World Enough & Time, On Creativity and Slowing Down [Paperback]

Christian McEwen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 2011

World Enough and Time focuses on the positive effect of deliberately simple living on creativity. McEwen juxtaposes religious traditions of both the East and West, and intertwines words of wisdom from writers ranging from Montaigne to Ralph Waldo Emerson and from Virginia Woolf to Jack Kerouac to Adrienne Rich, artists and musicians from John Ruskin to Meredith Monk, and myriad psychologists, linguists, philosophers, and scholars. In so doing, she creates a unique combination of history, spirituality, and practical advice about how to incorporate slowness and its benefits into everyday living. In short, it s what she calls inspiration for the literate reader. According to McEwen, the nonstop emphasis on productivity that is so prevalent in our society is counterproductive for anyone wanting to be creative. She describes a typical response to the question, How are you?regardless of age, race, class, and gender: I'm just so busy. Really, I'm crazy-busy, branding it as a mark of honor. Yet, she continues, When people are asked where they get their best ideas, again and again they answer, In the bathroom, On vacation, Doing nothing. They begin, in other words, by simply being. If we slow down, McEwen asserts, we can appreciate Henry David Thoreau's comment that, A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. She adds, Thoreau knew too, what contemporary thinkers are just beginning to understand, that the human mind is not some isolated little manikin inside our heads; rather it is fed and nourished by every sight and smell and sound that we encounter, from the movement of the clouds to the shrill of the birds outside our morning window. World Enough and Time extols the benefits of observation, conversation, walking, pausing and dreaming within a literary and artistic framework spanning centuries. World Enough and Time is the result of thirty years of thinking, teaching and writing in the midst of a busy world. Turning to stories of the writers and artists she has studied all these years, McEwen finds that each anecdote is its own parable of truth.

Editorial Reviews

Review

WORLD ENOUGH & TIME is, above all, simply one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. . . I read it far too quickly because I suffer from the very disease it illuminates so well, and I am one of those who warn against this disease (hurry sickness) that is everywhere among us. I want to read this book again (and again) and slowly, savoring the remarkably moving writing -- Christian McEwen's prose is pure poetry; she has a poet's heart! And yet, it is not just her gift with words that makes this so powerful a book. Her stories ring true and put flesh on the solid social criticism and historical insights contained in the work. Her literary erudition shines through, but with an abiding humility. Most of all, this is a book that goes to the core of our current condition and asks us to reclaim our souls. Its message about time could not be more timely. This is not just a good book. This is a book that should become a classic. --John de Graaf, editor of TAKE BACK YOURTIME and co-author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic

If one can speak of an elegance of soul, this book reveals it. Furthermore, it is a work crafted over a long time by an author who is also an uncommonly gifted reader, a vade mecum on a literary journey to a profound destination. --Jay Griffiths, author of A SIDEWAYS LOOK AT TIME

If one can speak of an elegance of soul, this book reveals it. Furthermore, it is a work crafted over a long time by an author who is also an uncommonly gifted reader, a vade mecum on a literary journey to a profound destination. --Jay Griffiths, author of A SIDEWAYS LOOK AT TIME

About the Author

Christian McEwen was born in London, England and grew up in the Borders of Scotland. She has edited four anthologies, including Naming the Waves and Jo's Girls: Tomboy Tales of High Adventure, True Grit & Real Life. She has written for the Nation and the Village Voice, and her poems and essays have been widely published. McEwen has taught poetry, environmental literature and creative writing at a number of different venues, including The Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh, Williams College, Smith College, and Lesley University. She has been a fellow, several times, at the Yaddo and MacDowell colonies, and currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Bauhan Publishing, LLC; first edition (September 9, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872331466
• ISBN-13: 978-0872331464
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.4 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Essays & Correspondence > Essays
  • #74 in Books > Education & Reference > Writing, Research & Publishing Guides > Writing

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The book I've been needing for 18 years October 24, 2011

By Joy Holland

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

It is a familiar observation that our lives flash by with too little time to savor the gifts of the present moment. Even having read a few books on Buddhism and mindfulness, I was constantly surprised and delighted by "World Enough and Time." It is, if you like, a glowing embroidery stitched around the notion that daydreaming, taking your time, doing things slowly, detaching yourself from the screen, the telephone--taking time for face to face meetings, writing real letters, looking at a painting or a landscape--are essential not only to our creativity but to our very wholeness. Finding inspiration in literature and a wide range of other disciplines, Christian McEwen wears her erudition lightly. Her writing voice is supple and strong as she follows her truths to their innermost parts. She has given me a whole list of other authors I now want to read; and a book that will stay by my bed for a long time to come. This book is a classic of its kind and everyone should read it.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Find another Rosie September 14, 2011

