Greed: The Seven Deadly Sins [Hardcover]

Phyllis A. Tickle (Author)

Book Description

Series: Seven Deadly Sins | Publication Date: April 15, 2004

Grasping. Avarice. Covetousness. Miserliness. Insatiable cupidity. Overreaching ambition. Desire spun out of control. The deadly sin of Greed goes by many names, appears in many guises, and wreaks havoc on individuals and nations alike.

In this lively and generous book, Phyllis A. Tickle argues that Greed is "the Matriarch of the Deadly Clan," the ultimate source of Pride, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, and Anger. She shows that the major faiths, from Hinduism and Taoism to Buddhism and Christianity regard Greed as the greatest calamity humans can indulge in, engendering further sins and eviscerating all virtues. As the Sikh holy book Adi Granth asks: "Where there is greed, what love can there be?" Tickle takes a long view of Greed, from St. Paul to the present, focusing particularly on changing imaginative representations of Greed in Western literature and art. Looking at such works as the Psychomachia, or "Soul Battle" of the fifth-century poet Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, the paintings of Peter Bruegel and Hieronymous Bosch, the 1987 film Wall Street, and the contemporary Italian artist Mario Donizetti, Tickle shows how our perceptions have evolved from the medieval understanding of Greed as a spiritual enemy to a nineteenth-century sociological construct to an early twentieth-century psychological deficiency, and finally to a new view, powerfully articulated in Donizetti's mystical paintings, of Greed as both tragic and beautiful.

Engaging, witty, brilliantly insightful, Greed explores the full range of this deadly sin's subtle, chameleon-like qualities, and the enormous destructive power it wields, evidenced all too clearly in the world today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The most insidious and least obvious of offenses is addressed in a specifically religious context in this latest entry to Oxford's Seven Deadly Sins series. After a brief survey of the status of greed in non-Western religions, the meat of this essay from former PW religion editor Tickle is devoted to a sequence of (mostly visual) representations of greed that track the shift from what she terms the physical imagination of pre-Reformation Christianity to the modern "intellectual imagination" of religious thought. There is an inspired essay lurking in these pages, about how the transformation of greed from a specific offense against godliness to a brutal but amoral force of society is a potent indicator of how the essence of religion has changed in the modern era. Compelling, too, is Tickle's intuition that in our own epoch the transformation of greed into a kind of mass hysteria heralds a similarly huge shift. Her readings of very apt images by Bosch, Brueghel the Elder and the modern Italian painter Donizetti can get obscured by asides and qualifications (particularly on the evolution of religious sensibility in the West), however, and Erich von Stroheim's great film doesn't get the discussion it deserves. But Tickle's thoughtfulness and scholarship will make readers avaricious and leave them wanting more.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"What midsummer night's feast would be digestible without Francine Prose's Gluttony; what weekend jaunt to your best friend's chateau would be survivable without Joseph Epstein's Envy? And you'll need Wendy Wasserstein's Sloth (wickedly subtitled 'And How to Get It') while you're struggling out of your deck chair."--O, The Oprah Magazine (on the series)

"Whimsically packaged exminations of Lust by Simon Blackburn, Gluttony by Francine Prsoe, Envy by Joseph Epstein, Anger by Robert Thurman, Greed by Phyllis Tickle, Sloth by Wendy Wasserstein and Pride by Michael Eric Dyson become playgrounds for cultural reflection by authors and playwrights in Oxford's Seven Deadly Sins series."--Publishers Weekly (on the series)

"Don't be misled by the format of this book. What you're holding is not a decaf caramel macchiato--it's a triple espresso, a little book with a big wallop. Greed, Phyllis Tickle says, is a sin we see readily in others but rarely acknowledge as our own--and therein lies its power. Urbanely provocative, with striking assertions every other page--if you don't find something to disagree with, you can't have been reading very carefully--it demands to be devoured in one sitting."--John Wilson, Editor, Books & Culture

