Awake: Stories of Life-Changing Epiphanies
Select Format
Select Condition 
Book Overview
Buddhists call it satori--the moment of intuitive illumination when the mind and soul finally understand the basic truth of the universe. It is the instant of spiritual fission, when the veil falls, when lives change. Awake collects the greatest, most moving, most inspiring tales of this ultimate experience: Thomas Merton and Henry Miller, Malcolm X and May Sarton, James Joyce and St. Augustine, Barbara Kingsolver and Leo Tolstoy. Some moments are mundane--Flannery O'Connor's heroine finds meaning in a hog pen, and Virginia Woolf discovers it one complicated day by a lighthouse; others exotic, such as Dennis Covington, who experiences it in a church while handling rattlesnakes. To some, such as the protagonist in Henry James's "The Beast in the Jungle," the fact that it was never looked for, never thought about, is the final epiphany.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1569245835
ISBN13:9781569245835
Release Date:May 2001
Publisher:Marlowe & Company
Length:407 Pages
Weight:0.55 lbs.
Dimensions:1.1" x 5.3" x 7.9"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Rewarding anthology
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
This is a nice collection. Don't be fooled (or discouraged) by the packaging, which tries to market these short pieces as "therapy and inspirational self-help". That makes them sound like New Age fluff. They're actually well-selected extracts and complete stories from some of literature's best writers. What they share is a moment in which the protagonist or the writer suddenly understands something significant - either about themselves, about life, or about the nature of reality. Commendably, editor Thomas Dyja doesn't skew his selection towards religion or to one particular philosophy, but rather gives us as broad a range of epiphanies as he does writing styles. There are some nice juxtapositions: none better than putting Henry James' dense yet rewarding "The Beast in the Jungle" up against a delightfully fresh extract from Jean Shepherd's "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash". What his selections show, time and again, is one of the great virtues of literature: the way it speaks up for what is hidden, for what we might otherwise have missed. It whispers through the fissures of the world.
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
