The Seeker Academy Bookblog

The bi-annual Integral Review is out with a new issue, which contains a 2,300 word review of The Seeker Academy by editor-in-chief Jonathan Reams. He appears to like the novel a lot. “There is realism to the writing,” he writes, “grounded in both the actions of the characters and Grace’s reflections on and perceptions of them.”

Best that you read the review and Ream’s discussion of Grace’s time at her retreat; I’ll only add his musings on how the story concludes: “Grace steps back into the world at large, having found in herself a confidence and awareness that many sought at The Seeker Academy. She finds that this is not something new or strange to her, but that she has simply not focused her attention on it before.”

With his Integral orientation, Reams ends his review by asking why so many New Age/ holistic/ Integral leaders refuse to review the novel. I hope you will read what he says. He sums up: “while these reasons may have contributed to the lack of reviews Gussin’s novel has received, they stand out for me as the strengths that make it a compelling piece of literature.”

Again, the review is here.

I have so far six Amazon.com reviews, none from people I’d met before the reviews were posted. One is from a reviewer on a social network thematically related to my book. Four men, two women; a romance novelist, a poet, two psychiatrists, a tech writer; one focuses on the story’s relationships, another its ideas. Chance starts to play a part, interesting juxtapositions to emerge.

One reviewer, a physician and professor of holistic medicine with a multi-decade practice, and an inveterate reader, reviewer and blogger, has the background to discuss the novel’s themes. As I read other of his reviews and his blog, I begin to want to know what he will think about my story. He writes this:

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

Recovering, Re-connecting and Re-Awakening: A Novel of Hope, May 27, 2007

By	Dr. Richard G. Petty (Atlanta) - See all my reviews

The book is deceptive. When I was asked if I would be interested in reviewing it, I expected a novel about holistic medicine and the spiritual path that I would polish off in an evening. Instead it has taken me three weeks to read. Not because it is badly written: far from it. After a slightly clumsy prologue, the book uses a story as a skeleton around which to wrap a careful examination of some very important ideas. Gussin is a very good writer and some of the prose and the images that they conjure up are luminous.

Grace is a forty-something woman whose twelve year-old niece has been going through the ups and downs of chemotherapy for leukemia. Grace is a former actress who is still acting her way through life. After the turmoil of her niece’s illness and days spent with other sick children, she is emotionally and spiritually drained. Not because of what has happened or what she has experienced, but rather that the events have uncovered a deep existential yearning.

So it is that she finds her way to the Seeker Academy, which could be any one of a hundred personal growth centers that I have visited. Here she meets an interesting and insightful group of people who are among the estimated thirty million Americans who describe themselves as spiritual seekers. The book does a superb job of describing the spiritual and emotional hunger of so many of us. How many of us have an uncomfortable feeling that there is something missing in our lives? That there is something important that we have all forgotten?

The characters have all brought their own emotional baggage, and amidst all the love and peace we still see people who can be mean and defend their positions and beliefs with religious fervor. Gussin captures the narcissism and spiritual elitism that can crop up amongst spiritual seekers and so disappoint people when they meet this world. There are the anti-science counter-culture folk who believe that to reason is to lie, and representatives of an array of beliefs and positions, including those who refuse any help from conventional medicine, even when in serious trouble. Grace samples classes, therapies and ideas like a person who is starving and stumbles into a five star restaurant.

There are discussions of Karma; survival after death; whether there is a purpose and a meaning to life that we sometimes miss because we have to focus on the mundane world; whether it is possible to have a spiritual life and to remain engaged in the material world; the advantages of controlling our reactions to, rather than escaping from the world; romanticism, reason and tragedy; the nature of reality and much more besides.

Grace learns at first hand how emotions can be stored in the body, and how skilled bodywork can release them. She also discovers that the seekers at the Academy are there for a dozen reasons. They are not just trying to heal some ill defined something, recover from trauma or find enlightenment. Most are just trying to re-connect with another human.

A car crash involving some of the characters sharpens the beliefs and actions of the cast, and leads into scenes where concepts and ideas are explored with rare intensity.

Gussin is clearly writing from experience. In the course of the book Grace discovers that real change is possible, and sometimes in a short space of time. But she then realizes that she no longer wants to change. She has a world to go back to. Yet despite her reluctance to change, it is giving nothing away to say that the experiences do change her beliefs and perceptions. Despite some of the difficulties that people bring with them to places like the Seeker Academy, for the person who arrives at the right time in his or her life, the experience can be life changing.

