Average customer rating:
- What a waste!
- "This is the game that moves as you play."
- For a first novel, not bad
- great deal
- Go West, young Man. Or, "Westward, Ho"
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Less Than Zero
Bret Easton Ellis
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Ellis, Bret Easton | ( E ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0679781498
Release Date: 1998-06-30 |
Book Description
Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait
of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age, in a
world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money a place devoid of feeling or
hope.
Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of
limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago,
and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his
best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday
turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy
mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.
Customer Reviews:
What a waste!.......2007-07-24
This book has no defined climax or conclusion. Has good detail but not a real good story line.
"This is the game that moves as you play.".......2007-07-04
If you have the Vintage edition of 'Less Than Zero', your first and only warning is the first thing you see, the cover. The muted skyline of Los Angeles choking in a sea of white with sprawl unfolding towards it.
This is a book where you have to follow the anxiety ladened drumbeat to a concert you don't want to go to but that has already passed. A claustrophobic, tense fog will enter the environment you are reading this book in. It doesn't go away until you get rid of or finish the book.
'Less Than Zero' isn't verbose, it isn't even intelligent. It's startlingly simple in the way it tells its story, but there's nothing bare here. It's like a slow moving train through a forlorn metropolis, the passengers watching hills of bodies move pass with the foundations of skyscrapers being freshly constructed upon them. Here it is: 'Less Than Zero', verbose (no), intelligent (no), but fascinating (yes).
Everything that 1950s America tried to bury in the middle of the Earth can be found here plus some more. Want to know the thing that would tickle their bones? There's a constellation of characters complicit in it all. It's screw and kill or get killed and screwed right in front of the Televangelist hallway monitors.
If you threw this book out your window, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't hear it land. I often wondered what the characters could hear. I imagined it was a metallic-like scratch as Blair talked to Clay or when Rip talked to Julian. Or maybe it was just a big empty nothing.
If you choose to read this book to fulfill any self-satisfying purpose, it will elicit one and one only black hole of a response from me, and it is that;
You will go nowhere.
For a first novel, not bad.......2007-06-17
Ellis' best novel is American Psycho. But in Less Than Zero one can see the direction Ellis was heading in: first-person monologue narration, disillusioned, vapid characters and scenes of disturbing violence. This novel is very good, especially when considered in the context of being a first novel. It's one I will re-read and continue to study. Some have compared this work to Catcher in the Rye, but it's more aptly linked to The Great Gatsby with its hyper-realism and trouble in paradise themes. However, in Less Than Zero Clay never finds out what he wants, never pursues it, and learns nothing. And in that regard, Ellis outdoes Fitzgerald. Ellis has the art of the tight sentence down, but Fitzgerald is more moving and beautiful. But Ellis' intention is to shock, which he does very well. Unless you've already read American Psycho, and then Less Than Zero might slightly underwhelm you.
great deal .......2007-06-12
I really enjoyed the book. Thank you for providing it to me
Go West, young Man. Or, "Westward, Ho".......2007-03-10
So 18-year old Clay comes home to Los Angeles from college in woodsy New Hampshire for Christmas Break and very rapidly resumes LA cruising altitude: partying, booze, getting a tan, partying, seeing all the hot bands making the rounds at clubs-of-the-moment like the Roxy or The Edge, more partying, checking out movies in Westwood blitzed out of his mind, cruising around LA, watching bootleg Mexican snuff porn (featuring underage victims & chainsaws and wire hangers),
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Bret Easton Ellis's "Less than Zero" is a fine little primer on how the Rich & Famous live and die in LA, with Clay as our Virgil in this descent into a 1980's Dante's Inferno peopled by the Lithium-addled (but thin, baby, thin! and tan! and loaded! filthy stinking rich, Maserati country baby!)Walking Dead. Tunes, by the way, courtesy of Duran Duran and Psychedelic Furrs.
He goes to lots of parties: celebrity parties, pre-movie deal parties at Spago with his movie producer Dad and his estranged mother, etc. He does a lot of good drugs. He does a lot of bad drugs. He drives around in his Mercedes. At times he practically shoves whole boxes of Kleenex up his brutalized, quivering snout to calk up the torrent of blood & snot, the collateral damage of his cocaine habit. He scopes out corpses in alleys.
"Less than Zero" proves you really can't go Home again, particularly if Home really wasn't much of a place to begin with. And you know, the thing is, with all the bling, the bank, the field trips to Spago & Chasen's, the road trips on the Pacific Coast Highway in the Porsche, holing up at the beachhouse at Monterey---with all that, if your life is so featureless there are no real markers or mileposts, it's pretty hard to get There from Here---or figure out how Here relates to anything at all.
As the billboard says: "Disappear Here."
Think of "Less than Zero"---the text, our guidebook into this Wonderland of banality, boredom, and high-octane depravity---as a kind of camera obscura, its image fused, heightened, now sharpened, now distorted, with light, speed, and time.
When Bret Easton Ellis released "Lunar Park", a kind of transgressive lament for his estranged father, critics howled that Ellis was playing dilettante, dipping his toes into the weedy moat of Horror reserved for Stephen King & Dean Koontz.
Really? Ellis hasn't ever written Horror? Even leaving "American Psycho" out of this, read "Less than Zero" and answer that question for yourself: Ellis's palmy, leafy, luxuriant LA is less American Dream than Nightmare, a twilight-realm of hardbodies and supercars where the daytime shadows flit across the flickering water-bottoms of swimming pools, and monsters move in the palm groves.
With that in mind, "Less than Zero" revelatory as a scalpel, is also as simple as an elementary school essay: bottom line, it's all about what Clay does on his Christmas vacation.
No, really.
So it's a little spyglass into the world of Clay & his old school buddies and their parties and sushi lunches and aimless high-end meanderings through the LA jungle. And the Kids are really, really, really *not* aliright.
For instance: Daniel sliced his hand up, has wires poking up through his raw phalanges, takes way too much lithium and is uncomfortably numb.
Julian is inaccessible, gomezing around his haunts in LA in a black porsche with tinted windows and stalked by wild-eyed panic; Blair, Clay's former girlfriend, who wants to know what love is---you know? alana & Kim, her friends, who evidently have an abortion competition going; muriel, who's anorexic and likes shoving shiny pointy things into her blood vessels, and Rip the drug dealer, who's *way* upbeat.
Clay gets driven around in the luxury cars his friends own, or rather, the cars their parents bought them: Ferraris, Porsches, BMWs. He goes to Fatburger; he checks out flicks half-bombed at Westwood, the Beverly Center, high in the Hollywood Hills, he worries about werewolves. about earthquakes. about a billboard that says, ominously & nonchalantly, "Disappear Here".
There are a few writers I'm actively, wrenchingly jealous of: Cormac McCarthy is one of them, Ellis is another. Ellis's peculiar talent is to infuse this bleak landscape with a kind of narcotic readability, while simultaneously excising his own voice, the presence of the author, entirely from the pages.
Fitting enough for this nasty little piece of grue & High Society, a world that excises its creatures as effectively as the High Sonorran Wind howling over the desert floor erases the hardtable playa.
JSG
Average customer rating:
- So accurate
- Boring
- Creative, Unusual, Thought Provoking
- A Definte Period Piece for the Early 90s
- A call to revolution for 30-45 year olds ...
