| BOOKS & TAPES | |
The Hijacking of Jesus Nation Books "Dan
Wakefield has had a long career of fair-minded and important and
meticulously researched journalism. And he crowns that career with
as complete an account and analysis as one could wish, of the capturing
of Jesus Christ as a totem for a few powerful Americans, intent
on becoming powerful all over the world, and by violent and corrupt
means which are anything but Christ-like. The very last words in
this fine book are not by Dan Wakefield but Jesus, his Sermon on
the Mount, not what you would want to call Pat Robertson or Dick
Cheney stuff." “A ringing call
to liberate the church from its late captivity, Dan Wakefield’s contribution
to the contemporary debate over religion’s role in politics sounds the
promise of a true Christian revival, where justice trumps greed, non-violence
tempers the terrible logic of war, neighborly love answers neighborly
hate, and the Holy Spirit of union displaces demonic icons of division
on altars throughout the land.” In The Hijacking of Jesus, Dan Wakefield asks how and why the Christian faith has been so effectively appropriated by the Bush administration. Why is it that Republicans have become the party of "moral values?" How is it that mainline Christian denominations and leadership, both Catholic and Protestant, have remained remarkably silent on the war in Iraq, the civil rights erosion of the Patriot Act, the growth of poverty, the Terry Schiavo debacle, and the fact that over 40 million people now live without health insurance? And how can Christians recapture and reclaim their faith from the cynical manipulations of Bill Frist, Tom DeLay, and George W. Bush?
Spiritually Incorrect SkyLight Paths Publishing by Dan Wakefield Spirituality is full of rules. You need to find your own way straight through them. Some people claim that you cannot truly achieve spiritual fulfillment if you're not a vegetarian. Some say you'll never find the path if you don't learn yoga. And some would insist that any display of vanity--cosmetic surgery! hair mousse!--is a sign that inner peace is way out of your reach. With great candor and humor (much of it irreverent!), Dan Wakefield's Spiritually Incorrect shows that there are as many ways to find spiritual fulfillment as there are individual seekers. Part memoir, part essay, part whimsical illustration from his own life, Wakefield's reflections break down the barriers that lie in the way of spiritual fulfillment, showing you that rules were made to be broken, and how it's possible--and imperative--for you to discover a rewarding spiritual life that fits your own personality, your own path.  Hardcover $21.95
SkyLight
Paths Publishing From the author of How Do We Know When It's God?--a practical guide to accessing creative power in every area of your life. In this passionate, compulsively readable guide, award-winning author Dan Wakefield explodes the myths associated with the creative process and shows how everyone can uncover and develop their natural ability to create. Drawing on the wisdom of religion, psychology, and the arts, he teaches us that the key to creation of any kind is clarity--of body, mind, and spirit--and he provides practical exercises that each of us can do to access that centered quality that allows creativity to shine. By learning to embrace each moment of the day as a creative act, this guide reveals how we can tap into the sources of spiritual enrichment that are everywhere around us. "Potentially life-changing." "Will stretch your mind and help you find the
source of your own spiritual and creative powers." "Full of examples of sanity, balance, and even
full-time employment cohabitating happily with creative callings."
Little/Brown
"Dan Wakefield offers readers an engrossing story as well as a guide to spiritual maturity. With breathtaking honesty, he shows that real spiritual faith requires that we be explorers, open to the possibility that our wrong turns and mishaps might lead to the richest territory of all." -- Publishers Weekly Read Chapter 1, The Quest. |
St.
