Title: The Holy Man
Author: Susan Trott
Date: 1995
Publisher: Riverhead
ISBN: 1-57322-002-7
Length: 173 pages
Quote: “Most of them, like most people everywhere, were nice. Maybe, per capita, there were more nice people in the line than elsewhere because of the nature of the destination.”
Is everyone familiar with the idea of putting one’s “monkey mind” to sleep by visualizing and counting a flock of sheep going through a gate, or over the fence? In order to get to sleep, Susan Trott says, she started counting pilgrims waiting to see a holy man. This led to stories about why they wanted to see him, what they learned from him, what they learned from one another while waiting in line. This is the first book of those stories. It’s full of parables and paradoxes and insights into real-life problems.
The holy man’s usual audience with his admirers is efficient. Somebody in a plain robe opens a door and leads a visitor quickly through the first floor of the holy man’s house. At the back door he says, “Goodbye.” When the visitor complains about having come to see the holy man not the house, “‘You have seen me,’ he gently replied,” and he advises the visitors to try to see everyone as at least a potential holy wo/man.
This keeps the holy man fit and keeps the line moving, but occasionally the holy man does talk to a visitor. That’s what some of these sunny, Zenny stories are about. Other times, visitors learn more from the other visitors they meet in the line.
Such are the stories of the Drunkard, who keeps going back into town for a drink, thereby losing his place in line, and agreeing to bring back supplies for those who want to wait in line overnight; and the Impatient Woman, who hates waiting in line so much that she makes a summer job of running up and down to talk with other people in the line; and Jacob, who really starts to get into his fantasy romance with Anna, before Anna mentions her husband and children.
Other stories are about the holy man and his household of what seem to be temporary, mixed-sex, very American-New-Age-style “monks”—a nice artsy house party of scientist, cellist, lawyer, runner, chef, poet, and dancer. They’ve shaved their heads and are living together as brothers and sisters, but they’re only summer visitors. In their regular lives they don’t have to renounce family life, and even the holy man himself, who is growing old and obviously belongs to no traditional monastic order—but that’d be telling.
Some of the stories form the plot of a short, simple romance, so you can call The Holy Man a novel if you like, but it was written more to illuminate a series of philosophical insights than to become a novel. It’s not entirely unlike the Humanist mini-sermons in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff but, since the stories are told as fiction about the people for whom the insights work, The Holy Man is probably less annoying to “you” the reader, for whom some of them might be less appropriate. The stories have that one-before-bed quality, if you choose to ration yourself in that way.
These stories might be too grown-up, too much concerned with spirituality and morality at the expense of sex and violence, to appeal to some teenagers, but they’re accessible to college or even high school students who want to read them. I’d recommend this book to anyone looking for two to ten pages of philosophical insight at a time.
There are two more small books of these stories. The first two were originally published as a two-volume set of small square hardcover books, and are widely available, cheap, from people who want to upgrade to the sleek new paperback trilogy. The three small books will fit into one $5 package with room to spare, and this web site can offer The Holy Man and The Holy Man's Journey as Fair Trade Books for $5 each, but if you want The Holy Woman this web site asks you to show respect to Susan Trott by buying the trilogy as new books ($35 for the books, plus $5 for the package, plus $1 for online payment if applicable). When you send $10 to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, or $11 to the Paypal account you get by e-mailing salolianigodagewi @ yahoo, for The Holy Man, we send $1 to Trott or a charity of her choice. When you send $15 or $16 for the two older hardcover books, Trott or her charity gets $2. When you send $40 or $41 for the new trilogy with pleasantly matching cover art, Trott or her charity gets $4. There'll be room for another thick paperback book, or two medium-sized ones or three thin ones, in the package, and if those are also sold as new or Fair Trade Books we can encourage other living authors as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment