THE FAR PLACE

The Kaleidoscope Press,

A review of a Book, Round and Complete and

REVIEWED

HENRY A. ACKERMAN

Willis A. Boughton has created an extraordinary fantasy epic poem and shows he is a stylist of rare, if somewhat restrained, powers. In a sense it has all the Race for its characters, tortured by their inability to live in harmony and health; believing that the stories of the Far Ones and their place were only old wives' tales and of little value save to lull a little one to sleep.

Literally the main characters are Three who set out for succor from the Far Place. A strange chain of circumstances ensue but at last the weary trio reach the Far Place.

Here the Three live, fashioning themselves a mystical life that at last emerges into the life of the Far Ones about them. The passages of description are almost unbearably brilliant and the tracing of the slow changes in the minds of the Three only a little less so. In the beginning, the Three retain vestiges of longing for their old ways. In the end, after a forceful dramatization of utter outreness, they transcend the physical. There is more than surface action in THE FAR PLACE. The passionate formulation of the escape-drive that has lured so many of the most sensitive men of our race.

Illustrated by Virgil Finlay in pen-and-ink.

Text versions and page scans Judy Bemis

Data entry by Judy Bemis

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