An engaging cannabis-infused metanovel about stoning your way to God.
A novel about faith, spiritual enlightenment, and marijuana.
In his fiction debut, Walker reveals that he was given a medical diagnosis of severe bipolar disorder and characterizes himself as a “bipolar stoner” who uses drugs to touch “the fire” that is his consciousness. He presents an “interactive novel” in which readers are given cues in parentheses that serve as prompts for deepening their enjoyment of the narrative, like playing a certain kind of song (Blinded by the Light, for instance, either by Bruce Springsteen or Manfred Mann, your choice). The crucial prompt, at the center of the book, is to smoke marijuana. The author suggests this not only enhances the reading experience, but also, as the unfolding narrative makes clear, deepens the spiritual experience of the work. The book’s thin plot revolves around a young two-tour Afghanistan veteran named Jack who visits a strip club with friends George and Dale. He meets a stripper named Trinity, and in a series of long after-hours conversations—in a diner, at a beach house—she details an elaborate philosophical worldview. Some ideas are standard-issue New Age pabulum, like when she tells Jack that all religions are right about their views on God (“They all basically preach the same idea, just in different languages, customs, and traditions”), and all are intensified by using marijuana. She refers to weed as “a wonderful gift from God” that hyperstimulates the pineal gland and allows users to achieve a oneness with God that would otherwise require a lifetime of dietary changes and personal discipline. Through a combination of sexual allure and drug use, Trinity opens Jack’s eyes to wider realities, and Walker is often a deft enough hand at what is in many ways an old-fashioned didactic novel (his ear for dialogue, for instance, is at times quite good) to make it all interesting.
An engaging cannabis-infused metanovel about stoning your way to God.Pub Date: April 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5434-1566-7
Page Count: 130
Publisher: XlibrisUS
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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