The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005 [Paperback]

Philip Zaleski (Editor), Barry Lopez (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2005

The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. For each volume, the very best pieces are selected by a leading writer in the field, making the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.

The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005 includes

Mary Gordon • Natalie Goldberg • Oliver Sacks • Ptolemy Tompkins • Patricia Hampl • Gary Snyder • Charles Johnson • Harvey Cox • Todd Gitlin • Bill McKibben • Philip Levine • W. S. Merwin • and others

Philip Zaleski, editor, is the author of The Recollected Heart, The Book of Heaven, and, most recently, Prayer: A History (with Carol Zaleski). He is a senior editor of Parabola and a research associate in religion at Smith College.

Barry Lopez is the author of Arctic Dreams, the illustrated fable Crow and Weasel, and several essay and short story collections, including About This Life and Resistance. He has received the National Book Award and other honors.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This year's spiritual writing anthology is varied and stimulating, showcasing reflections on the faith of children, Bible reading, Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King Jr. Some contributions are journalistic, others autobiographical, others analytical. Sources are wide-ranging and largely "secular," including literary reviews and such standard-bearing magazines as The New Yorker. With provocative and creative compression, the poetry in particular rewards with the fresh views that thoughtful writing stirs. Franz Wright's "Prescience" captures paradox ("Your unwitnessed and destitute coronation"). Among essays, Bill McKibben's "High Fidelity" impresses with its understated excellence. In "Dr. King's Refrigerator," Charles Johnson's fly-on-the-wall conjuring of an imagined scene in the civil rights hero's life is as fresh as the midnight snack it describes. Unfortunately, in this anthology, "best writing" doesn't necessarily mean "best written." Some passages convey only spiritual ozone ("Everything seemed poised on the cusp between familiar and unfamiliar"), which ought to be a sin in the religious genre. Some work is pedantic ("Both were radically opposed to Kulturprotestantismus"). Although some of the material requires more contortion than effort, other writings, using varied paths, reach the goal of inspiring what Barry Lopez in his introduction aptly calls reverence.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Forget about spiritual, this is some of the best recent American writing, period. Culling from everything from the Sun and American Soldier to the New Yorker and Christianity Today, Zaleski amasses a treasure trove demonstrating one of the most extraordinary things about American thought--that some of the best of it happens to be spiritual. Whether it's Brooks Haxton reflecting upon his maternal grandfather's morocco Bible, whose pages are "translucent with the oil and dark still with the dirt of his right hand," or Jean Bethke Elshtain recalling her thrifty childhood in "You Kill It, You Eat It," the act of honoring one's parents appears here as both profound and deeply spiritual. When entomologist Margaret Erhart anguishes over the dilemma of having to kill insects to study them, and self-admittedly nonreligious Todd Gitlin reports on cremations in the Indian city of Varanasi on the river Ganges, each spurs reflection on how powerfully spiritual thought can emerge in everything from the most mundane to the most uncommon of human experiences. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (October 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618586431
• ISBN-13: 978-0618586431
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,176,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Collection of Varied Spiritual Writing, October 19, 2005

By 

Timothy Kearney (Haverhill, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005 (Paperback)

Every fall I look forward to the release of THE BEST AMERICAN series of books. I always purchase three of the collections: Spiritual Writing, Short Stories, and Non-Required Reading. This year I've also purchased Essays. What I enjoy most about the collections is not that they contain "the best": that is a matter of opinion and it's probably safe to assume that there are many pieces not included in these volumes that would qualify as being "the best." What each volume does contain is a great variety of writings that can appeal to a wide range of readers. It also makes available great writings that could only be collected by people who subscribe to a wide range of periodicals and have more time than most people to devote to reading.

This volume, like the other collections of spiritual writings from previous years, represents a wide variety of spiritual traditions and do not subscribe to any one set of religious values. Each piece does, in some way, challenge us to look within ourselves and at our world. While it is not a self improvement book, it doe shave the potential to challenge and change the reader. What I enjoy most about the pieces included in these collections is that many are true to a specific religious or spiritual tradition, yet they also have a way of transcending that tradition and speaking to all people. A piece that comes to mind in this collection that does this is David James Duncan's "The French Guy." The piece tells of the author being asked to give a talk about the ecological meaning of St. Francis of Assisi's life, which the author contends was never a part of his life even though he is considered so by many in the ecological movement. Johnson discusses Francis' life from a Catholic perspective, not taking him out of the context of his time, and presenting a figure who may be at home in the Catholic tradition, but has elements that can speak to people from a variety of traditions.

As in the past, there are some well known names in spiritual writing such as Harvey Cox, Brian Doyle, Kenneth Woodward, Richard John Neuhaus, and Heather King (what makes them well known? I own and have enjoyed copies of books they have written) as well as some whoa re emerging writers and the original writings were published in a variety of periodicals, some religious or spiritual and other secular. While I always rush through the volume as soon as I purchase it, I often find myself rereading favorite pieces throughout the year and find that so many of the pieces have a great deal to say.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars more religious than spiritual, February 1, 2006

By 

Caroline Lamb (Santa Cruz, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005 (Hardcover)

I have loved this series, look forward to the book every year. I found this one disappointing. I felt like the selections were more religious than spiritual, with emphasis on moral values and Christianity. If that's your preference, you'll like this book better than I did. I'm a mystic, and not really interested in long academic discussions of what Kirkegard really meant.

4.0 out of 5 stars getting better, September 29, 2007

By 

[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005 (Paperback)

I found last year's collection, and its debut, to be a bit dull. But 2005 is getting better (and 2006 looks even better). They essays cover religion and spirituality, the poems are hit and miss though (but you have to read Haxton's poem, it's the best piece in the collection). This new edition has yet to hit its stride, though it took Mystery Stories a few years before it really became the best in the series. I look forward to the next couple of editions to see it gel together.