Customer Reviews

You Don't Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing: An Illustrious Collection of Thoughts on Naught

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Joan Konner has curated an enlightening and often entertaining collection of quotes on the idea of Nothing. From Samuel Beckett to physicist Richard Feynman, You Don't Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing offers various perspectives on the idea of nothing, voids, and absence. The book, which can be read as a whole or in snippets, offers a refreshing take on the world, when we are normally focused on Something.


Here is one of the quote I really enjoyed:

In a certain way, "thought" means nothing.

-- Jacques Derrida

Nothing is more than nothingness. "You Don't Have to be Buddhist to Know Nothing: An Illustrious Collection of Thoughts on Naught" is a discussion of the concept of nothing, tracing the history of nothing, as many minds come together and discuss nothing. As these assorted individuals come into a collection compiled by Joan Konner expertly, "You Don't Have to Buddhist to Know Nothing" is nothing more than utterly fascinating, and highly recommended.

What a brilliant fun idea for a book. Wonder if Porgy and Bess is in? Beautiful production too - perfect gift for the (wo)man who has everything.

Follow-up reading: Perec's A Void

As kids, Shel Silverstein taught us that Where the Sidewalk Ends 30th Anniversary Edition: Poems and Drawings is a place of puzzlement and great creativity. The "end" of what we know is the beginning of the creative. Dr. Joan Konner is one of America's foremost journalists. Dean Emerita of Columbia Journalism school and a longtime Bill Moyers producer, she's among the many creative people trying to cast new forms for the 21st Century. This "sound-byte library" book is one of those innovative gems.

If you enjoy Buddhist Koans (logic puzzles designed to bust the mind free of our normal daily patterns of thinking), then you'll enjoy her 300-page collection of bits and pieces on Nothing from a whole host of thinkers.

Among the hundreds of references here are thoughts by Douglas Adams (of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame), Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Woody Guthrie, Pope John XXIII, theologian Paul Tillich, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bill Waterson (of "Calvin and Hobbes" fame), Elie Wiesel and W.B. Yeats.

This is a wonderful little (it's a pocket-sized hardback) guidebook to these incredibly anxiety-producing times in which we live! When we think we've reached a point where familiar old forms are falling away--and we see a yawning void of Nothing ahead? Well, that's where the fun truly begins, Joan argues.

"Nothing is where knowing stops. And starts!" she writes in her introduction. "What Nothing should not be is a Dead End of thinking. Nothing is the other half of Being, of the paradox we call reality. Irrational? Naturally."

That's the adult version of where Shel Silverstein took us as kids. With Joan in your pocket, you'll feel honored to be standing at that precipice with giants.

Its just a bunch of quotes. I expected some insight. But there is no value added by the author. Don't waste your money.