Seeking Faust
Dale Pendell
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
4.00
· 1 ratings · 73 pages · Published: 01 Oct 2014
With Seeking Faust, Pendell revisits the legend of Dr Faustus, giving his own slant to the story made famous by Marlowe and Goethe. Our protagonist is Wagner, Faust’s former student and apprentice, who has chosen the royal path of alchemy over his master’s necromantic conjurations. His goal, to seek his master whom rumour would have is ‘far from dead.’ By art Wagner makes his antagonist, the Serpent, appear. As Mephistopheles is Faust’s shamanic ally, so is the Serpent to Pendell’s Wagner. Born of the homunculus, the hermaphroditic Serpent leads our hero on a visionary journey through various illusory scenarios, including the evocation of Augustine, a psychedelic trip, an encounter with Freud, and eventually ending in jail, defended by Daniel Webster.
Pendell, known for his own adventures on the poison path (‘so completely articulated’ in Goethe’s Faust), here uses humour as a pharmakon to counter our postmodern malaise.