Sunday, April 6, 2008

Just too New Agey.

Posted by Picasa
I read Mutant Message Down Under. It kinda snookered me with its new agey back to nature mantra. Pilar of course saw right through it immediately. Written in a very facile style, which should have set off alarms. I think my favorite part was where she said that mental telepathy is real and that the reason us civilized modern types can't connect telepathically is because it only works if you're totally honest. Now that's brilliant, because nobody is 100% pure through and through honest. And as soon as you try to be so honest, you're not because then you're not genuine. But I put the cart before the horse. The book is supposedly based on the author's true experience of having lived with an aboriginal tribe in Australia for a period of several months. The author is an ex-Mrs. America from Kansas or something like that, although I think she claims to be a scientist in the book. Online searches quickly revealed the author to basically be a hoax. Oh well. At least the telepathy conceit was amusing. Gotta love the double-bind. In order to redeem myself, I'm now reading Moby Dick, which is surprisingly humorous and entertaining. I was expecting some dry verbose stuff that would shovel heaps of sleepdust into my eyes. I haven't got to the part where he spends like 60 pages on the details of whaling yet so perhaps my enthusiasm is premature. Then again, enthusiasm is always premature.

1 comment:

Jonathan Paul said...

Trust me, your enthusiasm for Moby Dick really is premature...