A deep reverence for nature shines throughout Russell’s rich, enjoyable text.
The author weaves together an account of a single year in rural New Mexico with a history of the pantheistic tradition from ancient Greece to the present day.
Russell (Creative Writing/Western New Mexico Univ.; Hunger: An Unnatural History, 2005, etc.) opens with a quote from Marcus Aurelius: “Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy.” This nutshell definition of pantheism is expanded upon but not superseded in the pages that follow. Russell lives in New Mexico’s Gila Valley, next to a Nature Conservancy wildlife refuge and near an ecological research center where visiting scientists involve amateur naturalists in research projects along the Gila River. She describes netting and banding birds, hiking the Sacaton Mesa, stargazing, encountering wild javelinas, observing sand hill cranes, butterflies and the native loach minnow. In this setting, she readily imagined that she was walking through the “Mind and Body of God,” but that wasn’t so easy to do in less felicitous surroundings. Pantheism, Russell found, could be a lonely business; at times she mourned the loss of a personal God and felt envious of those with faith in prayer. Meanwhile, she attended Quaker meetings, where she found a welcoming, comfortable community. With some misgivings, she experienced their hour of silence and pondered her compatibility with the Society of Friends’ religious philosophy. Russell weaves into this personal journal a selective history of pantheism in which she examines the writings of Aurelius, Baruch Spinoza, Giordano Bruno, Walt Whitman and Robinson Jeffers, among others. She also looks at elements of pantheism in Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, as well as in the works of contemporary authors who describe themselves variously as holistic scientists, religious naturalists or deep ecologists.
A deep reverence for nature shines throughout Russell’s rich, enjoyable text.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-465-00517-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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