Most Helpful Customer Reviews
92 of 98 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Who Will Really "Get It" ? Many, hopefully., June 17, 2002
This review is from: Boomeritis : A Novel That Will Set You Free (Hardcover)
At least thirty percent of the population will probably not like this book, yet it may turn out to be a great example of the Perfect Postmodern Novel. If the three editorial reviews of "Boomeritis" I've seen are any indication, many readers will not understand Wilber's intent in writing this book. It's so sad when you see people get whacked between the eyes with a Stick Of Compassion and yet they don't even know they've been whacked. You'll soon see why I give this book 5 stars, but this is what you can expect to find in Boomeritis (as I shamelessly rip concepts and phrases from the book - I doubt Ken would mind. He might even find it humorous): 1) This book is sharply critical of many of society's closely held ideals and ideas, and many sacred cows are viciously gored. Too, it isn't soothing that the author comes across as polemical and pathetically narcissistic. 2) As written, there seems to be no difference between fact and fiction. Did this really happen? Does this character really exist, or not? At least one character, in fact, has a real-life counterpart of the same name and job description, but others seem to be an amalgam of various personalities both real and fictional. And many so-called facts are truly questionable. 3) Some of the main characters have been portrayed with shady, shallow, and reprehensible backgrounds. A certain segment of the readership will probably find the demographic distribution of these characters to be expected and fitting, others will find it curiously unnerving. 4) It's boring! The writing is incredibly flat. It often seems to be all Theory, a stream of verbal vomit, with no flowing prose or colorful descriptions of surroundings, people, or places. If it weren't for the X-rated fantasy scenes interjected every ten minutes, would the book even hold our interest? 5) There seems to be no great, highbrow writing here, as we're accustomed to seeing from `old' Ken Wilber. The text is simply an ad hoc mixture of fleeting images and scenes, largely drawing on elements of pop culture and the quintessential hooks of sex, drugs and rock `n roll. 6) The characters are flat and two-dimensional. No depth, only surfaces. `Character development' would be an oxymoron in "Boomeritis." 7) The book is written with an attitude of cranky criticism. What is positive in the book has been ripped off from other people, including Wilber's own past work. And all of that, Dear Souls, is exactly why this book is so darned wonderful! Readers who are not at all aware of Wilber's intent will find the book to be most objectionable. (Let's hope!) Some readers might consider it to be nothing more than convoluted spew. (Well, yes, it is.) Others who are more familiar with Wilber's previous works will consider this to be a further reduction by a pandit who claims to shun reductionism, a lame attempt to boil his message down into a form suitable for mass marketing, a sell-out, nothing more than a continuation of the thinning down that was last seen in steps from "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality" to "A Brief History of Everything" to "A Theory Of Everything." (Okay, that's true, of course.) If or when you feel this way, open your copy to page 324. Read the next few pages very carefully. Now, stop and realize: The book is INTENDED to be all of this and more!! (Or shall I say "less"?) This book is a deliberate poke in the ribs with a sharp stick. He even TELLS you this right in the text. Why does this escape some people? Gosh, it's about as subtle as, well, a sharp stick in the ribs. I fear that many won't see the beauty of "Boomeritis." The cunning humor, irony, layered mind-play, inside jokes, fact, fiction and fantasy that were cleverly crafted into this intentionally vitriolic indictment of our society's greatest problem will go unnoticed as some engage in reflexive, knee-jerk reactions when confronted with their own behavior. Indeed, the more you react to this book in a negative fashion, the more you need to pay attention to exactly what it is that bothers you about it. Only truthful introspection will tell you, then, that Wilber has twanged a nerve for our betterment. This is not a self-absorbed romp for Wilber; his intention is clear and pointed when you understand what he's doing. Through his latest work, he has attempted to make his message known to more people, primarily those not familiar with his previous work, in terms and language that they might absorb, understand, and integrate into their lives. Sadly, the fact that he's had to resort to this format says a lot more about the audience than it does about the author. At the very least, Wilber has tried to reformat his message and, Spirit willing, he'll continue to try. If he can help just a fractional percentage of "Boomeritis" readers to move along on their path, then his efforts will not have been in vain. For those who 'get it', this book is a reaffirmation of what we have already experienced in the behaviors we've witnessed, in our own path, and in the unlimited potential of humanity unfettered by self-absorbtion. In the end, the book is every bit as touching and inspirational as we might expect from Ken Wilber, and his message remains the same. Only the format has changed, as he jumps up and down on the wire a bit more vigorously than before.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Novel (bad) of ideas (mostly good), June 16, 2002
This review is from: Boomeritis : A Novel That Will Set You Free (Hardcover)
Wilber is a strange character. He's unbelievably smart and unbelievably well-read. He's also unbelievably goofy, so reading him is often like meeting up with a version of the owner of Garfield the Cat with a 300 IQ. This book tracks the attendance of a 20-something young man (with a 300 IQ and a hopelessly goofy personality) named Ken Wilber at a series of lectures at something called the Integral Center. He is a student at MIT and working on some sort of artificial intelligence project with the idea that silicon can develop the consciousness that flesh has now and evolve much more quickly and that the two consciousnesses might someday merge (as in Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines) -- of course there's an alternative, sinister possibility (as in Dan Simmons's Hyperion books) but neither of these possibilities is really explored (Wilber ultimately arrives at a new understanding of the flesh and silicon evolutionary processes). The real point of the book is a kind of exposition of Wilber's version of Don Beck's spiral dynamics theory of human development. We get this fed to us through a series of lectures by a series of