The singularly uninspired account of how agnostic sportswriter Bryan (Dogleg Madness, 1988) entered a fundamentalist seminary, studied and argued over the Bible, joined a missionary expedition to El Salvador—and found his life unchanged. Bryan spent the spring term of 1989 in residence at Criswell College in Dallas, a stronghold of Southern Baptist conservatism. His stated purpose was investigative rather than theological: He was interested in fundamentalism, intended to write a book on the subject, and wanted to know more about it. The reality turned out to be more complex than he had imagined. His classmates were quite likable, by and large, and his teachers (despite the precision of their creed) were remarkably open. Their obvious, almost single- minded dedication to biblical Christianity fascinated Bryan, who had abandoned Methodism in his youth and seems never to have found an adequate substitute. Throughout, he compares them with ``liberal Christians'' (who, he says, try to accommodate their faith within the framework of modern philosophy) and credits them with more consistency and passion. More than once, Bryan claims, he was tempted to present himself for baptism, and in a Catholic church in El Salvador he began to understand the reality conveyed by the ideas of ``sin'' and ``redemption.'' His story remains essentially voyeuristic throughout, however, because at no point does he seem willing to meet his classmates on their own terms. His skepticism is never relinquished long enough to make his encounter with theism seem like more than a diversion, and this undermines the significance of the whole undertaking. A disappointing tale, which tries without much success to provide new insights on an unfamiliar world.
Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-394-57509-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
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
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
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