Atheists and devout worshipers alike may never accept the agnostics’ philosophy. But even in defense of simply not knowing,...
A seasoned reporter on religion and an old hand on the Middle East beat, Hazleton (The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad, 2013, etc.) is Jewish by blood and convent-educated by nuns. After more than a decade in Jerusalem, she finds that accepted pious practice is not for her.
For the author, doubt is not a problem but a blessing. She does not seek assurance of an all-encompassing intelligent design but, rather, revels in the prospects that just might yet be discovered by mankind. For this agnostic, there is delight in mystery. Her faith is in not knowing everything. Humanity, certainly, is subject to misadventure, yet it is for humans to determine what is truly significant. Meaning, in her book, is not the responsibility of a force beyond us; how we behave is our choice and our obligation. The old aphorism is clear to Hazleton: man created God, not the other way around, and she sees Him (who is consistently male) as an anthropomorphic metaphor for something bigger. “If there is one thing that can really be said with any certainty about God,” she writes, “it is that the name is utterly insufficient to the concept.” Throughout the book, the author dissects the manifestations of religious devotion. Religious belief is seen as binary, a true-or-false proposition. Where, she asks, is the nuance? Is our universe unique or only one in a greater cosmos? How can we comprehend what is beyond infinity? The agnostic mind finds no satisfactory answers in canonical tracts or fundamentalist piety. There’s no need to reckon with evil, infidels, or visiting angels. Here, with clever elucidation, are artful essays that celebrate the wonder of the unknown.
Atheists and devout worshipers alike may never accept the agnostics’ philosophy. But even in defense of simply not knowing, Hazleton does not deny possibilities; she denies only assured and implacable dogma.Pub Date: April 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59463-413-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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
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