Teaching stories, parables and analogies have been used since the beginning of time, and in expert hands can be an extremely effective way of communicating difficult ideas. I have read some books in which characters discuss abstruse ideas and have sometimes come away scratching my head, thinking that even the most earnest angst-ridden undergraduates don’t talk like that! Gussin, though, succeeds very well indeed. The characters are lively, the ideas clear and the dialogue does not feel contrived. The format allows the author to talk about some complex and important ideas, without the formalism of a book about philosophy.

The best books, movies, articles and scientific papers do not give you all the answers, but make suggestions, challenge us and suggest new questions. More than once I saw parallels with the classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Both books suggest answers, challenge assumptions and pose a great many questions.

It was those questions that forced me to read the book far more slowly than I would normally. Despite the apparent certainties of some of the characters, the author does not pretend to have all the answers, and the book is the stronger for it.

If you are interested in some of the big questions in life, or if you feel that hunger that I described above, this is an excellent, well-written and engaging book.

Highly recommended.

With publication achieved, my first author events are coming up:

Blog Interview at Riehl Life: Village Wisdom for the 21st Century, May 1-3.

Reading at 7:30 pm on Saturday, May 12th. Location: Uncommon Grounds Coffee House, 403 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington, MA.

Radio Interview on Nancy Slonim Aronie’s show, Writing From The Heart, on Lime Radio, a Sirius satellite station, Channel 114. Sunday, May 13, 7 pm.

In addition, I’ll soon publish here prefaces to The Seeker Academy, one with a literary frame and one with the frame of political liberalism. I’m also writing a review of a new nonfiction book, Esalen: America And The Religion Of No Religion, by the religious scholar Jeffrey Kripal.

To arrange a reading, write 4361press@gmail.com.

Zaadz is a Web-based social network defined by its owners as “a community of seekers and conscious entrepreneurs.” I’ve read blog posts and conversations there that I find interesting and qualitative; I’ve also had the sense when visiting it that, like other online social networks, Zaadz jumps ahead (despite having 50,000+ “members”) to call itself a community. The entire medium has just begun the work to prove itself in that regard.

Still, I respect the effort, and plan to involve myself more and to see if my novel can be part of the Zaadz conversation. Thus I’m pleased to say that The Seeker Academy has received its first review, here, from a Zaadzter, Bruce Tanner. It is, to me, thoughtful. An excerpt:

I kept reflecting as I read about the resonances between Seeker and the Zaadz community. The academy is anything but homogeneous, is an intense experience for many there, and is full of differing opinions about what it is there for, which approaches to spiritual growth and healing are vital or important, what exactly the purpose of living might be…. What Grace is living through her brief stay of less than three weeks is the heart of this novel, and I was a little surprised to find how much I was moved and was identifying with her hero’s journey of self-discovery.

On the issue of online communities, I note that I’ve also chosen–being more a believer than not–to call my Amazon reviews not customer reviews (Amazon’s name for them) but community reviews.

Hoping for provably objective Amazon.com customer reviews, I read the profiles of three hundred reviewers. I then queried thirty who review literary fiction and some nonfiction books that can be deemed holistic. Seven of those queried asked for review copies, and two have now posted reviews. One review finds the book well written, but thinks I take the holistic movement “too seriously.” The second, in six hundred words, has several specific, reflective, and often complimentary things to say.

To read the reviews, and see links to the reviewers’ profiles and other reviews, click the text above the book cover image to go to the book’s Amazon.com landing page.

A few days to publication!

“With exquisite facility of language, L.D. Gussin takes us on a very real spiritual journey; the ups, the downs, the all arounds. I’ve been there. L.D. Gussin nails it!” — Nancy Slonim Aronie

For an unknown writer, particularly of literary and philosophical fiction, it is a struggle to get reputable reviews. In my case, I sent, last November, seventy review copies of The Seeker Academy to writers, editors, and leaders I admired in literary circles, in holistic circles, and in spiritual progressive circles. I’d met three of these people, and knew none socially. Four months later, ten or so say they are reading the novel or working toward reading it, and I am grateful to them.

Nancy Slonim Aronie, who I’ve not met, has now given me her brief comments. She is an author and writing teacher who leads workshops at Esalen, Omega Institute, Kripalu, Naropa, The Crossings, Rowe, and other holistic retreats. A longtime NPR commentator, she has taught at Harvard in the Literature for Social Reflection course led by the writer, psychiatrist, and professor Robert Coles. At Harvard, she has twice received a Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching award.

Aronie’s Omega Institute profile is here; her website is here.