https://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&feed=atom&action=historyJanuary 6, 2020 - Revision history2024-03-28T17:07:50ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.39.0https://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=11487&oldid=prevGrlucas: Updated cat.2020-07-24T12:29:27Z<p>Updated cat.</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 08:29, 24 July 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l2">Line 2:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 2:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''[https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 Four Men Shaking]''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''[https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 Four Men Shaking]''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, predictably, is <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:Norman Mailer|Norman Mailer]] </del>shortly after meeting [[w:Lawrence Shainberg|Lawrence Shainberg]], author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative arc of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of [[w:Kyudo Nakagawa|Kyudo Nakagawa]], a [[w:Zen|Zen]] master, to his SoHo ''[[w:Zendō|zendō]]'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls [[w:Rōshi|Roshi]], or “old master.”</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, predictably, is <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">{{NM}} </ins>shortly after meeting [[w:Lawrence Shainberg|Lawrence Shainberg]], author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative arc of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of [[w:Kyudo Nakagawa|Kyudo Nakagawa]], a [[w:Zen|Zen]] master, to his SoHo ''[[w:Zendō|zendō]]'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls [[w:Rōshi|Roshi]], or “old master.”</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with [[w:Samuel Beckett|Beckett]] and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world, his honesty, and his ability to bring a novelist’s sensibility to journalism. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their friendship—one that continues through Mailer’s waning years, mostly through shared meals at Michael Shay’s, thumb wrestling, and discussion/debates.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with [[w:Samuel Beckett|Beckett]] and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world, his honesty, and his ability to bring a novelist’s sensibility to journalism. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their friendship—one that continues through Mailer’s waning years, mostly through shared meals at Michael Shay’s, thumb wrestling, and discussion/debates.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l22">Line 22:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 22:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This final third of the memoir is the story of the last retreat, a seven-day ''sesshin'', at the SoHo ''zendō''. At 80, Roshi has decided to sell the ''zendō'' when he returns to Japan, so this will be the final ''sesshin'' Shainberg and twenty others will share with Roshi in New York. It’s during this ritual where these narratives come together, and Shainberg develops the metaphor for finding his “long-lost home.” Whether Shainberg is ultimately successful might be up for discussion—I won’t give away any more here—but he was successful in leaving me with a lot to contemplate about myself, my own influences, and ultimately what I will leave behind. As I said above: I do not want to give the impression that Shainberg’s memoir is depressing or maudlin, but it is honest and compelling. I left me with a sense finally of a resonant ambivalence, similar to my feelings upon finishing Herman Hesse’s ''Siddhartha'', in my role as a fellow human on his own search for a long-lost home.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This final third of the memoir is the story of the last retreat, a seven-day ''sesshin'', at the SoHo ''zendō''. At 80, Roshi has decided to sell the ''zendō'' when he returns to Japan, so this will be the final ''sesshin'' Shainberg and twenty others will share with Roshi in New York. It’s during this ritual where these narratives come together, and Shainberg develops the metaphor for finding his “long-lost home.” Whether Shainberg is ultimately successful might be up for discussion—I won’t give away any more here—but he was successful in leaving me with a lot to contemplate about myself, my own influences, and ultimately what I will leave behind. As I said above: I do not want to give the impression that Shainberg’s memoir is depressing or maudlin, but it is honest and compelling. I left me with a sense finally of a resonant ambivalence, similar to my feelings upon finishing Herman Hesse’s ''Siddhartha'', in my role as a fellow human on his own search for a long-lost home.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>===Notes===</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">==</ins>===Notes<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">==</ins>===</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Reflist|20em}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Reflist|20em}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l29">Line 29:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 29:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:01/2020]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:01/2020]]</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:Books]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:Books]]</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[Category:On Norman Mailer]]</del></div></td><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-added"></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:Rush]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:Rush]]</div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=6354&oldid=prevGrlucas at 22:51, 19 January 20202020-01-19T22:51:06Z<p></p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 18:51, 19 January 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l30">Line 30:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 30:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:Books]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:Books]]</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:On Norman Mailer]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[Category:On Norman Mailer]]</div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[Category:Rush]]</ins></div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=6107&oldid=prevGrlucas: Added some links.2020-01-13T12:21:34Z<p>Added some links.</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 08:21, 13 January 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l2">Line 2:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 2:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''[https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 Four Men Shaking]''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''[https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 Four Men Shaking]''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, predictably, is Norman Mailer shortly after meeting Lawrence Shainberg, author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative arc of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of Kyudo Nakagawa, a Zen master, to his SoHo ''zendō'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls Roshi, or “old master.”</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, predictably, is <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:</ins>Norman Mailer<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">|Norman Mailer]] </ins>shortly after meeting <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:Lawrence Shainberg|</ins>Lawrence Shainberg<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">]]</ins>, author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative arc of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:</ins>Kyudo Nakagawa<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">|Kyudo Nakagawa]]</ins>, a <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:Zen|</ins>Zen<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">]] </ins>master, to his SoHo ''<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:Zendō|</ins>zendō<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">]]</ins>'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:Rōshi|</ins>Roshi<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">]]</ins>, or “old master.”