By Toke Hoppenbrouwers

Format:Paperback

This book arrived two days ago. I started to read it and I'm already at page 210. I know I'll continue reading it until deep in the night, once I have had a chance to do my evening hike with my dogs. I want to gobble it up. I realize this is high paced! I love it. I find I can savor it, even if I go fast. I feel very familiar with what CM writes, yet at the same time, so much of what she has to say is new. Delicious!

CM reminds me of the many ways I can be connected with my soul. She blends the personal and the scholarly in a way that the reader feels cared for. I highly recommend her wisdom. World Enough and Time is a great springboard for discussion as well.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly glorious read September 29, 2011

By Toinette Lippe

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Christian McEwen leads us gently but inexorably toward what we all yearn for--the time and space to simply be. We all have a deep hunger for slowfulness and tranquillity but rarely manage to experience it. She has been enjoying "herself" in this way since childhood and now encourages us to do the same by appreciating our lives in each and every moment. She turns on its head the adage that "it is better to travel hopefully than arrive." Let us share this exquisitely written book with as many people as possible before they all die of exhaustion!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Get this book October 26, 2011

By Laura

Format:Paperback

I love this book. It is filled with good sense and rich with the musings of a very wonderful mind. I read pieces of it every morning as a way to get centered in what matters, beyond what passes for connection in today's noisy world. I was prepared to like the book but I was not prepared to have it become a part of my life. A beautiful accomplishment. Time very well spent.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fall Back: The Best Gift for Yourself & Those You Love November 6, 2011

By Susan Davis

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Fall Back. Today we moved the clocks back by an hour and received the gift of an extra hour. And didn't it feel good? I love that stolen hour. Well, that's what you will feel when you read Christian McEwen's beautifully written new book - like you've been given a very special gift of time - enough time to do, enough time to be. I have read it several times (first in a big gulp and then quite slowly, savoring each chapter)and have talked about it so much that I end up giving my copy away. So I keep buying more copies to give to friends and family. In fact, I have discovered the perfect birthday, Christmas and graduation gift. People love it! This special book is packed with wisdom and intelligence as well as powerful prose that will make your heart sing. I feel like she wrote this book just for me: a New Yorker trying to recover from 'hurry sickness' who hides in doing and busyness. This book is delicious read. It is a healing journey and a recipe for creativity. If you've read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, you will love this book. It will resonate with you if you like the creative side of yourself, the one who takes photographs or writes poems or bakes pies from scratch. If you read Matthieu Ricard's Happiness, you will love the practical ideas that McEwen includes at the end of each chapter. Or if you were attracted to Gretchen Ruben's The Happiness Project, you will really adore McEwen's elegant prose that packs in several university classes worth of insight in gentle ways that feels like poetry. Guess you can tell, I love this book. More importantly, I think we need this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Friend in Slowness, Walking, Savoring, and Light February 5, 2012

By Kate Chadbourne

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have savored this beautiful book in morning doses since Christmas. Today I reached the last page and knew that I would "turn around" and begin again, simply for the pleasure of remaining in Christian McEwen's warm, literate, witty, kind-hearted company. Encountering her particular mind reminds me of my first "meetings" with other essayists who have come to mean so much to me - JB Priestley, Robertson Davies, EB White, and especially Anne Fadiman.

Christian is that amazing friend who introduces you to a brighter, more colorful, and altogether more vibrant and loving world. She shares her "circle" of friends and influences generously and with the simple desire to pass along what is good or helpful. Here, you'll meet not only great writers, but walkers, artists, poets, children, philosophers, and epicureans of slowing down.

Christian's "voice" is by turns friendly, elegant, scholarly, inquiring, mournful, and joyful. I love the breadth of experience and feeling in every chapter - a breadth which calls something similar out of me as I read. Best of all, she not only tells us that slowing down is possible and will bless our lives in many ways, but she models on the page exactly how it can be done through well-chosen and interesting stories and examples. In the end, I concluded that the very act of reading her book was a health-giving and joy-giving form of slowing down!

I recommend this book with my whole heart and mind to anyone who loves great writing, graceful living, and wonderful company.