"Tickle's thoughtfulness and scholarship will make readers avaricious and leave them wanting more."--Publishers Weekly

"Many cheers to Phyllis Tickle for this lively, trim, erudite study! She has pulled off a near-miracle, making the most deadening (remember Midas?) of the deadly sins glitter with fascination and gleam with moral (or immoral) depth. Tickle is full of surprises, darting from the Mahabharata to Hieronymous Bosch to D.H. Lawrence to 9/11 as she makes her case for greed as the 'mother and matrix, root and consort' of all sins. A superb achievement that leaves one, dare I say it, greedy for more."--Philip Zaleski, Editor of The Best Spiritual Writing series, and author of The Recollected Heart

"Tickle gives the reader such an apt 'big picture' glimpse into our world and its history that her words could serve as the perfect introduction for the entire series. She then persuasively argues that greed is the ultimate source of all the sins, because the root of greed is desire spun out of control."--Library Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1ST edition (April 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195156609
• ISBN-13: 978-0195156607
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Phyllis Tickle, founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, is one of the most highly respected authorities and popular speakers on religion in America today. She is the author of more than two dozen books including the Divine Hours series of prayer manuals. A lector and lay eucharistic minister in the Episcopal Church, Tickle is a senior fellow of the Cathedral College of Washington National Cathedral. For more information go to www.phyllistickle.com and www.allthewordsofjesus.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I thought it was impossible for me to be surprised by greed anymore., May 9, 2006

By 

Pete J. Ceren (Memphis) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Greed: The Seven Deadly Sins (Hardcover)

I went to the bookstore expecting a thick volume. In my mind's eye I saw a heavy book encompassing the immense history of greed.

That was my first surprise.

It is a tiny book with a bright yellow cover and an endearing cartoon personification of Greed. As I carried it for a week, those who noticed - and many did - smiled and asked brightly what it was about. Then darkened when I told them. Looks cute, but sounds bad.

But that is what we learn inside these covers about Greed. It constantly remorphs into novel prettiness. The mother of all sins, from which all the others come, as the author says.

Might be important to learn about this mother.

So in what might be called "Tickle's Condensed Cream of Greed" we learn about Greed in her naked beauty.

Not a fun sin. Not a popular sin, like lust. But remarkably adaptable and effective at the work of sin. More subtle than any of her six sisters.

To reveal this chimeric beauty, the author explores all the major world religions. And investigates the struggles of the great artists and philosophers of history to understand her and show her in their personal light. Great portrait painters are seen as one of our best hopes at recognizing her face.

Not what I expected.

This little book is like a tiny circus car that disgorges a thousand clowns. It demands rereading and thought. Fortunately, it is very portable.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank God for Tickle, January 26, 2008

By 

George Abraham "Reader and Writer" (Manhattan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Greed: The Seven Deadly Sins (Paperback)

I ashamedly admit that I first came across Ms. Phllis A. Tickle, the writer, only a short while ago. However, I boldy proclaim that I had the experience of being a student of hers in 1963, when she taught Freshman Composition at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She literally changed my life forever, and I majored in English due to her influence. She was known as one of the best teachers at Rhodes, and indeed she was. Never too busy for her students, she would stay overtime helping us with our writing and sharing her infinite wisdom with those eager to drink from her generous fountain of knowledge and experience.
Besides evaluating her as a master teacher, I would say she was one of the kindest and most giving persons I have ever known. She was my anchor as a freshman that got me through the college experience.

Lately I learned about Ms. Phyllis A. Tickle, the author. I saw she had written an essay on "Greed," and I just finished reading it. It was as if I were in her class once more. Her essay is written the same way she taught. It is scholarly and provative, challenging and intriguing. I became a Glutton for each page, turn after turn. I loved her discussions of St. Paul and Dante, to name a few. Now that I am an avowed Glutton for Tickle's writings, I intend to read all of her works. Greedy me.

