An often moving account that’s just as outlandish and funny as the author’s bizarre experience.
In this debut memoir, one man’s hallucination at the dentist’s office offers answers to mysteries regarding religion and the universe.
“I just met God,” Grisetti said to the dental hygienist as he woke up from a combination of laughing gas, vodka, Xanax, and marijuana. He’d combined the drugs to avoid the traumatic pain of getting fillings, but instead, he says, he found himself in a 200-year-long conversation with the creator of the universe. It was more than nitrous oxide–induced babbling or simple hallucination: Grisetti was so deeply affected by what he experienced that he writes the ordeal out in surprising detail for this memoir. The God that Grisetti met was far different from the one he knew as a Southern Baptist child. This God was hipper, genderless, and more amenable to the New Yorker author’s agnosticism, and patiently explained what religions have gotten all wrong—and what many of them still get right. They watched supernovas together, talked about the origin of the world, and discussed what Jesus Christ was really all about. “My father was going to rub this in my face for the rest of my life,” Grisetti writes. “I met God on an accidental drug trip and He told me that Jesus was real. Gross.” Grisetti approaches all the complicated topics with this same punchy snark in what he jokingly calls “The Gospel According to Nitrous Oxide.” But he’s also so meticulous and thorough in his recollection that it can’t be taken as a simple laughing matter. He says that his book is a response to Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent’s 2010 book Heaven Is for Real, and he creates a cynical, adult-oriented version of that conservative take on near-death experience. Fittingly, Grisetti’s God is more reminiscent of the alien in Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel Contact than of anything in contemporary Christian literature. The author’s own friends, he says, responded to the event in different ways: they were either deeply affected by it or they told him it was a “narcissistic waste of time.” Both reactions seem valid for the memoir, as well. But even readers who aren’t converted by this odd testimony will still be charmed by Grisetti’s humor and his conviction in telling such a strange, audacious story.
An often moving account that’s just as outlandish and funny as the author’s bizarre experience.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5085-0266-1
Page Count: 200
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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