The verse sparkles and the visuals shine in this volume that examines Genesis.
A book offers a multimedia celebration of Jewish Scripture.
In the Jewish tradition, words have power—real power. According to the first verses of the Hebrew Bible (or Torah), God created the cosmos with speech. For Jews, then, the story of the world’s making shows that the phonemes that spill from their mouths possess an unimaginable potency. Jinnett (The Olive Tree in the Shadow of the Second Temple, 2015, etc.) reminds readers of this fact in the opening piece of his new collection inspired by the Torah: “In the watery depths / twenty-two fiery letters / swirled; / the aleph-beit of Hebrew, / building blocks of the world.” If God made the universe out of words, then the world is divine poetry. What more appropriate reply than to write poetry in return? The author focuses on the first few chapters of Genesis, in which God builds the world in seven days. Thus, a poem from the section entitled “Fifth Day: Fish and Fowl” gives readers a glimpse of the wonders of the deep: “And—oh—what a sight / was our undersea feast, / with conch shells of food, / near thousands at least.” Yet the book is no slavish retelling; the themes of Creation send Jinnett on flights of fancy that set him down in other parts of the biblical narrative. Hence, the aforementioned “undersea feast” reminds him of the Great Flood of Genesis and the birds Noah releases from the ark. Thus readers have “Raven’s Song,” which opens lyrically: “I remember how it was before the rains, / when waves kissed sand as waters lapped the shore, / gentle sounds like lovers make when they embrace.” Like the scriptural model on which it is built, this volume is fresh, dynamic, and readable. Its only real flaw remains its cumbersome configuration. The first half of the book features Jinnett’s poetry. But the second half awkwardly reproduces those works in their entirety—this time with extensive footnotes that flesh out references to Scripture and commentary. The information is valuable, but the exposition is bulky and didactic. Further, buried among these piles of explanatory text are gorgeous original artworks by Bowden, all of which deserve better placement. A more streamlined structure would make this good book great.
The verse sparkles and the visuals shine in this volume that examines Genesis.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5301-2671-2
Page Count: 106
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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
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
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