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Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
Douglas Coupland
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | 18th Century | 19th Century | 20th Century | African American | Asian American | Classics | Collections & Readers | Drama | General | Hispanic | History & Criticism | Humor | Jewish American | Letters & Correspondence | Native American | Poetry | Short Stories | Women Writers
Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Coupland, Douglas | ( C ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 031205436X |
Book Description
Generation X is Douglas Coupland's acclaimed salute to the generation born in the late 1950s and 1960s--a generation known vaguely up to then as "twentysomething."Andy, Claire, and Dag, each in their twenties, have quit "pointless jobs done grudgingly to little applause" in their respective hometowns and cut themselves adrift on the California desert. In search of the drastic changes that will lend meaning to their lives, they've mired themselves in the detritus of American cultural memory. Refugees from history, the three develop an ascetic regime of story-telling, boozing, and working McJobs--"low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no-future jobs in the service industry." They create modern fables of love and death among the cosmetic surgery parlors and cocktail bars of Palm Springs, disturbingly funny tales of nuclear waste, historical overdosing, and mall culture.A dark snapshot of the trio's highly fortressed inner world quickly emerges--landscapes peopled with dead TV shows, "Elvis moments," and semi-disposable Swedish furniture. And from these landscapes, deeper portraits emerge, those of fanatically independent individuals, pathologically ambivalent about the future and brimming with unsatisfied longings for permanence, for love, and for their own home. Andy, Dag, and Claire are underemployed, overeducated, intensely private, and unpredictable. Like the group they mirror, they have nowhere to assuage their fears, and no culture to replace their anomie.
Customer Reviews:
So accurate.......2007-07-30
Generation X is a cool, loose limbed, flexi sort of a novel. The plot is not really there - it is more a series of character portraits of doomed gen x'ers who opt out of the yuppie sell out rat race, with miserable jobs in cubicles 'veal fattening pens' working for clapped out, sold out hippies. They wind up in the Desert, Palm Springs region, working in dead end 'McJobs' in the service industry and don't do much else except whine, gripe, tell stories and fuss in a sort of Delillo lite pop analysis way. It is a compelling read for the observational nails Coupland hits time and time again in this novel. The numbers he puts up are extraordinary. Nearly every line rings true in some sense, except perhaps the really weird far left field final chapters which dissolve the book in a fairly unsatisfactory ending. Many of these points are in the extra text dictionary definitions that weave through the pages. You'll recognise them, even if you yourself are not a gen-xer. Terms such as 'emotional ketchup burst: the bottling up of opinions and emotions inside oneself so that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking and confusing employers and friends - most of whom thought things were fine; 'Conversational Slumming' - the self conscious enjoyment of a given conversation precisely for its lack of intellectual rigour; me-ism - the search for a personal religion, personally tailored.
Coupland has an acute sense of the contemporary head and heart. And his characters are far more rounded than the flat, one dimensional sadists of the likes of Bret Easton Ellis and 'Less than Zero' or 'American Psycho'.
Boring.......2007-01-12
Although it is intentionally written this way (postmodern) on purpose, the book is still very boring. The reader is left anticipating something to happen but is left with nothing. Humorous but not worth reading unless you have some extra time on your hands.
Creative, Unusual, Thought Provoking.......2006-10-26
This is the second Coupland book I have read (after JPod) and found this book, although difficult going at times, ultimately rewarding.
For quite a bit of the book, I didn't think it was going too well. Clear plotlines and stereotyped, easy to understand characters are not traits of this book. It's not a super action packed book and generally it isn't an extraordinary tale. It's a lot more realistic and closer to home, but does that make a good book?
Once complete, it becomes clear. The author's vision needs to be taken as a whole and, as a complete piece of work I think it's outstanding. The more I think about it, the better I think it is!
There was a lot of hype about this book, so some may be disappointed. However, it's quite short, it's unusual and I thought it had a great ending.
A Definte Period Piece for the Early 90s.......2006-08-08
I bought Generation X in the 90s, when the era of Generation X angst was going strong. Sorry to say it took me this long to read it. I wish I had read it then. It would've meant a lot more to me then. You see, I was in my 20s in the early 90s. Anyone in their 20s in the early 90s is just who this book is about. I remember the era well. The stock market had crashed in '87 and by '90, there was no job security, millions of Americans were downsized into McJobs, laywers were waiting tables and executives were doing landscaping, etc. On top of that, the price of housing was going through the roof, forcing more and more people away from home ownership. For us, making a little more than minimum wage, we felt the pain bad. Why? Because all the rules had changed for us from the generation before. In the 50s you could support a spouse and a child on minimum wage. You couldn't support a spouse and a child on twice the minimum wage in the 90s - it would take much, much more than that! Yet the older generation seemed oblivious to our predicament. "Oh, well, we got ours!" That was the attitude. Anyway, the book Generation X, describing this angst, came on the scene, along with movies like Reality Bites, and the first three seasons of Melrose Place, encapsulated the trying times people my age were going through. This book is a period piece and classic of that time. My only reservation (and why I'm giving it four stars instead of five) was the long-winded, highly detailed and analagous desciptions used by Douglas Coupland in his writing style. It, at times, was tedious to follow. It would've been a better read had it been shorter, sweeter, and more to the point without some of the unnecessary and overly flowery language. That being said, it is a good read and one you should not pass up.
A call to revolution for 30-45 year olds ..........2006-08-05
Did you ever know someone whose life was just "perfect" ?? Someone who went to college, got married at age 23, found a great job with valuable stock options... Someone who settled down in a house in a nice city at age 25 or 26, started a family a year or two later, and who now seems to "Have it All" ?? Well, after World War II, this happened to JUST ABOUT EVERYONE in the Silent Generation, and it happen to MOST in the boomer generation, and it's happening to JUST ABOUT NO ONE in Generation X. This books speaks to members of Generation X and describes the suffering and coping mechanisms for these people.
This book, now 15 years, is about a generation that was sold down the river by its elders - Generation X. The book describes 3 young people, Andy, Dag, and Claire, who visit palm springs and tell stories of their lives and of their friends who are suffering in life. The author Douglas Coupland is actually telling stories from Vancouver British Columbia, one of the first cities in North America to be sold out to foreign economic colonizers from Hong Kong (who escaped to Vancouver to avoid the 1997 mainland takeover.) In this city, the worst 1100 square foot fixer-upper house costs a third of a million dollars, or 10 years of take-home pay for a mid-career household. Economic success is impossible in the physical confines of the city - the system is rigged against everyone except rich immigrants and the existing upper class of blue-collar boomers who purchased homes in the 1970's and 1980's. Many aspects of the book (such as "Reverse Sabbatical", "McJobs", etc.) reflect the severe economic conditions faced by high-achieving intellectuals who go nowhere economically in that city.
In my grandparents generation, all you had to do was to go to college. In my parent's generation, you needed to go to college and become a successful professional. In my own generation, you need to co-found a startup company and be among the 10% of founders who can sell off the company or have an IPO. Do you notice something here? Yes, it's getting more and more difficult to be marginally successful in America.
Because Gen X'ers find that traditional paths to success - hard work, taking chances, saving and investing - don't work any more, they resolve to live like their parents by either living WITH THEIR PARENTS or by borrowing money endlessly and hoping for a miracle. Fiscal irresponsibility is at an all-time high, and has squandered everyone's future!
In this environment of perpetual economic slavery, Coupland counsels Generation X'ers to break free of the traditional career models that have been rigged by their elders for failure. Coupland counsels us all to re-examine what is success in our life and how to achieve it. This book is a call to enlist in a class warfare between gen-X'ers and their elders! In many ways, this book is similar to "The Razor's Edge" by W. Somerset Maughen or "The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living", in other words, redefine your notion of success in the world, while waiting for our evil society to implode in upon itself, which must surely happen in the near future ...
Book Description
Today's 18-to-40-year-olds make for a notoriously elusive group of consumers: they're savvy, sophisticated, and particular. They're all but immune to traditional advertising and have an instinctive sense of quality and fair pricing. Inundated with choices, they are drawn to brands that satisfy not just what they need, but what they crave. At the same time, these consumers are spending money like it's going out of style. Generation X has firmly refuted its slacker reputation and is nearing the height of its earning potential. Generation Y has more buying power than any previous generation of teens and twentysomethings. But how to win their attention and loyalty?
