The "Michael Bradley" Book Genre

[Ed Augusts]

The 'Michael Bradley' Book Genre

Michael Bradley is the author of two dozen rather unusual books.
First, let's make sure we have the 'right' Michael Bradley, for there
are other Michael Bradleys "out there"; it is a rather common name.
The ABE Books database, Amazon, too, might turn up a handful of other
Michael Bradleys, but let me assure you, his titles are
unmistakable. He never wrote a pungent romance novel, nothing that
would ever feature a bare-chested, long-haired 'Fabio' on the cover
with a femme fatale in his arms, although Bradley does have a spy
thriller under his belt. He never wrote a non-fiction book about how
to make cement or repair a Packard or Dodge, but he does have more
than one book about how the Holy Grail was brought from here to there,
and there to here, in ancient times. Many of his book titles have a
sing-song or poetic quality: Books like "Swords at Sunset", and the
"Cronos Complex", not to mention one of his most important titles:
"The Iceman Inheritance." His volumes range from lighthearted to
slightly sinister, in a spectrum wide enough to include 'Lake
Monsters' in American and Canadian waters. I don't see much on any
database at this moment, but for years in the late 1980's Michael was
obsessed about lake monsters and hitching rides with his girlfriend to
places in the middle of nowhere, wherever a lake monster might be
lolling around. He may have found that to be slightly below the
highest and best use of his time, so it is no surprise he went on to
topics and let's not forget the topic of the 'Black Discovery (?) of
the New World'. Is it weird? Is it uncanny? Is someone going to think
he's nuts? It's Michael Bradley! And that's just for starters! We
haven't gotten to the controversial stuff, yet!

What kind of book is a 'Michael Bradley' type of book? It is a book
about monsters, a book about conspiracies, a book about strange
origins of religions and peoples. So he produced anthropo-monstro or
monstro-anthro books. Or, you might call them conspiro-monstrosity
books. Don't forget: he writes archaeo-monstro-prehistory texts! He
should have done himself a favor and been writing screenplays for the
"X Files" in the 1990's instead of what he WAS writing -- books to be
taken seriously about "X-File"-type subjects.

You can easily recognize the 'right' Michael Bradley, by his titles:

Imprint (his first book – a thriller!)
The Mantouche Factor
The Black African Discovery of America
Holy Grail Across the Atlantic
Swords at Sunset : Last Stand of America's Grail Knights (co-author:
Joelle Lauriol)
The Magdalene Mandala (e-book format)
The Cronos Complex
The Jesus Voyage

Sometimes I think Bradley and I were cloned from the same Mammoth,
because if you gave me enough drinks, I could write many of the same
titles Michael Bradley has. (Well, I certainly could have written the
TITLES... but it's what's inside the books that count! Maybe he's
the expert on "all that!" I knew him about 20 to 17 years ago, 3 or 4
years was quite enough of a friendship to get the sense of what a man
is like who sees conspiracies everywhere, who has been called to
Houston for a 'hush-hush' meeting with NASA top brass, top brass whom,
he found, had books, many of them very rare books, on the walls of
their office, all about fairies, trolls, leprechauns, etc., and the
'top brass' asked him as he looked innocently up into their eyes:
"Tell us everything you know about the 'Little People!” Or, so goes
his story after a couple of glasses of ale! He swore me to silence on
the 'NASA' story, but by that time he was 'flying' as high as a UFO.
He was such a frustrated human being! He was Irish as well. I am
speaking of him in the past-tense, since e-mail messages have been
futile. Could there have been a bit of a 'Blarney component' in him,
d'ya think? Or, perhaps he could not even use some of the choicest and
most bizarre tales, that is, if he really wasn't allowed to pass them
on! What a horrible fate for a writer!

