1 comments about Robbers Roost Recollections (Western Experience Series).

1. In Robbers Roost Recollections, Pearl Baker sets down her memories of Robbers Roost, and in doing so captures the sounds and smells, the hard work, the cowboy lingo, and the excitement of ranch life while running cattle in the rugged southern Utah terrain that was home to Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. When her father, Joe Biddlecome, set to ranching in the early decades of this century, his wife and two daughters came to the Roost to live and ride with im in his cattle business. Readers of Baker's Robbers Roost Recollections will relive their true-life experiences and gain a unique perspective of how one family helped settle a part of the American West. Robbers Roost Recollections is a most remarkable and much appreciated contribution to the growing body of historical information and biography available for students of American history in general, and the American western frontier in particular.

2 comments about The Moral Vision of Cesar Chavez.

1. Cesar Chavez has been likened to the American Gandhi, using the powerful tools of nonviolence, including fasting with prayer and mass mobilizations, to affect political change, labor rights and human rights for his people, our people, for Americans now again forgotten, rejected, despised, blockaded, dispossessed. We need him now. We need him again. Read this book. Be him now.
   
   Published by the excellent Catholic printing house Orbis Books, this biography was written by a professor of moral theology at Holy Rosary College in San Jose who briefly and intermittently volunteered for the UFW after the death of Cesar Chavez, whom he had seen once deliver a speech.
   
   I met Mr. Chavez a few times nearly twenty five years ago at Mass in the tiny chapel of the Maryknoll House in Manhattan, as he was visiting during conferences in New York. Mr. Chavez was ever a faithful and a profoundly practicing Catholic, inspired by our Faith to work for peace and justice and labor and human rights for the most poor and despised, just as Our Holy Father His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI recently exhorts us in Sacramentum Caritatis: el Sacramento de la Caridad: una Exhortacion Apostolica Postsinodal that the Eucharist in itself compels us to alter the unjust economic structures which entrap so many of us in desparate poverty.
   
   Ceasr Chavez therefore inspires and guides all Americans and all Catholics in the true realization of living our Faith integrally. Professor of Moral Theology Dalton here examines deeply the life of Mr. Chavez, exploring his moral vision and his true path in Faith.
   
   Briefly the professor sums up this intense and real moral vision thusly:
   
   "Cesar's moral vision centered on sacrificial service, solidarity through voluntary poverty, nonviolent confrontation, and faith in God and others. These virtues shaped the identity and character of the union community just as they shaped Cesar's own identity and character. These characteristics were from Cesar's perspective, non-negotiable (p. 152)."
   
   I fonud the references to the great Bishops Connelly and Curtis of Connecticut tantalizing yet welcome. Despite the revised Code of Canon Law's bias which might throw cold water on such faith necessities, they performed truly Catholic work in line with Pope Leo the Great's famous encyclical Rerum Novarum, a courageous labor which may be studied more fully and thus usefully at Cesar Chavez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers' Struggle for Social Justice. We need them and their truly Catholic hierarchical witness and orthopraxis and deeply moral vision and integral living of our Faith now more than ever.



2. Frederick John Dalton is to be congratulated for this beautifully written and spiritually inspiring study of the moral vision that underlay Cesar Chavez's activism. Following in the tradition of Jesus, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, and the Berrigan brothers, Chavez's orientation was biblical to the core. He preached and practiced nonviolent resistance, personal and group sacrifice, the transformative power of love and forgiveness, and individual prayer and meditation as essential tools in working for peace and justice. Unlike so many activists then and now, Chavez wasn't concerned with protesting and demonstrating just to say "No." More fundamentally, he was interested in working for social and economic conditions that would affirm people with a resounding "Yes!" Chavez's deep faith in God and the Gospel of justice and peace grounded that "Yes" and made it truly prophetic. As he himself said, "What keeps me going? Well, it's like a fire--a consuming, nagging everyday and every-moment demand of my soul to just do it. It's difficult to explain. I like to think it's the good Spirit asking me to do it. I hope so...If you really want something, you have to sacrifice. Because of my faith the concept of sacrifice is understood" (p. 162).

   This is a must-read for anyone who yearns to integrate a passion for social justice with a deep, mystical faith in God. Cesar showed us, as all genuine mystics do, that the two are not only incompatible but necessarily conjoined. Dalton's sensitive and well-written study has done Chavez proud.

1 comments about Marcel Mauss: A Biography.