In Mind Your X's and Y's, Lisa Johnson proves that the buying habits of 18-to-40-year-olds can be anticipated. Johnson, coauthor of Don't Think Pink and a leading marketing consultant, pinpoints the new rules of engagement for this Connected Generation. Based on her own and others' groundbreaking research, she looks into the heart of the Gen X and Y psyche to identify its ten core cravings -- for adventure, for high-concept design, for new families and social networks, and for personal storytelling, to name a few.
This revolutionary book is packed with fascinating case studies of established and breakaway brands from every major industry, interviews with dozens of maverick thinkers and hundreds of consumers, and numerous revealing statistics. Johnson analyzes the scope of each craving to determine how it drives specific buying behaviors and offers relevant data that illustrate its impact. Mind Your X's and Y's equips anyone who wants to reach these consumers -- brand managers and their advertising, online, creative, packaging, events, and promotions teams; small-business owners and their marketing staff; advertising agencies and specialists -- with the know-how to transform market research into profitable strategies.
Members of Generations X and Y are the most coveted and hard-to-reach consumers in the marketplace. Mind Your X's and Y's is a master class in how to create compelling brands for this Connected Generation.
Customer Reviews:
Amazing assessment of the X and Y generations.......2007-01-04
If you need to understand how young people make purchasing decisions, this book will put you way ahead of the competition. Even my young, technically savvy friends have learned new things from reading this book.
A book that hits you where you live and shows you step by step how to influence one of the biggest markets in the nation today.......2006-09-07
I loved this book, it is one of the best that I've read this year.
This is an important book because it gives you a clear, step by step roadmap for influencing and persuading one of the most fickle (and over marketed) consumer groups of our era, those consumers between 18 - 40.
The author goes into exacting detail about how this market consumes information and how you can create messages that resonate with them and stick. She also tells you what doesn't work (I cringed several times as I recognized mistakes that I made).
If you are in this age range you'll find this book one of the most refreshing you've ever read because it will describe you and how you consume information (I know it did for me) and it will help you make the transition between the kind of marketer you are today and one that can be even more effective.
This book is a guidebook, a roadmap and a manifesto. Grab this book today, even if your market it older, one of the things that the author didn't cover is how much more like 18 - 40 year olds older generations are becoming in their consumption of information and their resistance to advertising. Most of the information in this book applies to anyone who is active in today's world regardless of their age.
I wish I could give this book more than 5 stars.
Dave Lakhani
Author: Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want and The Power of an Hour: Business and Life Mastery in One Hour a Week
Customer Reviews:
Great for 20-somethings Just Starting Out.......2007-09-21
I bought this book for a younger sibling who has just set out on her own. I read through it at the bookstore and thought it'd be great for someone just starting out in the world - it covers a lot of the basics in an easy-to-read manner. Not great for someone who wants to learn some new personal finance tricks, as this covers most that some of us have heard over and over and over. But a great, and affordable book, for new high school/college grads trying to find their footing financially.
Personal Finance - nothing new to learn here.......2007-05-07
This book did not help at all. I thought it was kind of worthless.
Best $11 Bucks I've Ever Spent!.......2004-02-14
Finally! A book on personal finance for the average person. This book is filled with easy-to-understand advice about managing your money. You can read it from cover to cover or just browse through it and pick the topics you're interested in right now. The budgeting and credit card debt chapters are great. Even though it's geared towards those of us in our 20s and 30s, most of it is good advice for anyone trying to get ahead financially. Best $11 bucks I've ever spent.
Book Description
Start-today strategies for a better financial tomorrow.
The Complete Idiot's Guide, to Personal Finance in Your 20s and 30s, Third Edition, clearly explains everything members of this age group need to know to get a handle on their pocketbook and their portfolio, from planning their personal finances to enhancing their current financial plan to getting better returns on their investments. This revised and updated third edition includes completely new material on:
• Internet banking
• Debit and prepaid credit cards
• Online car shopping
• The latest in effective job hunting
• Online college degrees and what they can get you
• Investment strategies for the next decade
• Home-based employment opportunities
• New financial impact of marriage and children
• Home ownership options from building your own to townhouses and condos
• Online mortgage brokers
• All-new websites and resources
Download Description
You're no idiot, of course. You're financially independent: You pay rent, utilities, and loans all out of your own paycheck. You realize that your parents had to cut the cord sooner or later, and you're proud of how well you've adjusted. But when it comes to saving money for the long haul, you feel like an astronaut whose oxygen cord has been cut. Don't drift into a financial black hole yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide to Personal Finance in Your 20s and 30s gives you an edge so you can get through financial hardships now, invest for the future, and even afford a luxury item once in a while.
Customer Reviews:
Basic Guide a Good Start for the Young Adult.......2007-08-08
Like all "Idiot" books I have read, this one has excellent organization. Technical jargon is kept to a minimum, and the conversational writing style moves along at a good pace. The level of user-friendliness makes the information instantly accessible and useful to young people who are concerned about their financial futures. The strategies are indeed suited to the age group in the title - 20s and 30s - because the strategies outlined are quite conservative. These will have limited use for people in their 40s or 50s who have suffered a devastating financial loss (such as foreclosure and bankruptcy)and are having to start over building for retirement. This book is just what it says. It provides a wealth of simple but crucial information, all for about the price of a movie ticket, with extra large popcorn and soda. Thumbs up!
So-so book. Get Suze Orman's instead........2007-08-04
I bought this book and The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke. Skip this one and get Suze Orman's book instead. Both books are for people in their 20's or 30's, but Suze Orman's book covers much more material and many more options. The Idiot's Guide tells the same old story: budget, budget, budget, and is very light on details.
Too juvenile.......2007-07-13
I found this to be ridiculously juvenile. I skipped the first ten or so chapters because it provided absolutely no information that any person over the age of ten should know. I did however find the chapters on stock and mutual funds, etc to be very helpful. Not for someone over the age of fourteen.
Great Book Excellent Transaction.......2007-01-22
This seller is fabulous and items are as promised and delivered lightning quick.
good book for young people.......2005-08-30
even if you don't have a lot of money, this book offers helpful tips on how to manage, budget, and invest.
Book Description
Is there hope in this era of cynicism?Jimmy Long, a campus minister for more than twenty-five years, is convinced that we are in the middle of a societal hurricane. As our culture moves further into postmodernity, now is a time of enormous and rapid change. How do we "do church" in such an era? How do we reach the lost? How do we communicate hope?In Emerging Hope Long traces the connections between postmodernism and the emerging generations--Generation X and the millennial generation--highlighting implications for evangelism and discipleship. What emerges is a compelling strategy for ministry that will appeal to a generation starved for a sense of belonging. (This book is a revised and expanded edition of Generating Hope.)
Customer Reviews:
insight into today's postmodern generation.......2006-04-16
Jimmy Long seems to be in touch with our emerging youth and can see the implications for ministry. This is a good book for emerging pastors who want to do missions to this generation in the 20s and 30s. It is not a book on how to set up an emergent gathering but provides historical background, explanations, and insight into the psyche of Generation-Xers and Millenials. Like the Enlightenment/Modern Era's search for objective truth, Long predicts that this Emerging/Post-Modern culture will also be the driving force behind a long-term cataclysmic change. Today's 20 & 30-somethings are rejecting the Baby Boomers' search for "objective truth". For them, truth is now "subjective truth", one that is relative to each person and each situation. Long's assessment of this generation says the emerging generation is for subjective truth, not objective; for community, not individualism; for virtual reality, not scientific discovery; and is cynical of society, and doesn't see societal progress as our savior. I'm not sure if the youth believe in moral relativism but many in their 20s and 30s are searching for something beyond the tangibility of scientific proof. Objective truth is too cold and harsh. I think our "Star Trek post-Next Generation" is searching deeper into the spiritual realm for the possibility of finding truth. I encourage you to read this book to see how pastors can better do ministry in this emerging generation.