</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with Beckett and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world, his honesty, and his ability to bring a novelist’s sensibility to journalism. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their friendship—one that continues through Mailer’s waning years, mostly through shared meals at Michael Shay’s, thumb wrestling, and discussion/debates.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:Samuel </ins>Beckett<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">|Beckett]] </ins>and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world, his honesty, and his ability to bring a novelist’s sensibility to journalism. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their friendship—one that continues through Mailer’s waning years, mostly through shared meals at Michael Shay’s, thumb wrestling, and discussion/debates.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Shainberg.jpg|thumb]]</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>[[File:Shainberg.jpg|thumb]]</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s succinct and eloquent accounts of the relationships he developed with these three personalities in the last years of their lives underscore Shainberg’s attempts to find sanity in his own life. His memoir reads like a puzzle he’s trying to assemble where some pieces might be too big, some are misshapen, and some maybe missing. Pieces like his friendship with Mailer and his zazen, or the Zen practice of “seated meditation,” seem antithetical to one another, like Shainberg is trying to assemble one puzzle from the pieces of several. This metaphor seems an appropriate one for describing his life specifically, and everyone’s generally. This seeming contradiction represents his interest in the “logical contradiction” of Zen and its goal, as articulated by Zen master Eihei Dogen, “To study Zen is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|pp=19, 34}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s succinct and eloquent accounts of the relationships he developed with these three personalities in the last years of their lives underscore Shainberg’s attempts to find sanity in his own life. His memoir reads like a puzzle he’s trying to assemble where some pieces might be too big, some are misshapen, and some maybe missing. Pieces like his friendship with Mailer and his <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:Zazen|</ins>zazen<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">]]</ins>, or the Zen practice of “seated meditation,” seem antithetical to one another, like Shainberg is trying to assemble one puzzle from the pieces of several. This metaphor seems an appropriate one for describing his life specifically, and everyone’s generally. This seeming contradiction represents his interest in the “logical contradiction” of Zen and its goal, as articulated by Zen master <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:Dōgen|</ins>Eihei Dogen<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">]]</ins>, “To study Zen is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|pp=19, 34}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>And here lies Shainberg’s dilemma: “How could I forget my self when I was obsessed with the brain that generated it?”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} and elsewhere: “But essential nature [. . .] is formless, and the brain of course deals only in form.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=133}} In these instances, he refers to his work as a writer, and his interest in neurology and the functioning of the brain. His early success as a writer stems from this latter interest. ''Brain Surgeon: An Intimate View of His World'' (1980) is a non-fiction portrait of a ''prima donna'' neurosurgeon who can do no wrong, even when he does. Godlike, Dr. James Brockman, or “the boss,” seems the epitome of the inflated ego that is as far from a Zen-self as one can be. In his novel ''Memories of Amnesia'' (1988), Shainberg’s protagonist, a talented neurosurgeon—perhaps a fictional Brockman, begins to suffer from brain damage which leads to his questioning reality and his own sense of self. It seems that ''Four Men Shaking'' is the logical descendant of this interest in the self vis-à-vis reality that finds its center in the author.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>And here lies Shainberg’s dilemma: “How could I forget my self when I was obsessed with the brain that generated it?”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} and elsewhere: “But essential nature [. . .] is formless, and the brain of course deals only in form.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=133}} In these instances, he refers to his work as a writer, and his interest in neurology and the functioning of the brain. His early success as a writer stems from this latter interest. ''Brain Surgeon: An Intimate View of His World'' (1980) is a non-fiction portrait of a ''prima donna'' neurosurgeon who can do no wrong, even when he does. Godlike, Dr. James Brockman, or “the boss,” seems the epitome of the inflated ego that is as far from a Zen-self as one can be. In his novel ''Memories of Amnesia'' (1988), Shainberg’s protagonist, a talented neurosurgeon—perhaps a fictional Brockman, begins to suffer from brain damage which leads to his questioning reality and his own sense of self. It seems that ''Four Men Shaking'' is the logical descendant of this interest in the self vis-à-vis reality that finds its center in the author.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l16">Line 16:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 16:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s ultimate understanding does not seem quite as grim as my assessment might sound. It's a short book, light but dense. The memoir is not difficult to read, but it is challenging in its themes. It is difficult to encapsulate in a short book review, and it seems a disservice to try to do so.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s ultimate understanding does not seem quite as grim as my assessment might sound. It's a short book, light but dense. The memoir is not difficult to read, but it is challenging in its themes. It is difficult to encapsulate in a short book review, and it seems a disservice to try to do so.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>My feelings having read this book and spent some time ruminating about it intersected with the death of a person who has had a huge impact on my own life: Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band Rush. “The Professor,” a sobriquet Peart earned for his virtuosity, was 67 when he died of brain cancer—the cruelest way that I can imagine a person who might have been the rock music’s greatest drummer and lyricist to meet his end. His death hit me hard, even though I never met him, his works—to borrow one of his ideas—made up part of the soundtrack of my life. I have literally been listening to Rush my whole life and every significant experience of my life has been accompanied by a new Rush album or performance. Great music like literature helps those who experience it shape and order their experience of reality, even if it might not do so for the author. Ultimately, then does art becomes a selfless act?