1. University of Montreal sociologist Marcel Fournier is now the world's expert on Marcel Mauss, Durkheim's nephew but by no means his mere shadow. In his clearly written and finely detailed intellectual biography, Fournier offers a wealth of new information on Mauss and his relations with many historians of religion, sociologists, and ethnologists working in the first half of the 20th century. Fournier is especially good at characterizing the institutional milieux where Mauss taught, conducted research, and served as administrator. The reader is privy for the first time to the complicated academic politics preceding his and others' appointments at Mauss's three berths: the section of religious science at the École Pratique des Hautes Études from 1901; the Institut d'Ethnologie from 1925; and the preeminent Collège de France from 1930-40. Reading Mauss's short works on sacrifice and magic (with religious historian Henri Hubert); primitive classification (with Durkheim); and, most famously, his seminal "The Gift" against this institutional background produces a greater understanding of their importance for the history of religion, sociology and the fieldwork-oriented anthropology arising in France after World War I. Drawing on the materials deposited by the Hubert and Mauss families at the Collège de France, including many letters, Fournier shows us the several ways Mauss was a unique scholar and personality. Unlike his uncle, Mauss avoided grand theory and focused instead on factual descriptions of far-flung and immensely varied religious rites, rituals, symbolism and cosmologies. He had a tendency to procrastinate, which annoyed his uncle and later collaborators, and probably caused him to despair of his thesis on prayer and books he planned on Bolshevism, nationalism and Melanesian religion. Also demanding were his socialist activities and work in the cooperative movement and people's universities, his own special gift to the principle of reciprocity he added to Durkheim's stress on social solidarity. Collaboration with his uncle, colleagues and students clearly took a toll on his own scholarly research; after reaching the apex of French academic life in 1930 as the leading representative of the "Durkheim School," he would go on to publish just an article a year on average. Most of Mauss's intellectual labor was spent on the many book reviews he placed in the "Année Sociologique" (1898-1913) and its two reincarnations (1925-27 and 1934-40) as well as the onerous editing of Durkheim's and others' posthumous publications. Fournier discreetly supplies some suggestive personal clues to Mauss's widely dispersed and fragmentary writings and seemingly desultory approach to his own work. For example, in 1914 Mauss wrote his mother that he was "utterly ill suited to the intellectual life" (70), preferring to socialize with both colleagues and students, or to hike in the forests around his birthplace in Alsace-Lorraine. Mauss also avoided the rigors of marriage and family for many years until he finally married a woman he had known for ten years in 1934, at the age of sixty-two. Fournier alludes to the possibility of a "domestic anomie" (121) leading the unattached bachelor to disorganization and dissipation, which both his mother and uncle claimed to see in his living habits. His earnings were very modest until 1930 and his budgeting spotty, so his mother subsidized him until her death the same year at eighty-two, the day before Mauss got the job at the Collège de France. Unlike Durkheim, who was austere, dour and workaholic, Mauss was lively, impetuous, and frequently dandyish in dress. As a researcher, he liked to read widely and take notes, but the demanding work of writing and publication put him off. In the French university system, many professors did not publish much if at all, so Mauss's shyness did not result in penalty. Ultimately, Fournier's characterization is particularly apt: "He remained a student at heart his entire life and at the end of his career wanted to become the pupil of his pupils" (4).
   Today mainly anthropologists commemorate Mauss by referring to, and extending, his thoughts on gift-giving and receiving, although this theme is making its way into other disciplines as any library search will attest. In his day, Fournier demonstrates, while Mauss was always seen as Durkheim's loyal standard-bearer, he was also identified with descriptive ethnography in all the courses he gave. It's therefore not surprising that he became teacher and mentor to a generation or more of French fieldworkers who left Paris starting in the late twenties to study tribal cultures in Africa, Latin America and Oceania. A floating group of fledgling anthropologists followed his courses at all three of his institutions to imbibe his encyclopedic wisdom and bibliographic riches. In helping to launch this movement, Fournier says, Mauss moved beyond sociology's armchair focus on primitive religions to father French ethnography in the field. The Institut d'Ethnologie, where the young anthropologists acquired Mauss's detailed questionnaire for fieldwork, we learn, was "not a specifically Durkheimian enterprise" (3). Even the future structural anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, who did not attend Mauss's courses, made sure to contact Mauss while he was preparing for fieldwork in Brazil during the 1930's and finishing up his classic book on kinship in the 1940's. As for everyone else who wanted to do anthropology then, Mauss was his touchstone. The kinship book started with "The Gift," Lévi-Strauss wrote Mauss from New York City on October 2, 1944, after Mauss, a Jew, had been forced to resign his academic posts by the Vichy regime. The younger man paid homage again with an introduction to six essays by Mauss appearing just after his death in 1950 at seventy-seven. With Lévi-Strauss's appointment to Mauss's old position at the École Pratique in this same year, the distinctive legacies of the grand-theorist uncle and the more modest and self-effacing nephew would combine to yield still another unique intellectual trajectory. As the founder of structural anthropology, Lévi-Strauss would gain fame for his "bold philosophical taste" as well as the "death of the subject" heralding the structuralist movement in other disciplines besides his own.
   I can think of no other book on French intellectual life after Durkheim's death in 1917 that offers such rich detail on its purely academic dimensions. Biographies of Bataille, Beauvoir, Beckett, Camus, Genet, Gide, Matisse, Picasso and Sartre necessarily describe milieux outside the university and the grandes écoles: the world of journals, publishing houses, theaters, studios, galleries and cafés. To be sure, books on Aron, Barthes, Foucault and Lacan contain some information, but not in such great detail. In his introduction, Fournier says that the Hubert-Mauss collection of letters and other archival materials "opened countless avenues" (5) for further research. The same may assuredly be said of Fournier's masterly study, which now beckons us to explore "the scope and breadth of Mauss's influence" (6) during his lifetime and beyond.