Martin's Press "A
precise and moving recreation of a time and place when the world
seemed
small and we knew everyone in it." Novelist/journalist Wakefield ("Returning," 1988, etc.) arrived in Manhattan as a Columbia student from Indianapolis and was, he tells us, unprepared for the astounding freedom of anonymity that the Upper West Side granted him and for the family feelings he later met with among Greenwich Village bohemians. Younger readers may find these and other memories distant from their own putative needs and, at times, even Wakefield is distant from himself, placing facts from the Sixties back into the Fifties or twice attributing Gordon Jenkins's ghastly musical melange "Manhattan Towers" to Stan Kenton or misquoting Allen Ginsberg's "America." Even so, Wakefield talks with his many friends still alive from the Fifties and gets their take on the era. His interviewees include Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Murray Kempton, Helen Weaver, Joyce Glassman Johnson, Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne, Calvin Trillin, Gay and Nan Talese, and many others. For himself, he defines the era nicely with, "Maybe the Village of my generation went from the time Dylan Thomas came to the White Horse [the famed Village tavern where Thomas drank his last drink] to the time Bob Dylan showed up [at the White Horse] that night in 1961 wearing his floppy hat." The liveliest passages here survey jazz joints and players; the explosion of "On the Road" in 1957 and Wakefield's buttoned-down antipathy to it; changes in sexual mores as the pessary showed up; Esquire's creative breakthrough with New Journalism; and the slime-crawl of McCarthyism over Manhattan liberals. Batches of local color refresh those who lived through a lost age, or what Kempton calls "an age of lead," now become "an age of gold." Synopsis Wakefield explores a decade in which the "taste, politics, and culture of our society underwent a profound transformation, one that shaped the way we live now." Enriched by the recollections of friends and colleagues who bring their own insights to this book: Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Calvin Trillin, Allen Ginsberg, and others. Photographs.
Harper
San Francisco A fresh exploration of miracles, with people from all walks of life telling their stories of healing, recovery, love and everyday wonders. "If you're tired of being vaporized into the metaphysical, read this book. Wakefield isn't selling. He tells it like it is -- and it's magical." -- Larry Dossey, M.C.
A step-by-step guide for writing the story of your own spiritual journey. "What a wonderful book ... Surely it will help many people to write their own spiritual autobiographies, and so to become aware of their own journey." -- Madeline L'Engle, author of "A Wrinkle in Time" |
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The author's story of his mid-life return to church and a spiritual path -- as well as a new life of health without drugs or alcohol. "One of the most important memoirs of the spirit I have ever read." -- Bill Moyers |
A guide for getting access to your own creativity, and exploding the myths that stifle us -- like the "booze and the muse" mythology that glamorizes drugs and alcohol. Interviews with Judy Collins, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Studs Terkel and creators from all fields. "This potentially life-changing work should appeal to the same wide readership as Julia Cameron's " The Artist's Way" -- Publisher's Weekly |
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Indiana
University Press A classic novel of the 1950s "'Going All The Way' is the 'Catcher in the Rye' of the Midwest. Like all great books, it somehow manages to preserve the mood and texture and morality of its time and place. A bestseller in 1970, it is Dan Wakefield's most famous novel. It seethes with pent-up frustration and confusion, and nearly every episode bubbles with hilarity. It is a book that so perfectly captures its time and place that it transcends the specific and becomes universal, which is as good a definition as there is of a classic." -- Kurt Vonnegut |
Indiana
Historical Society, $14.95 Paperback Imagine a past you must have known, even if you weren't there. Birney, Illinois. Population 4,742. December 7, 1941. Ten-year-old Artie Garber sees his brother Roy go off to war. Artie and his friends watch the skies for German planes, and the streets for spies. When Roy returns, his girlfriend is with another guy. The scenes, sounds, and images of Birney are at once lost in time, yet still with us today in this masterful novel of loss and growth. |
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Ben Affleck is an excellent narrator of this already hilarious tale of sex in the '50s. With interesting plot twists, and fun romps, it's great for any Affleck OR Wakefield fan! AND, if you like the book (or book on tape) you should definitely check out the movie. It's great for anyone who's ever felt sexually frustrated!
