A review by smark1342
The Green Child by Herbert Read

Incredibly weird, kinda bewitching, 100% will reread. Eliot weinberger intro adds a bunch of context that made for useful treasure hunts I.e he was reading about Paraguayan history and traditional english myths and so of course this is the book that comes out. Some critic also wrote about how confusing it is that the content of the book seemingly disavows read’s anarchism (pt 2) but I don’t think that’s true at all, he fabricates this idealized thought experiment of what society might be like and it consists of everyone ceasing to care about holding office and everyone goes about their affairs happily until miners come. Maybe that kind of world that still has kinda lovingly sensuous descriptions of military uniforms could only be written by an anarchist war hero who accepted a knighthood. Then the final part is a strange beautiful ornately weird description of an entirely different way people might live together and an entirely different set of values they might have. Someone else also criticized him for having no sense of evil and after they do away with the Spanish colonists in pt 2 everything does seem like smooth sailing, but I think this is necessary for the thought experiment. 
I feel like I’ve seen descriptions of the human form merging with coral (I know it’s in Piranesi and I think cosmocomics?) and for some reason those stories all work for me. I wanna turn into coral