5 comments about Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In: Appreciations, Castigations, and Reminiscences by Ram Dass, Andrew Weil, Allen Ginsberg, Winona Ryder, William Burroughs, ... Huston Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, and Others.

1. Regardless of one's personal opinions about Timothy Leary, one cannot really deny the fact that he was a great man; great in the sense that his thoughts and ideas influenced an entire generation (and continues to do so), and that A LOT of people had - and still have - A LOT of strong feelings about everything he stood for. Perhaps it's too early to figure out how extensive his influence actually was. Everything he talked about didn't revolve around LSD, even though many tend to think just that. What many don't know, for instance, is that he contributed greatly to the field of psychology and developed different tests that are still in use today.
   
   Robert Forte has edited a book, not about Leary's life, but more about people who met him, were familiar with him, were close to him, were affected and influenced by him, and all in all had some sort of relation to him. Some of these people are Winona Ryder (to whom Leary was godfather), Hunter S. Thompson, Albert Hofmann (the chemist who synthesized LSD in 1938), Ken Kesey (another "psychedelic pioneer"), Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson, and many more.
   
   Some of the contributions consist of Forte simply interviewing the individual in question, while in other cases the contributor has written the piece him/herself. But it's not all about Leary all the time. Timothy Leary is more a book about the psychedelic revolution itself than about one of its leading advocates. Richard Nixon referred to him as "the most dangerous man in the world", and sure, a great deal of the content is about him, what he accomplished, different incidents in his life, and so on. However, another great deal is about the use and abuse of psychedelic drugs, how they shaped and changed society and individual consciousness, how dangers (or harmless) they actually are, what happens to people who choose to try them, and how these now criminalized drugs could be used beneficially in different sorts of therapies.
   
   It's not the best book on the market if you want to learn more about Timothy Leary's opinions and messages, but on the other hand, it's a great book if you want to know some of the influence and the affect he had on his surroundings. Furthermore, through its use of sensible discussions by and with well-informed and rational people, the book offers great knowledge about the absurd American "War on Drugs" and all the hypocrisy this futile and senseless war is built upon.



2. This is a rich and revealing book that I always recommend to anyone trying to grasp the contradictory figure that was Timothy Leary - not least because many of its subjects are still struggling to grasp exactly what hit them when Leary entered their lives. Highlights for me include the essays by Ram Dass, Robert Anton Wilson and Ralph Metzner, as well as William Burroughs' ability to use a few brief words so well. Winona Ryder's eulogy is also terrific -- it has since been included in Copeland's book on the greatest eulogies of our time, and I liked it so much I used it as the foreword to my own biography on Leary, 'I Have America Surrounded'.
   
   As Forte writes in his introduction, this is "not a biography of Leary, nor an in-depth study of his ideas", and as such the critical review on this page by R. Goldstein seems to have missed the point of the book. Forte is not attempting to be a 'cheerleader' or promote his 'thesis', as is claimed, but instead provides a forum where those who knew Leary could record their memories and reminiscences. True, the majority are positive and loving, but this is no reason to criticize the book. The fact is Leary was deeply loved by many - which is something that those who condemn his character find it convenient to overlook. For this reason the book is an important record, but perhaps more importantly it is those who knew him best who often have the most revealing insights - and this is why the book is so valuable.



