No surprises here—just vintage Watts.
Playful and prophetic dispatches from the intersection of philosophy and spirituality.
Watts (Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide-and-Seek, 2017, etc.), who died in 1973, loved to startle his readers by exposing their erroneous assumptions about themselves and the world. Nothing in his latest posthumous publication will shock Watts initiates more than his assertion that, “ideally, you only attend one seminar or read just one book and never have to come back to me again. It’s not the best business model, but as far as my livelihood is concerned, there are always more people out there foolish enough to pay attention to me.” With Just So, Watts is closing in on 50 books to his name, most of which cover Zen, Taoism, Vedanta, and Christianity mixed with British and American cultural criticism. That the author is witty and insightful on these themes is why readers return again and again to only slight variations on them. To adapt one of his best-known sayings, “the point of reading Watts is not to learn something from him; the point of reading Watts is to enjoy it.” So his son, Mark, has a solid platform to keep turning out these volumes assembled from archived lectures (the number of posthumous volumes has now surpassed those Watts himself saw through to publication). The challenge for such a project is to get the lecture segments to cohere into something that feels like a book—and hopefully one that offers something that lectures themselves, which are readily available online, do not. On this count, this latest mostly falls short, but the author’s charming style is enough to overcome the book’s structural shortcomings. He’s as good as he ever was on ecology, the self, and what does and does not make for a good life.
No surprises here—just vintage Watts.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68364-294-7
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Sounds True
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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