Frenetic in its energy, but too obtuse, too careless, to clearly express its unique ideas.
A one-act, all-caps play depicting the inner chorus of a lonely man on the verge of suicide, explored using language and themes pulled from Eastern and Western philosophies.
Within the mind of the Founder there exists a bickering pantheon of emotional analogues: the hopeful youth Donut, the vexatious Cavalier, the nihilistic Riot, the depressive Somber, the unmoving Passive, and thoughtful Ponder. He is the entirety of their world, known as Yonder Town. But loneliness has sent him into a spiral, and he drinks while slipping in and out of a deep mania, contemplating suicide and causing upheaval in Yonder. The six aspects of his personality struggle to save him, and themselves, by reestablishing a sense of Equilibrium, a balance offset for them by the appearance of a chained sufferer—the Faust-meets-Prometheus Bearer of Burdens—who shoulders the Founder’s inner pain and great doubt. And with the Bearer, the embodiment of Death comes as well, looming over the six as they attempt to save themselves while acknowledging their own parts in this predicament. Hulasie’s script is verbose, but the narrative is a simple tale of balance and self-preservation, swallowed up by numerous references to Eastern and Western schools of thought. The effect is a little like philosophical name-dropping; a coherent doctrine could be pieced together, but it’s never established. Despite this, the play succeeds at portraying the concepts of doubt and despair, particularly when all the characters get going at once, spouting monologues at each other instead of actually conversing, conveying an anxious energy that feels true to a racing mind and an unsettled soul. So intense is this panic that, at times, the ever-silent Death even takes on a humorous slant, hinting at why she seems so welcoming to the Founder and cleverly illustrating the negative role his mental chorus sometimes plays. The lack of back story on the Founder leaves the ending in some doubt; even with equilibrium achieved, has his desire to self-harm been truly ended or only deferred?
Frenetic in its energy, but too obtuse, too careless, to clearly express its unique ideas.Pub Date: June 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456731090
Page Count: 56
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2014
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
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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