A Great Book for the understanding of today's youth........2006-02-19
Many of us at University Bible fellowship bought this book to help in understanding and ministering to today's college students. I recommend it for all youth pastors and those who want to be more effective in bringing the gospel to the world that is ever changing.
Amazon.com
Although it's been part of the cultural soundscape for over 25 years, hip-hop has been the focus of very few books. And when those books do pop up, they tend to be either overtly scholarly, as if the writer in question has just landed on some alien planet, or a bit too much like a fanzine. If there's anyone qualified to write a solid, informative, and entertaining tome on the culture, politics, and business of hip-hop, it's Nelson George. A veteran journalist, George is one of the smartest and most observant chroniclers of African American pop culture. Much as he broke down and illuminated R&B with his acclaimed book The Death of Rhythm and Blues, George now tackles hip-hop with the clarity of a reporter and the enthusiasm of a fan--which is fitting, because George is both. A Brooklyn native, he began writing about rap back in the late 1970s, when the beats and the lifestyle were not only foreign to most white folks, they were still underground in the black communities. Hip Hop America is filled with George's memories of the scene's nascent years, and it tells the story of rap both as an art form and a cultural and economic force--from the old Bronx nightclub the Fever to the age of Puffy. Highlighting both the major players and some of the forces behind the scenes, George gives rap a historical perspective without coming off as too intellectual. All of which makes Hip Hop America a worthwhile addition to any fan's collection. --Amy Linden
Book Description
Now with a new introduction by the author, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between black youth culture and the mass media.
Customer Reviews:
Music For the Masses in America Hit It Big........2006-11-27
The musical scene in the Sixties and the Eighties was hip-hop for all races and religions in the USA. The Seventies was devoted mostly to folk music. In the Ninties it was more rap and contemporary and also country music hit it big in the whole country and not just Nashville, Tennessee.
Who Takes The Blame?, August 13, 2006
Reviewer: Betty Burks (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews
In February, 1969, a study titled "Black-White Contact in Schools: Its Social and Academic Effects" was published by Purdue University sociologist Martin Patchen. In it, he concludes "Available evidence indicates that interracial contact in schools does not have consistent positive effects on students' racial attitudes and behavior or on the academic prformance of minority students." In March, it was declared that the AIDS virus started in Africa and on the Caribbean island, Haita and spread to the United States via tourists. Get this! Susan Sontag decided in 1988 that "the virus was sent to Africa from the U.S. as an act of bacteriological warfare" as a conspiracy.
July, 1985, a survey conducted in New York City using the HIV antibody test finds that of frequent drug users, 87 percent carried the infection. The majority of the addicts were black and Hispanic. In August 1988, on Zachary's birthday, Jean-Michael Basquiat died in New York village of a heroin overdose at the age of 27 (Zach was 26 then). He was a graffiti artist whose pieces sold for $50,000 at the time of his death. There was a lot of debate about his artistic worth.
This book traverses the years 1979 to 1989 in America and is mostly about the singers and groups in the entertainment area but also writers which proliferated during that time. It is the time of affirmative action and Clarence Thomas who was married to a Causcasian woman but courted the office girls and almost lost his nomination. I watched it all on t.v. The girl took all the blame, and she was honest and above-board, blameless. The results of overcompensation has caused much turmoil for us all in America and some are deceitful by trying to pull the wool ober the eyes of political figures to the detriment of everybody.
Excellent Overview.......2006-09-29
Nelson George has written several books on Hip Hop and African-American popular culture, all of which are worth reading. This book is particularly good for the clarity of thought evident in the writing. It is an assessment of the overall position of Hip Hop as an American cultural phenomenon branching out to the rest of the world.
It provides a neat and insightful stock take of what Hip Hop was about in the late nineties for academic purposes, but is written in an easy to digest style that suits readers of a non academic background too. It is a good book to read to get a good idea of how Hip Hop evolved from a localised phenomena to a wider cultural movement. It is enlivened by the author explaining his viewpoint, and not just presenting a dry account of facts.
excellent overview & inclusion of broader culteral impact but don't expect exhaustive material on all the big players.......2006-08-30
I am currently writing an entry about Grandmaster Flash for the forthcoming Icons of Hip-Hop (Greenwood Press). First of all, Nelson George is one of the most experienced, respected and eloquent hip-hop journalists alive, and he maintains his reputation in this book. He grew up in the middle of the birth of this artistic-come-cultural phenomenon, and tells the story as both insider and critic. Though there wasn't much specific material about Flash (which I didn't expect), George paints a genuine, if disarming or infuriating, portrait of the rise and continued influence of hip-hop through elegant and sometimes even poetic language and virtually unsurpassed insight. The latter observation comes, in part, from his willingness to explore the broader picture that this culture informs and is controlled by. He raises political and socioeconimic questions, takes on the task of discussing the record industry and how its desire for hit records over individual talent promotes a homogenous selection of 'rap artists', and is unafraid to question the roles society has played to transform hip-hop almost completely from what it was in its nascent form. Some people complain, with regard to hip-hop reference books, that the author obviously has no real authority. No one can make that claim about George. After all, he is respected enough to be able to interview GM Flash, Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa (considered the 'Holy Trinity'/founding fathers of hip-hop) in the same place at the same time. [For those of you who don't understand the significance here, no one has ever been able to get these three guys together, because of past rivalry among other things, and Kool Herc had not discussed hip-hop publicly for about thirty years prior to this interview.] So, George gives an authoritative, articulate, thoughtful and insightful account of the rise of hip-hop and the consequences of its appearance in mainstream society (which basically transformed it completely, so that the only true-to-its-roots subculture is underground hip-hop). Buy this book - but don't expect an in-depth discussion of the major players because that isn't what the book is supposed to be anyway.
STILL USEFUL.......2005-07-10
I read this book when it first came out, and from the onset I realized the book was flawed by Mr. George's ego. Mr. George has great thoughts and opinions, but unfortunately, he allows personal biases to mar how presents them to his readers. Like one of the other reviewers, I didn't agree with a lot of what he wrote, but it is still useful for information about the early days of hip hop.
Especially good on the early days of hip hop.......2003-11-18
I read this book for an African-American Studies class at UNC. At first I did not like it at all. I did not connect with George's choice of language, which seemed outdated and out of touch with current hip hop lingo.
But as I got into the book, I realized that this outdated language was not George's fault. After all, as George himself points out in a section about hip hop movies, trends and lingo in hip hop change too quickly for anyone to keep up without a very detailed scorecard. So if you can get past him using somewhat outdated language, this is a great book.
George manages to discuss a wide array of topics, from graffiti to break dancing to production and distribution of records to hip hop themed movies to hip hop lingo to the proliferation of hip hop around the world. Despite the very diverse topics, George manages to tie everything to a common theme, the impact of hip hop on American culture.
If I had to pick one aspect of the book that was especially good, I would have to choose his discussion of the roots of hip hop and its early days. As a native of New York during hip hop's formative years, George is very well informed on the topic and indeed was a witness to many key events in the early days of hip hop. He also has connections with many key figures, throughout the time period covered in the book, and he is able to recall these connections to tell unique stories you cannot find anywhere else.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of hip hop. It is a quick, enjoyable, and informative read.
Average customer rating:
- an inside look at what our youth think
|
Please Just F*Off: It's Our Turn Now
Ryan Heath
Manufacturer: Pluto Press Australia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1864033282 |
Book Description
25 year old Ryan Heath aims a missile at the baby-boomer generation of Australians who he believes are carelessly clinging to some of the country's most important leadership positions. Heath shows how the superannuated-complacency of this generation is leading to cultural decline.
Customer Reviews:
an inside look at what our youth think.......2006-04-06
While this book is ostensibly aimed at the Australian market, it speaks volumes about what the so-called 'igeneration' are thinking about the state of the world today.
