A review by daviddavidkatzman
The Journal of Albion Moonlight by Kenneth Patchen

3.0

​Disturbing, experimental and brutal, The Journal of Albion Moonlight is a post-apocalyptic novel before such a thing was invented. Patchen doesn't require an invented fantasy apocalypse to tell this story, war is the apocalypse that ends life, morality, and rationality, War is madness. The story is nominally set during World War II but it really takes place in a mind at war. The Journal of Albion Moonlight felt like the pre-cursor to Naked Lunch, perhaps it influenced Burroughs. Patchen combines abstraction and cruelty, literary flights of insightful philosophy and unexpected humor. At times, the violence toward women was too much for me. Yet I reminded myself, this is what war does. It makes the book hard to like but as relevant now as it was then. And it squarely lays the blame for war on Capitalism. I can't recommend this avant-garde, brilliant work, but I'm glad that I read it.