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STRIVING TOWARDS BEING

THE LETTERS OF THOMAS MERTON AND CZESLAW MILOSZ

The decade-long correspondence (195868) of writer/monk Merton and Milosz, Polish poet and winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature. By 1958, Merton had spent 17 years in one of the strictest contemplative orders of the Catholic Church but had paradoxically achieved world fame through his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, and his subsequent books on monasticism and contemporary spiritual life. Milosz was living with his family near Paris, disgusted both by Communist Poland and by what he saw as the political posturing of Sartre and Picasso. This correspondence, which was initiated by Merton as a result of reading Milosz's famous critique of Communism, The Captive Mind, covers the controversial final years of Merton's life, when he modified his otherworldly stance and became increasingly involved in the peace movement, and his longstanding fascination with Buddhism. The letters show both men struggling for a meaning beyond the clichÇs and spiritual drought imposed by society in the name of Soviet atheism or of an America trivialized by the media. Milosz calls on Merton's status as a writer who can make a difference, urging him to speak out against the banalities of commercial television and to adopt a more Manichean outlook, in the manner of Camus or Simone Weil. We relish Milosz's brief but searching analyses of Russia's self-image and of Polish Catholicism, not to mention his excoriation of the new vernacular Mass as a concession to boy- scoutish cheerfulness. Surprisingly, Merton claims scant sympathy with the student protests at Berkeley, where Milosz had settled, and imagines that his Zen may not be theirs. It is refreshing to see Merton in his intellectual mode, writing without thought of his public. Art, religion, the Cold War, and a host of contemporary writers flit elegantly through these letters of friends who hardly ever saw each other, yet achieved a remarkable meeting of minds.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-374-27100-3

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-670-88146-5

Page Count: 430

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998

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THE BOOK OF GENESIS ILLUSTRATED

An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.

The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.

R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.

An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009

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