This book was one in a stack of books received as a “bargain”. A hardback for around fifty cents, the quick explanation of the work being about an “alternate earth” seemed interesting enough to warrant two quarters. Upon reading the book after approximately 40 or so pages, it was evident that there was an un-advertised large amount of sex in this book–we are taking epic levels. Not only was this sex a present theme, but it was FORBIDDEN, torrid, incestuous sex. It was then that the relevance of the author struck me–Vladimir Nabokov. Oh yeah, that was the guy who wrote Lolita.
Honestly, this book was more of a struggle to read than it was a pleasure. Evidently, Nabokov wrote it at the age of 70 full of hot, forbidden desires, and an ample thesaurus mixed in with a lifetime of accruing phrases from other languages which are sprinkled liberally throughout the book. When the word “hot” here is used, what is meant is more like “temperature” and not “this is sexy”. Rather, most of the descriptions are disturbing in one way or another. It is not that they lack for being well-written. Indeed, the fact that the description are well-written are part of what adds to the disturbance because one must inquire, sooner or later, as to why one would write so floridly about coitus unless they had an agenda to try to also inspire some forbidden corridor of lust in the reader.
Indeed, if someone is looking for a lusty read, this book has it in spades. Somebody, somewhere, is gonna be jumping someone else’s bones between suicides, misfortune, taboo, and family upheaval. Incest is one of the biggest themes in the book.
It is a strange thing to say of such a book, but the parts I enjoyed most were the musings on time itself. You see, the book is written a little like a waking dream or a nightmare depending on how you want to view it, on a type of alternate Earth. Certainly this alternate Earth usually sounds Demonic on a good day. Fortunately, the main character’s father is nicknamed “Demon” and so one supposes it has the correct paternal lineage represented. Nearly the last section of the book enters this discourse on time and it is there that I think we best understand what Nabokov was trying to do with this work–he is trying to account for his own years and his aging and shows a deep understanding of what time implies and how to measure it and what, in fact, the measuring stick might be. When one is old, one cannot help but remember when one is young–and conversely when one is young one is most often enamored of becoming older. This thesis and antithesis is always at work in the process of living and it is upon this platform that we can see that Nabokov finally allows Van “Veen” who is related to the “De Vere” family to return to his first love at the age of 50 which just so happens to be “his sister”. “Return to your first love,” in the Biblical sense, is clearly not what is happening here, but at the same time it is evident that the passion that is fueled in this relationship creates by the end of this novel some unified kind of beast that destroys both individuals and quite often all those that are around them.
The book does eventually balance all this “forbidden desire” out as the two are eventually too old to worry anymore about the “passionate” aspects of their relationship and find what we hope, as readers, are simple joys. Of course, the entirety of the work is somewhat like a manuscript about the family that has a House of Leaves writing style present. Footnotes, memories. Time smears. Edits. The story is told from the perspective of Ada and Van, and we are never sure how much to trust what they have to say. They are clearly, after all, blinded by passions that they should not be indulging.
At some points of the book, one has to re-read to make sure they understood what the hell is happening. This is not a book that has a solid sentence structure such as “She jumped off a cliff.”. Rather, there are a myriad of phrases and expressions that hint at the eventual outcome and then those phrases conclude something that, if you were reading along and did not happen to translate the French, you might miss. Nabokov has something to prove with this work, and a large portion of what he has to prove is that he hopes to be in the halls of academia being analyzed as a great literature author. Part of what passes for this kind of literature is a certain amount of obtuseness. In other words, if you read Joyce, one had better be ready for all manner of language study along with words that are being used in curious ways. The same is true of Nabokov. While some may find such “Deep dives” rewarding, an average reader with average demands on their time will not find themselves able to fully immerse themselves in the meaning of the work. It is written this way purposefully, one concludes, since the treatise on time is itself meant to be a kind of meditation on passion and perhaps a confessional.
The book would have done as well without dwelling upon the incest theme and perhaps the work might have been more powerful for it since the eventual outcome would have been gained by uniting things that are not as “similar” as blood-related family. Part of the novel is about how this forbidden desire is what informs the love, although one wonders whether it is simply not all lust running its course.
When the backlog of the work is examined, it becomes clear that sex was a “big deal” to Nabokov, and most especially forbidden sex. While that is an easy road to make a career off of, (prostitutes do it all the time) it does feel as though the “easy button” is being hit. Humanity, generally, has desires, and not a few of those are forbidden. It does not, however, make those desires all the more desirable. It usually turns out that those desires have terrible consequence and we see a few of them in this book. The ending is often debated as to whether the two ultimately commit suicide, but I think this is wishful thinking. The worst punishment for the two of them in a way is unity, and that is where the book ends. It also loops in on itself describing itself as the memoir of Van that we are made privy to at the very beginning. Is it a happy ending? I suppose in the sense that the sensation of desire is present, one could describe it as happy. However, one cannot help feel a bit “dirty” and like there are many “unfinished karmic actions” these two have stirred up. At one point, the older Ada even mentions that if she were to go to hell, she would expect to find Van there as a kind of comfort. I suspect that hell might not function the way Ada has idealized. I suspect that the soul grows quite heavy that indulges its own forbidden desire–such as Van’s. Really, I suspect Nabokov knows this, and so hopes that a type of book that could be fictional is the best place to hide a confessional so that perhaps he can travel a little lighter. Of course, he still wants to be famous and no one can argue he has a gift with words. Nobody can say he does not have talent for crafting a story. What they can say, however, is, “Did you really need to write so much about incest?”