Yes, Bradley is either a genius or the next best thing,-- a rara
avis, a strange bird! Everything he told me about NASA may be
entirely false, the product of some acid indigestion. So, does he have
vision, or does he need a new prescription for his contacts? Because
he sees monsters and aliens from other worlds as ubiquitous, easily-to-
be-discovered if one is given a few bucks to lead an expedition into
the back country of Nova Scotia or upstate New York. Lake monsters are
nothing to him, he makes mince-meat out of the complacency surrounding
their legends. He believes these legends. He authors these legends.
He regularly discovers ruins in back of some village on the Gulf of
St. Lawrence or the Minnesota-Canada border where it is obvious that
Vikings, or perhaps Druids, perhaps even the Lost Tribes of Israel,
were hauling around the chalice from the Last Supper. That's how they
plied their trade, by trespassing into the Upper Mississippi Valley,
and that's how Michael Bradley plies his trade, as well., trespassing
on the borderline where one man's precious religion becomes another
man's hokum.

He's an old buddy of mine, though I have never been nominated for a
Nobel prize, as he has! Our meeting occurred when I bought a
collection of old books from him. I paid him generously. He was
impressed. He liked the fact I knew what kinds of books these were,
and could make fairly intelligent comments about them. He was starving
for friendships with someone of his calibre. Alas, our friendship is
from more innocent and peaceful times, which means it maybe cannot be
repeated today in the 21st C. It was not a really 'big' friendship.
I'm not much of a drinker, but he never noticed that I didn't drink
very much, once he started. What a convivial and engaging sort! He
and I have had a drink or two in 3 different bars, one Psychic Center,
the back room of one Bloor Street book shop, and his house. And when I
was putting in an all-plastic see-through shower in the middle of the
basement of my second bookstore, Michael lent a hand with his pipe
wrench. He had a grand idea for bookcases that would hang from the
ceiling, and swing back and forth, very slightly, giving the
impression of being aboard a ship at sea. A wonderful idea, although
I never figured why a person in the basement of a bookstore would want
to feel like he was aboard a ship at sea. That would be some new kind
of 'escapism', surely! It must've been his "Irish" coming forth, a
bit!

So, as I said, he's an ol' buddy. Or what passes for a buddy, a
drinking and bragging companion. Or, I'd like to think he is a
buddy... He may not be, anymore. I haven't been able to find him
lately, he hasn't been responding to even his own website, perhaps
because the latest site I can find for him is a few years out of date,
and for all I know, he has retired from writing, although I don't know
what kind of life follows a writer's life -- possibly it means death,
since what kind of life would there be, after the writing is done, for
a creative troll like Michael Bradley? I was going to call him a
'creative giant', but he's not a Hemingway, after all. In fact, he
remains essentially unknown, as an author, or as an anything else.
This must grate on him, for he is a proud man. It seems his creative
life is over. That's what happens to people when they get past a
certain age; it is one of the certainties of life, besides, even in
the late 1980's, his health wasn't the best. Various part of his body
were antagonized or estranged... The only fair thing for a man like
him could only go from a writer's life to a lifeless condition, it is
not fair to ponder an inbetween status.. it is like me, too: it's
writing... or nothing!

His profession -- writer of the strange -- is a surprisingly lonely
profession, which made Michael a friend to only a few. But although
he was a friend of only a few, he was a drinking buddy of many.
People I've never heard of, people Michael doesn't even know, have had
a drink or two with him in a tavern somewhere-or-other, from St.
John's, Newfoundland to Victoria, B C., and everywhere inbetween. I
hope he's still out there. He, without a doubt, has a lovely female
companion, no doubt similar to Deanna Bean, the tall, slender woman
who was in her late 30's or early 40's when I first met her. She was
a great facilitator for Michael. He had this one, charming,
intellectual female when I knew him in the 1980's, and he got another
one, quite pretty and no doubt very witty and intelligent, Joelle
Lauriol, whom he trekked around the world with in the 1990's. What is
unclear is whether he has a girl in his life right now. Without a
woman in his life, he would have only a 'leftover life to kill', as
Dylan Thomas' widow Caitlin put it. He needs a female to add some
class, culture, and a helpful hand to his day-to-day existence. Not
having a woman is like not being able to write for a man like
Bradley. But with a fine woman, (and all his women have been fine!)
and a keyboard to type on, a man like Michael Bradley becomes a god!

