Description
This is the sequel to 39 Blows on a Gone Trumpet. After the passion of energies described in 39 Blows, Dolphin explores the world of underlying meaning, the patterns behind the facade of cultures and the new forms emerging in synchronicity around the globe. In a series of episodes, he takes us to the Magic Room in Tangiers, to the Tombs of Knowledge in Egypt and Asia and into the cruel realities of Vietnam, returning to the Real Cafe in New York. It is now the 60’s and the hero’s return coincides with the start of the ‘counter-revolution’ in the USA for which his journeys have prepared him. The third volume will take us into the heart of the Haight-Ashbury phenomenon, telling of things quite beyond the popular images and memories of that event.
Woven into the novel, like its precursor 39 Blows, is the passionate literature of the ages: from Mayakovsky’s ardor to Blake’s ecstatic wrath; from the eloquence of Whitman to the density of Joyce; from the ‘cut-up’ technique of Burroughs to the terse and exact poetry of Brecht; and the love of the unknown that stretches from Khayyam to Baudelaire.
Cover illustration by Ralph Steadman
greggw –
I recommend this book, this journey and this journal, to all seeker-readers, especially the thinnkers among them. It gives good hints on how to go and is a good adventure story and a worthy addition to the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ genre, of such importance in world literature.
—Kaviraj George Dowden