An affectionate glimpse at the worlds of Japan and Zen. Chadwick began his formal Zen training in San Francisco in 1966. In his first book, he gives us an account of his four years in Japan as a Zen student and English teacher, beginning in April 1988, when he was 43. He spent the first six weeks in a small, remote mountain temple. Then he settled down next to a large suburban temple (he doesn't say exactly where) and soon afterward married his American girlfriend, Elin. Prefacing each short chapter with the appropriate date and location, Chadwick moves backward and forward between his secluded monastic practice and his lay Zen practice in an often chaotic domestic setting. The result is at times confusing, but the contrast between the two serves to hold the reader's interest and even acts as a kind of koan, forcing us to ask what spiritual activity really is. We meet Norman, a fellow American Zen monk who continually (and unsuccessfully) battles to convert his fiery temperament into detached compassion in his collisions with Japanese attitudes. We share Chadwick and his wife's brushes with government bureaucrats dealing with their not- quite-legal immigration status. We join Chadwick, Norman, and the other monks on a takuhatsu, or formal begging trip. Throughout, Chadwick writes with humor and insight. He deftly portrays the different American and Japanese mentalities, for example, in his hilarious description of his interview for a driver's license, during which he was asked (among other things) the exact score of his written driving test and the rank of the official who administered it. The death and funeral of Chadwick's friend, Zen master Katagiri Roshi, dominates the final chapters, and the sudden need to vacate his apartment brings Chadwick's happy existence in Japan to an unexpected and Zen-like conclusion. Japanese and Zen terms are explained in a helpful glossary. Vivid, lighthearted, and unself-consciously profound.
Pub Date: Aug. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-14-019457-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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