The weird life of Jack Parsons - brilliant, self-taught rocket engineer by day, practicing occultist by night, friend (and victim) of L, Ron Hubbard, disciple of Aleister Crowley, and dead in a mysterious explosion at the age of just 37 - is surely the basis for a great biography. Sadly, this isn't it.
Carter's book is thorough, well-researched and largely even-handed and sensible in its conclusions. Unfortunately it's written in such a style as to be not so much dry as absolutely arid. I frequently found myself bored, and then wondering how I could be bored when the subject matter is so bizarre. There's simply no life to Carter's prose.
The masses of detail don't help. Page after page of information on rocket engineering is presented without any attempt at providing context which would enable a non-expert to understand what it means, and why and how Parsons's work contributed so much as it did to US aerospace technology. Mind you, that's like the frothiest of souffles compared to the endless accounts of Parsons's occult rituals, of which I can only conclude they must have been a lot more fun to conduct than to read about (that said, I am firmly of the conviction that Crowley, Parsons and their ilk were no more possessed of supernatural power than was Tommy Cooper, so maybe I'm the wrong audience).
There are other omissions too. Considering Parson's mother was so traumatised by her son's death she committed suicide on hearing the news, little discussion of what must have been a strange and intense relationship is provided. And Carter frequently comments that Parsons was a lively, entertaining and amusing person to be around. You'll search hard for any evidence of that here: we gain little sense of his personality, and he consequently comes across as being as colourless as a civil servant in a 1950s British film comedy, albeit a colourless civil servant who practices sex magic.
The best thing about the book - apart from the cover illustration, which perfectly captures the mood of the 1940s SF world of which Parsons was a fringe member - is the introduction by Robert Anton Wilson. RAW being RAW, it's inevitably attempting to prove 2+2=5, and is characterised in roughly equal parts by acute insights and specious poppycock, but it's compulsively and enjoyably readable.
Still three stars, though - given the depth and breadth of the research, you can't really fault the book in terms of covering the territory in a very thorough manner. But it's a shame it couldn't be a more vivid read.
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Le recensioni migliori da altri paesi
Runmentionable
It IS rocket science...
Recensito nel Regno Unito 🇬🇧 il 14 aprile 2020
TomThomas
Sex, Rockets, the Occult, Satan, Orgies, Crowley, ticks every box
Recensito nel Regno Unito 🇬🇧 il 14 febbraio 2020
Morrison Stone
very thought provoking
Recensito nel Regno Unito 🇬🇧 il 29 agosto 2015