You don't have to agree with all of the author's conclusions - I certainly don't - to get the feeling that it's entirely possible that he may have a point.
The broad strokes are that the Baby Boomer's have taken control of the world and their out-dated thinking is having far-reaching consequences that only a younger generation can resolve - but they won't let us.
'Boomers' across the world control government, property markets, consumer demand and corporations. They have largely destroyed the planet through rampant consumerism, and the legacy is a rapidly aging population that the young are inheriting not only the mistakes of, but the responsibility for repairing, while simultaneously funding the retirement of their elders.
We bought this book to gain an insight into the minds of the youth market - and found ourselves swept up in the author's arguments to such a degree that we had to question how effective we were in providing solutions to many of the problems facing the world today - and we're only in our thirties.
Well worth a read - and should definitely be required reading for anyone in Australia born before 1950.
Book Description
Dear Church is a series of letters from a former emergent church staffer to the global church she's not always sure she wants to be a part of. On a personal level, Sarah's story awakens the sometimes M.I.A. voice of the twenty-somethings who are distancing themselves from conventional expressions of religion. But, thanks to discussion questions that can be used for personal or group reflection, this book is much more than just one person's story. On a global level, Dear Church invites every person to engage their own disappointments and share in Sarah's story—the story of journeying through disillusionment and back again.
Customer Reviews:
Coming Full Circle.......2007-09-12
This book was an absolute page turner for me. I empathized with the author as a believer, yes, but definitely as a pastor's daughter who has seen the church from almost a 360 degree view. Dear Church sheds light on those issues that keep many looking from a distance, yet they remain reluctant to fully dive in. On the other hand, it calls believers to conviction with the simple reminder that "We are the church." And, the church is Christ's bride. Our commitment is (or should be) "for better or worse."
Every believer may benefit from adding this one to their library. However, it is surely a must for Christian leaders in the church or in the community, Worship Leaders, Pastors, Pastors' family, and anyone else who has gone beyond the realm of frustration. May you be blessed my this young woman's transparency!
Review of Book for Course on Young Adult Ministry.......2007-03-09
Summary
With witty humor and in a cleverly constructed format, Sarah Cunningham writes a series of letters on her generation's disillusionment with the church. Telling things as they are, these letters are addressed simply as "Dear Church". Cunningham begins by recounting her own story of disillusionment with the church and then shares a list of characteristics she has found to be true about twentysomethings - who make up the so-called "disillusioned generation". Following, she explains our disillusionment and proposes a way for hope in the end.
One of Cunningham's particularly astute observations comes from her list of twentysomething characteristics. She points out that because of today's technology - which allows us to "get the dinner dishes done and still make it to the movie on time" - we live in a "both-and" culture that has pervaded not only our society, but also our politics and spirituality. As a result, we do not feel threatened by polar opposites but perhaps thrive off the differences. I appreciate Cunningham's mention of so many "groups" who are often excluded by the church because I believe that it is in the context of twentysomethings' "both-and" culture - as well as our resistance to identity labels - that the postmodern generation has come to value inclusiveness.
Review
Cunningham's fundamental question regards the identity of the church. What or who is the church? Her raw reflections realize that the church is human, that "thanks to the imperfect nature of its participants, every kind of local church we imagine or bring to expression is marked by human flaws, missed expectations, and disillusionment" (2006:108). This statement most plainly means that the church is the people themselves, not the building nor the institutional structure. The quote also brings to the table what Cunningham raises as a major reason for our disillusionment: unreasonable, unhealthy expectations up to which no human could possibly live! Implicitly tying this to the characteristic need among twentysomethings for authenticity, she writes that we must honestly admit the flaws that are present in the church. Finally, the quote leads to the book's conclusion that the church is not to be the hope of the world. Rather, Jesus is! We are merely flawed reflections of Jesus, trying to live by his example but failing miserably at it.
By her poignant understanding that the church is the people, Cunningham creatively places the responsibility for disillusionment not on a distant, faceless institutional church but on each individual comprising it, including - and perhaps even especially - on those who have been disillusioned. In her words: "We all do our part in contributing to the church's shared mistakes, but when it comes time to take the blame, we seem to lose our individuality. All of a sudden, the church is just one faceless, nameless, ownerless institution that can't own up to its failures" (140). Therefore, we must each collectively take responsibility for the mistakes of the church, owning up to the reality whether we are to blame or not. Indeed, I would agree that ownership of the church - or the lack thereof when it comes to our collective faults - is key toward developing serious credibility, not only with the church, but also - and I believe more importantly - with the world. Dedicating an entire chapter to the dangers of dwelling on our disillusionment and the need for forgiveness, she calls attention to the fact that any solution process will necessarily involve pain. However, that "suffering is actually linked to the production of hope" (135). We must understand this reality in order to keep moving forward and not run away when the difficult moments arrive.
In a sense, Cunningham's conclusion borders on the simplistic. While she introduces a solution - to live as Christ - I wish she would have analyzed it in the context of postmodernism, using her list of Generation X and Y characteristics. What is it about twentysomethings that might call for a slightly different solution? What are some practical steps we can take - specific to our generation - toward living like Jesus? Indeed, Cunningham does not directly address the postmodern issue other than to base the book on her extensive correspondence with a diversity of postmodern twentysomethings. At the same time, perhaps a simplistic solution is best, since that is what the reader may remember best in order to apply to complex contexts.
My final comment is this: What about those who are just plain disinterested in church?
A Must Read.......2007-03-09
Being over 20 something I had a hard time with the first few chapters, because I totally agreed with everything the author said. I don't think disillusionment with the church is something that is reserved only for the 20 something group. It runs the generational gammet. Chapter nine had me in tears and the rest of the book was pure perfection. A must read for everyone inside and outside of the church.
Important words, but..........2007-02-23
First, I was extremely excited when the names and places of my (and now Sarah's) hometown of Jackson, MI showed up. I have been away from home for four years now, pursuing my M.Div. degree while pastoring a small, rural church in Ohio and I miss home. The nature and substance of the letters struck a deep chord with things I have observed, experienced, and criticized from within the system to which she writes. However...
Part of my dilemma as Christian/pastor/worship leader/theologian/dad/etc. is the undertone of Sarah's book (which echoes the very words I have heard from many people in my own generation (X) and after) that take the form of complaint regarding "boring worship services." She makes valid points about the word "service" and the like that we associate with "going to church." But what I fear is the ignorance (and I mean this word in it's true sense: the act of ignoring) of the word "worship." The Sunday gathering is not, as the Boomers started and everyone after swallowed hook, line, and sinker, feeding time. It is not designed (nor has it ever been so until contemporary services came along) to give anyone an encounter with God, an emotional/spiritual high, or some divine insight. To be sure, any one or all of these MAY happen, but that is not the intention of the gathering. It is WORSHIP, it is an offering of ourselves TO God, an intentional giving of our attention to God, a recognition of the, for lack of a better word, hierarchy of the relationship. Worship is not an expectant waiting for God to come to me, it is me coming before God. It is not a time to receive, it is a time to give.
I can hear the heads shaking everywhere now, so please don't misunderstand. God does desire relationship with us. God does desire our relationship to each other. This is why love of God and love of neighbor are, in Jesus' teaching, the greatest and second greatest commandment (note that the greatest is our love TO God with all our heart, mind, soul, etc.). I am deeply excited that the dialogue of God's people is finally taking this relational turn. But I beg you to consider how you would feel about a relationship with another person who only came to you in order to GET from you.
Keep seeking, keep loving, be at peace and be blessed.
