Angel in the Forest: A Fairy Tale of Two Utopias

Marguerite Young · ★★★★

Question - what is the nature of experience - what dream among dreams is reality? Two utopian communities founded and failed in America and Young gives us a spectacular account of both using dazzling prose and the kind of poetic insight her style made possible. They converted, consciously or unconsciously, hallucination into fact and fact into hallucination, wherever they could. Their religion, while they grew fatter, was centered upon themselves, magnified unto eternity, as a body both male and female - which phantom seemed to them a virtue, not a vice, naturally. Overall I was taken by this book. I find the subject endlessly fascinating and Young's prose was something I enjoyed, even if it was easy to get a little lost in it. That's a hallmark of this author, I believe. It's the make or break point for any reader. I was comfortable losing the thread and following her virtuosic sentences wherever they may lead but I could also understand someone getting a little fed up with it. In my opinion, each part of this book justified itself and the endings of her winding thoughts often gave way to artful vistas. For example: Man, Robert Owen said, is the best of all possible machineries, the most delicate, but is still a machine, of whom all the parts may be known and studied, and whose requirements are simple and few - food, water, shelter, clothing, the love of our fellow beings - beyond which, there is nothing but the dance of the golden atoms in the void. If you're like me, hitting the phrase "dance of the golden atoms in the void" elevates what might otherwise be a relatively simple idea. The book is full of these moments and depending on your tolerance, kink, whatever, the book will be more or less successful. As for its content, it is hard not to view the American project as a static and unmoving struggle of Utopias and there were times reading Young's account was discouraging in light of where the country is today. That said, both for it's excellent way of organizing arguments and the artful prose style that drives home certain more poetic points, and for the very basis of this long form essay, I thought this was essential reading. Now to decide whether I am ready for Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.