by Paul Eliefrom Georgetown University
Trending in Los Angeles: Coprolaliac Dog-Eat-Dog Buddhism
Walker Percy liked to say that there were no great Buddhist novels, and over the years Tom Wolfe has proposed that the great unwritten American novel is the one about Left Coast religion.
Well, Bruce Wagner is trying. His book Still Holding was received as “a weird, coprolaliac amalgam of Buddhism and Us Weekly”:
Sometimes, the horrors of this book are such that one is certain it’s hell, with all its circles of celebrity, Hieronymus Bosch in smoggy sunlight. But really, the effect is more like a Buddhist El Greco, a coil of figures spiraling awkwardly heavenward against a garish backdrop.
And his new book of twined novellas, The Empty Chair, apparently takes the axiom “if you meet the Buddha, kill him” as a formula for the practice of authorial omnipotence.
Kelly, “an ardent, even fanatical Buddhist” — according to Michiko Kakutani’s quote-fest of a review –
received a contract for a spiritual memoir that she thought of calling “Nirvanarama” or “Impermanence Rocks.” And she got into a sort of competitive rivalry with her former mentor Dharmabud over spiritual territory — like teaching Buddhism to elementary school kids. She was particularly enthusiastic — at first, that is — about doing “mindfulness workshops” at San Quentin prison.
“Part of the allure was ego,” Charley says. “It was kind of a trophy gig — frontline bodhisattva service. It was sexy.” Here was a woman with gumption enough “to suck it up and walk straight into the belly of the beast… for the enlightenment of others. I think she dug people at the Zen Center knowing too. Gave her a major uptick in the incestuous world of the sangha, where competition for humility was dog-eat-dog.”
The other day I posted a piece on the extraordinary longevity of the critics at the Times and some other big places. That longevity has been extraordinarily good to Wagner. A daily Times review is hard to get, a good one even harder — but Kakutani has reviewed his novels I’ll Let You Go, Memorial, Dead Stars, The Chrysanthemum Palace, and now The Empty Chair, all favorably.
Talk about good karma.