Coming from a background of knowing more than average about World War II and the Air Forces involved, it is always interesting to run across a book concerning some facet which is perhaps, more overlooked. The Black Sheep is such a book concerning the marine aerial fighting squads of World War II. Though there was a TV show about the squadron who, as the book lets us know, had Robert Conrad star as the lead from the TV show The Wild Wild West most everyone agreed that it was inauthentic at best and “bullshit” at worst.
The book does not really offer us any additional consolation since one of the first quotes the reader is introduced to indecorously announces that “We are sociopathic liars.” in relation, one supposes, to the squadron. Indeed, the entire book could be summarized as “How much of this is an actual account, and how much of it is ego by any given side?” The author, Bruce Gamble, asks us to trust his scholarship on some level, and he does, it seems, try to straighten out fact from fiction. The continual problem, however, is confusion, drunkenness, the fog of war, and general chaos that leads to fatalities in the squadron in sometimes horrendous ways. Sure, there are those stories where this is not so, but the general rule in this book is a lot of guys go to be pilots and then with alarming frequency, die by some mistake not caused directly by the enemy. On the other hand, the people that are often the most reckless seem to escape with barely a nick.
The history of the squadron starts with a navy plane called a Wildcat and speaks about the birth of the “Black Sheep Squadron” out of its ashes. This former squadron is called the Swashbucklers, but dissolves at almost the same time it comes into any sort of solid existence. The military reorganizes the unit under a Greg Boyington who is one part inspirational to three parts alcoholic throughout the book. It is he who comes up with the name of the “Black Sheep” with him leading the squadron and he gets this opportunity after having previously gone AWOL.
Mr. Boyington, it seems, has some kind of death wish either in the air or by alcohol. This naturally makes him a great fighter pilot, and we learn through the course of the book that he breaks the record for his unit for numbers of kills. The problem with Mr. Boyington, however, is that he is a liar, and an opportunist who is also out to exaggerate in self-aggrandizing ways. If it were not for the war, Mr. Boyington would be, as the book he wrote about himself notes, nothing more than “A Bum”. One could say that even with the war he is STILL a bum, albeit one that gets unfairly promoted despite his less than reliable actions.
Mr. Boyington, is however, without a doubt, the glue that holds the unit together as he is 30 whereas the rest of his men are in their younger 20s. In the hell of the firefight that was Japan Mr. Boyington could lead and be a kind of hero to his unit, and so he did.
After the actual unit of the Black Sheep form, the type of plane switches from a Wildcat to the newer, fancier Corsair. Everyone has to re-learn their flying abilities in this plane, but for the most part these planes appear to be superior to the Wildcats. We learn of the conditions under which the pilots were stationed in their tropical locales, and that even when they were not taken in captivity which, if possible, provided worse conditions, everyone was miserable and sick often.
Eventually, the Black Sheep are dissolved as a unit, and we flash over to California where it is reborn with some new pilots that go aboard an air craft carrier called the Ben Franklin. Carrier landings are are new element and we learn that life aboard the ship is, as one might imagine, cramped. The ship is eventually targeted by a lone Japanese zero and because of all the ordinance it is carrying the ship explodes into a fiery furnace of death and concussion the likes of which break bones and in some cases simply “dissolve” those on board her. Here, three months before the end of the war, marks the end of combat for the unit known as the Black Sheep.
It is really hard to keep track of all those who died in this book, as often the writing style will mention a pilot long enough to kill him off in the next sentence. One supposes Mr. Gamble is trying to do the topic justice since the people reading it are going to be the people in that squadron. If he misses someone, it is likely some family is going to get angry or feel slighted. So, the solution, it seems, is to drop in certain names at certain times for their cameo before they are “played off the stage”. Occasionally a pilot sticks around long enough with other pilots that we have some sense of attachment to who they were. Most often, however, a leafing back must occur to remember who they were since the narrative of the unit as a whole collides with the people in it at any given point.
The book ends with some more of Boyington’s antics, and mentions what some of the men did after the war and tells us that the memory and participates are starting to fade. Since the book was written in 1987, it is probably true it is not better now and if anything is worse. The problem, of course, is, that the reader is hoping that the book has indicated some semblance of the truth, and of that there is no guarantee other than common consensus from other pilots and the military itself.
Boyington is credited, after returning from Japan as a prisoner in war in much better shape than other men who were taken prisoner, for his kills and is given a Medal of Honor and his life, predictably, self destructs. The book states that his life was better in prison since the Japanese kept him sober as a prisoner. The rest of everyone else? They go on to do things in various fields. What exactly is the lie? The War? Boyington? The kills? The squadron? The world? Apparently, whatever it was, it required a group of people in planes to go fight to try to “clear the air”. It is unfortunate that after that, the air promptly got stuffy again.
