Anamorphosis: Dale Smith reviews The Spell, by Tom Clark [Book review]

[para. 1]: "Last winter scientists reported an ozone hole over the Arctic the size of North America. This leads me to believe there could be a giant hole blown through the climates of our spiritual north, to use a metaphysical term referred to by certain North Africans of the medieval period to describe the imaginal geography of the soul. I don’t know if that helps explain the psychic anti-matter blowing over us like nuclear fall-out, or plucked columbine petals, but I think it’s true, as one friend of mine recently suggested, that we live in an economy, not a world. But Americans are spellbound people, plunging into a dense abstraction, where career, market shares and various material models of growth direct attention away from those now quaint ideals of medieval romance. Fidelity, loyalty, camaraderie and the life-altering adventures of the quest lie in the deep-frozen permafrost of distant atmospheres. But the quest, that at heart always belongs to the warrior, remains one of few responses for those in possession of their senses."