The late Professor Lewis' fame began flickering over the wartime roofs of Oxford and Cambridge with the publication of The Screwtape Letters, a witty defense of Christianity in a "satanic" age, meaning the 20th century. But the prolific don had other bits of glitter: The Allegory of Love, a study of medieval tradition; Till We Have Faces, a novel based on the Psyche legend; and a series of fantasies, notably Perelandra, a time-travel conceit concerning a visit to Venus where the temptation of Eve is re-enacted with somersaulting results. One totes out this brief inventory, to which many other credits could be added, since in the posthumous collection of odds and ends here lamentably little of Lewis' formidable literary talents and exuberant intellect is on view. The publisher describes it as a "mixed bag of Lewisiana" bound to "be treasured by his devotees," an assessment more in the tradition of optimistic blurb than statement of fact. The essays have a mild, after-dinner charm, whimsically relaying cultured opinions on the delights of juvenile romances, the follies of highbrow criticism, a formal and informal discussion of science fiction, and some intelligent quibbling with Professor Haldane on ethics and government. The few tales seem tired and coy, though the slight extracts from a projected novel supposedly revamping the Helen in Egypt ploy and the troubles of a victorious, if cuckolded, Menelaus, have a wry, squinting gaiety.
Pub Date: June 15, 1966
ISBN: 0156027674
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1966
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
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
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