Notes on the Need for Beauty: An Intimate Look at Essential Quality [Paperback]

J. Ruth Gendler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 2007

The introduction of this book reads, "Beauty, like every other quality — courage, fear, ugliness, trust, truth, wisdom — is a part of us and apart from us, inside us and outside us, personal and impersonal. Beauty invites us to build bridges and make connections between the senses and the soul, between contemplation and expression, between ourselves and the world." In this wide-ranging and deeply felt book, artist and writer J. Ruth Gendler invites us to reclaim and celebrate the often misunderstood quality of beauty as one of the most profound and essential forces in our lives. Drawing upon observations from art and mythology, science and nature, contemporary culture and personal experience, the author looks at her subject in its most generous implications — not simply as a reflection of surface and image, but as a pathway to wholeness, integrity, coherence, and ultimately, to love. Written with curiosity, courage, a discerning eye and a lyrical sensibility, and illustrated with evocative line drawings by the author, Notes on the Need for Beauty displays the strong personal voice that has made her previous book, The Book of Qualities so beloved. It is a work to savor and to share.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Notes on the Need for Beauty is delicious, a feast for the soul. Ruth Gendler's eye and heart are true and the vividness, constancy, and meticulousness of her meditation calls us to the banquet of beauty like music heard across a meadow. This is an utterly nurturing book, savory with loveliness from the exquisite cover art to the last morsel of wisdom." -- Tim Farrington, author of The Monk Downstairs and Lizzie's War

"Beauty is as beauty does and Ruth Gendler outdoes herself with this completely charming illustrated compilation of information and inspiration. Notes on the Need for Beauty is warm, winsome and very, very wise." -- Donna Henes, author of The Queen of My Self

"Gendler doesn't just teach people how to reach into their creativity--she exudes it." -- Catherine Girardeau, independent radio producer

"In this time when we are losing our own senses by one percent per year, rediscovering the sense for beauty is an urgent priority that requires conscious employment. In Notes on the Need for Beauty, Ruth Gendler presents us with faceted seeds that can be planted in our own souls for rumination. She urges us to look at everything as aesthetic events, to not just look, but to look as if with our arms open. This book is a lighthouse of a gift for individual reimaginations for beauty wherever we uncover it." -- Paulus Berensohn, author of Finding Your Way With Clay

"Like a rose disciple, Ruth Gendler takes note of what's beautiful and assembles this wholly original text, full of children talking, mystical insight, the history of cosmetics, sublime etymologies, and big mirrors that someone attached to the sides of the NYC sanitation trucks. Look out. Here comes the aquarium." -- Coleman Barks, author of A Year with Rumi

"Subtle and complex, these more-than-clever gems become addictive once you begin reading." -- Patricia Holt, San Francisco Chronicle

"The Qualities are wise and express truth in a personal way." -- Jean Bolen, author of Goddesses in Every Woman

"The very act of reading Notes on the Need for Beauty will change the way you see things. It will awaken you to notice beauty, to make beauty, to remember beauty. And this is a cause for celebration." -- Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

"Through Gendler's work, you see beauty in an entirely new way." -- Valerie Geller, Creating Powerful Radio, international radio consultant

"Who does not have a thirst for more beauty in their life? Who has provided themselves with the necessary time to savor the beauty that already surrounds them. Ruth Gendler's book, Notes on the Need for Beauty, is studded with wise counsel and crafted prose coaxing us gently, to turn from our current ways to better witness and so be nourished by the infinite beauties of the world--just as it is." -- Peter London, author of No More Second Hand Art

About the Author

J. Ruth Gendler is an artist, writer, and teacher. She is the author of The Book of Qualities and the editor of Changing Light: The Eternal Cycle of Night and Day. The Book of Qualities, now in its thirty-fifth printing, has been adapted as a two-act theater piece and translated into German, Japanese, and Chinese, as well as being widely excerpted in literary, psychological and educational publications. In addition to personal essays and poems, Gendler writes about the arts, education, health, and books. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally.

Gendler has taught writing and art in a variety of settings for twenty years. She has been an artist in residence with both California Poets in the Schools and Young Audiences of the Bay Area and leads writing and creativity workshops nationally. She received her B.A. in English and Communications from Stanford University, and she now resides in Berkeley, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (April 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569242925
• ISBN-13: 978-1569242926
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #352,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beauty Is An Essential Part Of A Life Well Lived, July 10, 2007

By 

Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty (Port Orford, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Notes on the Need for Beauty: An Intimate Look at Essential Quality (Paperback)

