<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Pearls
Review: "The Hog's Wholey Wash" warrants top marks, to my mind. It somehow persuaded me (irritating me, mostly) to make an effort of a kind I would rarely trouble with in reading a fictional text. Without this effort, I'm sure I would have been disappointed by the book. To anyone who would read without working with it, wise to think of it as having minimum recommendation. Initially intrigued through its debated relation to the work of G I Gurdjieff, I did a good deal of bemused reading of it till something unexpectedly clicked; Blake's "infinity in a grain of sand" for some reason lodged firmly in my mind, not to be shaken off. The "Wholey Wash" subsequently 'stuck' and 'grew' in a way it simply had not before. If I found I ended up with a pearl of great price, it ultimately seems a thing as much of my own making as that of the author/ his influences (Sufism? Vedanta? Holography?)/ his interpreters, critics /others. But what to cast? Could we perceive 'infinity in hogwash' ?! This book certainly helped/forced me to better grasp how I can find unexpected windows on different realities - realities of my own psyche and its milieux. The reading of it did work for me (at a literary level, not unpainfully) as both eye-opener and feeling-opener. From my own experience with it, I can say it can serve as a wonderful little 'Working Person's Manual' on getting to grips with our worlds, perceptions, our more untamed intimations as well as everyday senses. Having gone through a wide range of reactions and cross-referencing with this book, I should highlight its sneaking webs of allusion to the follies of cynicism and obsession - and alternatives of living Work.
Rating:
Summary: More than hogwash
Review: A unique book; entertaining, funny, puzzling, but what does it all mean? Perhaps there are no easy answers. If you're prepared to do your share of the work, this book will take you on a fascinating spiritual journey. It's compelling on the first read - but more enjoyable each time you return to it, because that's when the different layers of this multi-faceted tale really present themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Big Left-field Dipper
Review: Awesome trip to the four corners of the mind. Weird, poignant, compulsive, with plenty that got me laughing out loud. Slyly deconstructs the hinges of reductionism in how we can take the "spiritual" & "scientific", and mistake ourselves in the process, whether looking through the Eastern or Western. Sparks off parallel takes prone to involutions & crossbreedings - though how we get with the flows of it all, overt & covert, really hangs on feedback with our own experience and focus of intent. Steep at $13. But if you're one for koans, black holes, enlightenments, fractal tidal waves and such - cool fare. Fasten your wits for a mutant Möbius belter of a ride.
Rating: 
Summary: A rich and unique experience
Review: Many smiles and appreciations as I read this book. The language was so concentrated that I could only really take in some of it on first read, but I was left with a sense of multi-layered interpenetrations of creative unfolding, a new opening to possible worlds and realities, and a perspective of the small but irreplaceable part our world and lives play in the web of connection of all beings.
Rating:
Summary: A rich and unique experience
Review: Many smiles and appreciations as I read this book. The language was so concentrated that I could only really take in some of it on first read, but I was left with a sense of multi-layered interpenetrations of creative unfolding, a new opening to possible worlds and realities, and a perspective of the small but irreplaceable part our world and lives play in the web of connection of all beings.
Rating:
Summary: Hogging the Starlight
Review: Plutarch argues in a dialogue in "Moralia" that animals are able to reason, including pigs. Malcolm Mitchell would agree. He has devoted a slim book of voyage and meditation to the theme of wise and stupid animal beings. It is called "The Hog's Wholey Wash" (the quote marks are part of the full title). The long title says it all: "A Complete Allegorical Manual on Consciousness & Cosmos, with Vindication Sublime of that Most Maligned Terrestrial Species or `The Hog's Wholey Wash.'"
* The book is the ideal bedside companion, being written in short, four-page sections. It is also the perfect gift for the jaded friend who has read everything. (Mind you, the tastes of the friend have to be really jaded, for the language here is "superswineishly" slipper and sly, Joycean, Gurdjieffian, neologismically inventive. There is a lot of humour here amid the "higher" wisdom. One never knows what the next sentence will bring.
* The way Virgil led Dante through a hierarchy of worlds, the "Pig-Being" leads us through all the worlds that are, instructding us along the way. Here is one pig that is garrulous, but no boar, being closer to Plutarch's philosopher than it is to the sty-variety. In fact, Malcolm Mitchell's pig is in a class by itself, the dispenser of unlikely wisdom to the animal nature that hogs the limelight.
Rating:
Summary: Challenging but worthwhile!
Review: The "Hog" is a timely, lighthearted prod in a serious direction. Spiritual issues and dimensions are explored within the context of the present age with prophetic emphasis on the "end times".
The Hog takes us on a metaphorical, allegorical and literal journey of discovery. Its playfulness is counterbalanced by brain stretching linguistic convolutions, twisting the mind into new unfamiliar patterns or painful contortions, depending on how you experience it. It seems to depend on the time of day!
Challenging is a word that could be used here, but a worthwhile one that draws our attention to the looming crisis awaiting us on this path of self destruction - or is that transformation? In any case, the Hog is a colourful jaunt into other dimensions, giving us a sense that they really are just around the corner.
Rating:
Summary: Challenging but worthwhile!
Review: The "Hog" is a timely, lighthearted prod in a serious direction. Spiritual issues and dimensions are explored within the context of the present age with prophetic emphasis on the "end times".
The Hog takes us on a metaphorical, allegorical and literal journey of discovery. Its playfulness is counterbalanced by brain stretching linguistic convolutions, twisting the mind into new unfamiliar patterns or painful contortions, depending on how you experience it. It seems to depend on the time of day!
Challenging is a word that could be used here, but a worthwhile one that draws our attention to the looming crisis awaiting us on this path of self destruction - or is that transformation? In any case, the Hog is a colourful jaunt into other dimensions, giving us a sense that they really are just around the corner.
Rating:
Summary: Buy This Now
Review: The possibilities and probabilities of porcine aviation, long the sphere of philosophical questioning, and doubted by only the most literal of the literally minded, are here exppressed in fairy-tale form. With the intention of introducing us to 'a bit more' of our organically unfathomable selves, via a flight through the cosmos, the hog mysteriously manages to encourage us to 'try, try, try and trust how wihin you already fly'. Much as Alice followed the rabbit, and Carlitos struggled to follow Don Juan, so the teller of this tale obeys the hog's injunction to 'follow me' and scrambles after it on an adventurous and possibly salvific flight through the cosmos. In like manner, we the readers, earnestly strive to unravel Mitchell's narrative which twists itself ike an amoebic strip, flowing seamlessly to unite sets of opposites, to answer and provoke questions, to baffle and enlighten. Though the tale of the hog is shorter, and lighter to carry round the Gurdjieff's 'Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson' Mitchell has that author's ability to muddle, befuddle, and charm his reader into a submissive agreement to grapple with the text, and through it with the unfathomable mysteries of 'Consciousness and Cosmos'. Very funny and highly recommended, buy two, because you will want one to give away.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful descriptions, that's it
Review: When I started reading this book, I was very interested in it -- I loved the author's writing style, and it really wrapped me into the story. This lasted for about 10 pages, at which point I started thinking, "When's he going to get to the point?" I stopped thinking of the writing as beautiful and started thinking of it as expositional filler, the words of someone writing so he can read his own words. I tried to stick with the book, thinking that eventually I'd find something interesting again, but I was disappointed. If you're at all curious about this book, I suggest you try interlibrary loan and save your cash.
<< 1 >>
|