3. This book is a source of comfort to anyone disgruntled by Robert Greenfield's less than appreciative bio of Timothy Leary. Editor Robert Forte calls his project a "festschrift," which, if my rusty German holds up, loosely means "celebration of writing." It is by no means balanced; its cover promises castigations but delivers only one, ironically from former outlaw chemist Owsley Stanley. There are polite rebukes of Leary's methods from Huston Smith and Myron Stolaroff, but the rest of the book is mainly a chorus of paeans, a love fest that gets sloppy in places.
   
   Part of Forte's thesis is that Leary will come to be vindicated and revered as another Socrates or Galileo. Inevitably the uptight world will recognize the transformational power of psychedelics and, grasping the keys to the missing link in evolution, start popping them like vitamin supplements. Why millions of grateful acid veterans haven't united to demand a change in the drug laws goes unexplained. Like a lot of other issues the book grazes. Why was Eldridge Cleaver not more supportive of Leary in Algeria? Why was Art Linkletter hostile to Leary? What happened to Leary's children? What was "The Brotherhood" that Forte cryptically refers to a couple of times? What about the charges that Leary betrayed friends, including the lawyers who helped him avoid lengthier prison time? Although Forte concedes that Leary failed "to confront his shadow," the negative aspects of his life, he left the shadowy particulars for Robert Greenfield to detail.
   
   There are other shortcomings. The correspondence between Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard is vacuous, discussing where and when they plan to meet next. Albert Hofman's contribution is brief. Hunter Thompson's more caustic criticisms of Leary are absent, replaced by a short, all-is-forgiven comment. Some of the respondents use a pretentious argot prevalent in the `60s, reflecting the mindless blather of the drug-addled. And there are outrageous claims that transcendentalist philosophers Emerson and Thoreau took drugs, that psychedelics brought forth the computer revolution and the Internet. At least Forte didn't suggest that psychedelics are "the only visible hope for a race tottering on the brink of extinction." That claim was in a recent letter of complaint from the Leary estate to The New Yorker over the favorable review its critic gave to the Greenfield book.
   
   I don't blame Forte for being a cheerleader. He was only 11 years old during the '67 Summer of Love, so he didn't see the zombies walking down Haight Street and other hippie enclaves ingesting not only psychedelics but other wares sold by hierarchical criminal outfits (such as the Brotherhood?) engaged in the "democratization" of drug distribution. Gosh and golly, why would law enforcement ever consider LSD a gateway to heroin, methamphetamine and crack? Set and setting indeed.
   
   I thought I'd had enough of Leary after reading the Greenfield book, but I picked this one up after browsing its table of contents. It has limited appeal, so I give it three stars: one for the interview with Huston Smith, one for the interviews with Metzner & Stolaroff, and one for likening Leary to Huck Finn. Greenfield mistakenly linked him to Tom Sawyer.



4. Timothy Leary is a mythological figure. Almost everyone has an opinion of him, even if they have never read a word he wrote.
   Often opinions are second-hand filtered through this or that media source.

   The editor for this book, Robert Forte, one
   of Mircea Eliade's last students at the University of Chicago,
   does not provide us with second-hand information that he has digested, but instead, gathers an anthology of viewpoints from those who knew Timothy Leary. Not all are positive, and I was surprized to read the negative remarks of Owlsley Stanley in regards to Leary. Thanks to this compendium, we are allowed past the veil of the myth and get a glimpse of the human Timothy Leary.

   Robert Forte knew Timothy Leary personally and has edited another book, Entheogens and the Future of religion, that I highly recommend.

   Thomas Seay




5. Robert Forte is one of the most important living documentarians of psychedelic history and phenomonology. In this book, he's gathered a myriad voices of people who were really "there" when Leary was influencing people and who therefore have valuable commentary worth hearing -- both positive and negative. The folksy, chatty style of this book make it a pleasure to read. Along with his other book "Entheogens and the Future of Religion," Forte is performing an important informational and documentary service toward a fair assessment of the role that drugs have in society and also of the real-life figures who have affected this. This book is a must read for anyone interested in what Tim Leary (and for that matter, ...) were really like.

2 comments about Jung: A Journey of Transformation Exploring His Life and Experiencing His Ideas.

1. This is one of the best introductions to the thought and life of Carl Jung. It covers all of his major psychological concepts in clear and concise language. The author has also included several "exercises" to help the reader in their own journey towards wholeness. For example, in one section, the reader answers a series of questions and then one is able to determine what "Psychological Type" they are. Several other exercises focus on Jung's method of active imagination and confronting one's own shadow. The book, then, is not just a dry academic presentation of Jung's psychology. Instead one becomes actively engaged with Jung's theories and through the exercises one can see how his ideas relate to our day to day life. In this sense, the author has made Jung much more enagaging and richer than many other standard "textbook" type introductions. The book is well illustrated with several photos of Jung and his world. I highy recommend this for anyone who is new to Jung and wants a good introduction to his thought. I have suggested this book to many of my friends and despite its brevity, it does an excellent job of capturing the heart of Jung's ideas on human nature.



2. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) is an amazing man whose personal researches and inquiries into the mystical traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Gnosticism, mythology, and psychology, created a profound influence on succeeding generations of truth seekers is presented and surveyed in a single volume that does full and complete justice to the man and his thoughts. Jung: A Journey Of Transformation will enable the student of metaphysical, spiritual, and psychological insight to fully grasp this original thinker's manifold observations, insights, ideas, and findings. Highly recommended.

3 comments about An Arthur Ford Anthology: Writings by and About America's Sensitive of the Century.

1. I first learned of Arthur Ford through reading Ruth Montgomery books. It was Ford who told Ruth she would be doing automatic writing which later lead to all her wonderful metaphysical material. I was always fascinated by Arthur Ford and wished to learn more about him. This book tells it all from his beginnings as a medium who channeled Fletcher, an old friend he knew as a child who passed over after going to war. All the stories contained in this book are fascinating and within the pages I learned Arthur Ford was the medium who cracked the Houdini code! You will read the remarkable accounts of those who attended Ford's sessions and the information they received from Spirit. Its a most interesting read of a medium's life.



2. I have always been interested in the paranormal and the major men and women of our time that have made a difference.
   Have always been interested in Arthur Ford, and that he channelled through an entity named Fletcher - I remember seeing old films where Ford's face would literally change and he would do his reading.
   I was saddened that upon Ford's death, Fletcher considered himself free - like he too had a lesson to be learned, and he was so happy to move on - always felt sorry for him.
   Will be an interesting read, but look under the tale and feel what I just told you - there is more to the story delve further down and you learn more about Ford, and Fletcher -



3. I bought this as an introduction to Arthur Ford, and it serves that purpose admirably. It is a shortish volume published by the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship, which Ford was instrumental in founding. It is, therefore, solidly pro-Ford -- but it doesn't ignore his personal flaws or the controversies surrounding his mediumship. It consists of passages from Ford's own writings as well as the writings of his closest associates. One particularly interesting part concerns an auto wreck in which Ford's sister and a friend were killed and he was left in a coma. Writing 25 years before anyone had heard the term "Near Death Experience," he described a classic NDE. In case you aren't familiar with Ford, he had nearly a 50-year career. Two of his main claims to fame were solving the riddle of the message Houdini had left for his wife ("Rosabelle, believe") and putting Bishop Pike in touch with his late son. I previously hadn't taken Ford seriously due to the controversy surrounding the Houdini episode and some of the other anti-Ford propaganda, but this book led me to do additional digging. Ford clearly seems to have had a great deal of genuine mediumistic ability (whatever that may be). He was also a complex individual who would make an interesting study even if he had been a complete fraud. I would recommend this as an excellent introduction to Ford (or a good summing up as to what he was all about, if you are already familiar with him).

No comments about A Compulsion for Antiquity: Freud And the Ancient World (Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry).

No comments about The Rash Adventurer: A Life of John Pendlebury.

5 comments about In Search of P.D. Ouspensky: The Genius in the Shadow of Gurdjieff.

1. The partisan squabbles between the devotees of Ouspensky and those of Gurdjieff take place on roughly the same level as those between the advocates of the XBox and the Playstation, or the Yankees and Red Sox. But Lachman doesn't sink to their level, and his understanding of events is as near to the truth as we will probably see from any of these types. He is still sort of a moon-mad mystic, but not nearly to the degree of William Patterson or J G Bennett or any of the other lost souls who have written about these subjects in the past. However, there is little new in this book, and the author's understanding of Ouspensky's most important ideas is obviously quite shallow, as he concentrates on the more incidental aspects of his work. Those who have read the sourceworks, almost all of which are decades old, won't find this book to be of much value.
   
   The Gurdjieff work is a hundred miles wide and one foot deep. Just deep enough for those who can't swim to drown in, as Ouspensky almost did. The work isn't without value; many of Gurdjieff's ideas are basically correct, but everything he knew can be found in superior form in other places. All of Gurdjieff's ideas are distortions of things he got from other places, but he wasn't sophisticated enough to always tell the good from the bad, and he mixes wisdom and foolishness together in a salad of roughly equal parts. And much of what Gurdjieff taught, such as the necessity of group work or self-observation as endless toil, is the opposite of truth. Gurdjieff was a man who asked the right questions, but got all the answers wrong. Partly because Gurdjieff was a second-rate mystic with a second-rate mind, and partly because he was like all gurus: he had a deep-seated need to manipulate others and take financial advantage of them. I have seen his type repeatedly and known some of them personally. They are all the same. They take bits and pieces of other people's ideas and use them to impress the gullible. Ouspensky was able to separate what little good there was in Gurdjieff from the little con man himself, but grew too attached to the ideas before finally rejecting them.
   
