A slightly jumbled but moving call for a fresh American philosophy, one with “music in our parlors and love in our hearts.”
An examination of America’s shifting moral values, conducted through the lens of cultural analysis and autobiography.
Somer opens his encyclopedic analysis of American cultural priorities with two stark stories about the deaths of his son and wife, and he skillfully broadens the impact of these tragedies by then shifting his narrative back to his boyhood in the 1940s rural Midwest. His childhood memories evoke pleasures of simpler times—family dinners around a communal table or sitting on a front porch. He contrasts these reminiscences with the often frenetic pace of life and change that has gripped the country ever since (“it was as though the future was thrusting itself upon people so quickly,” he writes, “that they had to discard past pleasures to experience pleasures they had never anticipated, like air conditioning”). He diagnoses a fundamental shift in the values that characterized the America of his youth, and like many a writer before him, he locates that shift in the 1950s and early ’60s, when a new materialism swept the country and a youth-mania was born out of the virtual creation—and commercialization—of a new kind of consumer: the teenager. Seminal figures—Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley and James Dean—are inspected for the new ideas they seemed to embody, and transformative literary works, such as On The Road, are given detailed and sympathetic new readings. Somer studies the existentialism of Kierkegaard with the same energy he devotes to the religious beliefs of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and although this intellectual latitude can at times be too diffuse for its own good, the opinions are never dull. Ultimately, it’s Somer’s optimism that pulls together the disparate threads of his study; “After all,” he writes, “America’s hope, even though it was compromised the moment it was inaugurated, seems to continue to be the world’s best hope.”
A slightly jumbled but moving call for a fresh American philosophy, one with “music in our parlors and love in our hearts.”Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500749200
Page Count: 232
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2014
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 moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf