I have been interested, although not fanatical, about J D Salinger since I had the, not unique, experience of reading Cather in the Rye in high school and feeling that I had finally read a book that made perfect sense to me. What I really loved about Catcher was the natural flow of the dialogue. I admired Salinger for his keen ability to create realistic conversational prose. At the time I knew of the radical reclusiveness of Salinger but I never spent much time reflecting on what it meant or finding deep hidden meanings in-between the words of Catcher. After the death of John Lennon, however, I did have a peak in interest, as many of us did, mostly because of my fond memories of reading the book being a pleasant counter-weight to the tragic events of December 7th in front of the Dakota building.

It was a mixture of these latent memories and curiosities that led me to read J. D. Salinger: A Life. I was also curious just how much information one could dig up on the reclusive author. I was aware of his WWII military service but not aware that almost 1/2 of the book would consist of it's telling. Not that it made for bad reading, mostly due to the intriguing facts that emerge, not only about his rather heroic military career but also about the interconnection to his life as an author and his most famous work : Catcher.

Given Salinger's oddities and quite possibly fear for his life, early drafts of Catcher were in his possession during the storming of the beach at Normandy as well as throughout the entire war. I found it an intriguing although small detail that Holden had been carried around the battles of throughout France and while Salinger took a literary break with fellow author Ernest Hemingway in Paris.

Aside from these details, much of the biography is a bricolage of letters that the author send to attorneys, lovers and magazine publishers. Although the book, as any book on this particular subject, is robbed of any direct insight from the subject himself, "A Life" still does a fine job in penetrating some of the aspects of Salinger's character that might go misunderstood had it not been for this biographer's keen sense of his subject and his focused ability to stick to the facts rather than drifting of in speculation.

In total the book is an interesting literary read and I most enjoyed it final third that reveals the shift of Salinger's life toward a mixture of Zen Buddhism and Catholicism and how writing became his chief spiritual practice. I will leave it to future readers to find the other nuggets of insight into his writing process, love life and need for solitude and simply end by giving this book a solid recommendation. If you are a writer you will learn a few things, not just about and from Salinger, but also from the skilled biographer. If you are not there is still plenty to learn about the ability to attain greatness through perseverance, given that the book records the timeline of almost three dozen rejections from various magazines and eventual book publishers. None of this had any impact on Salinger's tenacious will and in outlining these episodes is when the deepest character of the famous and nearly invisible author emerges. At the end you are left with the inspiring reminder that all great things must face being misunderstood, such as Catcher in the Rye, and all great people, such as Salinger, must learn to face and rise above failure.

For that reminder alone this book is worth the time and a peek into the life of a man who would have targeted that his spiritual work speak for him rather than anything else.

Douglas Coupland has been one of my favorite authors since I read his first book Generation X in the early par tof high school. I have read them all ever since and Shampoo Planet is by and far bpmy personal favorite, a Catcher in the Rye for my generation, if you ask me. I love his writing not just because he is a fellow Canadian, or because he has a gift for blending great characters and fantastic powers of observation of the state of our times. It is mostly because of him writing about his interests in the same shards of popular culture that I am also interested in such as the many embedded Smiths lyrics and song titles (including the book title) in Girlfriend in a Coma. He just seems to be from my world and I from his so I understand him.

His latest book, although a bit of a departure from his literary style of semi-auto-biographical fiction into biography, is not a departure from the bond of interests that have continued between his writings and I through the years. I have been a Marshall McLuhan junkie since I read the Gutenberg Galaxy in High School and more M M books would sparkle and crackle in my mind for years to come. In this telling of the life of the 20th century prophet, Marshall McLuhan, Coupland does away with the details that have already been chronicled  in other McLuhan biographies and goes for an exploration into what made the made rather than all the factual details of his life. Coupland's wit is present at the start as he follows a McLuhan quote about the importance of names with a list of Internet generated fake names for M M such as his porn star name to his outlaw name. 

There are plenty of interesting details, M M would decide if a book was worth reading by reading all of page 69 to se if it had anything of value, M M had two main arteries pumping blood too his brain, something rarely seen in mammals except cats and most likely the cause of both his brilliance and his untimely death from a seizure. In between the details we are treated to a primer on M M's core theories on how the method that delivers information is just as or sometimes more important than the information itself and that the method actually changes humans on a physical level. This is astounding when you consider that he was discovering all of this in the 1940-60's. 

What emerges is a picture of a man whose intelligence, religious conviction (of the non-judgmental sort!) and his arcane, and often exhausting use of rhetoric, left him a man out of time. He could see so far into our future but was unwilling to judge the course we were on harshly enough to change it's direction. So we are now living in the world that M M envisioned, the Global Village as he called it, combining the ideas of another academic colleague. A world where geography is irrelevant and everyone has access to all the world's libraries of information, but also we are living in what he called would be an "Age of Anxiety" because we will try to solve new problems with old tools and old concepts. Boy was Marshall right, from his ideas on politics to the current religious landscape, we are living in a new world but we are largely afraid to really change the game and try new tools and concepts. 

Anyone who hasn't read any McLuhan need to if you want to understand our world better and this book is a great primer! I recommend it and I will leave you with one of the M M gem quotes that I will adopt and use often:

"I don't always agree with everything I say" - M M

The Head trip is a guided tour around your own brain in nice bite size and digestible chunks. Have you ever wondered what happens during deep sleep? or why we sometimes fall into a low level trance when driving the familiar path to our home? By giving his personal observations alongside personal interviews and extensive research on everything from hypnosis to entrainment of brain waves through neuro-feedback loops, Jeff Warren weaves a masterful, if scientifically biased, tour of consciousness. What I mean by scientifically biased is that he is intentionally distancing himself from the average new age 'brain science/kosmic spirituality' gurus that have cropped up lately. By staying close to the research put forward by the world's foremost researchers and only using his personal experiences as a support, the book steers clear of sounding like a self help manual, although I am sure it will be very helpful to lots of interested people. At times the physiology of the body/brain begins to sound very much like a computer system. i am not sure if this is just a simple metaphor because of the proliferation of personal computers of whether the design and architecture of personal computing was imprinted with the blueprints of brain mechanics. Either way, the idea of 'harnessing' each of these various states of consciousness (deep sleep, hypnosis, and more) seems very empowering.

take the story of Thomas Edison who developed a way to tap into the brain's most creative state: The Hypnagogic - that moment right before you fall into a deep sleep. By taking an intentional nap in front of his desk with two small steel balls in each hand. Edison was sure he would wake up as soon as he drifted off and released the balls to smash hard on two metal plates that he set on the floor. As soon as the crash woke him up, he would quickly lean forward an write down what was on his mind. This way of tapping the deep layers of unconscious activity associated with sleep for creative inspiration was also mined by Salvador Dali who devised a similar technique involving metal keys rather than steel balls. Dali would paint whatever image he brought up out of his sleeping mind (this explains a lot about Dali's work!) This technique even has a practical history beyond the invention of the light-bulb. Paul McCartney has said that the song Yesterday (voted by Rolling Stone to be the greatest pop song written so far) came fully formed as he awake from a dream.

The Head Trip is full of interesting applications and explorations for each state that the average person passes through in their head space every day. I can't begin to image a world where this kind of practical knowledge about what it means to be human is taught to children as part of a more holistic educational paradigm. Anyone who wants to see just a small glimpse into the brain-tech future should do a little searching for the concept of Binaural Beats. We may never be the same again!

