Tony Earll Mu Revealed (1970)
Despite being in possession of a more or less fully operational brain, I'm a sucker for this kind of Fortean bollocks providing it's entertaining on some level, so this one was difficult to resist. Mu Revealed purports to tell the story of the lost continent of Mu through reference to the eyewitness account of Kland, a young priest and citizen of the same. Kland wrote about his life on a series of ancient scrolls, although obviously they weren't ancient at the time of writing - some thousand or so years prior to Mu sinking beneath the waves. The scrolls were found during an archaeological excavation in the Valley of Mexico, to which Kland had retired at some point in later life.
I knew this one was going to be tough. Not only am I pretty certain that Mu never existed, but I've spent too long immersed in Mesoamericana to suspend disbelief when these crackpots start making it up or citing implausible sources, as they always do - every fucking time.
The alarm bells rang earlier than I'd anticipated. Our boy kicks off describing the excavation of an amazing buried city in the Valley of Mexico, giving no more specific location than that it's in the north-west of the valley. A clay figurine from this dig is named the Hurdlop Venus, having been discovered by Earll's colleague, Dr. Reesdon Hurdlop, later renamed the Texcoco Venus by actual archaeologists, which is weird because Texcoco is very much in the south-east of the valley, and that's one big fucking valley. The author additionally implies that they had specifically set out in search of relics relating to lost continents on the grounds of this unidentified locale being exactly the sort of place a refugee from a lost continent might settle. Then we have page after page describing goings on at the dig, who had which amazing hunch, who was surprised by what they found and so on and so forth - all a bit Edgar Rice Burroughs, I thought.
I vowed that I wasn't going to allow myself to be influenced by researching Mu Revealed on the internet, hoping to give the author a fair crack at pulling the wool over my eyes, but I just couldn't not take a sneaky peak. Mu Revealed, it turns out, is a parody - or so ran the description I found - and the author is one Raymond Buckland writing as Tony Earll, an anagram of not really. Another anagram would be Reesdon Hurdlop, which comes from Rudolph Rednose, and Hurdlop's female colleagues, Maud N. Robat and Ruby Kraut, also sounded suspiciously fictitious.
So I persevered in anticipation of something cannily taking the piss out of the sort of book this purports to be, or at least in anticipation of something amusingly ripe. The closest it came was Buckland's analysis of Kland's testimony regarding the ocean going longboats of Mu being covered in silver. Buckland suggests this as the most likely interpretation of the narrative, although admits he doesn't want to rule out the possibility of said massive boats being quite literally made of silver.
See, I couldn't really tell if that was supposed to be a zinger or not. The civilisation described by Kland seems to be the usual variation on Greek, Roman and Egyptian society with a bit of Ben Hur thrown in, and if it's marginally more entertaining than what Buckland writes as Tony Earll, it's still pretty fucking dull due to our notional priest dutifully recording - for the benefit of future generations - even the most mundane details of his existence and what type of trousers he wore on certain days of the week. It's almost as though this was written by someone with no imagination.
Further research reveals that Buckland was better known for his books of magic, Wicca, and the occult, so it's difficult to see how this is genuinely a parody, as distinct from just some bloke telling lies, making things up, and wheeling out the snake oil in hope of paying a few bills; and Robat, as in Maud N. Robat, was actually Buckland's special magic name—sorry, of course I meant his special magick name. I was hoping that, at worst, this might be interesting as modern mythology, perhaps reflecting upon the psychological aspect of the stories we tell about things which don't exist, but really it's just some dude taking the piss; which is why I skimmed the second half. I have other stuff to read and, crackers though he may well have been, Richard S. Shaver did a better job.
Despite being in possession of a more or less fully operational brain, I'm a sucker for this kind of Fortean bollocks providing it's entertaining on some level, so this one was difficult to resist. Mu Revealed purports to tell the story of the lost continent of Mu through reference to the eyewitness account of Kland, a young priest and citizen of the same. Kland wrote about his life on a series of ancient scrolls, although obviously they weren't ancient at the time of writing - some thousand or so years prior to Mu sinking beneath the waves. The scrolls were found during an archaeological excavation in the Valley of Mexico, to which Kland had retired at some point in later life.
I knew this one was going to be tough. Not only am I pretty certain that Mu never existed, but I've spent too long immersed in Mesoamericana to suspend disbelief when these crackpots start making it up or citing implausible sources, as they always do - every fucking time.
The alarm bells rang earlier than I'd anticipated. Our boy kicks off describing the excavation of an amazing buried city in the Valley of Mexico, giving no more specific location than that it's in the north-west of the valley. A clay figurine from this dig is named the Hurdlop Venus, having been discovered by Earll's colleague, Dr. Reesdon Hurdlop, later renamed the Texcoco Venus by actual archaeologists, which is weird because Texcoco is very much in the south-east of the valley, and that's one big fucking valley. The author additionally implies that they had specifically set out in search of relics relating to lost continents on the grounds of this unidentified locale being exactly the sort of place a refugee from a lost continent might settle. Then we have page after page describing goings on at the dig, who had which amazing hunch, who was surprised by what they found and so on and so forth - all a bit Edgar Rice Burroughs, I thought.
I vowed that I wasn't going to allow myself to be influenced by researching Mu Revealed on the internet, hoping to give the author a fair crack at pulling the wool over my eyes, but I just couldn't not take a sneaky peak. Mu Revealed, it turns out, is a parody - or so ran the description I found - and the author is one Raymond Buckland writing as Tony Earll, an anagram of not really. Another anagram would be Reesdon Hurdlop, which comes from Rudolph Rednose, and Hurdlop's female colleagues, Maud N. Robat and Ruby Kraut, also sounded suspiciously fictitious.
So I persevered in anticipation of something cannily taking the piss out of the sort of book this purports to be, or at least in anticipation of something amusingly ripe. The closest it came was Buckland's analysis of Kland's testimony regarding the ocean going longboats of Mu being covered in silver. Buckland suggests this as the most likely interpretation of the narrative, although admits he doesn't want to rule out the possibility of said massive boats being quite literally made of silver.
See, I couldn't really tell if that was supposed to be a zinger or not. The civilisation described by Kland seems to be the usual variation on Greek, Roman and Egyptian society with a bit of Ben Hur thrown in, and if it's marginally more entertaining than what Buckland writes as Tony Earll, it's still pretty fucking dull due to our notional priest dutifully recording - for the benefit of future generations - even the most mundane details of his existence and what type of trousers he wore on certain days of the week. It's almost as though this was written by someone with no imagination.
Further research reveals that Buckland was better known for his books of magic, Wicca, and the occult, so it's difficult to see how this is genuinely a parody, as distinct from just some bloke telling lies, making things up, and wheeling out the snake oil in hope of paying a few bills; and Robat, as in Maud N. Robat, was actually Buckland's special magic name—sorry, of course I meant his special magick name. I was hoping that, at worst, this might be interesting as modern mythology, perhaps reflecting upon the psychological aspect of the stories we tell about things which don't exist, but really it's just some dude taking the piss; which is why I skimmed the second half. I have other stuff to read and, crackers though he may well have been, Richard S. Shaver did a better job.
No comments:
Post a Comment