Controversial guru Lenz (Lifetimes: True Accounts of Reincarnation, not reviewed) uses snowboarding as a metaphor for the path to enlightenment in this slick, how-to guide to Tibetan Buddhismanother hybrid of a novel originally self-published. Giving a fictional presentation to supposedly real experiences, Lenz portrays himself as a spiritually naive, all- American boy who has come to Katmandu simply to find the ultimate snowboarding challenge. One day he literally runs into a mysterious Tantric Buddhist monk, Master Fwap, who, apart from being able to fly and read minds, turns out to be the last surviving member of an esoteric Tibetan order. The Master makes our author his disciple, informing him that he will attain enlightenment at age 29 on account of his having been enlightened in former lives. Fwap then discourses on such topics as the nature of Samadhi, the interplay between free will and karma, and the importance of developing a higher, intuitive mind. Happiness and enlightenment are available within us if only we learn to meditate and to open the Third Eye. Fwap's advice, which often sounds more like Zen than Tantra, makes no reference to the fierce struggles and renunciation that the tradition envisages for those who would attain enlightenment in a single lifetime, nor to the fact that the usual metaphor for this heroic endeavor is the ascent of a mountain. Instead, our snowboarding author is exhorted to ``become the board'' and, having thus learnt the principle of perfect action, to go on and become rich and famous—which in fact Lenz has done. Recent allegations of cult activity and sexual impropriety by Lenz have been reported in Wired magazine and the New York Times. As a result, Warner, the author's original publisher, dropped the book, for which a 100,000- copy first printing had been announced. Students of Buddhism will find nothing new here, while the general reader will be disconcerted by the absence of boundaries between fact and fiction. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-14147-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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