by Peggy Noonan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2005
A fan’s notes, mainly of interest to the right-listing faithful.
Reverential study of the late pontiff by Reagan hagiographer (and Hillary scourge) Noonan, blending solid theology with a few pages from Tiger Beat (“His face was—oh, his face!”).
Karol Wojtyla, who took the papal name John Paul II in 1978, was a man of contradictions; as onetime Reagan-Bush speechwriter Noonan (A Heart, A Cross, and a Flag, 2003, etc.) remarks, he was at once traditionalist and progressive, fluent in Latin but also delighted by e-mail and text-messaging. She is less quick to remark that the pope, to whom Lech Walesa gave the lion’s share of credit for bringing down communism, had little use for capitalism, either, or that he fiercely opposed the death penalty, beloved of Republicans—but no matter, for Noonan is more interested in celebrating the pontiff’s bravery and humanity, which are indisputable, than in examining his complexities at any length. Crediting him similarly with helping her through some dark-woods moments in a spiritual journey waylaid by such things as the quest for career and the benighted ’60s, Noonan gives much attention to signs and portents: a mystical document that, a thousand years ago, foretold the death of John Paul I; the tripartite message Mary delivered at Fatima; the odd fact that the mothers of Reagan, John Paul and Margaret Thatcher all worked as seamstresses. (She is worldly enough, however, many though her Vatican II–related qualms may be, to give Warren Zevon’s words proper philosophical weight.) Noonan’s homage to John Paul’s spirituality has transcendental and apolitical moments: Though she sidesteps the matter of women priests, she writes warmly of the pope’s dedication to the proposition that both genders are created equal and of his view—a surprise to many—that sex can be sacramental. She even gets in a few criticisms of the decidedly unholy sex scandals in the American church and of the “dumbing down” of precepts and rituals “on John Paul’s watch.”
A fan’s notes, mainly of interest to the right-listing faithful.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03748-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2005
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
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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