A warmhearted, if not groundbreaking, work about the transmission of wisdom.
In Turner’s debut novel, a young man traveling through Alaska meets a mysterious figure in the wilderness who instructs him on the true nature of wisdom.
Gabriel is a young college student looking for adventure. While backpacking with friends in Alaska and hoping to earn money working on the new pipeline, Gabriel goes for a solitary moonlight walk and encounters a flute-playing mountain man. This strange, elderly man has a wolf and a raven as companions. Although he looks shaggy and scraggly, he turns out to be highly cultured. His cabin, which appears to be bigger inside than out, has a good library, Persian carpets and a baby grand piano. He and Gabriel have a wide-ranging conversation in which Gabriel learns, among other things, to use strength in service to others, to not mistake humility for weakness, to question one’s own truths and to seek wisdom. Turner, who has lived in Alaska for 30 years, writes vivid and evocative descriptions of nature: “Rough-hewn mountains rose to the sky all around, and the forests carpeted them as far up as they could before losing breath and the ability to climb any higher.” Once Gabriel meets the wizard, however, the novel’s focus turns to the old man’s teachings, conducted in a single overnight conversation. “I had always enjoyed campfire philosophy and mountaintop metaphysics,” says Gabriel, and readers who feel similarly will enjoy this book. Gabriel learns about the Noble Arts (including language, listening, patience, imagination, influence, finance and giving) and the two Great Powers of the Spirit (the abilities to love and create). Although this information is imparted with liveliness and humor, some readers may find much of it familiar—a conglomeration of well-known ideas from literature, self-help books, New Age philosophy, psychology and other tales of shamanic encounters.
A warmhearted, if not groundbreaking, work about the transmission of wisdom.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475107074
Page Count: 162
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.
An essayist and novelist turns her attention to the heartache of a friend’s suicide.
Crosley’s memoir is not only a joy to read, but also a respectful and philosophical work about a colleague’s recent suicide. “All burglaries are alike, but every burglary is uninsured in its own way,” she begins, in reference to the thief who stole the jewelry from her New York apartment in 2019. Among the stolen items was her grandmother’s “green dome cocktail ring with tiers of tourmaline (think kryptonite, think dish soap).” She wrote those words two months after the burglary and “one month since the violent death of my dearest friend.” That friend was Russell Perreault, referred to only by his first name, her boss when she was a publicist at Vintage Books. Russell, who loved “cheap trinkets” from flea markets, had “the timeless charm of a movie star, the competitive edge of a Spartan,” and—one of many marvelous details—a “thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, seemingly scalped from the roof of an English country house.” Over the years, the two became more than boss and subordinate, teasing one another at work, sharing dinners, enjoying “idyllic scenes” at his Connecticut country home, “a modest farmhouse with peeling paint and fragile plumbing…the house that Windex forgot.” It was in the barn at that house that Russell took his own life. Despite the obvious difference in the severity of robbery and suicide, Crosley fashions a sharp narrative that finds commonality in the dislocation brought on by these events. The book is no hagiography—she notes harassment complaints against Russell for thoughtlessly tossed-off comments, plus critiques of the “deeply antiquated and often backward” publishing industry—but the result is a warm remembrance sure to resonate with anyone who has experienced loss.
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780374609849
Page Count: 208
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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