One of his books, at least, has made itself noticed in the wrong kind
of way. Its title is: “Chosen People from the Caucasus”. for its
possible antisemitism, since Bradley made the unfortunate faux pas of
(as near as I can tell!) citing the origin of the Jews as that of a
'sport' or kind of sub-human survival, in the Caucasus region beyond
the Black Sea. From this ancient origin, these lowly (he implies)
creatures, have crept around & about and become a rather wretched kind
of 'sport' in-place around the world. I believe he's talking about all
Semites, but I might be wrong.. At least, that's what 'goes around'
about this book (I haven't seen a copy yet!) and it does sound like an
easy target, since it cinches-up an absurd theory, easily dismissed.
His lack of a Ph.D. in the fields he liked to write about begins to
catch up to him... but, my God! Does ANYONE have a Ph.D. in some of
the fields HE writes about? . He liked to write about genetics and
proof about race and species that had to do with things like DNA
testing, and I recall that he DID actually have some training in that
area, but although he's been offered to enroll for an advanced degree,
he hasn't continued in that direciton. He may have been writing...
imaginative popularizations...while assuming he was writing science.
He has to be careful, in that regard. When I tried doing that on the
USENET, the very destructive skeptinazis, academics and scientists,
quickly dubbed me a "kook". Michael's a proud man, that's one word he
would never want to have applied to his own research. The problem is,
a more and more sophisticated readership knows when 'something was
up!' They refuse to accept mere theories from a man perceived,
rightly or wrongly, to be a 'dabbler', an amateur. That Ph.D. or even
an MA tacked-onto his name would have ultimately given him the
credence he couldn't get on the world stage otherwise.

I think he was ambitious. I think he was possessed by that same
writing demon that I and others are possessed by, and yet I would
never have pursued this bitter path which led to disbelief and then
hatred being expressed against him, I would have made my own mistakes
in my own way, but I would have left the roots of the Jews and other
Semitic peoples out of it. But, propelled by hubris, perhaps, be
could not stop. It sounds as if, consciously or unconsciously, he
wanted to write a book that was the ABSOLUTE ANTITHESIS of the Bible
(Old Testament) portrait of the "CHOSEN PEOPLE". Whatever the exact
opposite is of the word "chosen", that sounds like what Bradley
labeled indelibly upon the already much-besmirched, much-used, Jews.
Alas, he wrote the thing and published it, and it sounds like an ugly
thing, too. Because ye shall know them by their fruits thereof, and
many former friends and traveling companions seem to have dismissed
Michael Bradley from the rolls of readable, collectible authors,
because since this book of Bradley's appeared, it seems he hasn't
written, or at least published, anything else. He seems to have been
dabbling in e-books, which is a sorry lot for a 62-year old. An
author's reputation goes before him, after all, and there isn't a
publisher anywhere who wouldn't at the very least 'Google-up' an
author's 'rep' before committing to a new book project or paying $$$
as advances on royalties.

So, it is possible Michael Bradley's goose, duck, or other bird, has
been cooked. If he had traced the history of the Lithuanians and
Latvians back to Peking Man or the orangutan, it would have been
better for him, for although Liths and Letts are proud, attacks on
them are not likely to lead to black-listing, and that may well have
been part of what's made Michael Bradley disappear from sight, with no
new titles that I've been able to find, these past few years. Or two
guys led him away to an unknown fate! It is a Free Country, after
all. Oh! But he was living in Canada, where strange things happen --
at least as strange as in the United States, viz: his peculiar book
titles, for proof of that!

I just did some more research! Michael Bradley seems to be alive and
well, and all the time I've known him, he seems to have been using an
alias! According to a decade-old "Who's Who in Canada", his real name
is Michael Anderson de Sackville. He is said to be "a researcher,
author, amateur historian, and anthropologist". He was elevated to
the rank of a Knight of Malta for his activities in bringing relief
supplies to Central America in 1983. His website bemoans the fact he
can't get published anymore because of being "blacklisted" on account
of books like "Chosen People from the Caucasus". Despite all that, he
is one amazing dude, and I'm glad to have known him, no matter what
name he went by! In the end, there is very little daylight between
"kook" and "genius". I think Michael is more the second than he ever
was the first. And if he'd only been a kook, he wouldn't have
published all these titles. And if he'd been a genius without a little
bit of kookiness, he might have never been noticed as the "character"
that he is. Best, ------Ed

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