The Seeker Academy Bookblog

This bookblog introduces The Seeker Academy, published in April, 2007 by 4361 Press. It provides blog posts and reader comments concerning the novel’s themes, and information about the book.

The central conversation around the novel is on its Amazon.com page, here. You can browse the book’s pages and read through its numerous, often substantive reviews.

WHERE THE NOVEL WILL TAKE YOU
Using literary realism, The Seeker Academy visits the holistic healing (or human potential, or mind-body-spirit, or new age) movement, which is rooted in the beat-hippie counterculture and, more broadly, in a three centuries old romantic movement. The story is searching for the social and political heart of that counterculture movement as it exists today.

You can learn about the book and its fine reception by browsing this bookblog and by following the link at upper right to read its many substantial Amazon reviews. Here are a few brief testimonials:

“A superb job… I saw parallels with the classic Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Dr. Richard G. Petty (author, professor of holistic medicine, Georgia State U.)

“… the story serves as a vehicle to illustrate and reflect on extremely relevant issues for today and for the future. Guillermo Maynez (Amazon Top 500 Reviewer, international relations consultant in Mexico City)

“With exquisite facility of language, L.D. Gussin takes us on a very real spiritual journey…. [Gussin] nails it!” Nancy Slonim Aronie (NPR commentator, Harvard lecturer, holistic retreat teacher)

“The yearning for connection and understanding is a central theme in this thoughtful and introspective story.” Midwest Book Review

“[Gussin] possesses the rare ability to avoid abstraction even when writing about rarefied philosophical issues.” Chris Noel (literary novelist, memoirist, Vermont College lecturer)

“A humane and loving look into the search for what is real…. This is a look not so much into the New Age movement as into the part of the human spirit that has given rise to that movement and how that spirit is feeling its way into a full expression.” Stephen Chakwin (Amazon Vine Voice reviewer, attorney)

“thoughtfully composed… differing viewpoints imbue the narrative with a satisfying richness.” Kirkus Discoveries

“If you’ve been on a retreat of this type, you’ll find this story familiar, riveting. If you haven’t, but wondered what it’s like… Gussin’s novel is the next best thing.” Winslow Eliot (romance novelist, Waldorf teacher)

“Though a novel of ideas, the relational strand of connection most compels me.” Janet Riehl (poet, teacher)

“I was surprised to find how much I was identifying with [Grace's] hero journey of self-discovery.” Bruce Tanner (Zaadz network blogger)

A PREFACE TO THE NOVEL
The first part of a preface to the novel, titled The Holistic Movement As a Literary Subject, is here. The entire preface when completed will be titled Three Prefaces In Search Of A Liberal Counterculture.

HOW THE NOVEL READS

Chapter 29 begins:

Humid heat returned overnight, but daylight showed that it had not brought clouds. A restless feeling drove her from her tent and kept her once again from going to morning yoga. She walked to the pond and stood for a long while like another shade tree, watching the sun, which just had risen, start its climb. I’m between times in many ways, she mused. A flock of geese, which too often used the beach area for a toilet—a regional problem, but she avoided dwelling on the TV news feature that had reported on it—floated within the ropes of the beginner swimming area with their backsides to the land. Rather than shoo them she left, after a time, when a tai chi class began, to get coffee. At the dining-hall steps, just as a black-aproned Mel raised the rope to let in breakfasters, she noted the many new faces present in this second flock of her day. New workshops had begun. By now, she also knew that some strangers there would be experiencing life as intensely just then as she was.

Chapter 37 begins:

Trumpeter was within thirty yards of her by the time she sensed someone’s near presence and turned his way. His white travel wear, crisp against the tawny grasses, exposed only his neck and head, cupped hands, and sandaled feet. His expressions again looked more weathered than she had remembered.

“Hi, Grace,” he said, once he had halved the remaining distance. She was struck by his swiftness. Then she sensed that his resolve had brought him only to where he could greet her, and he might not quite know what more to say. But the connection she had felt lay between them, never mind how little they had ever yet spoken, had been there in fact.

He could be her older son, grown uncannily to manhood.

“This is a surprise,” she said, even if it wasn’t so, entirely.

“It seems we are both leaving now.”

“And Willa, too, I’m told. Is she here?”

“I’ll meet her back in town in a couple of hours.”

“Were you in the handmade mask last night? I didn’t see Willa.”

Trumpeter smiled, shyly; then his expression turned reflective.

“She watched from outside,” he said. “I was there with her some of the time. That ongoing role—it results from a promise I made to Monk.”

“Do you mean that the things you said were staged?”

“There are always a few actors. It’s staged in the sense that he each time has us read things and assigns us points of view and then we improvise.”

“Do you rehearse? Is it that contrived?”

“No, it’s spontaneous. Monk says it’s mostly about listening.”

“Theater as meditation—breathing into varied points of view?”

“Well, I guess.”

Now, anyway, he seemed to care less about the performance than she did. She was still getting used to having him stand there. “Ask me questions, if you want,” she told him.

“Did you get tired of the Seeker food?”

“Only recently… ask real questions, if you want.”

“What will you do when you go home?”