Review by New York Times Review
ROBERT M. PIRSIG'S "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (1974) was the rare quest narrative in which two American males headed west in search of enlightenment and didn't score a single chick along the way. Chaste and pedagogic, the book has sold five million copies and inspired way-seeking "Pirsig's pilgrims" to retrace his journey, plotting its GPS coordinates and debating his ideas on the Internet. Devotees compiled a readers' guide and organized an academic conference dedicated to Pirsig's unifying idea, the Metaphysics of Quality. And in their wake came Mark Richardson, who writes about cars and motorcycles for The Toronto Star. In 2004, feeling cramped by his children's Hot Wheels and Pokémon cards, he saddled up his trusty 1985 Suzuki DR600, added a GPS device and Butt Buffer gel seat pad, and set out along Pirsig's route from Minnesota to San Francisco, to arrive on his 42nd birthday. "It's undeniable," Richardson writes, "that if his book could open so many readers' eyes to more of life's qualities, then there's a good chance his actual journey can open my own eyes wider still." Friends, haven't we all been there? Haven't we all traveled to the mystic mountaintop or to Elvis's burial place, hoping for contact catharsis, only to find the same perceptive blockages we carried up in the first place: wow, cool mountain, now what? Or, as Richardson expounds in midjourney, "A big part of the message of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' can be boiled down to a truism: if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well." This level of insight never lets Richardson down, but it never quite lifts him up, either. Elsewhere in "Zen and Now," he finds "a reminder of one of the greatest lessons of all: live as if you'll live forever, but live each day as if it were your last." And, when he misses his family, he finally discovers that "we're related to each other in ways we never fully understand, maybe hardly understand at all, but my family is pulling at me now as, at 42, I come to realize the meaning of my life. ... People who care and people who care enough for me to give me a home - they are Quality." Like Pirsig's, his is a book of its time: the new seeker's payoff is therapeutic, and fatherhood is life's wondrous gift. Richardson interweaves a broad outline of Pirsig's troubled and fascinating biography. Before his Zen journey, Pirsig was institutionalized and forcibly given electroshock therapy, and much of "Zen and the Art" is the narrator's dance with his pre-shock self, whom he calls Phaedrus. Pirsig later described his collapse, which included waving a gun at his wife, as either "catatonic schizophrenia" or "hard enlightenment," depending on your perspective. He declined to make that call; his ex-wife, Nancy, chose the schizophrenia. His turbulence passed to his son Chris, his travel companion in "Zen and the Art," who was also later institutionalized, and eventually stabbed to death outside a San Francisco Zen center in 1979 during a mugging. In "Zen and the Art," Pirsig used the motorcycle trip mainly to illustrate the principles of his "Inquiry Into Values," which he felt broke through the either-or logjam of Western thought (emotion versus intellect, technology versus romanticism, subject versus object) by establishing the idea of Quality as the foundation for both sides. In press interviews - he did not speak with Richardson, though they exchanged letters - he has lamented that he is not embraced by academic philosophy departments and that his books are sometimes lumped under "New Age." After all, as he writes in "Zen and the Art," his ideas constitute "a line of thought that had never been traveled before." Richardson, on the other hand, is a motorcycle guy. He's best describing the gear or the feel of the bike. "It's almost like bull riding," he writes of heading down a Montana road, "and just as I let out a ringing yee-hah, the road turns without warning ... and an almighty pothole bottoms the suspension, almost throwing the bike into the fence alongside." His tensions are automotive: Will he run out of gas? Will he be able to swerve to avoid oncoming traffic? It's a nice travelogue that occasionally abandons Pirsig's austere path. "That's not for me," Richardson writes. "I'll take a snug Super 8 any day, or an attentive server at a decent steakhouse." The journey through what Pirsig called "the high country of the mind" need not entail outdoor camping or bad coffee. This isn't a biography, and Richardson doesn't provide enough interviews to flesh out the testimony of Pirsig and a few people close to him. For example, part of both "Zen and the Art" and "Zen and Now" concerns Pirsig's battles with the philosophy department at the University of Chicago, which Pirsig describes as high drama, featuring a rebel genius against the tenured forces of darkness. "Zen and Now" offers no second opinion. Richardson's modesty, winning in small doses, distances him from his subject, who was all grand ambition. In the end, Richardson writes, "Robert Pirsig's remarkable book changed my life in numerous ways." I wish I could tell what they were. John Leland is a reporter at The Times and the author of "Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of 'On the Road' (They're Not What You Think)."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
It was part of the pain of living in Manhattan, this overwhelming ache for prime real estate, writes Bushnell in her first novel since Lipstick Jungle (2005). Two events throw the inhabitants of One Fifth Avenue, Manhattan's ritziest address, into a tizzy: the return of beautiful actress Schiffer Diamond, and the death of Louise Houghton, who owned the building's swankiest apartment. Gossip columnist Enid Merle and her dashing nephew Philip Oakland think Louise's now-available three-story apartment should be divided up, while ambitious Mindy Gooch, whose husband is on the cusp of literary stardom, wants it sold to a high bidder. Mindy gets her way, and nouveau riche couple Paul and Annalisa snap it up for $15 million. But when Mindy refuses to let Paul install a wall-unit air conditioner, he declares war, inciting a conflict that draws in all the residents of the building. Other characters include a scheming Lolita type who tries to sleep her way into One Fifth and a penniless male socialite who has aspired to One Fifth for decades. Devotees of Bushnell's megahit Sex in the City and fans of New York-aimed satire will enjoy this scathing all's-fair-in-real-estate novel.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sex in the City goes middle-aged, mordant and slapstick in Bushnell's chronicle of writers, actors and Wall Street whizzes clashing at One Fifth Avenue, a Greenwich Village art deco jewel crammed with regal rich, tarty upstarts and misguided lovers. When a Queen of Society dies, a vicious scramble for her penthouse apartment ensues, and it's attorney Annalisa and her hedge-funder husband, Paul Rice, who land the palatial pad, roiling the building's rivalries. There's Billy Litchfield, an art dealer who slobbers over the wealthy; strivers Mindy and James Gooch, and their tech-savvy 13-year-old Sam, the most hilariously bitter (and strangely successful) family in the building; gossip columnist Enid Merle and her screenwriter nephew, Philip Oakland, who struggle to uphold traditions and their souls; actress Schiffer Diamond, who lands a hit TV series, and her old love; and Lola Fabrikant, a cunning Atlanta gold digger whose greatest ambition is to become Carrie Bradshaw. Here are bloggers and bullies, misfits and misanthropes, dear hearts and black-hearts, dogfights and catty squalls spun into a darkly humorous chick-lit saga. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
New York Observer columnist-turned-New York Times best-selling novelist Bushnell (www.candacebushnell.com) here writes of a single New York City apartment building and the machinations of the women who live in it, want to live in it, and eventually leave it-one way or another. There are some jumps in narrative flow in this abridged edition, but Tonyr Award winner Donna Murphy (www.donnamurphy.com) perfectly voices this microcosm of women's lives. Recommended for public libraries. [Audio clip available through www.hyperionbooks.com; unabridged library-edition CD and digital download available from Books on Tape, with Carrington MacDuffie reading; the Hyperion hc was called "Bushnell at her best," LJ 9/1/08.-Ed.]-Beth Traylor, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libs. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