   It is Ouspensky's work that is of serious interest, but really only parts of it, mainly his thinking on spatial dimensions. It is a tragedy of epic proportions that Ouspensky abandoned his real work for the shallow occultism of the dubious Gurdjieff, and it doesn't speak well of Ouspensky's more mystical side. But that isn't the side of Ouspensky that will stand the test of time.
   
   To this day, his two books Tertium Organum and New Model of the Universe are at the cutting edge of human thought. They show the real direction that our conceptions of space and time should take, not the mathematically correct but logically ridiculous direction physics has taken. And yet, no doubt largely because of his association with the little Armenian con man, the enormous importance of Ouspensky's work is largely forgotten by all but a few.
   
   Those two books show how to overcome the paradoxes of not just physics, but of philosophy. Nothing like them exists, or has ever existed. If you understand his ideas, their truth cannot be denied on any level. Unlike the endless double-bind prison that constitutes the "thought" of the "fourth way", the essays in those two books can change the way you perceive the world in the most fundamental way imaginable. But they are beyond both the reach and grasp of people with no more intelligence or common sense than occult disciples, which is why the people most likely to encounter them get very little from them.
   
   To his eternally recurring credit, Ouspensky abandoned and renounced the Gurdjieff system late in life, realizing at last that it was a dead end, a dangerous distraction. It is ironic that Ouspensky is remembered mostly for his book on Gurdjieff, which is the least of his works and the very thing that keeps the Gurdjieff movement going. Indeed, much of the better stuff people tend to give Gurdjieff credit for was, in fact, Ouspensky all along. Without Ouspensky to make his ideas semi-coherent, there never would have been a Gurdjieff movement. It would have died with Gurdjieff.
   
   In any event, it has been noticed by too few that many of the ideas credited to Gurdjieff, such as the antiquity of the Sphinx, for example, are mentioned in Ouspensky's books long before Gurdjieff professed them, in altered form, later on. And Gurdjieff himself said he would beg Ouspensky to be his teacher if Ouspensky "understood" his own books! From this we can gather that Gurdjieff read Ousepensky's early classics, admired them, and very likely appropriated many of Ouspensky's own ideas, only to regurgitate them back at their originator later on, as part of Gurdjieff's own admittedly "stolen" hodgepodge of ideas. No wonder Ouspensky was so impressed with him.
   
   My recommendation is to read Ouspensky's two early classics, then come back to this biography if you are interested in more information on this fascinating man. But only if you haven't already read any of the existing biographical literature.



2. Gurdjieff was certainly not infallible, by his own admission, let alone dozens of others who knew him. He made errors--one of which may have been placing so much hope in Ouspensky, especially during the Russian phase of his evolving teaching.
   
   But he was able to embody and transmit his teaching to the whole person. Ouspensky became, by HIS own admission as told in Lachman's book, as elsewhere, merely a 'professional philosopher,' lost in mental abstractions and super-ego fixations devoid of practical application, leading not only his groups, but many new to the Gurdjieff ideas astray.
   
   Lachman's book tries to be an apologia for a lopsidedly brilliant (in the mental sense) man, but succeeds only in being cringingly lazy, recycling (sometimes almost verbatim) not only Ouspensky's own highly worthy IN SEARCH OF.../FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN TEACHING but dozens of superior books about Gurdjieff.
   
   Lachman's tired endnote about that 'quaaaaaazy' Mr. Gurdjieff's own ALL & EVERYTHING volumes--how 'needlessly obtuse' they are, how Gurdjieff 'just made up' words (laughable to anyone who bothers to explore context, sound, and etymology)--is one of many not-so-subtle red flags about his own bias, a threadbare thesis supported by his cherry-picking the stuff which makes Ouspensky seem the misguided, wounded genius.
   
   Lachman wants to give Ouspensky brownie points for being such a gentleman, explaining so-called "Fourth Way" ideas in such a beautifully straightforward manner. Actually, that was exemplary of a significant part of Ouspensky's (appropriately called by Gurdjieff "Mr. Wraps-The-Thought,") problem, as he himself all but admitted at the end of his life.
   
