Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Black Sunlight
Marechera's depiction of Christ is certainly sordid, but he also humanizes him and makes one realize what it really would mean to be reviled, debased, gazed at, etc. This is very shamanic, because it acknowledges that what we, as humans, really wish to put upon the Christ is our sickness and our shame. Bataille's book ON NIETZSCHE addresses similar issues about humanity's dark side.
The whole BLACK SUNLIGHT book has this twisted aspect to it, whereby, through twisting the existing ideology, or even adding a level of humor, one reveals the actual reality as it really is, which had been hidden until that time. That is, I think shamanic - twisted words or "words that see around corners".
It is a horrible, shocking book, and I really felt like the ground was opening up underneath me and that I kept falling through it without any metaphysical safety net. After reading the book carefully, several times I was traumatized severely, not least because it took me back into my own Rhodesian past. I also felt reconciled with the vagaries of life in a deeper way.
I read some reviews of it last night that said the book reveals the "emptiness" of reality. Someone elsewhere gave it one or two stars and said it was the worst book they had ever read.
For me, it was the best book I have ever read, second only to Zarathustra.
I felt I really understood my place in the world much better, especially how to have reverence for the fragility of life.
Marechera's depiction of Christ is certainly sordid, but he also humanizes him and makes one realize what it really would mean to be reviled, debased, gazed at, etc. This is very shamanic, because it acknowledges that what we, as humans, really wish to put upon the Christ is our sickness and our shame. Bataille's book ON NIETZSCHE addresses similar issues about humanity's dark side.
The whole BLACK SUNLIGHT book has this twisted aspect to it, whereby, through twisting the existing ideology, or even adding a level of humor, one reveals the actual reality as it really is, which had been hidden until that time. That is, I think shamanic - twisted words or "words that see around corners".
It is a horrible, shocking book, and I really felt like the ground was opening up underneath me and that I kept falling through it without any metaphysical safety net. After reading the book carefully, several times I was traumatized severely, not least because it took me back into my own Rhodesian past. I also felt reconciled with the vagaries of life in a deeper way.
I read some reviews of it last night that said the book reveals the "emptiness" of reality. Someone elsewhere gave it one or two stars and said it was the worst book they had ever read.
For me, it was the best book I have ever read, second only to Zarathustra.
I felt I really understood my place in the world much better, especially how to have reverence for the fragility of life.
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