Industry of Magic & Light

Industry of Magic & Light is a prequel to Keenan's cult classic debut, This is Memorial Device, set in the mythical Airdrie in the 1960s and early 70s. It is a direct channeling of the decade's energies, bringing to life how even the smallest and dreariest of working-class towns felt full of possibility in the wake of the psychedelic moment. It is a forensics of the 1960s, a detective novel, an occult thriller, a vision quest, and the hallucinatory exposition of a moment where anything was possible.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 25 August 2022
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co

The much-anticipated prequel to Keenan's cult classic debut, "This is Memorial Device," "Industry of Magic & Light" is set in the same mythical Airdrie in the 1960s and early 70s and centers on a group of hippies running their own psychedelic light show. Told in two halves - the first in the form of an inventory of the contents of a caravan abandoned by one of the hippies, the second in the form of a tarot card reading - it is not so much a book about the 1960s as a direct channeling of the decade's energies, bringing to life how even the smallest and dreariest of working-class towns felt so full of possibility in the wake of the psychedelic moment. Via artifacts from the time - everything from poetry chapbooks, record reviews, and musical instruments through bubblegum wrappers, bicycle repair kits, and mysterious cassette recordings - the book opens out into adventures along the hippy trail in Afghanistan and behind the Iron Curtain that leads a cast of new and returning characters - as well as the authorities - to believe that they are literally making magic. Simultaneously a forensics of the 1960s, a detective novel, an occult thriller, a vision quest, and the hallucinatory exposition of a moment where it felt like anything was possible, "Industry of Magic & Life" brings to life the streets of small working-class towns as transformational sites of utopian joy.

Weight: 384g
Dimension: 223 x 145 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781399603249