A Book for Those Who Feel Alone in a Rented World

Posted by admin in Rented World on December 21, 2011

In 1976, on a frozen field in the midst of the worst winter storm anyone could remember, gunfire rained down on a group of state narcotics agents near Columbus, Mississippi. A heroin deal had gone bad, and a sniper for the dealers opened fire with deadly accuracy. A wounded agent fell in a pool of his own blood, but what should have been fatal was not, because of a voice that commanded the young Captain to bring the bullet proof vests to what appeared to be a routine deal. I know this to be true, because I was that young Captain.

Similar stories of the paranormal and supernatural are to be found in a new book, “The Mystery of Fate: Common Coincidence or Divine Intervention?”

The Mystery of Fate: Common Coincidence or Divine Intervention, a collection of short stories, is a honeycomb of treasures for anyone who has ever walked alone–pausing to look back–feeling someone was near but seeing no one; for those who have shivered suddenly as if “someone just walked across my grave;” and for those who felt a faint buzzing, an enchanting melody or distant murmuring near their ears and asked a loved one, “What did you say?”–only to see quizzical glances and hear, “I didn’t say anything.” The stories in this anthology suggest that someone is shadowing us, and it just might be–goodness and mercy. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru

Posted by admin in Hari Kunzru on December 21, 2011

In his impressive and successful novel, Hari Kunzru explores the nature of identity. For some people a sense of belonging is very strong, whereas for others such feelings are mere illusion. The former group may cite social group, language, culture or religion as evidence of their stance, while the latter group, perhaps, may cite exactly the same subject matter to prove the opposite. The more politically inclined may even cite our relationship to the means of production as the primary source or personal and social identity. In that case, the way that we make our living provides much of what we perceive as identity, and, in Hari Kunzru’s book, The Impressionist works through several quite different lives.

It’s not that The Impressionist, the principal character of Hari Kunzru’s novel, has no identity. Indeed, The Impressionist has a whole host of them, and all of them are both complex and, at the same time, completely credible. It is those around him who endow him with the trappings that confirm who he is. And he, of course, responds, donning new lives according to each new coat he wears.

The book’s style seems to owe much to the magical realism of Salman Rushdie. There is also a superficial similarity of subject matter, since The Impressionist begins in colonial India where we witness our hero’s chance conception. There are royal parlours, low-life slums and chance encounter. We see the inside of an English public school, a prestigious university and eventually travel to Africa in a professional but doomed role. And throughout, The Impressionist seems to do no more than merely fit into the niches that have apparently been prepared for him. Everything he tries on fits him well. Read the rest of this entry »

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Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: A Review

Posted by admin in Malcolm Gladwell on December 21, 2011

With Blink, Malcolm Gladwell has attempted to quantify the phenomenon of the gut feeling. Malcolm Gladwell puts forth his thoughts on the feelings of intuition in a considerably more scientific way than many people thought possible, all while admitting to the shortcomings of science in this particular area. And although science cannot possibly hope to give us all of the answers within this discipline, Gladwell retains enough of the childlike sense of wonder about the topic to leave certain questions open to the child within us, maintaining that we do not have to know everything in order to use the information that we have.

Despite the book’s quantitative shortcomings at times, there is no better statistician than Malcolm Gladwell in mainstream literary society today. While discussing the concept of intuition and the things that we gather from it, he puts forth many statistics that prove that intuition is a useful and even necessary tool for humans to use. As a matter of fact, in his book, the most scientific people sometimes must rely on intuition more than the average person, which leads to great breakthroughs when their intuition is finally proven correct after a passage of time.

There can be little argument over Gladwell’s penchant for numbers and statistics. The true reason for the average person to read this book is not to prove or disprove anything about the way that our brains and bodies process information. It is to learn how to trust ourselves more fully, and as we split hairs and atoms attempting to figure out the physiology and the science behind our incredible central processing systems, not to discount the information that it gives us on a daily basis without being fully understood. Gladwell gives the average reader an excuse to trust himself and to break down the barriers between science and God. Read the rest of this entry »

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