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What is this book really about?, May 23, 2004

By 

ewomack "ewomack" (MN USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Greed: The Seven Deadly Sins (Hardcover)

This is the shortest book so far in the Seven Deadly Sins series, not that any of them have been long (the longest so far has been about 150 pages, including the index). Greed is amazing in that, of its 97 pages, approximately 30 of them are notes. Some of these notes are pages long. Unfortunately, brevity in text does not translate into coherence, and this book will leave readers wondering as to what the author was trying to accomplish, and with no very new insights into the sin of greed. The corpulent notes only detract from the main text, and many provide little or no substance to the subject matter, which is supposed to be greed.

There are many interesting historical snippets in this diminutive essay, and some of them relate to greed. Most of them are inserted into a vast 2000 year sweep of the evolution of the concept of "sin" and the effect that these events have had on western human history. St. Paul is discussed, Tertullian, Prudentius (specifcally his work called "Psychomachia"), Martin Luther, Alan Greenspan, Bosch, Brugel the Elder, Nietzsche, and many others are mentioned more in passing than in any detail. The ties of many of these hisorical figures to greed are tenuous or at the least not instructive as to the subject matter (i.e., Bosch painted a triptych called "The Haywain" and the author examines this painting as a symbol of Bosch's attitude towards greed- sure, it's interesting, but what does it really teach us about greed?). It's interesting in its own way, but isn't this supposed to be an essay about greed? Greed itself (plastered on the front of the book with a cartoony looking person clutching a large sack) seems to have been forced in and woven throughout an essay that was not originally about greed, but more about the concept of sin in general and greed was emphasized for the purpose of this series. Greed is, at one point (pg. 36) literally inserted with brackets into the text: "Many of us in my line of business would also add, even emphasize, as does Professor Schimmel himself, that it is the responsibility of theistic religion, 'to translate its relevant teachings [i.e., about greed] into an idiom that speaks to modern man while respecting his skepticism about religious dogma.'" The brackets are in the original text (and presumably, the author's own), and (though this is the most blatant case) give the feeling that we're not really talking about greed per se, but about a larger subject. The conclusion of the essay does not wrap up the subject of greed, but is more about Mario Donizetti's (a contemporary Italian painter) style of painting (though the painting discussed is called "Avarice" the discussion doesn't shed much light on the subject of greed, though it stimulates curiousity about the artist). What is the author trying to communicate through this essay? If the title had been "sin" or "the evolution of sin" or "explosive moments in the last 2000 years that have changed our conception of sin" the work may have made more sense. Diving into this book with the idea that greed is about to be discussed may cause some disorientation. One of the strangest lapses, which should have been put into the already burgeoning notes, is this passage from page 39 where Dickens' "Christmas Carol" is being discussed: "Indeed, Scrooge is so completely a caricature that he is better known to thousands of school children today as a duck than as a human being." Not only is this highly debatable - which is irrelevant here, not to mention in the book itself - it adds nothing, and even detracts, from a discussion that could have circled around the entire moral of the story which relates to greed (Scrooge is known through popular culture - mainly television advertisements - to many as the embodiment of greed). Scrooge is a caricature, and that's partly why the story works, to explore the consequences that greed can have on one's own life.

The book also includes pictures that add little to the subject matter. Some are mentioned in the text, but without direct reference to the actual figure (i.e., the book never tells a reader to "see Figure 1") so the reader must make the connection (e.g., why was the work called "The Greenspan Buddah" included? Greenspan is mentioned in the text, but why include this particular piece?).

Perhaps re-reading the essay without the notion that it is in fact about greed will yield more. It is too bad, because greed seems to surround us these days. Scandals in the financial industry and people living lives in debt for the pursuit of "stuff" abound. The book does not even attempt to shed light on these modern day issues (they are mentioned, but not examined in any depth). Greed is a huge problem and a huge subject, it's just too bad that this book is more about something else.