The New Yorker on DESCENTS OF MEMORY: The Life of John Cowper Powys

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, Morine Krissdottir's Descents of Memory gets another fine notice: "The first comprehensive biography of John Cowper Powys, the author of “Wolf Solent” and “Porius,” reveals a man who saw himself as a magician and manipulator, to the occasional consternation of the family members and lovers who found themselves depicted in his writing. Born in Derbyshire in 1872, Powys was plagued by ulcers and possessed of a disastrous business sense, had various sexual preoccupations (he found the slender legs of young boys titillating), and tended to mythologize his own existence, ritually tapping his head on stones in attempts to communicate with Indian spirits. He was also incredibly prolific, drawing on his suffering and his obsessions to produce sprawling novels. Krissdóttir’s sympathetic immersion in the Powysian universe is balanced by a sharp critical engagement with Powys’s work, and she uses recently discovered correspondence and diaries to provide a fuller portrait of his relationship with Phyllis Playter, his longtime companion and amanuensis."