</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>My feelings having read this book and spent some time ruminating about it intersected with the death of a person who has had a huge impact on my own life<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">: [[w</ins>:Neil Peart<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">|Neil Peart]]</ins>, drummer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[w:</ins>Rush <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">(band)|Rush]]</ins>. “The Professor,” a sobriquet Peart earned for his virtuosity, was 67 when he died of brain cancer—the cruelest way that I can imagine a person who might have been the rock music’s greatest drummer and lyricist to meet his end. His death hit me hard, even though I never met him, his works—to borrow one of his ideas—made up part of the soundtrack of my life. I have literally been listening to Rush my whole life and every significant experience of my life has been accompanied by a new Rush album or performance. Great music like literature helps those who experience it shape and order their experience of reality, even if it might not do so for the author. Ultimately, then<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">, </ins>does art becomes a selfless act?</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>While Shainberg does not dwell on the deaths of Mailer, Beckett, and Roshi, much of the book is observing them in their declining years and trying to make sense out of mortality. I’m left with the question that seems to be an integral one for Shainberg: how can we derive meaning in the deaths of great men? Or, if all great men decline and succumb to death, how does that not render life ultimately meaningless? Especially for us little ones?</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>While Shainberg does not dwell on the deaths of Mailer, Beckett, and Roshi, much of the book is observing them in their declining years and trying to make sense out of mortality. I’m left with the question that seems to be an integral one for Shainberg: how can we derive meaning in the deaths of great men? Or, if all great men decline and succumb to death, how does that not render life ultimately meaningless? Especially for us little ones?</div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=6104&oldid=prevGrlucas: Added link.2020-01-12T22:57:14Z<p>Added link.</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 18:57, 12 January 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1">Line 1:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 1:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Large|Searching for Home}}<ref>This is the first draft of a review that will be published in the forthcoming volume 13 of ''[[pm:The Mailer Review|The Mailer Review]]''.</ref></div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Large|Searching for Home}}<ref>This is the first draft of a review that will be published in the forthcoming volume 13 of ''[[pm:The Mailer Review|The Mailer Review]]''.</ref></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''Four Men Shaking''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 </ins>Four Men Shaking<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">]</ins>''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, predictably, is Norman Mailer shortly after meeting Lawrence Shainberg, author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative arc of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of Kyudo Nakagawa, a Zen master, to his SoHo ''zendō'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls Roshi, or “old master.”</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, predictably, is Norman Mailer shortly after meeting Lawrence Shainberg, author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative arc of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of Kyudo Nakagawa, a Zen master, to his SoHo ''zendō'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls Roshi, or “old master.”</div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=6103&oldid=prevGrlucas at 21:59, 12 January 20202020-01-12T21:59:49Z<p></p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 17:59, 12 January 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l2">Line 2:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 2:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''Four Men Shaking''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''Four Men Shaking''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, predictably, is Norman Mailer shortly after meeting Lawrence Shainberg, author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">arch </del>of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of Kyudo Nakagawa, a Zen master, to his SoHo ''zendō'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls Roshi, or “old master.”</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, predictably, is Norman Mailer shortly after meeting Lawrence Shainberg, author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">arc </ins>of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of Kyudo Nakagawa, a Zen master, to his SoHo ''zendō'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls Roshi, or “old master.”</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with Beckett and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world, his honesty, and his ability to bring a novelist’s sensibility to journalism. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their friendship—one that continues through Mailer’s waning years, mostly through shared meals at Michael Shay’s, thumb wrestling, and discussion/debates.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with Beckett and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world, his honesty, and his ability to bring a novelist’s sensibility to journalism. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their friendship—one that continues through Mailer’s waning years, mostly through shared meals at Michael Shay’s, thumb wrestling, and discussion/debates.</div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=6102&oldid=prevGrlucas: Added note and image.2020-01-12T19:45:11Z<p>Added note and image.</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 15:45, 12 January 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1">Line 1:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 1:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Large|Searching for Home}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Large|Searching for Home}}<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><ref>This is the first draft of a review that will be published in the forthcoming volume 13 of ''[[pm:The Mailer Review|The Mailer Review]]''.</ref></ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''Four Men Shaking''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''Four Men Shaking''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l5">Line 5:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 5:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with Beckett and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world, his honesty, and his ability to bring a novelist’s sensibility to journalism. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their friendship—one that continues through Mailer’s waning years, mostly through shared meals at Michael Shay’s, thumb wrestling, and discussion/debates.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with Beckett and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world, his honesty, and his ability to bring a novelist’s sensibility to journalism. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their friendship—one that continues through Mailer’s waning years, mostly through shared meals at Michael Shay’s, thumb wrestling, and discussion/debates.