Beyond The Kitchen Sink: Mind-Blowing Escapism by Paul Kieniewicz
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Beyond The Kitchen Sink: Mind-Blowing Escapism
Books That Break All The Rules
by Paul Kieniewicz
Tolkien asked himself, why should a prisoner be limited to writing about prison cells and prison guards because that’s where he is?
What about the world beyond the prison bars?
That’s escapism, so why not escape? I’m all for it. I won’t read novels revolving around the kitchen sink, about ordinary people and ordinary things, because I consider it fake. It’s the world beyond all that I want to explore. The real world.
So, here’s a sample of authors who engaged in mind blowing escapism that broke all the rules.
Start with David Lindsay, a Scottish fantasy writer, and his Voyage to Arcturus. After wandering about on that strange planet and talking to its inhabitants, you’ll be asking yourself what is real. And how to leave this prison and find the real world. If you like Arcturus, try his Haunted Woman or the Violet Apple. Another writer in the same vein is David Bentley Hart whose Kenogaia throws a totally new perspective on this world that we think is real.
Maybe we’re really living in the Matrix.
In the tradition of Scottish Fantasy, you’ll find George Macdonald and Lilith and Phantastes. The latter book is what C.S. Lewis blamed for his conversion to Christianity. Escapist novels can have that power, that you’re forced to look at your own assumptions. C.S. Lewis later wrote his Escapist Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength.
Talk about looking at our world from another perspective.
Lovers of Tolkien may want to try William Morris’s The Well at the World’s End, a book that influenced Tolkien, a story of a journey to find the waters of immortality. That theme was taken up by other writers, notably Rider Haggard in his She: Who must be obeyed. Also, Ayesha. Yes, the fountain of youth is real, not a trick.
Those writers, less cynical than kitchen-sink writers actually took that mythology seriously.
Still on cheating death, try James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, made into a great film by Frank Capra.
For a journey into the depths of the soul, I’d try books that explore books with a spiritual theme, such as Talbot Mundy’s OM–The Secret of the Abhor Valley, the Devil’s Guard or Old Ugly Face. These stories revolve about the mystical tradition of Tibet. For a background in it, try Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David Neel. The author was the first woman to travel in Tibet in the 1920s and witness the paranormal activities of Tibetan monks. In a similar vein there are the novels of Maria Corelli and L. Adams Beck.
You take journeys inwards in those books and find miracles inside you that you never knew existed.
There are of course so many fantasy and science fiction books that they can weigh down your bookshelf to breaking point. Much are formulaic an repeat each other. They’re kitchen-sink but in a different setting. In a different vein is Alisdair Gray’s Lanark, much of it taking place in the underworld. Don’t overlook Michael Ende, his Neverending Story and particularly obscure, Momo – a gem you won’t forget.
Escapist novels have one thing in common – redemption.
They don’t accept a world that cannot be transformed. Endings are not downbeat, without redemption.
Yup, life is tough, but it’s worth it to take a journey beyond the prison bars that we face every morning, because that’s where we find the real reality.