A Crowley Miscellany

Published by Ninepin Press.

We’re stocking a quartet of small paperbacks by John Crowley, collectively referred to as A Crowley Miscellany.

Each volume is devoted to a different aspect of his experience and admiration. Of special note is Two Chapters in a Family Chronicle, which contains two short stories, one of them a previously unpublished novelette.

“John Crowley is one of the finest writers of our time.”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“Crowley is generous, obsessed, fascinating, gripping. Really, I think Crowley is so good that he has left everybody else in the dust.”
—Peter Straub

In these four wildly imaginative short books, award-winning author John Crowley employs a rattling button jar of styles to tell multifaceted stories: of a young artist’s adventures in 1960s New York, of family histories brought to light, of the beguiling mysteries of the dreaming mind. Featuring all the wonder, erudition, humor, and finely wrought prose for which Crowley is known, each volume stands on its own, yet all four are connected by thematic threads of love, loss, and chance, and of a life committed to literature and art. Taken together, they represent some of the author’s most intimate works to date.

The books are printed in the US on 100% recycled paper. Their covers combine to reveal a painting by Jean Valette-Penot, Trompe-l’œil à la gravure de Sarrabat.

The Sixties: A Forged Diary

In 1963, reeling from a devastating heartbreak, a young John Crowley moves to New York and immerses himself in the city’s vibrant film, music, and art scenes. After taking a job with a photography studio, he soon crosses paths with the likes of Andy Warhol and Richard Avedon, Claudia Cardinale and Raquel Welch. He photographs Baby Jane Holzer opening for The Fugs, drops acid, joins anti-war marches, finds and loses love…

But that John Crowley kept no diary. So here is the journal that might have been, composed on his behalf by the Crowley of our time. As fact and fiction blur in this innovative take on the memoir form, the fantastical worlds of Crowley’s novels intrude on the life of the young man who has yet to write them. The result is an intoxicating, visionary trip that poses vital questions about surviving loss, making art, and connecting to a swiftly approaching tomorrow.

Length: 81 pages
Size: 6” x 8”

Seventy-Nine Dreams

Harvested from a vivid period of Crowley’s dream life, this journal of visions, visitations, and escapades features a jewel heist, a battle with a murderous robot, a bus tour through a city of shrines, and a job preparing pizza for Lord Byron. Recorded with a lucid attention to detail—and with a style attuned to the peculiar, free-wheeling logic of dreams—the tales drawn from Crowley’s nocturnal wanderings are at turns hilarious, frightening, and sublime. They are also deeply personal, recounting spontaneous love affairs and unexpected meetings with friends and fellow writers both living and dead, plus a recurring mystery played out across the winding streets and corridors of a dark, labyrinthine city.

Length: 95 pages
Size: 5” x 5”

Two Talks on Writing

Revised and specially prepared for the printed page, this pair of talks on the craft of writing will be of interest to writers and readers alike. In “Practicing the Arts of Peace,” Crowley addresses the thorny question of whether “writing our little stories, especially we fantasists and poets,” can serve any real-world utility. His response recounts the evolution of his own work while also serving as a stirring defense of the imaginative arts. 

“The Uses of Allegory,” originally presented at Mythcon 50, rescues this “least loved of all literary forms” with an analysis of its connections to fantasy and science fiction, as well as to mythic and spiritual texts. Topics considered include C.S. Lewis, the Owl of Minerva, the intertwining of ritual and story, and the adventures of a Gnostic spaceman.

Length: 52 pages
Size: 4” x 6”

Two Chapters in a Family Chronicle 

On a sunny summer weekend in 1924, a family drives their Overland Six touring car into the Vermont countryside, where one woman’s dream at the edge of a meadow will change the shape of their lives. Over a decade later, a young doctor named Joe Crowley is called into the snowy winter night to deliver a baby in a farmhouse outside Brattleboro. The tales of these two fateful car rides—as told in “Percy and Lulu Go to Vermont” and “Poker Night at the Elks Club 1938”—link three generations of John Crowley’s family. 

A meeting over a Ouija board, a disastrous poker game, the 1918 influenza pandemic...these are just a few of the elements, summoned with luminous imaginative power, of this quietly exquisite diptych.

Length: 58 pages
Size: 5” x 7”

About the Author: 

John Crowley is the winner of three World Fantasy Awards—including one for Lifetime Achievement and one for his novel Little, Big—as well as two Mythopoeic Awards. In 1992 he received the literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.