A starkly direct but sometimes-puzzling series of Christian reflections and exhortations.
A debut faith memoir delivers an emphatic and unusual perspective.
In his book, Gonzalez lays out his religious credential right at the outset. In the spring of 1994, while he was a student at City College of San Francisco, he claims he had “a real-life, physical encounter with the being known as the Creator.” The memory of this face-to-face meeting naturally changed the author’s life and filled him with an unshakeable confidence in his own faith —an assurance he’s eager to impart to his readers. “If you have ever wondered if the Creator of the universe exists and if He is even real,” he writes, “I am here to tell you that He is very real and really does exist because I have personally met Him, and it has changed my life.” This account sets the tenor for the rest of the work, in which Gonzalez relates his many subsequent interactions with the Christian God and offers advice and encouragement to readers seeking such dealings themselves. Building on the fervor of that initial encounter, the book presents a series of exhortations and insights into the nature of the Christian experience. The author outlines three basic steps to creating a more direct communication with God—pray regularly, read the Bible, and keep the Creator always in mind—and he elaborates on this program in short, clearly written chapters of easygoing prose filled with plenty of personal ruminations. Some of Gonzalez’s descriptions of his subsequent divine encounters may strike some readers as almost comically trivial—a gate "miraculously opened up for me right before my eyes" during a train trip from Oakland to San Francisco (the author compares the event to the parting of the Red Sea). Occasionally, they’re more baffling (God "allowed" an injury to the hand Gonzalez’s father used to beat his children instead of simply changing the man’s heart and leaving him unharmed). But the author’s call to selfless service will resonate even with readers who may doubt the particulars of its origin story.
A starkly direct but sometimes-puzzling series of Christian reflections and exhortations.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-973653-95-0
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2020
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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