Long Quiet Highway

Rating:
Summary: Banality, Boredom and Buji Zen Make for a Looong Ride
Review: I came to Goldberg's eight hour audio work with high anticipation. I'd read, reread and shared Writing Down the Bones with anyone who cared to listen about my enthusiasm for it. One of my treasured memories is that of riding in the dead of night through West Texas landscape and unexpectedly coming upon a taped interview with Golberg just after she published her book of paintings. I felt a connection with Goldberg's experience as a Soto Zen practitioner, having launched my own practice with the benefit of time spent in a tiny Soto sect Zendo.

None of this prepared me for the disappointment of Long Quiet Ride. Goldberg's reading voice traced and retraced the same four-note drone with mind-numbing precision for six and one-half of the eight hours of listening. The only thing that saved the last hour and one-half was that she was not reading, but being interviewed. I almost cried to hear her natural speaking voice in that interview. Despite its fancy packaging, this Sounds True production bears the marks of no effort, not in the Zen sense, but in the simple sense that NO ONE cared to bring Goldberg's drudge of a reading voice to this poet's attention, and Goldberg HERSELF evidently did not care or was not awake enough to really hear herself reading in a voice that would have made Mr. Clemente (a former English teacher) groan aloud.

This book's effort (or lack thereof) at clear, descriptive and inviting prose is largely confined to banal descriptions like that of Goldberg eating a sandwich in a deli after witnessing the cremation of Katagiri Roshi's body. Don't get me wrong. It could have been a profound moment in the history of prose, but Goldberg refuses to press even one inche below superficial description to any semblance of specificity. Such is the case again when she visits Katagiri's grave in Japan. "I saw a bird, a brown bird," she states and then repeats the statement. "What kind of bird is that?" she asks someone. No reply is given. Goldberg drops the observation, half-baked, unexamined and unresearched- essentially undenoted- and moves on to more banal descriptions punctuated with lots of adolescent angst and hysteria. Yet we are asked, by the author's insertion of this bit of trivia, to treat the presence of this "brown bird" as somehow significant. If the writer is aiming at mystery, then her attempt fell miserably short of the target. To create a mystery (or to evoke a sense of the mysterious), one must awaken interest in the reader.

Such basic mistakes in writing were so numerous in this work that I stopped counting. After three hours I even stopped feeling embarrasment or pity for Goldberg, the teacher of writing who can't seem to write. Much more serious than the above stylistic concerns (and I say this after having spent eight hours in a car being assaulted by that droning monotone GoInG Up aNd DoWn with maddening precision)are my concerns about Goldberg's understanding of Zen and her ethics in allowing Sounds True to hawk this book as a legitimate look into Zen.

Perhaps it is in this most profound disappointment that I actually do feel great connection to Goldberg, and real empathy for her task. She wrote the book in a self-admitted effort to keep her teacher alive, much as John Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air to exorcise the demons of his participation in the Everest disaster of 1996. I can and did hear this book as a grief journal of someone who was quite undone by the death of a surrogate father figure. I only wish that Goldberg was awake enough to realize the depth of her own grief, or that she exhibited some signs of having com to insight in the course of her writing. I only wish that Goldberg had somehow found the courage of Nanzen's students and kept her peace (you'll have to listen to about four hours of the tape to get this story- sorry) when she was tempted to speak where she had no knowledge or experience. As far as I could tell, Goldberg never once said "no" to that temptation.

She witholds much about the true nature of Zen, but is unabashed in her eagerness to claim the mystery, the specialness, and the fantastical elements that lie on the periphery.

Krakauer's work towers over Goldberg's attempt in mastery of language, eye for detail and pure poetic concision (compressing feelings too big for words into a single sharply focused image). Both works, however, are fundamentally flawed. Krakauer sacrifices truth to his anger, need to blame others, and his own self-loathing. Goldberg sacrifices Zen to her loneliness and need for a father. Thus it is only in the last half-hour or so of the tape, in the interview, that we find that Katagiri was guilty of the same sexual predation of his students that Goldberg decries in others. She knew this information when she taped the book, but leaves it up to the interviewer (whose voice, by the way, saved me from insanity) to unearth this fact.

Goldberg's portrayal of Katagiri is fleeting, vague, constantly clouded by her obssessive description of her inner world. Indeed, every object external to Goldberg is portrayed in this way. No clarity of vision here. No big mind. Only hypnotic fascination with the fermentation of her quest for . . . well, something. Goldberg titilates us with visions of Katagiri after death, reveres her teacher and claims a kind of relationship with him that is difficult to swallow even after the most determined attempts to suspend disbelief. She does all this in clear contradiction to Zen teaching.

And this, dear reader, is what I am writing to warn you of. If you are looking for dependency relationships, if you want to risk your spiritual and sexual well-being by brokering your trust, if you seek fantastic visions, then by all means read and "eat" Goldberg's long quiet highway. That is what she's selling. This approach to spiritual practice has long gone by the name, "Buji Zen" that is crudely translated as "bullshit zen." Fascination with the experience, a quest for the special moment and the special relationship so that one may enter the lineage of THOSE WHO ARE SPECIAL.

If you seek Zen, however, my advice to you is to take the path less often traveled by the author and reader of this work. In short, look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Eclipses the Book
Review: Natalie Goldberg's reading of her book Long Quiet Highway truly enhanced the amazing content of her work. Her wonderful New York accent, complete with its dry wit, wonderfully transformed the recollections of her search for true direction in her life through both her writing and her Zen Buddhist practice.

The motion and rhythm of her voice as she describes the depths of her great love for her teacher makes for both warmth and a riveting story. Her travels take her from the suburbs of New York to New Mexico and beyond. The greatest of her travels, of course, proves to be the journey into herself as she continues her challenging Zen practice.