Savage Gods

Paul Kingsnorth is indeed one of the very best writers. Both his writing style and his content, the concepts, are astounding. In his latest book, he wrestles with whether writing, and even the written word, is a good or a bad thing. Personally he asks, is he doing himself a disservice, and broadly, has writing made the world a worse place? So the man who is possibly the best writer living today has written a book about - not writing. How great is that? Mr. Kingsnorth has serious misgivings about current society and, even more so, our future. I happen to disagree almost completely with him; I believe we live in the best of times and the future holds even better. At moments in the book, I’m not sure he doesn’t feel the same way too, though he may not realize it. When one sees awesome beauty and intelligence in their children’s games, can they really be hopeless? That said, here are aspects of the book that read like a suicide note. I sincerely hope that Mr. Kingsnorth is very healthy, if for no other reason than that it would be a tragedy to lose his writing. So I hope he does plan to continue writing, despite the misgivings discussed in Savage Gods. And if anyone is in the neighborhood, please check in on him once in a while.

Some writers never get over writer’s block. Paul Kingsnorth turned into a personal, high readable memoir. “Savage Gods,” published in 2019, is a memoir, a meditation, a search for understanding, a discussion of writing and words, and a reflection about a father, concisely presented in a 2 126-page book. But don’t let the short length mislead you. Thinking I might read it in a day, I was surprised to find myself rereading, reading slowly and carefully, and thinking about the other writers and thinkers Kingsworth was quoting and discussing. The expected one day gave way to four days. But for a writer, it’s time worth spending. Kingsnorth and his family moved from England to the west of Ireland. He considers the move part of the compelled restlessness he’s maintained in his adult life, a restlessness that is more like a hunger for place, and belonging to a place. He’s brutally honest about himself; he understands that the desire to disrupt his own life is somehow intrinsic to his writing, He considers what it is that writers do, this appropriation of words to create something. And he considers how words, those “savage gods,” as he calls them, have directed his life. And then he experiences the time when the words stop, even when they’re not supposed to. And that leads to a meditation upon silence. He draws upon thinkers and writers as diverse as Russell Means, the Native American activist; the culture of the highlands in Papua New Guinea; mythologist Colin Campbell; the poet R.S. Thomas; cultural ecologist David Abram; D.H. Lawrence; Rainer Maria Rilke; and many others. Kingsnorth is searching here, and he mines the experiences and words of other writers and thinkers to understand what is happening in his own life. Kingsnorth is the author of three novels, “The Wake” (2015), “Beast” (2017), and “Alexandria” (2020), and a collection of poems, “Kidland: And Other Poems” (2011). He’s also the author of three non-fiction works: “One No, Many Yeses: A Journey to the Heart of the Global Resistance Movement” (2003); “Real England: The Battle Against the Bland” (2009); and “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays” (2017). He blogs at The Abbey of Misrule. He and his family live in Ireland. “Savage Gods” tells a story, the story of a writer experiencing a struggle. It may be a struggle ostensibly about writer’s block, but it is really a larger struggle, and a larger story, of self-understanding.

If you have ever wondered about the dark night of the soul, Paul Kingsnorth allows us to see how it is for a writer when words no longer serve. An important book for its honest and brave revelation of a man on the night-sea journey of personal crisis. If it doesnt resonate with you now, it will.

SAVAGE GODS is like no other book I’ve read in the last 60 years. Kingsnorth gets Five Stars, but I must caution readers that this not a story, this is an exposed nerve ending. Never have I experienced a collection of words that so much pushed my frustrations, failures and lack of focus to the surface. I’m sure if this book can help anyone, but for anyone who lives through their art, you will find some wonderful advice. Use to silence to quell the turmoil in the world, and natural sounds to motivate your creativity. I get it. You should read the book.

Paul, pardon the familiarity, asks the questions that are at the heart of the matter: what is real and how to live it. He cannot answer the question for us, to his credit, but he seems to ask almost everything that could be asked in his quest. A powerful read and if only reading helped.