THE NIGHT OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

De: JOHN NOONE

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

This text of The Night of Accomplishment has been revised by the author, but the revision is superficial, consisting of a slight trimming down of the early part to better show the book's form and of the removal of half a dozen minor items which may have caused irritation when the book was first published. Nothing has been added. The structure of the book is complex and the style is not an easy read, but the basic narratives and major themes are not difficult. The book follows the introspections of a man in depression who suspects that an accident in which he broke his heel was self-motivated, a physical injury to cover a psychological crippling. The man is a teacher and writer, working on his second novel, and believes he should be able to find the reason for his depression hidden in the symbolic underpinning of both his first book and the unfinished text of the second. His individuation through the archetypes which appear in his work leads him to recognize the psychological problem which is the cause of his condition, and this he then seeks to resolve in a choice of action which transforms his life. The references to history, mythology and ritual, their exposition and interpretation, are specific to the book's argument and an integral part of the analysis. The action, which takes place in Kyoto, Japan, in the early 1970s and in Alexandria, Egypt, in the mid 1960s, has much of originality and importance to say about love and creation, responsibility and freedom, maturity and self-knowledge, suffering and exaltation. Though the book won an Arts Council Award in Great Britain, the reviews were at best mixed, often hostile, and it was never published in the United States.