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div> </div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">[[File:Shainberg.jpg|thumb]]</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s succinct and eloquent accounts of the relationships he developed with these three personalities in the last years of their lives underscore Shainberg’s attempts to find sanity in his own life. His memoir reads like a puzzle he’s trying to assemble where some pieces might be too big, some are misshapen, and some maybe missing. Pieces like his friendship with Mailer and his zazen, or the Zen practice of “seated meditation,” seem antithetical to one another, like Shainberg is trying to assemble one puzzle from the pieces of several. This metaphor seems an appropriate one for describing his life specifically, and everyone’s generally. This seeming contradiction represents his interest in the “logical contradiction” of Zen and its goal, as articulated by Zen master Eihei Dogen, “To study Zen is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|pp=19, 34}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s succinct and eloquent accounts of the relationships he developed with these three personalities in the last years of their lives underscore Shainberg’s attempts to find sanity in his own life. His memoir reads like a puzzle he’s trying to assemble where some pieces might be too big, some are misshapen, and some maybe missing. Pieces like his friendship with Mailer and his zazen, or the Zen practice of “seated meditation,” seem antithetical to one another, like Shainberg is trying to assemble one puzzle from the pieces of several. This metaphor seems an appropriate one for describing his life specifically, and everyone’s generally. This seeming contradiction represents his interest in the “logical contradiction” of Zen and its goal, as articulated by Zen master Eihei Dogen, “To study Zen is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|pp=19, 34}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=6099&oldid=prevGrlucas: Fixed typo.2020-01-12T18:22:21Z<p>Fixed typo.</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 14:22, 12 January 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l12">Line 12:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 12:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In this context, Shainberg’s friendship with Mailer does not seem too paradoxical. He discovered Mailer through ''The Armies of the Night'' wherein “Mailer had found his voice by letting go of himself, discovered his vision with total surrender to objective reality.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} While this last statement might be too generous, Shainberg borrows Mailer’s approach in ''Armies''—“a perfect combination of of real-world description and novelistic skill”—for ''Brain Surgeon''.{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} Mailer’s influence leads to the success of Shainberg’s book, and, as Beckett will tell him later, his strength as a writer in “witnessing.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=75}} Indeed, while ''Four Men Shaking'' is about Shainberg’s self-discovery, its strength seems to be in Shainberg’s accounts of meeting with Mailer, Beckett, and his Roshi during the last years of their lives.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In this context, Shainberg’s friendship with Mailer does not seem too paradoxical. He discovered Mailer through ''The Armies of the Night'' wherein “Mailer had found his voice by letting go of himself, discovered his vision with total surrender to objective reality.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} While this last statement might be too generous, Shainberg borrows Mailer’s approach in ''Armies''—“a perfect combination of of real-world description and novelistic skill”—for ''Brain Surgeon''.{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} Mailer’s influence leads to the success of Shainberg’s book, and, as Beckett will tell him later, his strength as a writer in “witnessing.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=75}} Indeed, while ''Four Men Shaking'' is about Shainberg’s self-discovery, its strength seems to be in Shainberg’s accounts of meeting with Mailer, Beckett, and his Roshi during the last years of their lives.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>While not an explicit theme in ''Four Men Shaking'', mortality for the four men weighs significantly on the narrative. Part of Shainberg’s interest in the brain is derived for its deviant pathology, or the brain damage that skews perceptions and therefore one’s relationship with the external world. Early in his account, Shainberg associates his interest in the workings of the brain with his writing and concludes that these lead to an obsession that reinforced a false <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">send </del>of self: “That was the real brain damage—self-absorption and the fixations it engendered.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} Shainberg seems to link brain damage with a desire to impose a fictitious forms on reality, like his attempts as a novelist: “What is writing anyway but another form of brain damage?”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=97}} As a journalist, Shainberg is able to witness and break through the ego. Shainberg’s relationship with Beckett in his declining years illustrates this point, as the latter ruminates on his aging brain: “With diminished concentration, loss of memory, obscured intelligence—what you, I suspect, would call ‘brain damage’—the more chance there is for saying something closest to what one really is.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=71}} Ultimately, the search for meaning and order is futile when that which is used to process it finally breaks down and dies.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>While not an explicit theme in ''Four Men Shaking'', mortality for the four men weighs significantly on the narrative. Part of Shainberg’s interest in the brain is derived for its deviant pathology, or the brain damage that skews perceptions and therefore one’s relationship with the external world. Early in his account, Shainberg associates his interest in the workings of the brain with his writing and concludes that these lead to an obsession that reinforced a false <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">sense </ins>of self: “That was the real brain damage—self-absorption and the fixations it engendered.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} Shainberg seems to link brain damage with a desire to impose a fictitious forms on reality, like his attempts as a novelist: “What is writing anyway but another form of brain damage?”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=97}} As a journalist, Shainberg is able to witness and break through the ego. Shainberg’s relationship with Beckett in his declining years illustrates this point, as the latter ruminates on his aging brain: “With diminished concentration, loss of memory, obscured intelligence—what you, I suspect, would call ‘brain damage’—the more chance there is for saying something closest to what one really is.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=71}} Ultimately, the search for meaning and order is futile when that which is used to process it finally breaks down and dies.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s ultimate understanding does not seem quite as grim as my assessment might sound. It's a short book, light but dense. The memoir is not difficult to read, but it is challenging in its themes. It is difficult to encapsulate in a short book review, and it seems a disservice to try to do so.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s ultimate understanding does not seem quite as grim as my assessment might sound. It's a short book, light but dense. The memoir is not difficult to read, but it is challenging in its themes. It is difficult to encapsulate in a short book review, and it seems a disservice to try to do so.</div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=6098&oldid=prevGrlucas: Corrections and small additions.2020-01-12T17:56:33Z<p>Corrections and small additions.</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 13:56, 12 January 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l2">Line 2:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 2:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''Four Men Shaking''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Quote box|title=''Four Men Shaking''|By Lawrence Shainberg<br />Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications: 2019<br />134 pp. Paperback $16.95.