A Nineteensomething.......2007-02-19
Dear twentysomethings, oldersomethings and younger. I read this book when I was eighteen years of age and cannot express to you how deeply moved I was. When beginning the book, the first thing I saw was someone just like me, getting everything off their chest about the Church today and was completely reading my mind.I must say, in the beginning it was very nice to let out even my own anger with the Church as I read through these pages, but as I read on, it became a tool for me. She began to uncover how these problems and issues we face with the Church today can be of great use and in turn be the exact opposite of what we thought. This is a book I thought was going to make me feel all good inside about not wanting to go to Church anymore and make me feel right about my rebellion and frustrations with the church. I came to find the exact opposite with her convincing people that maybe leaving the Church isn't the best thing and showing how to truly forgive. It's a beautiful book that you will relate to whether you are twentysomething or not. This book brought me great hope and insight. What a blessings I have received!
Shalom
Book Description
The Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind delineates, in one slim volume, a complete system for achieving personal spiritual awakening, along with a straightforward, no-nonsense plan individuals and groups so enlightened can follow to awaken Humanity en masse and positively transform the world. This book contains keys to awakening. Awakening from our personal dream shatters the solid "box" of limitation memes have built around our lives, and frees us to fluidly craft our personalities, environments, relationships, careers, etc. as an artist paints a landscape or a sculptor teases form from formless clay. All of us awakening together from the shared dream of the planet will mark the birth of our species out of our current global nightmare of decline into a limitless future literally beyond our present ability to imagine, even in our "wildest dreams," indeed.
Customer Reviews:
Way Beyond "Socrates Revisited".......2007-08-22
After reading the commentary attached to the one star rating given by the young man from Texas, I feel compelled to step forward in defense of this very fine book. With only one exception, every point made in that negative review is simply wrong. Just not factually correct. The reviewer identifies himself as a young man (... "to my young mind"), and since all of his other Amazon reviews are of TV episodes on DVD, video games and rock music CDs I take him at his word. Well, I am an "old man," closing in on my sixty-third birthday, and I came to Mr. Casspriano's book after six decades of life experience, the last three of those decades a zealous practitioner of Zen Buddhism. I say this not to "brag," but simply to qualify myself as a reviewer before beginning.
I'll start where the one star reviewer closed his argument, with his statement that the simplest path reduces to two Socratic concepts: "Admit that you don't know anything" and "know yourself."
The first part is nominally true (the exception). Like Zen Buddhism, a central tenet of the simplest path is working to release the false notion we all hold that we know ourselves, other people, the world around us. But identifying and releasing our attachments to our illusions is a life's work, not some brash "I don't know nothin'!" as the young Texan seems to imply. Under normal circumstances, we go about our daily lives with no idea we are deluded about anything, as Maya (the illusion of the phenomenal world around and even inside us) is so convincing that most of us never even think to question its validity. Casspriano did not invent the notion of human beings being trapped in illusion, as this truth was known to the timeless authors of the Hindu Vedas and is central to all schools of Buddhism (not just Zen). But his scientific/spiritual exploration of the mechanism by which Maya ensnares our minds and can, with effort, be overcome is among the best "plain English" explanations of this process I have read. There is no "inscrutable mystery" in the simplest path (a criticism that has been accurately leveled toward Zen Buddhism, as a lot of Eastern thought truly does come off as "inscrutable" when translated into English and/or the metaphors of Western culture). Casspriano lays out in no-nonsense American English exactly what our brains are doing when they create the illusion we mistake for reality, then shows the reader in the same clear terms how to train his or her brain to break free of illusion and taste reality as-it-is. In just 216 pages, that is no mean feat. After thirty years of Zen practice and numerous kensho experiences (of varying depths and intensities), I can say from personal experience that Casspriano is correct. Enlightenment comes as the fruit of a long, incremental process of retraining the mind to touch reality in a new way, and the process described in the simplest path is the same as that followed in Zen practice, especially Rienzi Zen koan study (I'll have more to say about this in a later paragraph). Casspriano's approach and language is very different from traditional Zen (more "scientific," and no sitting meditation is required), which I think would appeal to Americans and other Westerners seeking to experience "awakening" without necessarily committing themselves to a religion like Buddhism, but the internal mental/spiritual process and final destination are the same.
"Know yourself," on the other hand, is not in this book at all, at least not in the way the young reviewer, or Socrates for that matter, uses the phrase. As in Buddhism, Casspriano takes pains to demonstrate that "self" is as much of an illusion as our misapprehension of the phenomenal world, and is a byproduct of exactly the same mind process that creates outer Maya. A core teaching of Buddhism is that our "self," our personality/ego, is nothing more than an aggregation of outside influences that cluster together in our minds like shiny stones gathered into a pile, and which we mistake not only for something "real," but tragically, for our essential selves. Yet this "pile" has nothing really to do with who we are at all. Buddhism teaches "no-self." Belief in the illusion of a unique and independent "self" is our greatest obstacle to enlightenment. Wasting time and energy getting to "know yourself" in the Western sense is foreign to Eastern thought. Casspriano again does a great job of translating the Buddhist concept of "no-self" into Western scientific/spiritual terminology. He shows the process by which our ego/personality aggregate "piles up," as well as how to take the pile down, stone by stone. Enlightenment is what the pile was covering up, and so it naturally appears as soon as the pile is removed - but oh how we cling to our personal pile of stones! "Self" is what we must trade for enlightenment, what must be surrendered, and Casspriano returns to this truth many times in the simplest path. My point is that the one star reviewer's reduction of the simplest path to "know yourself" has no basis at all in the actual book.
As to the book being "gimmicky": Yes, the words "The Simplest Path" recur frequently throughout the book, but not in reference to the book itself (at least that's not how I took it), but rather to the system of understanding the mind and working toward "awakening" Casspriano is describing - and it is a complete system that deserves to be considered as a whole, on its own. At times the repetition does have a feel of "branding" in the commercial sense, so I understand where the reviewer may have taken his impression. But the simplest path, while resonant with Zen Buddhism (and apparently, according to Casspriano, with the Toltec philosophy espoused by Carlos Castaneda, of which I have no personal knowledge, so I'll have to take the author's word for that) is far enough different that it needs its own "name" to set it apart from other schools of similar but not identical thought. The reviewer's criticism is like saying that every use of the term "Zen" in a book called "Zen Buddhism" should be taken as a reference to the book, and not to the larger practice of Zen Buddhism as a spiritual discipline that the book is describing. Casspriano's point in repeatedly linking The Simplest Path, Zen Buddhism and Toltec Shamanism throughout the book, at least as I understood it, is to highlight these three spiritual practices as related reliable paths through a dark forest of illusion, a forest in which many apparent (and more popular) paths, including most (all?) religious beliefs, actively vie to mislead travelers toward deeper ensnarement in the dream, rather than leading them toward "awakening."
I want to say a word about koan study in Rienzi Zen and how it relates to the simplest path. Koans are those quirky Zen sayings and stories like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" or "what was your original face before you (or your parents) were born?" that have no rational answer, and which Zen students turn and turn in their minds like the tumblers of a combination lock until their imprisoned psyches "explode" in a "super-rational" experience of reality beyond the illusion ("irrational" would be the wrong term, as that implies "nonsense"). That "super-rational" vision of reality is called "kensho." I have experienced it myself, more than once in my lifetime. I have come to think of Casspriano's "Key Questions" in the second half of the simplest path, especially the later seven of the ten, as "cultural koans" designed to trigger "collective kensho" for the whole human race at once. Like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?", unflinching consideration of the value of human life, of how our beliefs about the future shape the present, of the true origin and destiny of life on Earth, etc., especially as seen through the lens of Casspriano's "Key Question Technique," reveals that none of these questions have rational answers, yet all require our active and immediate response. Successful resolution of these larger riddles that impact everyone will require us all to eventually "explode" into reality, together, in a "super-rational" way. We'll have to break through the illusion and wake up together, as one (which has been the goal of Mahayana Buddhism, of which Zen is a sect, since around 200 BCE). That is the "Planetary Awakening" addressed in this book, and I believe Casspriano's "Key Questions" are a concrete step in that direction. I'm glad I spent my fifteen dollars.