Sonny, a thin, mumbling and fidgety young man played masterfully by Jeremy Davies ("Spanking the Monkey"), pairs up with an ex-high school jock named Gunner in "Going All the Way," an amusing and well crafted coming-of-age tale of two recently discharged veterans of the Korean War. The film, which is novelist Dan Wakefield's screen adaptation of his 1970 best-seller, is set in the staid and relatively uneventful Indianapolis of 1954. Through the reluctant eyes of Sonny, we are introduced to his insanely doting mother and the rest of his square family, the wood-paneled station wagon and the dainty, wholesome and wholly conventional suburban home. It is clear from Sonny's look of disgust that tension is inevitable. Gunner (Ben Affleck of "Chasing Amy") is Sonny's ticket to a more liberated and socially adjusted life. With his smooth, cool demeanor and his clean-shaven youthfulness, he embodies the social ease and confidence that Sonny longs for. At the time of his acquaintance with Sonny, Gunner is attempting to reinvent himself as sophisticated and "inner-directed." As part of this new project, which he explains in terms of trite but convincingly delivered notions of Zen Buddhism, Gunner is no longer interested in hanging out with the jocks and instead, prefers misfits like Sonny. He imagines that, while he was screwing around with the football team, guys like Sonny were immersed in soulful contemplation. In truth, Sonny occupied much of his time masturbating, but no matter. Though Sonny and Gunner do spend some of their time together attempting to better themselves intellectually, it is clear that women are their true focus. Early on, we are privy to Sonny's infatuation with the rear of Gunner's sexy mom (Lesley Ann Warren). As the movie progresses, we watch Sonny's lustful gaze survey all the women that pass before him except Buddy (Amy Locane), the cheerful girl-next-door who secretly cajoles Sonny into sex at every opportunity. "Going All the Way" rides the superb acting of Jeremy Davies, who squirms and stammers his way to a nearly flawless performance. The cinematography is, at times, dizzying and irritating, owing perhaps to director Mark Pellington's music-video roots; there are, however, some effective sequences, particularly the fragmented and jerky episode in the bathroom that captures Sonny's drunk and anxious state of mind. If you are looking for an amusing, inventive comedy with a serious edge that boasts uniquely crafted characters and fine acting, "Going All the Way" is your film.
-- Michael Hope - Intermission |
Dan Wakefield recounted his own pilgrimage through the heady peaks and grim gulches of a creative life in "Returning: A Spiritual Journey," which Bill Moyers called "one of the most important memoirs of the spirit I've ever read." Now, in "Creating from the Spirit," this award-winning journalist and novelist reveals how writers, artists, musicians, and creative people of all kinds can unleash the principle of creativity within, so that it can infuse every aspect of our lives. Wakefield explodes the many myths often associated with the mysterious creative process: that creativity is only for the artistic elite, that women's work is less creative than men's, and that to be creative means one must be tormented, alienated, neurotic, irresponsible, and a failure at relationships. The truth is that many of us are blocked by low self-esteem, unrealistic expectations, stultifying routine, or the double demons of money and artistic standing -- we compartmentalize our lives into the "creative" and the "commonplace." Drawing on examples from religion, philosophy, and literature, and exercises such as journaling and right-brain drawing, "Creating from the Spirit" teaches us that the key to creation is clarity of body, mind, and spirit. This book challenges the "dangerous nirvanas" of drug and alcohol as false agents of inspiration, examines the stereotype of tortured artists like Dylan Thomas, Scott Fitzgerald, Jackson Pollock, and Kurt Cobain, and contrasts them with portraits of fulfilled and healthy creators, such as Toni Morrison, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Michael Jordan, and Hildegarde of Bingen. "Creating from the Spirit" guides us into the art of "emptying" ourselves of the incessant chatter that deadens both senses and soul. It teaches us the wisdom of "filling up" by accessing our natural perceptions and hidden creative resources. This cycle is brilliantly expressed in the lives and words of twenty "creators of the spirit" -- from artists and writers to scientists and athletes, to CEOs and chefs -- who have learned to embrace each moment as a creative act. For those who create in solitude or in community, out of personal pain or irrepressible joy, "Creating from the Spirit" testifies to a luminous truth: "To access your creative powers. . . you need only be in awe of the mystery of the universe, the life force and its power, and be willing to be open to it."
C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings Introduction by Dan Wakefield Edited by Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills. Published by the University of California Press, 2000. "Marks an important contribution to our understanding of the provocative work of eminent sociologist Mills. The editors' descriptions of the contexts of many letters, a chronology of Mills's life, and notes on correspondents enrich this volume."--Library Journal
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