Notions not necessarily translatable into your own life, but an elegant, calming pleasure to read as they touch upon...
Careful, congenial, Zen-inflected rustications on woodworking, and, by extension, an entire worldview, from poet and professor Laird (Psychology/Antioch Univ.).
With the easy feeling as though he were pausing for a moment to offer these reflections on creative work, Laird treats readers to a few of his woodworking experiences and how the deliberate, exigent craft nonetheless relies on ingenuity, inventiveness, and a willingness to start with nothing, to be open to the possibilities, looking for an invitation from the wood. He has an admirable ability to focus closely, whether it be on the precise, demanding work of sharpening a knife on a water stone (then brooding on how the perfect edge is invisible, absent of light) or getting lost in the architecture of a woodpile, letting it incubate ideas of future cabinetwork. There’s a lovely meditation, as he builds a wooden block plane, on the keen sensibility of one’s hands, and there’s a deconstruction of an old rowboat that turns into an archaeological dig through memory. Laird is ever-attentive to the moment of creative impulse, expressed as perhaps akin to lightning, “passing over or through the body, scorching or liberating, sometimes painfully,” or the joy of “the articulation of joints that connect all the worlds.” Laird tips over occasionally into fruity aphorisms (“the magic of memory is only one of the many spells woven by the work of hands”), overwriting (“an emerald glistening far up the slope of a verdant landscape”), and an odd sense that he is subservient to the creative process, not elemental to it, as when he walks the woods with “eyes softly focused. I want the forest to offer up the pieces, to point them out to me as gifts. I don't want to be a thief here.”
Notions not necessarily translatable into your own life, but an elegant, calming pleasure to read as they touch upon Laird’s. (8 b&w illustrations)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2001
ISBN: 0-8027-1389-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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
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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