This is my "old man" take on the simplest path, having encountered it after 30 years of Zen Buddhist practice (I'm not veering off my chosen path here, just bowing respectfully in passing toward Casspriano's). From a Buddhist perspective, the simplest path is true Dharma, though I do not get the impression from reading his book that Vincent Casspriano is himself a Buddhist or a follower of any religion. That to my mind makes his book all the more interesting.
True, but gimmicky.......2007-08-09
Casspriano's book is scientifically and philosophically sound as best as my young mind can tell, but I don't recommend this book. Its scattered with numerous pages of advertising about how his "program" works and how it compares to other religions and spiritual movements. Why must this author physically write out "The Simplest Path" in reference to his book every other page, and talk about his second volume? Perhaps because he's not out for pure truth, but for our money.
All this book comes down to after you strip away the nonsense is two things. First, admit that you don't truly know anything. Second, know yourself. Do those two things (they essentially both mean to question EVERYTHING), and you'll have Casspriano's "Planetary Awakening," with 15 bucks still in your pocket. And you'll be following the fundamental truths already said by Socrates.. so do yourself a favor and pick up Plato's "Apology" and read up on the Socratic dialogue on how to live a good life. And don't stop there, because you can't be sure he's right.
And I have 10 bucks that says these other couple of reviews were written by the book publisher. In any case, ignore the hype.
A Unique and Inspiring Wake-up Call.......2007-05-15
This is one of the most clear-headed books I've read in years on the subject of real, nitty gritty, get your hands dirty spiritual development (as opposed to the fru fru New Age variety). So much of what passes for "spirituality" in our time amounts to some author, celebrity, priest, philosopher or self-appointed guru telling us what to "believe," sight unseen, if we want to reach heaven, attain enlightenment, achieve "ascension," etc. Casspriano takes an at times startling opposite approach. For Casspriano, such unquestioned/unquestionable beliefs are not only NOT the path to spiritual awakening, they represent the chief obstacle blocking our realization of higher consciousness. And it's not just religious beliefs ("faith") he's talking about, but all our beliefs about reality, especially those that enclose our thinking in "boxes" that limit our freedom to find solutions to real-world threats like Peak Oil, overpopulation, Global Warming, etc. Though much of the book focuses on individual enlightenment, for Casspriano, these larger planetary issues are "spiritual," as well. Whether the issue is our personal inability to find happiness or Humanity's collective rush toward physical extinction, the cause is the same - our wrong-headed beliefs about what's real. The solution is the same, as well - continuous, deep questioning. Using Richard Dawkins' concept of "memes" as a central metaphor, Casspriano first breaks down the basic process of belief, showing the mechanism in our brains by which beliefs misdirect and control our psyches, then he walks the reader through an exploration of a series of ten "anti-meme questions" aimed at breaking down the walls of our mental "boxes" and setting our minds free. With each question, he supplies an exercise designed to allow the reader to attain a personal taste of reality "beyond the box," especially as flavored by that chapter's "Key Question." For the most part, this formula works very well (with a few rare moments of over-exuberance on the author's part, as already described in other reviews, though as a card carrying vegan environmentalist, I can't say I particularly minded), delivering a cumulative series of death-blows to some of the most basic "pillars" of our present human consensus reality. Beyond the walls those pillars supported lies real reality, where we are all interconnected and interdependent, and, in Casspriano's view, mutually destined for greatness, if we can just wake up and grab the reins of our runaway culture in time. This is not a book for spiritual "feel gooders" seeking soft assurances that they're perfect just they way they are and everything's going to be all right, no matter what. This is a wake up call, a tool kit and a concrete action plan for becoming individually enlightened and collectively saving the world, all rolled up into one. That, I think, is a cause well-worthy of exuberance.
Challenge Consensus Reality!.......2007-05-10
This is a thoughtful book that addresses how we may go about developing a process to question our everyday consensus reality. I suppose if I have learned anything in 49 years of life, it is that all personal and social problems stem from our fundamental views on the nature of reality itself. Vincent Casspriano uses the concept of a "meme" as a fundamental unit of ideas, assumptions, etc. that often block our understanding of reality itself. One such meme, for example, may be that we have to "fight for our freedom" or the world's a "fearful" place and hence, we have to be ready to kill to protect ourselves. I suppose you could also use the word "paradigm" here as well, but the essential point of this book is that we "unconsciously" function in our life with many limited points of view that block our ability to solve problems on both a personal and a social basis.
While Vince Casspriano is to be congradulated for producing a book that presents both a methodology and a motivation for personal transformation, there are a few pitfalls here that the potential reader should be aware of before tackling this material. The author has some rather strong views on fossil fuel consumption, meet consumption, and the role of humans in the cycle of procreation. While I generally agree with his analysis on fossil fuel consumtion and meat consumption (as I have viewed large tracks of deforrested grazing land in developing countries), these viewpoints can distract the reader from the essential point here which is to rigourously question consensus reality. Since I am single, and have no motivation to have children, I definitely disagree with his views on the necessity of human procreation on this planet, but here again, it is important to extract the essential meaning rather than get caught in the specific political/social debates that these issues may spawn.
If you are serious about personal transformation with the potential for changing our global consciousness, than this book can be an invaluable tool. I do agree with the Author that a world population of "high functioning" people can resolve every planetary problem we face today. As we systematically question our consensus reality, we will see our problems in new ways, and with this new perspective, problems can often be quickly resolved or transcended.
A Simple Cure For What's "Eating Us".......2006-11-13
I considered titling this review, "Stop Whining, Wake Up and Get Busy Saving the World," but decided "Eating Us" would be more attention-grabbing - which matters because I believe Vincent Casspriano, Jr.'s "The Simplest Path, Step One: FREE YOUR MIND" is an important book, and I want to do whatever I can to draw your attention to it. Pick the title you like best. Both very fittingly describe what you will find within the pages of this remarkable new release from New Paradigm Press.
I have selected three short quotations to explore in this review that I think best summarize Casspriano's overall message:
From Chapter One, "The Boxes We Dream In":
"Right now, this very moment, you are asleep... Even if you are reading these words in broad daylight - sitting at your desk or beside the kitchen table, your feet firmly planted on the floor, eyes open, senses alert, feeling the weight of this book in your hands as sounds of life rise and fall rhythmically around you - you are deeply asleep, and dreaming furiously"
Now, the idea that Humans are sleeping, and must therefore "awaken," is by no means unique to Casspriano's "Simplest Path" spiritual system, being the root observation underlying pretty much all Eastern religion, and a lot of Western Occultism and New Age metaphysics, as well. In fairness, Casspriano makes no claim to this as an original insight, openly supporting his assessment of the human predicament with quotations taken from Animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. He then flows seamlessly into a list of complementary illustrations from the secular realms of Quantum Physics, brain/consciousness research, and most to-the-point, the study of memes and memetics, ala Evolutionary Biologist and world's best-known cheerleader for scientific atheism, Richard Dawkins.
If you've never heard of memes or memetics, a quick Google of those terms will reveal hundreds of serious, information-rich websites devoted to this now thirty-year old science. In a nutshell, a "meme" is a sort of contagious thought-form that spreads between people by way of imitation. Obvious memes in our environment include advertising jingles, fads and fashions, etc. Casspriano somewhat radically extends the concept to include just about everything that makes up the contents of our individual brains and shared human culture. While he resists redefining the word "meme" wholesale, he decidedly expands its definition to make memes and "memeplexes" (what you get when a number of memes band together into an organic, relational unit, like a religion or cultural or political movement) the basic, fundamental building blocks of everything we habitually label "real..."
