On the surface, the writing deals with the author trying to make sense of his need to belong to something meaningful, his desire to connect with an older reality tied to the earth. Right underneath that, however, are a series of other questions that wriggle around like termites inside the wood of Kingsnorth's heart: What does it mean to belong? Can we connect to culture in a world where there is none? Can words truly communicate life? ... Ultimately, Savage Gods is a beautiful, intelligent, extremely poetic book about a writer dissecting his thoughts and feelings on the page without the protective layer of fiction.
This is not a manifesto — that kind of verbal strong-arming was first to go when he threw out the words. Like all the best books, it’s a wail sent up from the heart of one of the intractable problems of the human condition: real change comes only from crisis, and crisis always involves loss. The real change we need is to stop imposing ourselves on the planet, in deed and, possibly, in word. The real change we need is to learn to listen and to be. For Kingsnorth, the cost of this change is a perhaps temporary loss of language. For the world at large, the cost will be mass death. It has already begun. The question is, by trying to stop it, do the rest of us mitigate the problem, or hinder humanity from learning the lessons we need to learn? ... Whatever you think of Kingsnorth, there are few writers as raw or brave on the page. Savage Gods is an important book, and one that could come only from him, which makes it all the more wrenching that we don’t know whether there’ll ever be another. He won’t read this, so I’ll shout it at his back as he wanders into the wordless wild: thank you for the words.
The task is almost impossible, though in the throes of anguish the author produces a book filled with words. But the pain it causes him is palpable to the reader ... These repeated attempts are extraordinary and revealing, even when they read as forced experiments, cop-outs, and unnecessary apologies, ultimately creating tensions among the author, his work, and his readers ... This book provides a startling and instructive account of an uncommonly creative consciousness in a state of profound doubt.
Savage Gods is a compromise of a book...veering between inner and outer worlds, shape-shifting from narrative to aphorism to vision. But tidiness is indisposed to containing multitudes, and there’s a price to pay in retaining them. Kingsnorth’s troublesome words do an unexpectedly moving job of capturing the problem of being, and of writing about it.
These musings read like journal entries from a practiced scholar, as Kingsnorth references everything from the writings of D.H. Lawrence and Dante Alighieri to the works of cultural ecologist David Abram ... isn’t just for literary types. The book is self-consciously shaped by, and susceptible to, the questions we convince ourselves we already know the answers to — including those surrounding nature, our sense of belonging, deities, and the biggie: the meaning of life.
A little angst goes a long way, and it doesn’t help when Zen koans get mixed into the picture: If you don’t exist, are you really writing? In the end, a book that begins with the promise of adventure turns into a kind of journal of pondering and meditation, which is not at all a bad thing—think Alan Watts’ Cloud-Hidden. One wishes for a little of the sinew of Roger Deakins’ like-minded book Waterlog, but spiritual seekers with a mind to leave the workaday world will find that there’s plenty to think about as Kingsnorth works his way through his many questions. One needs to be in the mood for lyrical lamentation, but Kingsnorth’s is a voice worth listening to.
