THE NORTHERN WHIG AND BELFAST POST

Belfast, Antrim, Northern Ireland

6 January 1923

(page 7)

SOME RECENT BOOKS.

SHORT NOTICES.

So much is heard of “doping” nowadays that we suppose it was inevitable that this degrading vice would be exploited by writers of fiction. “The Diary of a Drug Fiend,” by Aleister Crowley (London: Collins, Sons & Co., 48, Pall Mall, S.W. 1), is written with ability and apparent sincerity, but the narrator and his wife are an unattractive pair of Degenerates, and Mr. Crowley, with all his undoubted skill in the handling of his medium, leaves us unconvinced by his account of their cure in that strange twentieth century “Abbey of Thelema.” The description of the effects of persistent drugging are at times revolting, but the power of this part of the book is undeniable. It lacks, however, the wonderful imaginative beauty that preserves the “Confessions of an Opium Eater” from the fate that has overtaken most of De Quincey’s numerous works.

“Testament,” by G. Robinson (London: Duckworth), deals with the same subject on different lines. It is not quite the equal of Mr. Crowley’s book from a literary point of view, but the end, is, one fears, distinctly more probable than that of the “Diary of a Drug Fiend.”