And then he demonstrates, in at times excruciating detail, the complete emptiness of the "apparent-reality" that is a byproduct of memetic activity in our brains. What we call "real" is not real at all. It's an illusion spun up by our memes. And our memes are not original to us. They are "viral invaders" assailing our minds from without. Worse - and, while even this thought is not wholly unique to Casspriano, he certainly gives it his own very effective spin - memes are by no means mere passive beliefs or simple "harmless ideas." They are, Casspriano believes, actively predatory psychic parasites whose survival depends on our buying into the illusions they create in our minds. Think of illusion (Samsara, Maya, etc.) as a web we're caught in. Memes are the spider. We are the fly. Gotcha.
One thing I like very much about Casspriano's book is that he never asks us to take anything on faith, least of all this rather ugly depiction of the human psychic/spiritual condition. He not only challenges readers to test his hypothesis firsthand in order to experience what is real and true for ourselves, he spends a large chunk of the book outlining specific exercises anyone can do to escape memetic interference and personally experience reality as-it-is. The exercises in Part II of the book are powerful medicine... But this is a digression, so let me return to the point.
Memes are the spider, and we are the fly. A better metaphor might be that memes are the farmer, and we are the cow. Domesticated and docile, we allow memes to milk us daily, to extract from our minds the potent human psychic energy which, if reclaimed by us and put to proper human use, would quickly and positively transform our lives and our world. This transformation is awakening, ascension, enlightenment, metanoia, the Buddha-like change of consciousness most religions and spiritual systems on Earth hint at, but few ever actually deliver to followers. In this analysis, Casspriano's "Simplest Path" is very much in line with Gurdjieff's "Fourth Way," Carlos Castaneda's Toltec sorcery, and a few other well known spiritual practices inhabiting a somewhat darker, though perhaps more realistic corner of the New Age. But unlike most of those other systems, Casspriano's prescription for escaping illusion and awakening to reality is remarkably, well... simple.
From Chapter Three, "Waking Up":
"The simple truth is that we are sleeping because we lack sufficient energy to wake up."
And later in the same chapter:
"The real work that brings about awakening, rather than merely granting the external appearance of "being spiritual," while actually embroiling us ever more deeply in the dream, is a rigorous, daily commitment to the identification and elimination of every self-serving belief from which our personal dream-lives are constructed."
For "belief" in the quotation above, read "meme/memeplex." Casspriano certainly does, treating the terms as largely interchangeable. In the end, this genuinely simple - at least in the sense of being uncomplicated and pragmatic - spiritual practice amounts to discovering reality as-it-actually-is less by searching for a glimpse beyond the illusion, than by systematically withdrawing our participation in, and identification with, the dream. When we disentangle our psyches from memetic illusion, only reality remains. We don't have to chase it; to a meme-free mind, reality just appears. This is "Satori" in Zen Buddhism. This is "stopping the world" in the Toltec sorcery of Castaneda and others. Casspriano's genius lies in his talent for exposing the core mechanism behind such complex and often inscrutable spiritual systems, and for putting into plain language clear instructions for unraveling the dream and achieving personal awakening. The virus-like process by which memes take over and control our human minds, as described by Casspriano is, to my mind, very complicated (but well worth struggling through). What is genuinely simple about "The Simplest Path," however, is Casspriano's prescription for breaking those bonds, once you've made the effort to understand how they are created and maintained. For Casspriano, remaining a victim of spiritual sleep and energetic exploitation by memes is a complex activity in which we unconsciously invest enormous amounts of psychic energy every day of our lives. Awakening is the product of a simple act of withdrawing that investment, which automatically re-energizes of our minds and lives. Or as Casspriano cleverly phrases it when closing Chapter Three, "Waking Up":
"Unweave the tapestry of the dream, and awakening happens."
Anyone can do this. Spiritual awakening, in Casspriano's view, may be hard work, but it is not complicated work. The path to enlightenment is really rather shockingly simple. Fall out of love with the dream. Reclaim your psychic energy. Wake up to reality.
The ten "Key Questions" Casspriano explores in the second section of the book are designed to put the theory laid out in Part I to practical and immediate use. Essentially, I think Casspriano sees these ten issues - why we treat enlightenment as an "airy-fairy" ideal instead of a measurable transformation of brain functioning, the excuses we make for avoiding personal responsibility and integrity along the lines of Castaneda's "impeccability," the fallacy of belief in a "separate self," etc. - as pillars of both our personal and collective human dreams. They are by no means an exhaustive listing of the memes twisting our minds. But they are primary keystones on which layers upon layers of the grand illusion are built. Topple these ten baseline pillars and the larger structure crumbles.
Casspriano explores some "Keys" more successfully than others. One downside to the book is that, especially in the "Keys," Casspriano's own memetic prejudices shine at times rather glaringly through, as when, in his discussion of the American "What Would Jesus Do?" religious fad, he characterizes the Evangelical Christian purveyors of WWJD as, "ultra-conservative, right wing ideologues." Even should the reader personally agree with such pronouncements, its hard to resist thinking, "Hey Vince! Your memes are showing!" But where he nails his point, Casspriano's prose can be downright inspiring, as with the "Key" cosmological study "Is Earth the Center of the Universe?," which explores the gap between what we know, scientifically, about the Universe and what our daily choices and behavior says we really believe, about the cosmos and about ourselves. His closing "Key" "Are We Alone?" so poetically frames the true stakes of our global human predicament - species survival VS extinction - that its hard to imagine anyone keeping their gaze glued squarely to their own self-involved navel in the wake of reading it. Of course we are not alone. There are six and a half billion of us on Planet Earth, and whether we awaken to what's best in us or follow our darkest drives over History's cliff into oblivion, we do so as one. One planet, one fate.
This notion of "oneness" and of a common, intertwined human spiritual and biological destiny is a core theme in The Simplest Path, Step One: FREE YOUR MIND that sets it apart from any spiritual book in recent memory. My final quotation from the book returns us to the opening lines of Chapter One, "The Boxes We Dream In":
"We are all aware of the challenges facing us as we enter together into the 21st Century:
· World oil supplies are running out.
· Global warming is transforming the Earth into a steamy greenhouse.
· Even as our technology connects the world, ideological extremism, terrorism and militarism divide us as never before.
· Headlines bombard us with news of war, famine, pestilence and death until we feel overwhelmed and unable to respond.
· Time is running out..."
Vincent Casspriano, Jr.'s "The Simplest Path to Personal and Planetary Transformation, Step One: FREE YOUR MIND" does not offer easy escape from these very pressing real-world human ills, but rather, a down to Earth, workable prescription for their cure. Yes, we must awaken as individuals, and, rest assured, "The Simplest Path" shows spiritual seekers exactly how to do that. But a prime message of "The Simplest Path" is that, for personal awakening to have meaning, it must occur within the context of a complete re-visioning of global culture, and a mass wrenching away of the wheel of History from the control of viral memes, that we might create a common cosmic human destiny worthy of our highest potential as a species.
Now that's a meme worth feeding.
Books:
- Life in the Far West (Classics of the Old West)
- Lone Wolf & Cub, Volume 13
- Magic Tree House Boxed Set 1, Books 1-4: Dinosaurs Before Dark, The Knight at Dawn, Mummies in the Morning, and Pirates Past Noon
- Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer
- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, 20th Anniversary Edition
- Prize Pokemon (Pokémon Chapter Book)
- Queen of Ice, Queen of Shadows: The Unsuspected Life of Sonja Henie
- Saltwater Fishing. Tackle, Rigging, How & When to Fish
- Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American West
- Shadowplay (Shadowmarch, Vol. 2)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Jane Austen: The Complete Novels
- Beowulf: A New Telling
- The Best Of Norman Rockwell
- The Trouble with Mary
- White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s
- Developmental Genetics of the Flower, Volume 44: Advances in Botanical Research
- Behind the Burqa: Our Life in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom
- Vanessa Beecroft: Performances 1993-2003
- The Travail of Nature : The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology
- Treitschke And The Great War