|align=right|width=25%}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">of course</del>, is Norman Mailer shortly after meeting Lawrence Shainberg, author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative arch of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of Kyudo Nakagawa, a Zen master, to his SoHo ''zendō'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls Roshi, or “old master.”</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>“I’ve always hated Zen.” That, <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">predictably</ins>, is Norman Mailer shortly after meeting Lawrence Shainberg, author of the new memoir ''Four Men Shaking''. Published in 2019 by Shambhala, the main narrative arch of the memoir takes place over a short time, recounting the final visit of Kyudo Nakagawa, a Zen master, to his SoHo ''zendō'' in New York. Though brief, ''Four Men Shaking'', a series of tight vignettes, flows back and forth over the last fifty years detailing significant moments of Shainberg’s life and his attempts to reconcile his career as a writer with his pursuit of Zen. This contradiction establishes the fundamental conflict of the memoir and the relationships Shainberg develops mainly with his literary influences Samuel Beckett and Norman Mailer, and his Buddhist teacher, who Shainberg calls Roshi, or “old master.”</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with Beckett and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">friendship</del>. </div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>There's much in this memoir that will be of interest to readers of this journal, especially Shainberg’s accounts of his meetings with Beckett and Mailer. Shainberg links the former’s interest in “not-knowing, not-perceiving, the whole world of incompleteness” to his interest in Zen,<ref>{{cite book |last=Shainberg |first=Lawrence |date=2019 |title=Four Men Shaking |url=https://amzn.to/2PLWhr2 |location=Boulder, CO |publisher=Shambhala |pages=72, 74 |isbn= |author-link= |ref=harv }}</ref> while Mailer’s influence is one of conflict and passion about the external world<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">, his honesty, and his ability to bring a novelist’s sensibility to journalism</ins>. Half-serious, Mailer’s above assessment of Zen was both a reaction to Shainberg’s first memoir, ''Ambivalent Zen'', and a friendly goading of the writer that begins their <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">friendship—one that continues through Mailer’s waning years, mostly through shared meals at Michael Shay’s, thumb wrestling, and discussion/debates</ins>.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s succinct and eloquent accounts of the relationships he developed with these three personalities in the last years of their lives underscore Shainberg’s attempts to find sanity in his own life. His memoir reads like a puzzle he’s trying to assemble where some pieces might be too big, some are misshapen, and some maybe missing. Pieces like his friendship with Mailer and his zazen, or the Zen practice of “seated meditation,” seem antithetical to one another, like Shainberg is trying to assemble one puzzle from the pieces of several. This metaphor seems an appropriate one for describing his life specifically, and everyone’s generally. This seeming contradiction represents his interest in the “logical contradiction” of Zen and its goal, as articulated by Zen master Eihei Dogen, “To study Zen is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|pp=19, 34}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s succinct and eloquent accounts of the relationships he developed with these three personalities in the last years of their lives underscore Shainberg’s attempts to find sanity in his own life. His memoir reads like a puzzle he’s trying to assemble where some pieces might be too big, some are misshapen, and some maybe missing. Pieces like his friendship with Mailer and his zazen, or the Zen practice of “seated meditation,” seem antithetical to one another, like Shainberg is trying to assemble one puzzle from the pieces of several. This metaphor seems an appropriate one for describing his life specifically, and everyone’s generally. This seeming contradiction represents his interest in the “logical contradiction” of Zen and its goal, as articulated by Zen master Eihei Dogen, “To study Zen is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|pp=19, 34}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>And here lies Shainberg’s dilemma: “How could I forget my self when I was obsessed with the brain that generated it?”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Here</del>, he refers to his <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">earlier </del>work as a <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">journalist and novelist </del>and his interest in neurology and the functioning of the brain. His early success as a writer stems from this interest. ''Brain Surgeon: An Intimate View of His World'' (1980) is a non-fiction portrait of a ''prima donna'' neurosurgeon who can do no wrong, even when he does. Godlike, Dr. James Brockman, or “the boss,” seems the epitome of the inflated ego that is as far from a Zen-self as one can be. In his novel ''Memories of Amnesia'' (1988), Shainberg’s protagonist, a talented neurosurgeon—perhaps a fictional Brockman, begins to suffer from brain damage which leads to his questioning reality and his own sense of self. It seems that ''Four Men Shaking'' is the logical descendant of this interest in the self vis-<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">a</del>-vis reality finds its <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">focus </del>in the author.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>And here lies Shainberg’s dilemma: “How could I forget my self when I was obsessed with the brain that generated it?”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">and elsewhere: “But essential nature [. . .] is formless, and the brain of course deals only in form.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=133}} In these instances</ins>, he refers to his work as a <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">writer, </ins>and his interest in neurology and the functioning of the brain. His early success as a writer stems from this <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">latter </ins>interest. ''Brain Surgeon: An Intimate View of His World'' (1980) is a non-fiction portrait of a ''prima donna'' neurosurgeon who can do no wrong, even when he does. Godlike, Dr. James Brockman, or “the boss,” seems the epitome of the inflated ego that is as far from a Zen-self as one can be. In his novel ''Memories of Amnesia'' (1988), Shainberg’s protagonist, a talented neurosurgeon—perhaps a fictional Brockman, begins to suffer from brain damage which leads to his questioning reality and his own sense of self. It seems that ''Four Men Shaking'' is the logical descendant of this interest in the self vis-<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">à</ins>-vis reality <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">that </ins>finds its <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">center </ins>in the author.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In this context, Shainberg’s friendship with Mailer does not seem too paradoxical. He discovered Mailer through ''The Armies of the Night'' wherein “Mailer had found his voice by letting go of himself, discovered his vision with total surrender to objective reality.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} While this last statement <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">may </del>be <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">debatable</del>, Shainberg borrows Mailer’s approach in ''Armies''—“a perfect combination of of real-world description and novelistic skill”—for ''Brain Surgeon''.{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} Mailer’s influence leads to the success of Shainberg’s book, and, as Beckett will tell him later, <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">that </del>his strength as a writer <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">is </del>“witnessing.