A valuable, earth-friendly lesson, not presented artfully.
In Redfern’s encyclopedic second book, she looks to the lessons modern civilization should learn from ancient, indigenous cultures.
There’s a little bit of everything in this book: the Maya calendar and 2012, Atlantis, Native mysticism, galactic pseudoscience, shamans, dimensional jumps, and spirit guides who speak through the author. Redfern’s basic message is that modern humanity must return to the geocentric, brotherly values of indigenous cultures. To prove that ancient cultures across the continents and over the millennia had the same basic philosophy, Redfern chops her book into small chapters about each culture. The Hopi get a few pages; ancient people in Norway, Colombia and Alaska each have a chapter; African tribes have their own section. Redfern wants to convey similarities in religion, customs and even language. Ancient people held these beliefs; therefore, modern people should also hold these beliefs. The problem is in the book’s structure and writing, which can feel like a collection of pamphlets, rather than a coherent argument. Certain aspects of Redfern’s sketches of native cultures are interesting, but the connections she draws between tribes are not powerful enough to sustain an entire book. Redfern is also not a trained anthropologist, and even though there are footnotes in the book, some of her claims about the similarities between cultures separated by oceans and centuries are hard to swallow. Take her point about the term “Masma.” According to Redfern, “Masma” was both the name of a tribe of pre-Columbian Peruvians, and also the name that Romans gave to an African tribe. Redfern claims, “This indicates a connection between these cultures,” which could be explained by ancient travel, or a common originating civilization. The logic isn’t sound. First of all, the word “Masma” is spelled using western characters, which would have been unavailable to Peruvians, Africans or Romans. If the same word, or two words that sound similar, are actually used to describe these two cultures, then that would seem more like a translation error than divine intervention. Redfern doesn’t bolster her case when she repeatedly mentions her “spirit friends” who channel information to her. An additional problem is the tangled, tortuous sentences: “The Ancients remind us of the importance of applying peace and love in personal living before communities cooperate.” This sentence represents her overall thesis, but it takes too much effort for the reader to untangle its meaning.
A valuable, earth-friendly lesson, not presented artfully.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2009
ISBN: 978-1449057602
Page Count: 248
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Reality and imagination infuse a probing memoir.
A writer’s journey to find himself.
In January 2015, French novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and memoirist Carrère began a 10-day meditation retreat in the Morvan forest of central France. For 10 hours per day, he practiced Vipassana, “the commando training of meditation,” hoping for both self-awareness and material for a book. “I’m under cover,” he confesses, planning to rely on memory rather than break the center’s rule forbidding note taking. Long a practitioner of tai chi, the author saw yoga, too, as a means of “curtailing your ego, your greed, your thirst for competition and conquest, about educating your conscience to allow it unfiltered access to reality, to things as they are.” Harsh reality, however, ended his stay after four days: A friend had been killed in a brutal attack at the magazine Charlie Hebdo, and he was asked to speak at his funeral. Carrère’s vivid memoir, translated by Lambert—and, Carrère admits, partly fictionalized—covers four tumultuous years, weaving “seemingly disparate” experiences into an intimate chronicle punctuated by loss, desperation, and trauma. Besides reflecting on yoga, he reveals the recurring depression and “erratic, disconnected, unrelenting” thoughts that led to an unexpected diagnosis; his four-month hospitalization in a psychiatric ward, during which he received electroshock therapy; his motivation for, and process of, writing; a stay on the Greek island of Leros, where he taught writing to teenage refugees, whose fraught journeys and quiet dreams he portrays with warmth and compassion; his recollection of a tsunami in Sri Lanka, which he wrote about in Lives Other Than My Own; an intense love affair; and, at last, a revival of happiness. Carrère had planned to call his yoga book Exhaling, which could serve for this memoir as well: There is a sense of relief and release in his effort to make sense of his evolving self.
Reality and imagination infuse a probing memoir.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-60494-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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