cardboard characters distinguished by superficial qualities (skin color, sexuality, eye color) but who all speak the same wooden dialogue. These monologues are punctuated by character Wilber's erotic imaginings which arrive with the mindless frequency and communicative vacancy of a series of obscene phone calls. In between the lectures, Wilber meets with his peers who exchange would-be witty put-downs and eat meals. There are hints of sub-sub-sub plots - this one doesn't get along with that one, that one is jealous for some reason of another one, but nothing that advances any action or seems to mean anything in the big picture of the book. In short, if you want to read a novel - whether it is a story of an unhappy middle aged person who lives in a city or a more traditional one about people who grow in relationship to one another or even a novel intended to be a tour through a particular time or space - this is not going to do it for you. There aren't any characters here, no development, no deep looks into time or space. It's like having a "conversation" with an only child of doting parents who can't stop talking about himself and can't imagine any other subject worth a moment's attention. And yet... The ideas really are compelling and seem sound. The Beck/Wilber division of human consciousness into a series of stages ranging from the barely self-aware to the transcendently conscious seems exactly right as does the searing indictment of the narcissism and intolerance of our prevailing middle brow culture, the legacy of the 1960s that has all but destroyed everything that it can paint with the label of elitism - classical music, traditional literature, high art, history as a study of humanity's attempt to overcome limitations, etc. If you can read past the goofiness, stilted dialogue, and absent characterization, you will find a powerful set of ideas and a compelling explanation of why our society is in such an intellectual muddle and how we can find our way out. Of course you will have to read past more than goofiness. As can happen in Ken Wilber books, there are some solecisms. Thus we get to read about building bridges where others dug "motes" ("moats" was probably intended) and we have one of the stick figures tell us that DNA testing showing that 40% of the convicted rapists didn't do it means that the women who brought charges weren't really raped and were claiming spurious victimhood even though the real meaning of this number is only that the wrong perpetrators were identified, not that the rapes never happened. It will doubtless console the women who have been raped and who have identified the wrong perpetrators to know that in Wilber's view, the rape never happened. And Wilber has bought into tort reform propaganda, that subset of urban legends created by insurance companies and corporations who would rather hold onto money than pay it to those that they and their insureds have injured, so that in his view the tort system is really about fakers who have claimed that they lost their psychic powers in car accidents, etc. not seriously injured people forced into lawsuits because they have no other way to deal with the problems created for them by the carelessness of others. My experience in this regard is different from his but we all have to judge things the best way we can. With all this silliness, is this a book worth reading? Emphatically yes. It does two things supremely well. It exposes the shallow and deadly narcissism of the baby boom generation and the horrible damage it has done to our academic, cultural, and political structures. It also lays out a powerful and coherent framework of human cultural and individual development. A novel of ideas can be better done than this one as Ayn Rand, among others, showed, but ultimately it is the ideas, not the novel that will compel the attention of readers. This is a seriously flawed novel but has ideas (although not all of them) that we ignore at our peril. If we are not to perish as a society under the kudzu of boomer narcissism and anti-intellectualism we need to become aware of the subtle and pervasive danger that boomer mentality poses to our society. Nobody has presented this better than Wilber does here and so this book, for all of its many and egregious faults, must be read and taken seriously. And, truth be told, it's an easy and compelling read for all its silliness. If only Wilber had spent a little more time and attention on it... Although the book says that it has footnotes on a web site, they weren't there when I checked, although there were some interesting "sidebars" in which "characters" from the novel pontificated on matters that they didn't get to in the novel itself.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
America's ... Bodhisattva's Brave New World, June 18, 2002
This review is from: Boomeritis : A Novel That Will Set You Free (Hardcover)
What will realize god-consciousness first- Carbon or Silicon? In Boomeritis, Ken Wilber's first novel, and probably his most avant-garde project yet (which is saying quite a bit), the philosopher-sage from Colorado jumps into the pop spirituality marketplace with a book that pokes fun at the New Age movement, takes a flamethrower to the sacred cows of what Spiral Dynamics refers to as the "mean green meme", and has enough raunchy sex fantasies to make Robert Anton Wilson blush. This ain't James Redfield or Deepak Chopra, not by a long shot. "Boomeritis" is the "Great Postmodern Novel". It's about nothing but theory, filled with two-dimensional characters and silly, cruel dialogue, constantly self-references, interrupts all meaningful thoughts with lewdness, reduces all meaning to surface features and irony- and this is precisely what makes this novel so brilliant. In writing such a novel, Wilber shows his reader precisely what is wrong with "flatland" by subtly [pulling] the reader into his worldview, and then bludgeoning the reader with the realization that he's been had- that the shallowness of the novel and the endless gags are nothing but a ploy and a put on by a literary zen master in an attempt to beat the reader into awakening. It's a turnabout that will catch the reader unprepared, even if he thinks he's prepared for it. Wilber's deviousness and tongue-in-cheek humor, though evident in his scholarly works as well, are out in full force here. But "Boomeritis" is more than just an extremely long koan. It's a musing on consiciousness, artificial intelligence, and meaning. It has a wonderful segment in which Wilber relates true stories from his friend, the musician Stuart Davis, who is featured as a prominent character in the story. Best of all, the ending is an absolute blast. Pick up Boomeritis, for Wilber tells the truth, if in a somewhat roundabout way- this novel will set you free.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
