• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Donate

The Arts Fuse

Boston's Online Arts Magazine: Dance, Film, Literature, Music, Theater, and more

  • Podcasts
  • Coming Attractions
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Commentary
  • The Arts
    • Performing Arts
      • Dance
      • Music
      • Theater
    • Other
      • Books
      • Film
      • Food
      • Television
      • Visual Arts
You are here: Home / Featured / Book Review: “Desert Oracle” — Dwelling on the Fringe

Book Review: “Desert Oracle” — Dwelling on the Fringe

January 3, 2021 Leave a Comment

By Drew Hart

Desert Oracle is an omnibus, a kind of hand-drawn map, as well as a bit of a crackup — something you will peruse and possibly find the route leading to a deeper dive.

Desert Oracle, Volume 1 by Ken Layne. MCD/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; 304 pp.

All aboard with the iconoclastic Ken Layne, formerly a creator behind famed online gazettes — Wonkette, Gawker, and the Awl — who chucked city hipsterdom for a life in the vicinity of Joshua Tree, CA. (Ed. note: a place that has become almost insufferably “woke” in the time of the Pandemic — Brooklyn with chollas and creosote bushes?) There, six years ago, he began chronicling life in the Mojave and points adjacent in a seasonal (sometimes only occasionally appearing) chapbook-like magazine with the same name as this book, which is a compendium of articles and tales first seen in its issues.

You will go headlong into Layne’s world, which is alternately enthralled and appalled by the subject at hand. Beginning with a piece entitled “Try Not to Die,” which offers helpful hints on desert survival tactics — don’t worry, there’s even reassuring advice on how to manage if you feel you are about to die out there (“find a place in the shade, if there’s any shade. None of us live forever.”) — Desert Oracle wanders further than Moses in the Sinai. To wit, some choice entries:

Desert Sasquatches are a thing! They have appeared to many in different shapes and forms: with wings; seven feet tall, blue-eyed and hairy — one haunted Edwards Air Force Base, of “Right Stuff” fame. There is tell, too, of an ancient civilization with ten-foot giants, and their kingdom of gold, now underground after thriving for centuries by vast lakes.

Yeah, here be monsters, not just Gila Monsters — and also innumerable dreamers, quacks, survivalists. Wyatt Earp, long past his heyday, makes an appearance. So does L. Ron Hubbard, the father of Scientology, and a pal of his, Jack Parsons, founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; among their other accomplishments, they said they’d found a way to open a ‘hole in the sky,’ a “hole in space and time.” Meet the notorious bandit, Tiburcio Vasquez, who served as the inspiration for the great Southern California folk hero, Zorro. William S. Burroughs is on the program, as a sickly teenager; ditto for J. Robert Oppenheimer. And the permanently sick Charlie Manson is around too…

Other encounters are of supernatural and paranormal varieties: there’s a high gear preoccupation with alien visits and UFO sightings, along with accounts of late-night talk radio hosts who broadcast stories and conspiracy theories across the region. Uncertainty lives on the edge — Layne contends that desert life is fringe dwelling, and things happen that are never going to happen in Peoria. Anyone can fall under the spell: even President Eisenhower, whose overnight disappearance from Palm Springs one night in 1954 has been ascribed to both extraterrestrial abduction and… emergency dental work?

Desert Oracle, to sum up, is an omnibus, a kind of hand-drawn map, as well as a bit of a crackup — something you will peruse and possibly find the route leading to a deeper dive. You’ll want to listen to cowboy singer Marty Robbins and “Texas Swing” pioneer Bob Wills, to read the great gadfly essayist of the West, Ed Abbey. A few bits repeat themselves in different entries — no one will care. Your faithful correspondent, who once moved to Los Angeles partially because the desert was within reach, was more than delighted, and is pleased that this is only “Volume 1.”


Drew Hart is from Santa Barbara, California

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share

By: Drew Hart Filed Under: Books, Featured, Review Tagged: Desert Oracle, Drew Hart, Ken Layne

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search

Popular Posts

  • Television Review: “Surviving Death” — Probing Death and the Great Beyond Surviving Death's balance between personal experiences... posted on January 11, 2021
  • Jazz Album Review: “El Arte del Bolero” — Passionate Homage to the Era of the Bolero So Miguel Zenón, who on saxophone has the facility of a... posted on January 5, 2021
  • Arts Feature: Best Movies (With Some Disappointments) of 2020 Our demanding critics choose the best films (along with... posted on December 21, 2020
  • Arts Feature: Best Classical Recordings of 2020 The pandemic may have largely shut down live musical pe... posted on December 22, 2020
  • Film/Music Review: The Best Music Documentaries of 2020 — With Some Disppointments Some of the best music documentaries of 2020 - and some... posted on December 29, 2020

Social

Follow us:

Follow the Conversation

  • beverly schwartz January 17, 2021 at 3:23 pm on Book Review: A.B. Yehoshua’s “The Tunnel” — A Serious Romp about an Aging BrainDid not understand the end of "The Tunnel" By A.B. Yeshoshua
  • Tom Augaitis January 15, 2021 at 10:23 pm on Blues Album Review: John Hurlbut and Jorma Kaukonen’s “The River Flows”What a great recording from two masterful artists. Hoping for a sequel.
  • Anthony January 15, 2021 at 7:08 pm on Classical CD Reviews: A Banquet of Beethoven from Daniel Lozakovich, Midori, and Gidon Kremer & FriendsI went ahead and listened to both but I could not finish listening to Midori's, had to stop. Lozakovich's was...
  • Bill Marx, Editor of The Arts Fuse January 15, 2021 at 11:44 am on Film Review: “Pieces of a Woman” — “They give birth astride of a grave…”The quotation in the review's headline is part of a line in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot: "They give...
  • erica abeel January 14, 2021 at 3:31 pm on Film Review: “Let Them All Talk” — Angst of Many FlavorsI'm most grateful to be read by such responsive readers as you guys!

Footer

  • About Us
  • Advertising/Underwriting
  • Syndication
  • Media Resources
  • Editors and Contributors

We Are

Boston’s online arts magazine since 2007. Powered by 70+ experts and writers.

Follow Us

Monthly Archives

Categories

"Use the point of your pen, not the feather." -- Jonathan Swift

Copyright © 2021 · The Arts Fuse - All Rights Reserved · Website by Stephanie Franz