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=75}} Indeed, while ''Four Men Shaking'' is about Shainberg’s self-discovery, its strength seems to be in Shainberg’s accounts of meeting with Mailer, Beckett, and his Roshi during the last years of their lives.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In this context, Shainberg’s friendship with Mailer does not seem too paradoxical. He discovered Mailer through ''The Armies of the Night'' wherein “Mailer had found his voice by letting go of himself, discovered his vision with total surrender to objective reality.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} While this last statement <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">might </ins>be <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">too generous</ins>, Shainberg borrows Mailer’s approach in ''Armies''—“a perfect combination of of real-world description and novelistic skill”—for ''Brain Surgeon''.{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} Mailer’s influence leads to the success of Shainberg’s book, and, as Beckett will tell him later, his strength as a writer <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">in </ins>“witnessing.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=75}} Indeed, while ''Four Men Shaking'' is about Shainberg’s self-discovery, its strength seems to be in Shainberg’s accounts of meeting with Mailer, Beckett, and his Roshi during the last years of their lives.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>While not an explicit theme in ''Men'', mortality for the four men weighs significantly on the narrative. Part of Shainberg’s interest in the brain is derived for its deviant pathology, or the brain damage that skews perceptions and therefore one’s relationship with the external world. Early in his account, Shainberg associates his interest in the workings of the brain with his writing and concludes that these lead to an obsession that reinforced a false send of self: “That was the real brain damage—self-absorption and the fixations it engendered.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} Shainberg seems to link brain damage with a desire to impose a fictitious forms on reality, like his attempts as a novelist<del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">. </del>As a journalist, Shainberg is able to witness and break through the ego. Shainberg’s relationship with Beckett in his declining years illustrates this point, as the latter ruminates on his aging brain: “With diminished concentration, loss of memory, obscured intelligence—what you, I suspect, would call ‘brain damage’—the more chance there is for saying something closest to what one really is.”{{sfn |Shainberg|2019|p=71}} Ultimately, the search for meaning and order is futile when that which is used to process it <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">ultimately </del>breaks down and dies.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>While not an explicit theme in ''<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Four </ins>Men <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Shaking</ins>'', mortality for the four men weighs significantly on the narrative. Part of Shainberg’s interest in the brain is derived for its deviant pathology, or the brain damage that skews perceptions and therefore one’s relationship with the external world. Early in his account, Shainberg associates his interest in the workings of the brain with his writing and concludes that these lead to an obsession that reinforced a false send of self: “That was the real brain damage—self-absorption and the fixations it engendered.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} Shainberg seems to link brain damage with a desire to impose a fictitious forms on reality, like his attempts as a novelist<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">: “What is writing anyway but another form of brain damage?”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=97}} </ins>As a journalist, Shainberg is able to witness and break through the ego. Shainberg’s relationship with Beckett in his declining years illustrates this point, as the latter ruminates on his aging brain: “With diminished concentration, loss of memory, obscured intelligence—what you, I suspect, would call ‘brain damage’—the more chance there is for saying something closest to what one really is.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=71}} Ultimately, the search for meaning and order is futile when that which is used to process it <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">finally </ins>breaks down and dies.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s ultimate understanding does not seem quite as grim as my assessment might sound. It's a short book, light but dense. It is difficult to encapsulate in a short book review, and it seems a disservice to try to do so.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s ultimate understanding does not seem quite as grim as my assessment might sound. It's a short book, light but dense<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">. The memoir is not difficult to read, but it is challenging in its themes</ins>. It is difficult to encapsulate in a short book review, and it seems a disservice to try to do so.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>My feelings having read this book and spent some time <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">thinking </del>about intersected with the death of a person who has had a huge impact on my own life: Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band Rush. “The Professor,” a sobriquet <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">for </del>Peart earned for his virtuosity, was 67 when he died of brain cancer—the cruelest way that I can imagine a person who might have been the rock music’s greatest drummer and lyricist to meet his end. His death hit me hard, even though I never met him, his works—to borrow one of his ideas—made up part of the soundtrack of my life. I have literally been listening to Rush my whole life and every significant experience of my life has been accompanied by a new Rush album or performance. <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">While Shainberg does not dwell on the deaths of Mailer, Beckett, </del>and <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Roshi, much of the book is observing them in </del>their <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">declining years and trying to make sense out </del>of <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">mortality. I’m left with the question that seems to be an integral one </del>for <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Shainberg: how can we derive meaning in </del>the <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">deaths of great men? Or, if all great men decline and succumb to death</del>, <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">how </del>does <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">that not render life ultimately meaningless? Especially for us little ones</del>?</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>My feelings having read this book and spent some time <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">ruminating </ins>about <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">it </ins>intersected with the death of a person who has had a huge impact on my own life: Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band Rush. “The Professor,” a sobriquet Peart earned for his virtuosity, was 67 when he died of brain cancer—the cruelest way that I can imagine a person who might have been the rock music’s greatest drummer and lyricist to meet his end. His death hit me hard, even though I never met him, his works—to borrow one of his ideas—made up part of the soundtrack of my life. I have literally been listening to Rush my whole life and every significant experience of my life has been accompanied by a new Rush album or performance. <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Great music like literature helps those who experience it shape </ins>and <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">order </ins>their <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">experience </ins>of <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">reality, even if it might not do so </ins>for the <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">author. Ultimately</ins>, <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">then </ins>does <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">art becomes a selfless act</ins>?