The Great Failure: A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth (Hardcover)

by Natalie Goldberg (Author) "WITH ORANGE LEAVES STILL CLINGING to branches in that unusually mild stretch of late fall, on a sweet street in quiet St. Paul, I was..." (more)
Key Phrases: Uncle Sam, Zen Center, New Mexico (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"Of course, we are drawn to teachers that unconsciously mirror our own psychology," writes Goldberg in a memoir about her wrestling match with her particular devil. In Writing Down the Bones, she coupled writing with the insights of Zen Buddhism, showing writers how to use a stream of consciousness approach to move through blocks and understand their true experience. Here, however, as Goldberg explores the link between her elegant Zen master, Katagiri Roshi, and the gritty, charming bartender father who sexually violated her, she inadvertently demonstrates this approach's shortcoming. Years after his death, Goldberg learned that Katagiri, the teacher who taught her so much (and the subject of Long Quiet Highway), carried on affairs with female students. Goldberg was shattered; she'd wanted to believe he was an immaculate refuge. Liberation through disillusionment is a universal and durable theme, yet as Goldberg muses and tells stories—splicing in a long Zen tale for a little extra-dimensional oomph—her account closes rather than opens up. In spite of her fluid writing and honesty, the work feels insular and self-cherishing, like personal notes rather than a compelling narrative for the rest of us. Many readers will conclude that this is a not-so-great failure after all, or perhaps a heartache that hasn't really healed.
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From Booklist
Goldberg is renowned for Writing Down the Bones (1989), a book that inspired millions of people to express themselves through writing. Also known for her study and practice of Zen Buddhism, described in Long Quiet Highway (1993), Goldberg has taken readers time and again into her world of raw feeling, real experience, and broad awareness. In her new memoir, Goldberg seeks to reconcile misconceptions about her long-time Zen teacher and entangled feelings of love and anger for her father with truths she has discovered. Readers looking for writing advice, even by example, may be disappointed. Goldberg's writing is straightforward and utilitarian, and her mission is personal as she tries to come to grips with two influential figures in her life. What readers are most likely to appreciate and to learn from is her dogged determination to get at the truth and to come clean about personal failings. This is the path toward better understanding, a road Goldberg has unwaveringly navigated throughout her writing life. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (August 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060733993
• ISBN-13: 978-0060733995
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #725,231 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new direction for this author, October 29, 2004

By	Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book differs in subject and style from Natalie Goldberg's previous books. Here she writes of feeling betrayred by two father figures, her natural father and her Buddhist teacher Katagiri Roshi, the bartender and the monk of the subtitle. Attending an abuse group, she begins to remember episodes from her childhood and she wants her family to acknowledge how they harmed her.



Without sparing herself, and with a hint of irony, Goldberg writes of confronting her parents by letter. They react with almost comic bewilderment. Goldberg's mother, Sylvia, a child of immigrants, views the world literally: did you eat and sleep? Were you warm? Her father, Buddy, ran a "rough" bar for years. His response to Goldberg's accusations was, "Were you on drugs?" Psychology, the author summarizes, was developed in a country outside Brooklyn.

Even after the family reconciles - which means she begins speaking to them after three years - Goldberg's parents still don't understand her new life. When Goldberg offers to give them a Zen experience, her father begins singing along with the silence bell. In one of their last visits, Buddy whispers an insulting remark about Natalie's weight.

The author gets her second shock, as word spreads about Katagiri Roshi's numerous love affairs with Zen students. She begins to remember episodes she'd tried to ignore. She recalls Roshi's remarks about her beauty. And ultimately she recognizes that Roshi gave her a tremendous gift, regardless of his personal life. She writes (page 136) that both artists and religious leaders can be "enlightened" in their work, yet function "cruelly and ignorantly" in their personal lives.

Toward the end of Great Failure, Natalie writes about crashing her car while fiddling with knobs on her tape deck. She adds, almost casually, that she'd been given "two or three" speeding tickets in the past six months, including one where the police actually chased her down. These episodes were disturbing.

She realizes she's acting out rather dangerously, and she realizes she's in an in-between phase, losing Roshi but not finding another touchstone. She doesn't judge herself, just reports, and in fact people often do behave in unusual, even bizarre ways when they're in the eye of the transitional hurricane.