   Lachman hardly bothers to dig deeper as William Patrick Patterson at least tries to in STRUGGLE OF THE MAGICIANS, investigating WHY Gurdjieff taught as he did, and WHAT he was trying to get at in order to make Ouspensky see himself. Ouspensky only did this when it was (almost?) too late.
   
   As evidenced in these reviews, some adore the chance to disparage Gurdjieff's teaching and the unfortunate things they 'observed' in association with it every chance they get. The teaching itself is not the same thing as the distortions perpetrated by persons who use their version of these ideas for their own egotistical ends.
   
   It is likely they have never really known a person who was properly instructed to practice what Gurdjieff actually taught. Lachman's book is actually evidence of this, in an indirect way--of what happens when the half-educated instruct and the blind lead the blind. Gurdjieff predicted that this would happen to his ideas. Like much else, unfortunately he was right.
   
   A vital weblink you can visit which sheds a great deal of light on the important similarities and differences between Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's ideas and approach:
   
   http://www.darkecho.com/JohnShirley/lindh.html
   
   In both philosophies and in books, as always--buyer beware.



3. Gary Lachman and Gary Valentine (guitarist with Blondie and Iggy Pop + author) are one and the same person.
   There is nothing wrong with this, but worth to know.
   
   Lachman has taken over the role to bring P.D. Ouspensky back into respect as some are in need to discredit Ouspensky without knowing him personally nor having really worked in his groups (NOT the FOF alias Burton Society). Well, the orig. Ouspensky groups stopped existing really after his death, so there was no chance, but gossip-needy as some are (W.P.Patterson), there is no need for a book written by somebody who doesn't have a clue what the 4th.way work is all about.
   
   So if Gary Valentine alias Lachman writes a book like this, he will NOT bring back respect to somebody who served the 4.th way to his possible best, i.e. deserves respect, but the opposite is achieved:
   
   Lachman's book is so full of nonsense, halfbaked truth's and often deliberate lies, that it would be better he wrote a book about Robert Burton, who might quite well be behind Lachman.



4. Gary Lachman's book is essentially predicated upon what we already knew about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky from primary and secondary sources. However, the book's very special character stems from the author's brilliant synthesis of all that material. One might criticize the book for its dependence on secondary sources. But such criticism badly misses the mark.
   
   In my judgment, the real value of Mr. Lachman's work is that it humanizes the so-called "Fourth Way," something that has, heretofore, never been attempted, let alone achieved. The book is a lucid and fascinating demythologization of both an erstwhile practical "philosophy," and the concealed personalities behind it. It provides a badly needed hermeneutic by which one can decipher the manner in which the sly man behind the curtain plied his hypnogogic craft. The man I have in mind, of course, is Gurdjieff.
   
   Lachman is absolutely correct to suggest that Ouspensky denied his better self, and neglected his own (in my estimation, more important) work, to pursue the idiosyncratic and synthetic occultism of Gurdjieff. Lachman gives us a masterly depiction of the process of decline of Ouspensky the man, as well as his metaphysical thought world. It is truly tragedy on an epic scale, and Lachman adeptly chronicles the monumental pathos without disfiguring the human beings involved in the drama.
   
   Besides all the obvious merits of Lachman's book, allow me to touch on one that has been thus far neglected in any reviews of which I am aware. In fact, allow me to go so far as to suggest that it is the chief merit of this important book. That is, Gary Lachman opens a way for Fourth Way devotees to gain some objective insight into their precarious existential situation. He reveals the people and personalities behind the dogma and ritualism of the Fourth Way worldview. He exposes the true and concrete dimensions of the "work," not in any theoretical or purely historical manner, but as it actually was and is for the people bound to the "system." He lays bare the roots of Fourth Way "philosophy" in the person and personality of one man, G. I. Gurdjieff, and displays the catastrophic and appalling outcome of the imposition of one man's will upon that of another.
   
   In my own meetings with remarkable wo/men over the years, I have never met a more remarkably rigid, mechanical, and unimaginative lot as those who are devotees of Beelzebub, the sly Monsieur Gurdjieff. They are blindly caught in the neurotic-obsessive drive to actualize a superhuman, godlike Self. Their uncomprehending devotion to the religion of spiritual self-idolatry surpasses anything with which I have come into contact. This penetrating and sadly amusing irony escapes no one except his very obedient and unthinking disciples. Now there is an "escape manual" for them to consult. I cannot, of course, say that this was one of the intentions of the author in writing his book. My guess is that it must have at least been in the back of his mind. In any event, we owe Mr. Lachman a debt of gratitude for a very fine and interesting book, and furthermore, one with the potential to do great good.
   
   -- Michael J. Langlais, Ph.D.