</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This final third of the memoir is the story of the last retreat, a seven-day ''sesshin'', at the SoHo ''zendō''. Roshi has decided to sell the ''zendō'' when he returns to Japan, so this will be the final ''sesshin'' Shainberg and twenty others will share with Roshi in New York. It’s during this ritual where these narratives come together, and Shainberg develops the metaphor for finding his “long-lost home.” Whether Shainberg is ultimately successful might be up for discussion—I won’t give away any more here—but he was successful in leaving me with a lot to contemplate about myself, my own influences, and ultimately what I will leave behind. As I said above: I do not <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">what </del>to give the <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">impressing </del>that Shainberg’s memoir is depressing or maudlin, but it is honest and compelling. I left me with a sense of <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">delight and hope </del>in my role as a fellow human on his own <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">quest </del>for a long-lost home.</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">While Shainberg does not dwell on the deaths of Mailer, Beckett, and Roshi, much of the book is observing them in their declining years and trying to make sense out of mortality. I’m left with the question that seems to be an integral one for Shainberg: how can we derive meaning in the deaths of great men? Or, if all great men decline and succumb to death, how does that not render life ultimately meaningless? Especially for us little ones?</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div> </div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>This final third of the memoir is the story of the last retreat, a seven-day ''sesshin'', at the SoHo ''zendō''. <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">At 80, </ins>Roshi has decided to sell the ''zendō'' when he returns to Japan, so this will be the final ''sesshin'' Shainberg and twenty others will share with Roshi in New York. It’s during this ritual where these narratives come together, and Shainberg develops the metaphor for finding his “long-lost home.” Whether Shainberg is ultimately successful might be up for discussion—I won’t give away any more here—but he was successful in leaving me with a lot to contemplate about myself, my own influences, and ultimately what I will leave behind. As I said above: I do not <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">want </ins>to give the <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">impression </ins>that Shainberg’s memoir is depressing or maudlin, but it is honest and compelling. I left me with a sense <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">finally </ins>of <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">a resonant ambivalence, similar to my feelings upon finishing Herman Hesse’s ''Siddhartha'', </ins>in my role as a fellow human on his own <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">search </ins>for a long-lost home.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>===Notes===</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>===Notes===</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Reflist}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{Reflist<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">|20em</ins>}}</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{2020}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>{{2020}}</div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=6097&oldid=prevGrlucas: Finished?2020-01-12T17:14:22Z<p>Finished?</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 13:14, 12 January 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l14">Line 14:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 14:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>While not an explicit theme in ''Men'', mortality for the four men weighs significantly on the narrative. Part of Shainberg’s interest in the brain is derived for its deviant pathology, or the brain damage that skews perceptions and therefore one’s relationship with the external world. Early in his account, Shainberg associates his interest in the workings of the brain with his writing and concludes that these lead to an obsession that reinforced a false send of self: “That was the real brain damage—self-absorption and the fixations it engendered.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} Shainberg seems to link brain damage with a desire to impose a fictitious forms on reality, like his attempts as a novelist. As a journalist, Shainberg is able to witness and break through the ego. Shainberg’s relationship with Beckett in his declining years illustrates this point, as the latter ruminates on his aging brain: “With diminished concentration, loss of memory, obscured intelligence—what you, I suspect, would call ‘brain damage’—the more chance there is for saying something closest to what one really is.”{{sfn |Shainberg|2019|p=71}} Ultimately, the search for meaning and order is futile when that which is used to process it ultimately breaks down and dies.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>While not an explicit theme in ''Men'', mortality for the four men weighs significantly on the narrative. Part of Shainberg’s interest in the brain is derived for its deviant pathology, or the brain damage that skews perceptions and therefore one’s relationship with the external world. Early in his account, Shainberg associates his interest in the workings of the brain with his writing and concludes that these lead to an obsession that reinforced a false send of self: “That was the real brain damage—self-absorption and the fixations it engendered.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} Shainberg seems to link brain damage with a desire to impose a fictitious forms on reality, like his attempts as a novelist. As a journalist, Shainberg is able to witness and break through the ego. Shainberg’s relationship with Beckett in his declining years illustrates this point, as the latter ruminates on his aging brain: “With diminished concentration, loss of memory, obscured intelligence—what you, I suspect, would call ‘brain damage’—the more chance there is for saying something closest to what one really is.”{{sfn |Shainberg|2019|p=71}} Ultimately, the search for meaning and order is futile when that which is used to process it ultimately breaks down and dies.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s ultimate understanding does not seem quite as grim as my assessment might sound. It's a short book, light but dense. It is difficult to encapsulate in a short book review, and it seems a <del style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">crime </del>to try to do so. </div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Shainberg’s ultimate understanding does not seem quite as grim as my assessment might sound. It's a short book, light but dense. It is difficult to encapsulate in a short book review, and it seems a <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">disservice </ins>to try to do so<ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div> </div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">My feelings having read this book and spent some time thinking about intersected with the death of a person who has had a huge impact on my own life: Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band Rush. “The Professor,” a sobriquet for Peart earned for his virtuosity, was 67 when he died of brain cancer—the cruelest way that I can imagine a person who might have been the rock music’s greatest drummer and lyricist to meet his end. His death hit me hard, even though I never met him, his works—to borrow one of his ideas—made up part of the soundtrack of my life. I have literally been listening to Rush my whole life and every significant experience of my life has been accompanied by a new Rush album or performance. While Shainberg does not dwell on the deaths of Mailer, Beckett, and Roshi, much of the book is observing them in their declining years and trying to make sense out of mortality. I’m left with the question that seems to be an integral one for Shainberg: how can we derive meaning in the deaths of great men? Or, if all great men decline and succumb to death, how does that not render life ultimately meaningless? Especially for us little ones?