I think the key to this book is Natalie's wish to be remembered like her heroes, not just as a writer, but as someone who dealt with loneliness and made mistakes. Because she tells these stories about herself, that's exactly how she will be remembered.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A strange memoir, December 4, 2005

By	S. D Temple "SDTemple" (Iowa City) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Great Failure : A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth (Hardcover)

The oddest and most disturbing memoir of abuse is perhaps Kathryn Harrison's book "The Kiss", about her sexual relationship with her father, a relationship that extended into adulthood. In contrast, Natalie Goldberg's book is odd precisely because it is difficult to figure out who did what harm to her, despite the fact that the book is packaged in the language of sexual expoitation. That her father could be boorish, insensitive, unattuned to his daughter's needs, and at times frightening, is not in doubt. Whatever sexual doubts and insecurities the author harbored, were only amplified by his grossly unattuned parenting of her. And while the author takes pains to document allegations that her beloved Zen teacher, the renowned Dainin Katagiri Roshi, she states that he never sexually expoited her. To be sure, both men disappointed her. And this seems to be the crux of the memoir. It is really a lament about disillusionment, important people in the author's life who were flawed and imperfect, despite her emotional needs that they be otherwise.

To her credit, Natalie Goldberg is a fine writer, who manages to put her own frailties on the page for the reader's scrutiny. She deserves credit for this. The book will lead readers to question our own assumptions about teachers, about parents, and about the failure of those important people in our lives to be 'perfect'. Goldberg doesn't provide any neat and tidy epiphanies here. But in a sad and loving tribute to her teacher, she leaves the best lines about this matater for Katagiri, himself. In response to a question from a student, asking if "it's okay to just listen to yourself?", Katagiri responds: "Ed, I tried very hard to practice Dogen's Zen. After twenty years I realized there was no Dogen's Zen." Dogen was the 13th Century Zen monk who founded Katagiri's sect, and Katagiri seems to be saying that real spiritual growth involves taking responsibility for our own growth, and freeing ourselves from the grip of childlike fantasies of perfection. This by no means excuses expoitive misconduct by spiritual teachers or, for that matter, parents. It does mean that if, at least in adulthood, we know it's "okay to listen to yourself", the teacher's power to harm is diminished. While there is no sign the author has quite learned this lesson, she at least understands it well enough to make it available to the reader.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Greatest Failure of All, August 31, 2005

By	Jeanie C. Williams "PenPow" (Santa Cruz, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Of course, we are drawn to teachers who unconsciously mirror our own psychology," writes writing guru/Zen practitioner Natalie Goldberg. In The Great Failure, she ponders her own psychology after a life-shattering realization causes her to reassess her relationships with her father, her Zen teacher and ultimately herself while she searches for balance in both her spiritual and writing practices.

Goldberg describes her father (the bartender) as an old-fashioned man's man with fluctuating boundaries. In daring to capture the full bravado of her larger-than-life Jewish father, she illuminates the intricacies of a precarious father-daughter relationship. She writes about how she tried to teach her parents to meditate during one of their rare visits to Santa Fe from Long Island. Her father interrupts the session by launching into his personal rendition of "Hello Dolly" while accompanying himself with his daughter's meditation bell. This and other more inappropriate behavior by both of her parents led Goldberg to reduce their contact to letters for several years; this tenuous relationship also leads Goldberg ultimately to Dainin Katagiri Roshi, a dynamic, celebrated Zen master.

Goldberg explores the link between her charming father and her charismatic Zen teacher when she learns a few years after Roshi's death that he'd had affairs with some of his female students. Faced with this truth, Goldberg's perceptions about her teacher are completely shattered. "I had the illusion that he (Roshi) was perfect," she writes. Complicating matters is the fact that she wrote lovingly of her devotion to Roshi's teachings (and about his death) in an earlier memoir entitled Long Quiet Highway.

Goldberg describes the betrayal she felt regarding Roshi's secret life, and how it mirrored the feelings of betrayal by her own father when she learned of his adulterous past. Ultimately, these two very powerful and provocative relationships in her life cast doubt on her understanding of herself.

In spite of her piercing honesty and elegant writing, Goldberg's latest feels self-centered and precious, like writings from a diary rather than a compelling narrative. Many readers may conclude that this story isn't so significant after all and will probably wonder about its relevance. Disillusionment is so very often the stuff of life and there are scores of brilliant books on the matter that stand out brighter than this one. However, the writing is provocative and straightforward and Goldberg's mission here-as it always has been-is personal. Full of Goldberg's generosity and trademark gifts for both humor and teaching, The Great Failure ultimately touches our hearts and minds as we come to recognize the ways in which each of us fails to confront our own illusions.

If you are looking for writing advice in The Great Failure you will be disappointed; however, Goldberg's fans will appreciate her dogged determination to get at the truth and to come clean about personal failings. This is the path Goldberg has unwaveringly navigated throughout her writing life. In The Great Failure, Goldberg puts her teachings to work.

Reviewed by Jeanie C. Williams