A slim book that will resonate with the reader’s inner biker/philosopher.
A book-length essay connecting the profane and the profound, as a biker with a master’s degree in classics (and a translator of ancient Greek and Latin) contemplates a life not always well spent.
Though categorized as an essay, the book has two parts and chapters within them. The first part is mostly about the all-American concept of freedom, as exemplified in Easy Rider. Toward the end of this part, Fishbone relates the story of his attending an autopsy after earlier chapters showed how easily he and his friends could have been the subjects of one. “I felt a strange detachment which I’m not sure ever really left me,” he writes of the experience, described in vivisectionist’s detail. “I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that we were all just bags of guts, dragging around in the air.” In the second part of the book, Fishbone is a little less descriptive and experiential and more philosophical. It begins with the voices the author has heard, ones that may or may not be God’s, but which he is certain are not his own interior voice. He had been reluctant to resume motorcycling after a drunken accident that might have—perhaps should have—killed him. Until that voice says, “Alan, get a Harley and drive to Death Valley.” Which he did, even though Death Valley is way across the country from the upper Midwest and he’s never bought into the cult of Harley. The trip turns into a meditation on the Platonic conception of the soul, as the author weighs scientific evidence that there’s no such thing as the soul against spiritual certainty that there is. “It takes a soul to believe in the soul,” he writes. A couple of final chapters on animal instincts and a birth bring the meditation full circle.
A slim book that will resonate with the reader’s inner biker/philosopher.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-86547-834-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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