As I approached my reading of J. Ruth Gendler's "Notes on the Need for Beauty," I immediately put on my hat as a student of philosophy for over half a century. After all, "beauty" is the subject of a branch of philosophy called "aesthetics," a sub-discipline which, unfortunately, does not seem to generate a great deal of attention in the college curriculum of departments of philosophy in our colleges. In fact, as I recall, the department of philosophy where I did all my undergraduate work did not even offer a course in aesthetics. The great idea of "beauty" was discussed -- I went back and checked my undergraduate textbooks -- in exactly one chapter of the text we used for a course in "ontology" (philosophy of being). That was it. Thinking back now, as close as I came to considering aesthetics was a graduate course I took in "philosophy of literature," wherein we studied "beauty" in things literary. We have all heard the familiar phrase "the true, the good, and the beautiful." The "true" gets lots of attention, since it's the object of a controversial branch of philosophy called "epistemology." The "good" also gets lots of attention, since it's somewhat the object of another controversial branch of philosophy dealing with "ethics." But it seems that the "beautiful" does not get much attention from students of philosophy. I now wonder why.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. While Gendler's book is not a philosophical treatise on the subject of "beauty," at least in any strict sense a professional philosopher would recognize, it is, I think, a clarion call to get back to the basics of beauty as an awareness of what we experience in everyday life. The book is a strictly "empirical" approach to the subject which is, of course, necessary at the beginning of any discussion about things (qualities in this case) in the "world-out-there" as well as the "world-within-us." The "measures" of beauty have traditionally been unity, order, and clarity; these are the concepts which have been applied to evaluations of the beautiful since the ancient Greeks. These concepts, however, have to be applied to something that actually exists, either as real or ideal, and it is here where Gendler directs most of our attention: to the simple things around us which we so often just take for granted. We rarely really "see" them, we hardly spend time contemplating them, and we, in our busy and messy contemporary world, ignore them for the most part and wonder if we're not missing something.

Gendler certainly makes an important "philosophical" point (unwittingly or not) when she says that "Beauty, like every other quality -- courage, fear, ugliness, trust, truth, wisdom -- is a part of us and apart from us, inside us and outside us, personal and impersonal. Beauty invites us to build bridges and make connections between the senses and the soul, between contemplation and expression, between ourselves and the world." The great debate in aesthetics has always been the argument over subjectivity versus objectivity: Is beauty merely in the eye of the beholder, or is there something "out there" which, in fact, possesses the quality of beauty regardless of the beholder? Gendler appears to take the middle road on the issue and I agree with her: "Beauty . . . is a part of us and apart from us, inside us and outside us." Her book provides numerous examples to support her observation.

Beauty is, however, a most elusive quality. Its nature is no tenuous that it always seems to escape in the very moment of its capture. There is hardly a term in any language which is used more and abused more than "beauty." The conflicting varieties of its definition are truly amazing -- a sure indication of the complexity of its nature and of the many-sided character of its appeal. Beauty manifests itself in so many and in such divergent forms that it is extremely difficult to discover the general element common to them all. Gendler simply asks us to "look" around us and "consider" ordinary things: light, darkness, mirrors, windows, faces, masks, clothes, the human body, and even cups, bowls, and baskets. She takes one on an adventure into the "obvious," although in this case the obvious may have been missed all the time. Here, there is no mere glossing over the beauty that is present in our lives. This is an "intimate" confrontation. The reader is compelled toward an encounter with the quality of beauty anywhere and everywhere.

"Notes on the Need for Beauty" is a book to be enjoyed at leisure; it is not a book to be read quickly. It contains prose to be reflected upon; images to be savored quietly; ideas to be considered over time. From a strictly philosophical point of view, I think the instances of beauty that Gendler provides in her work, commonplace as most of them may be, do satisfy perhaps the best definition of beauty that I've ever come across: "Pulchra sunt quae visa placent," that is, "things are beautiful which please when perceived." That definition is courtesy of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest classical realistic philosophers the world has ever produced. I suspect that Aquinas would have enjoyed Gendler's book since he was, contrary to the view of all too many "modern" philosophers, a most empirical and "down-to-earth" thinker who did not disdain nor dismiss the "beauty" which surrounds us in our most common, conventional, and everyday life.

Finally, the media bombard us daily with the ugliness in the world: the useless deaths, the unnecessary destruction, the epidemic diseases, the multitudinous disasters, the unconscionable crimes of humanity. Now is the time to take some "time-out" and reflect on the beautiful, on those things, simple as they are, that make a full life worth living. Gendler's book is a good guide to doing just that. And that is why I highly recommend this work to all readers.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lovely, nurturing read, June 9, 2007

By 

Suzanne Rothenberg (Seattle, WA ,USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Notes on the Need for Beauty: An Intimate Look at Essential Quality (Paperback)

This is a lovely book. It reawakens us to the real, uncontrived beauty all around and within us -- the kind you get for free -- and gently urges us toward awareness of how it can nurture us, if only we'd let it. Gendler's book is a meditation,a balm, a book to savor. Her quiet drawings match her gentle tone. Keep it on your night table.