A clever and spirited defense, perhaps more energetic than the actual amount of prejudice requires.
A witty essay about things best done on your own by admitted loner Rufus.
Editor (presumably in splendid solitude) of the literary quarterly East Bay Express, our Lone Writer finds the conviviality of the wide world one huge pain and would like to not be considered nuts just because solitude and a room of her own speak to her soul. (Her loyal husband agrees.) Rufus discusses with brio the rewards of the sequestered life and the bothers imposed by gregarious outsiders in various sociological contexts. In film, lone heroes like Shane are overtaken by lone killers like Norman Bates. By the way, if popular culture is so popular, what has it to do with an anchorite beyond offering information as what the crowd is up to? Advertising, the ubiquitous power behind pop culture, reveals what everyone else will want, so who wants it? Not the true recluse. Don’t misjudge: loners have real friends, though perhaps not a lot and maybe they don’t visit frequently. And they have sex, too, though perhaps not a lot or frequently. Organized religion is a problem (it’s organized, after all), but the Internet is a stroke of luck. Solo adventure is a cinch, and so is eccentricity. Loners flourish in the creative arts and science. Emily Dickinson and Albert Einstein, Thomas Merton and Greta Garbo are among the many insular folks examined, along with Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and the D.C. snipers (losers misidentified as loners by the media). Sam Spade, Batman (but not Robin), and the author are simply reclusive, preferring independence to society. “Is socializing all that great?” asks Rufus. “Riots are socializing.” Proceeding on the perhaps questionable assumption that loners are universally reviled, she provides a founding manifesto for an organization of self-contained people. (There would, naturally, be no meetings.) Or maybe it’s a book discussion topic for eremitic groups: join the stay-at-home crowd and read it alone.
A clever and spirited defense, perhaps more energetic than the actual amount of prejudice requires.Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-56924-513-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A riveting look inside the human brain and its quirks.
Acclaimed British neurologist Sacks (Neurology and Psychiatry/Columbia Univ.; The Mind’s Eye, 2010, etc.) delves into the many different sorts of hallucinations that can be generated by the human mind.
The author assembles a wide range of case studies in hallucinations—seeing, hearing or otherwise perceiving things that aren’t there—and the varying brain quirks and disorders that cause them in patients who are otherwise mentally healthy. In each case, he presents a fascinating condition and then expounds on the neurological causes at work, drawing from his own work as a neurologist, as well as other case studies, letters from patients and even historical records and literature. For example, he tells the story of an elderly blind woman who “saw” strange people and animals in her room, caused by Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a condition in with the parts of the brain responsible for vision draw on memories instead of visual perceptions. In another chapter, Sacks recalls his own experimentation with drugs, describing his auditory hallucinations. He believed he heard his neighbors drop by for breakfast, and he cooked for them, “put their ham and eggs on a tray, walked into the living room—and found it completely empty.” He also tells of hallucinations in people who have undergone prolonged sensory deprivation and in those who suffer from Parkinson’s disease, migraines, epilepsy and narcolepsy, among other conditions. Although this collection of disorders feels somewhat formulaic, it’s a formula that has served Sacks well in several previous books (especially his 1985 bestseller The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), and it’s still effective—largely because Sacks never turns exploitative, instead sketching out each illness with compassion and thoughtful prose.
A riveting look inside the human brain and its quirks.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-95724-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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