A not so practical guide to enlightenment

[Otto]

  A not so practical guide to enlightenment

Sam Martin's "How to Achieve Total Enlightenment: A Practical Guide to 
the Meaning of Life" (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $14.95).
BY JAKE SPATZ, Special to The Examiner, Friday, June 17, 2005

Martin opens "Total Enlightenment" with a sightseer's look at the major 
religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam - and then 
proceeds to stop for postcards at some minor ones - Wicca, Druidry, 
Taoism, Confucianism, Scientology and that Landmark Forum thing.
With nose wrinkling ironically, he gives short shrift to everything but 
Hinduism and Buddhism. Yet this is no surprise. Given that his reading 
list of enlightening books includes both Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the 
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and "Gravity's Rainbow" - a daunting 
postmodern mega-novel by Thomas Pynchon, which is centered around the 
Nazis' V-2 rocket, and which acquired a cult fan base among college 
students in the 1970s - you can tell the guy is just another 
standard-issue hipster, too intent on being irreverent to take much of 
anything, except irreverence, very seriously.
This should in no way reflect poorly on "Gravity's Rainbow," of course. 
It's a masterful, hilarious, challenging, rewarding work of art. Pynchon 
is a madcap virtuoso, equally artful in any of a hundred styles, and 
quite willing to use them all and throw anything he finds fascinating 
into his able 
prose.http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/06/17/features/books/89books19enlightenment.txt




	

	
		
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