By WHITLEY STRIEBER (Harper; 1997)
COMMUNION was an allegedly nonfiction 1987 book by Whitley Strieber, who was then known primarily as a horror novelist (of THE WOLFEN, THE HUNGER and several others). In its pages he claimed he was paid a nocturnal visit by aliens who administered an anal probe, leaving him disoriented and perplexed. Yes, the book was pretty standard alien visitation stuff, albeit enhanced by the fact that it was chronicled (for once) by a really good writer. No wonder it was a bestseller.
Why the Hell would aliens choose Whitley Strieber of all people for their experiments? Was Stephen King busy…?
For a time it seemed that Strieber was on track to becoming the modern-day T. Lobsang Rampa. Rampa, for those who don’t know, was a British plumber who, in the “nonfiction” 1956 tome THE THIRD EYE, wrote about hosting the spirit of a Tibetan monk, and spent the remainder of his career putting out books that embellished those claims. Strieber likewise turned out a handful of post-COMMUNION publications bolstering its contents, such as TRANSFORMATION (1988), BREAKTHROUGH, CONFIRMATION (both 1995) and SOLVING THE COMMUNION ENIGMA (2012).
Then there’s THE SECRET SCHOOL, the most outlandish book of the lot.
Its seeming reason for existence is to answer a major question posed by COMMUNION skeptics: why the Hell would aliens choose Whitley Strieber of all people for their experiments? (Was Stephen King busy that night?) Hence THE SECRET SCHOOL, about an alien-run school Strieber claims to have attended in the Olmos Basin, TX, at age nine, recalled through recovered memories he’d forgotten when the events of COMMUNION occurred (forgotten and/or false memories being a large part of Strieber’s extraterrestrial visitation claims).
It seems odd that he’d forget what’s detailed in these pages, which includes a meeting with the angel of death, a magic telescope, virtual reality views of the asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs and multiple trips back and forth in time, in one of which the nine year old Whitley meets himself as an old man. Each chapter is followed by an analysis of what was learned, something the late Carlos Castaneda did in his chronicles of sorcery and astral travel; that device failed to make Castaneda’s claims seem any less outlandish, and it doesn’t do much to bolster Streiber’s even-nuttier declarations.
A large part of the problem is that the book, unlike COMMUNION, isn’t particularly well written. Strieber has complained that after COMMUNION he became a laughingstock and his books stopped selling, but I suspect that had to do with the fact that, simply, following its publication his writing grew increasingly slapdash (did the aliens sap his writing talent?). THE SECRET SCHOOL is emblematic of that shift, suffering from a repetitive narrative—the constant time tripping gets old very quickly, with Strieber registering the same sense of befuddlement each time he finds himself in a different era—and an overriding message that’s none too certain.
Strieber has complained that after COMMUNION he became a laughingstock and his books stopped selling, but I suspect that had to do with the fact that, simply, following its publication his writing grew increasingly slapdash (did the aliens sap his writing talent?).
The aliens, you see, were looking to issue a warning to young Strieber about a future catastrophe (and so probably weren’t too happy that he promptly forgot it all) that may involve 1). an asteroid hitting the Earth, 2). climate change (in passages that were recycled in the later Strieber book THE COMING GLOBAL SUPERSTORM) or 3). a nuclear bomb smuggled into Washington, DC and detonated. The latter possibility comes from a vision Strieber claims to have had of just that, a vision in which he and his wife Anne are both alive to witness the catastrophe (even though Anne, sadly, died in 2015).
In the final chapters Strieber goes full L. Ron Hubbard on us, proclaiming that “As we express ourselves into the next age, we will come to the prime moment of this species, when mankind gains complete mastery over time and space and lifts his physical aspect into eternity, inducing the ascension of the whole species into a higher, freer, and richer level of being.” It’s hard to discern whether such prophesizing is based on (alleged) extraterrestrial wisdom or Strieber’s own vastly inflated ego—in his mind, I suspect, those two things are one and the same.