achievement it ought to have been, but a crippled masterpiece. Nonetheless, anything by Lindsay is still worth reading. Even at his worst, he is still one of the most unique minds of the twentieth century.

David Lindsay listed the themes of Devil's Tor in a letter to Putnams:
"...Fate made visible, the Great Mother, the mystic stones belonging to a world of other dimensions, the part of the Northern races in history, the supernatural bringing-together of a chosen pair for the uplifting of humanity, the purpose of the creation of the universes..." Lindsay has used various storylines in his books including a journey to another planet, celtic myth, a dream recording machine, Adam and Eve, ancient goddess worship, and a witch. These elements or even some of the philosophy in the books are not the key to the genius of Lindsay. He uses everything to create a bridge to the numinous and help the reader to a hint of supernatural experience. He succeeds best with the numen at the tor. This depiction of an ancient goddess at Devil's Tor ,along with the other visions seen by the people there, gave a strong sense of another dimension. Lindsay had also done his homework on ancient goddess worship. Many facts presented in the book check out with current archaeology.
Behind all of Lindsay's books is the emphasis on individual contact with something that is very like the Chinese concept of the Tao. Something existant before religion, before gods and goddess. Lindsay calls this muspel (norse myth), in one book and names it the ancient in Devil's Tor. Contact with this ancient brings authentic life in a world that Lindsay often sees as sham. Devil's Tor can be a slow read because Lindsay makes use of interior monologue to let us see inside his characters. The characters engage in endless arguments and discussion which can make for tedious reading at times.
This line from the book describes sundown at the tor: "Only in the vertical line of the sun's descent a lozenge of darkest, quietest crimson hung over the horizon, as it had been a goblin window..." With Devil's Tor Lindsay has opened a goblin window on the numinous.

Half fiction, half philosophical treatise, Devil's Tor reveals David Lindsay both at the height and the nadir of his creative powers. At it's best, the novel is a deeply fascinating tale of fate, ancient prophesies, archeological discoveries, and cosmic mystery. At its worst its tedious and poorly written. The book's plot involves a young, beautiful woman, Ingrid Flemming, whose destiny to be the mother of the next messiah unfolds rapidly through a series of startling supernatural events centered upon Devil's Tor, an ancient hill in England's Dartmoor region. Underlying the story is Lindsay's exploration of the myth of the Great Mother - a myth he correctly points out exists in nearly every culture on Earth. Through this myth Lindsay develops a theory on the underlying spiritual nature of the universe. As with Aldous Huxley in Island, Lindsay uses his story as a series of opportunities to lay out his complex views. He does not balance his theorizing with the needs of the story as gracefully as Huxley, however.

Lindsay originally wrote Devil's Tor in 1924, then did an extensive rewrite between 1928 and 1932. All the extra time he spent on the text resulted in a lot of superfluous material. Many passages are overwritten in the extreme as Lindsay puts far too fine a point on his numerous cosmic ideas. I would say that the novel is at least 60,000 words too fat. To be fair to Lindsay, though, what he is trying to describe in the book is nothing less than the eternal nature of the universe - a daunting task to be sure. No doubt Lindsay found that no matter how many words he wrote he failed to get a handle on the subject matter, and so he wrote more. Trying to give tangible form in print to that which is unknowable is a characteristic that runs through all of Lindsay's work. Only with A Voyage To Arcturus, where he was working on a purely symbolic level, did he meet with something approaching full artistic success. His post-Arcturus novels with their casts of reality-based characters and 1920's English settings rely on lengthy exposition to make their points rather than inspired symbolism, with the result that the reader frequently gets bogged down. This is most notably the case in Devil's Tor, which is ironic since Lindsay writes repeatedly in the novel about the power of symbolism.

The chief frustration of the novel is that its story is in fact highly intriguing making the reader anxious to find out what happens next, yet Lindsay constantly interposes page after page of excessively detailed inward reflection and Nietzsche-inspired philosophizing (much of which is awkwardly written) before revealing the next plot development. This is particularly troublesome in the last third of the book where just as the story's pace should be quickening towards its climax, Lindsay slows it down with infuriatingly tedious squabbling between the main characters. This is a book that requires patience and a degree of determination to finish.

With such serious faults, why should anyone bother to read Devil's Tor? The answer is that David Lindsay was one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century and that while as a writer he suffered from some exasperating limitations, he nevertheless possessed remarkable gifts. Nobody evokes a sense of otherworldliness better than Lindsay, and few writers have meditated as deeply on the nature of existence and the universe. The result is that Devil's Tor is overflowing with weirdly beautiful imagery and sharp cosmic insight. The book has a strange, tranquil power as if it were conceived in a metaphysical trance. A quiet, solitary man who spent much time wandering the very moors upon which Devil's Tor is set, Lindsay appears to have opened - or at least believed he had opened - a window onto the occult. Communicating the glimpses and hints he received of a more profound, more terrible, yet wondrous reality underlying human existence is the main function not only of Devil's Tor, but of all his books.

If you are new to David Lindsay, be warned that Devil's Tor should by no means be the first of his books you read. Nor should it be the second. It is best to start with A Voyage to Arcturus, Lindsay's masterpiece, then proceed to The Haunted Woman, Sphinx, or The Violet Apple (provided you can get your hands on copies). Only after you have acclimated yourself to the difficulties of Lindsay's post-Arcturus novels and have enjoyed the experience should you attempt Devil's Tor. It's a demanding book, yet when read with patience and the proper set of expectations, it yields significant rewards.