5. This study of the philosopher-mystic Ouspensky breaks new ground, and also dares to challenge the Gurdjieff mystique, with a refreshing look at the author of Tertium Organon, the man before meeting the sufi shark, who wrecked his natural development and left a broken man in his place. Hopefully this book can help many to stand back and not get mesmerized by the 'fourth way' game. Almost everyone susceptible to these writings at all lacks the ability extricate themselves from the entanglement or move on to something more useful. I never met anyone who was ever helped by thrashing through this spiritual way, it simply leaves people confused and, ironically, more mechanical than before. It is hard not to suspect the whole game wasn't even intended to help the people it snared, and even a superficial acquaintance with sufis tells one that's no exaggeration. The whole issue of the Work, and the relationship of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff has gone on far too long, become rancid, with no productive result, and in the process has confused too many people, thousands in fact who need to be released from what was all too obvious a flypaper 'spiritual path' never designed to really help anyone. Such deceptive people are sadly part of the Sufi world and its shadowy mafia,it's no big mystery anymore and it is time people had the courage to stand up to the obsessive domination tactics concocted by such dishonest people.

5 comments about Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures.

1. I picked up this book hoping that I might find some similar experiences. Like this author I immigrated to the US when Iwas 20 and have been in the US for more than 20 years and living in two cultures: Korean and American.
   
   I didn't mind reading the author's comparisons about two cultures, saying "in Japan....but in Midwest ..." But her voice is getting too much negative and so angry then it becomes that she sounds arrogant: no personal warmth from the author.



2. As a half-Japanese raised in the Midwest by an old-fashioned Japanese mother born and raised near Tokyo, I could really relate to much of this book. Mori's personal story and her eye-opening revelations of traditional Japanese culture vs general American culture are fascinating, however she did lose me a bit in her comparisons with the Midwest which I did not fully buy into. Others may argue that Mori discloses the "old" Japan, but there are plenty of books out there trying to teach Americans how to negotiate the Japanese social terrain which is extremely complex and still quite traditional and conservative. Mori is an unusually independent and practical woman, so much so that she discovers marriage even to a good man who gives her space is too constricting. It seems her own childhood experiences have thrust her into the extreme. I hope she finds happiness.



3. I loved this book. I am not surprised that there are bad reviews. Some Japanese and japanophile readers could be offended by the revelations about Japanese culture. But, Kyoko is giving the reader tremendous insight into the social structure of Japan. She points out quite a few similarities to American Midwest culture. Best of all, her stories draw the reader in and keep reader wanting more.



4. I really enjoyed reading this book. Mori, as befits a writing instructor, writes beautifully. Her essays have a wonderful flow about them and are peppered with interesting details. I think they would serve as great instructional pieces on writing personal essays.
   
   However, I found some un-evenness in the actual content of what Dr. Mori had to say. Her observations about what it's like to be a person caught between or maybe with one foot in each of two very different cultures struck me as very true and perceptive, as this is also my life story.
   
   The problem is when Dr. Mori talks about Japan. She is one of a fairly typical group of adult-immigrants to the US, who moved here because they disliked their life in their home country. And since she has been here for 20 years and has been very successful and lived a full life, all her stories about Japan are going to have a goal of saying 'I am so glad I left Japan.' In addition, as the other reviewers have said, Dr. Mori had an extremely unhappy childhod in Japan, which probably colors all of her perceptions of that country. I found her descriptions of her feelings in flying closer to Japan on a rare visit there very revealing -- to her, Japan is not a home, not even a happy place, but instead a place full of terrible memories that she is only too happy to have escaped from.
   
   Nonetheless, I think this book is worth reading both for its writing and its observations about being a person who is bicultural by choice.



5. Having lived in Japan 4 separate times, I loved returning because things worked somehow and at the same time confused me as to how they worked. Mori by sharing her personal experiences -- through her mother's suicide, her stepmother's evil intent, her transition to life in Green Bay, her divorce to her husband, and more -- offers a lot of insight into the thinking that makes Japan's culture such a magnetic source of confusion for me. Although this represents more the author's insights from her personal experiences more than whatever "average" there may be to Japanese life, the reader can still learn from her unique experience of being "Japanese."
   
   Also, coming from the Chicago area, I learn from Mori's comparison of her understanding of Midwestern Green Bay culture and Kansai Japanese culture. It's a comparison that other sociological books and more quantative readings fail at. In terms of writing quality, maybe I'd give it 3 stars, but the way Kyoko Mori shares so much personally, this open honestness encouraged me to give it 4 stars. This book might also be useful for couples with a Japanese or Japanese-American partner.