</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div> </div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">This final third of the memoir is the story of the last retreat, a seven-day ''sesshin'', at the SoHo ''zendō''. Roshi has decided to sell the ''zendō'' when he returns to Japan, so this will be the final ''sesshin'' Shainberg and twenty others will share with Roshi in New York. It’s during this ritual where these narratives come together, and Shainberg develops the metaphor for finding his “long-lost home.” Whether Shainberg is ultimately successful might be up for discussion—I won’t give away any more here—but he was successful in leaving me with a lot to contemplate about myself, my own influences, and ultimately what I will leave behind. As I said above: I do not what to give the impressing that Shainberg’s memoir is depressing or maudlin, but it is honest and compelling. I left me with a sense of delight and hope in my role as a fellow human on his own quest for a long-lost home</ins>.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>===Notes===</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>===Notes===</div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucashttps://grlucas.net/index.php?title=January_6,_2020&diff=6096&oldid=prevGrlucas: Added more.2020-01-12T13:58:14Z<p>Added more.</p>
<table style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122;" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #202122; text-align: center;">Revision as of 09:58, 12 January 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l10">Line 10:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 10:</td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>And here lies Shainberg’s dilemma: “How could I forget my self when I was obsessed with the brain that generated it?”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} Here, he refers to his earlier work as a journalist and novelist and his interest in neurology and the functioning of the brain. His early success as a writer stems from this interest. ''Brain Surgeon: An Intimate View of His World'' (1980) is a non-fiction portrait of a ''prima donna'' neurosurgeon who can do no wrong, even when he does. Godlike, Dr. James Brockman, or “the boss,” seems the epitome of the inflated ego that is as far from a Zen-self as one can be. In his novel ''Memories of Amnesia'' (1988), Shainberg’s protagonist, a talented neurosurgeon—perhaps a fictional Brockman, begins to suffer from brain damage which leads to his questioning reality and his own sense of self. It seems that ''Four Men Shaking'' is the logical descendant of this interest in the self vis-a-vis reality finds its focus in the author.</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>And here lies Shainberg’s dilemma: “How could I forget my self when I was obsessed with the brain that generated it?”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} Here, he refers to his earlier work as a journalist and novelist and his interest in neurology and the functioning of the brain. His early success as a writer stems from this interest. ''Brain Surgeon: An Intimate View of His World'' (1980) is a non-fiction portrait of a ''prima donna'' neurosurgeon who can do no wrong, even when he does. Godlike, Dr. James Brockman, or “the boss,” seems the epitome of the inflated ego that is as far from a Zen-self as one can be. In his novel ''Memories of Amnesia'' (1988), Shainberg’s protagonist, a talented neurosurgeon—perhaps a fictional Brockman, begins to suffer from brain damage which leads to his questioning reality and his own sense of self. It seems that ''Four Men Shaking'' is the logical descendant of this interest in the self vis-a-vis reality finds its focus in the author.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="−"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In this context, Shainberg’s friendship with Mailer does not seem too paradoxical. He discovered Mailer through ''The Armies of the Night'' wherein “Mailer had found his voice by letting go of himself, discovered his vision with total surrender to objective reality.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}}</div></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In this context, Shainberg’s friendship with Mailer does not seem too paradoxical. He discovered Mailer through ''The Armies of the Night'' wherein “Mailer had found his voice by letting go of himself, discovered his vision with total surrender to objective reality.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} <ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">While this last statement may be debatable, Shainberg borrows Mailer’s approach in ''Armies''—“a perfect combination of of real-world description and novelistic skill”—for ''Brain Surgeon''.{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=42}} Mailer’s influence leads to the success of Shainberg’s book, and, as Beckett will tell him later, that his strength as a writer is “witnessing.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=75}} Indeed, while ''Four Men Shaking'' is about Shainberg’s self-discovery, its strength seems to be in Shainberg’s accounts of meeting with Mailer, Beckett, and his Roshi during the last years of their lives.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div> </div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">While not an explicit theme in ''Men'', mortality for the four men weighs significantly on the narrative. Part of Shainberg’s interest in the brain is derived for its deviant pathology, or the brain damage that skews perceptions and therefore one’s relationship with the external world. Early in his account, Shainberg associates his interest in the workings of the brain with his writing and concludes that these lead to an obsession that reinforced a false send of self: “That was the real brain damage—self-absorption and the fixations it engendered.”{{sfn|Shainberg|2019|p=35}} Shainberg seems to link brain damage with a desire to impose a fictitious forms on reality, like his attempts as a novelist. As a journalist, Shainberg is able to witness and break through the ego. Shainberg’s relationship with Beckett in his declining years illustrates this point, as the latter ruminates on his aging brain: “With diminished concentration, loss of memory, obscured intelligence—what you, I suspect, would call ‘brain damage’—the more chance there is for saying something closest to what one really is.”{{sfn |Shainberg|2019|p=71}} Ultimately, the search for meaning and order is futile when that which is used to process it ultimately breaks down and dies.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div> </div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-side-deleted"></td><td class="diff-marker" data-marker="+"></td><td style="color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Shainberg’s ultimate understanding does not seem quite as grim as my assessment might sound. It's a short book, light but dense. It is difficult to encapsulate in a short book review, and it seems a crime to try to do so. </ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br/></td></tr>
<tr><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>===Notes===</div></td><td class="diff-marker"></td><td style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #eaecf0; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>===Notes===</div></td></tr>
</table>Grlucas