A highly intimate rendering of one person’s attempt at religious insight.
Carty presents a collection of Christian poems.
The structure of this collection is bound together by some vague information that the uninitiated reader—that is, probably anyone who is more than a couple of degrees removed from its publication—is probably not privy to. The “footprints” of the title is a reference to another poem, published back in 1963, as this book informs us, that describes a twin set of footprints along a beach, one belonging to a man and the other to God. This poem is clearly the inspiration for the current collection, which takes off with the same theme and imagery. As a vehicle for the poems themselves, the book contains a nearly pure outpouring of religious emotion. At its most coherent, some of the longer poems read a bit like a sermon. Elsewhere, short poems, tied together by innocent rhymes, are full of, or based on, an abundance of biblical imagery, mostly about the writer’s relationship with God. From the strange pixelated image on the cover to the free-flowing verse and loose grammar, the entire project has an unrefined feel. In place of polish, the overwhelming veneer consists of raw religious feeling, and the writing is driven by a deeply personal, sentimental Christian spirituality. The work is not scholarly, beyond the casual biblical reference, and the poetry is not particularly crafted—but this does not seem to be the point. Rather, through these poems the author seems to be translating her own spiritual experience, presenting an interpretation of the way religion has woven itself through her life, and perhaps with a bit of moralizing, her understanding of the role it is meant to play for people more broadly.
A highly intimate rendering of one person’s attempt at religious insight.Pub Date: July 24, 2011
ISBN: 978-1418448530
Page Count: 108
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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