I have been a devout reader of RIchard Rohr since I first picked up a copy of 'Jesus' Plan for a New World.' The title intrigued me and the content re-shaped my whole understanding of faith, conversion and the deeper dimensions of the spiritual life.
This particular book: Things Hidden : Scripture as Spirituality, proved to have all the hallmarks of Rohr's style and insight. It seems that, while I find myself on the Protestant side of the great divide, most of my favorite theologians are catholic (and monastics as well) I am not sure if that means that I am becoming more catholic in my theology or if we are experiencing a re-formation or re-uniting of the two main halves of Christendom. (No offense to Eastern Orthodoxy but they are less engaged it seems, at this point, in relating outside of their paradigm) For now I think it is the latter rather than the former because most of the writers that grab my attention are not too popular in mainline catholic circles (Anthony DeMello, Gianni Vatimo, Leonardo Boff, John Caputo...) Sometimes I am surprised at how much some of them get away with in the order of criticism from within about the catholic church. Maybe the public image of Pope Ratzinger is not as heavy handed as one might believe? That being said, let me mention what I loved about this book on spiritual reading of the scriptures.
One of the things I like about Rohr is that he putting new language to the faith and along the way revealing some fresh insights into concepts that have become wooden and stale over the centuries since they were originally conceived. Here is a great example:

"Paul frequently uses the expression 'in Christ.' We are saved by standing consciously inside the force field that is Christ - not by getting it right in our private selves... We can't always be correct, but we can be connected. All we can do is fall into the eternal mercy."

His ability to re-voice old concepts (and introduce a few new one's as well) has helped me connect with my own understanding and practice of faith in ways that have stimulated and inspired my journey.
I also like that he weaves a deep knowledge of the way people are now talking about life and themselves into his writings. This makes him very current and his writing stand alongside some of the more popular contemporary 'gurus' while still maintaining a clear connection to the Christian tradition.

"What the Biblical revelation is achieving is basically a very different consciousness, a recreated self, an 'identity transplant' - like a kidney or heart transplant. The text is inviting us slowly, little by little, into a very different sense of who we are."

He also says some helpful things about some core Christian doctrine in new ways that don't violate 'orthodoxy', if you believe in that sort of thing, but shift our perspective in ways that allow us to see these ideas and concepts that were once hidden come to new life:

On Biblical Inspiration:
"Read inspiration primarily meaning that God is slowly evolving the reader's consciousness, so that it can receive an ever-clearer understanding of itself as the beloved of God"

This I love because it helps me understand that inspiration doesn't just mean 'when the Bible was written' but also means 'when it is read and interpreted.'

On The Fall of Man
"The English mystic Julian of Norwich said, 'First the fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the mercy of God.' It is in the falling down that we learn almost everything that matters spiritually. As many of the parables seem to say, you have to lose it (or know that you don't have it) before you can find it and celebrate fittingly (see all of Luke 15)"

There are many other quotes that really grabbed my attention in a way that affirmed thoughts or wonderings that I had already begun to consider and plenty that stretched me into new understandings and ways of making sense of this mystery called faith. If you like Rohr or if you like reading books about the spiritual life voiced in new ways then I suggest you pick up a copy of this book. You will find much to chew on and digest and hopefully little that gives you spiritual indigestion.

"I started to realize that there was a great hunger and thirst for regular, cynical, ragbag people to talk about God and goodness and virtue in a tone that didn't frighten and upset you, or make you feel that you were doing even more poorly than you'd thought." Anne Lamott

In the article attached to the above image of me and Anne Lamott, she says that it was her little church community in the poorest area of San Francisco that saved her life. I can certianly identify with that thought. My church community and Anne Lamott have both saved my life more than once. In a supreme act of grace, I was given Anne Lamott's book Traveling Mercies at the lowest point in my life. I remember many days that passed by so painfully slow that only Anne's words had the power to nurture my soul. She is so brutally honest and at the same time able to articulate the depths of struggle at the center of any authentic faith journey. I remember when this picture was taken she had just given an hour plus talk about wheat she wanted in a pastor. It was delivered to a national pastor's conference in San Deigo. She was so edgy that many people walked out in a huff. I was also told that right before she went onstage she was told she could not mention certian topics. Her main theme was one of the censored topics. She stuck it out and gave a wondeful rambling and harsh talk. When it was over, their were very few people lingering around by the stage. One person did come well prepared and gave her the embossed leather KJV bible. Maybe to "sort her out" :)