The Eldritch Evola and Others

Tradition never died. Despite the complacent triumph of Modernity, it lurks, like a never-rotting Gothic revenant, just beneath the surface of our materially bloated and spiritually empty world. In these 16 essays, James J. O'Meara uses the Traditionalism of Julius Evola and René Guénon to bring to light the spiritual and philosophical dimensions of the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, Henry James, Mickey Spillaine, Olaf Stapledon, Owen Wister, and Andy Nowicki; the music of Richard Wagner, Harry Partch, and Scott Walker; and the lives and works of architect Ralph Adams Cram and economist Thorstein Veblen. In O'Meara's lens, the doomed WASP gentry in the weird tales of H. P. Lovecraft and Henry James are on Sufi-inspired vision quests, while Mickey Spillane's brutal but equally doomed Mike Hammer is an occult detective in the Atom Age. Hobo and microtonal composer Harry Partch is a Dionysian shaman for mid-century America, while the transatlantic Scott Walker enacts Aryan musical archetypes in the 30th century. Even the Episcopal architecture of Ralph Adams Cram barely conceals the hideouts of the Wild Boys, the primal male hordes of culture creators feared by conservative and liberal alike. The Eldritch Evola . . . & Others firmly establishes James J. O'Meara as one of the most original voices of the North American New Right. "James J. O'Meara is my favorite literary and cultural critic. A virtuoso essayist who can reveal the most startling connections, O'Meara brings Traditionalist spirituality and a New Right sensibility to bear on both high and popular culture, showing that Tradition, like Cthulhu, still lives in the depths and can rise to the surface again, if you know what to look for . . . or if the stars are right." - Greg Johnson, author of New Right vs. Old Right "James J. O'Meara is the Camille Paglia of the Alternative Right." - Andy Nowicki, author of Lost Violent Souls