If nothing else, the book is an interesting read about how the Navy likely operated in World War II. Whether or not it is historically the final word, well, the jury is still in deliberations.
Stars On The Earth is almost brilliant. Richard Leviton has a knack for finding mythologies and stories that are not often told. When it comes to tables with sacred spots and different deities and mythologies, I dare say that one would be hard-pressed to find a better book than this. However, there is a massive downside.
Mr. Leviton describes something in this book that is a “wide-open” field. This “wide-open” field concerns the light grids that some believe illuminate the Earth and are the cause or the “struts” of its existence. The fact that many ancient cultures around the world built solid objects along certain lines suggests that this aspect of the book is more than a theory. That these lines also often aligned with certain stars is also factual.
Star domes, ethereal creatures, and secret galactic histories, however, are notoriously hard to determine where fact starts and fiction begins. At the very least, Mr. Leviton develops a hybrid science that is plausible in many regards.
However, the area where Mr. Leviton fails terribly is at the point he tries to convince or insist that Lucifer is just a misunderstand angel along with all the giants that used to roam the planet. In his version of events, apparently, Lucifer is an “okay angel” that really is all about making a “beautiful sacrifice”. Of course, one of his “grid line events” happens five days after 9-11 in Tennessee, and one wonders if that was also one of those “beautiful sacrifices” Lucifer is somehow implicated within. Mr. Leviton makes no connection between that, and the fact that Tennessee is also home to people with political power who might have had direct bearing on how the events of 9-11 unfolded and “all the dead trees that look like evil has destroyed them” in the area of Tennessee he happens to be pondering and observing.
He also mentions that the Cherokee Indians believed in a group of astral bears that lived in some kind of townhouse, which I think is also suspect since Cherokee Indians would not be likely to understand what a townhouse was. A lodge or tipi, perhaps.
As it sounds then, this book has a lot of brilliant insights punctuated by insanity. It is more of a “ride” than it is “a read”. At one point, Mr. Leviton says that his angelic “assistors” depict themselves “tarted up” within the guise of a blazing star that he describes as a " black bowling ball“. I am not entirely sure Mr. Leviton got the full memo on angels, but in the cliff notes of most angelic existences there is not an allotment made for”tarting up." Fallen angels, sure. Angelic angels in the heavens? No way.
This glaring oversight makes the rest of the book suspect particularly since Mr. Leviton says he is working with Archangel Michael at another juncture. He jumps through world mythologies seemingly not understanding that most of those mythologies are full of cultures that are now as dead as the trees he views as being destroyed by “evil”.
On the other hand, Mr. Leviton has been at this for a long time, and started doing what no one was yet doing in the 80’s so perhaps some leeway should be granted.
On the other hand, as opposed to referring to the Adam Kadmon as being the etheric template of man he refers more often to Albion which is a distinctly English monarchic way to relate to the subject. Especially telling is that the phrase that most often precedes Albion in the old literature is “treacherous”. Mr. Leviton omits this descriptor.
Where Glastonbury Tor is at the head of the light grid, Jerusalem apparently does not even constitute a “navel”. That area that takes care of that is also, not surprisingly, in England. Also, at the very end, he mentions that Judeo-Christian beliefs have “lied” about Lucifer as indicated, and that there is “nothing wrong” with his “misunderstood” rebellion.
A lot of the rest of the book discusses stars/stargates and the relation between stars and the Earth as the book title would indicate. Again, much of this material indicates a sort of Babylonian lean. Egypt and Babylon may or may not have had star gates that gave people access to the Gods, but it seems this proved to be a “bad thing generally” and one infers that probably this is because mortals are crunchy. Indeed, both Egypt and Babylon have a long history of eating people at varying rates for different festive occassions.
The verdict of the booklight then? If you want to read a book that courts madness and outright lies to you at fairly regular intervals mixed in with pretty good research on Native American beliefs, this is a book for you. If you want a book for how the light grid works or doesn’t work, I’d treat this book with a lot of caution. If you want a book that does not have any sort of Luciferic agenda, this book is right out. If you can understand that many books in the world have a lot of things in them and not all of them are beneficial, then you can make it through this book and the madness it represents mostly intact with the feeling that Mr. Leviton probably has had all the experiences he says he has, but he has not yet understood his own end, or how he is being used by powers and entities that he does not comprehend. In that specific regard, it is a scary book since it shows how far down a rabbit hole one can get without ever knowing they are in such a rabbit hole with which to begin.
It’s probably why a “Great Man” said “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Whether the Father forgives Mr. Leviton is between Mr. Leviton and that Great Presence, but I would say offering a defense of Lucifer is poor grounds for such forgiveness. It certainly is not going to help repair the light grid of the Earth any faster, since Lucifer is, quite often, busy trying to tear that down so that he is the “brightest thing around”.
