Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Zen monk and punk rocker Warner offers a "big snarly ball of confessional vomit" in his third book, following Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up. The snarly ball is his own suffering, fodder for the Zen cushion: his mother's and grandmother's deaths, the dissolution of his marriage and lots of day-job insecurity when the Japanese monster-movie company he works for downsizes and gets sold. As ever, Warner is unafraid to smash idols, including his own celebrity status as a Zen master. "Not only am I not that thing, but no one is," he writes, and that means everybody from the Dalai Lama to fellow students of his Japanese teacher who disliked his being picked as the teacher's successor. Warner is honest-he would say his attitude is seeing things as they are, a Zen bent. Those familiar with his previous work will find this book exceptionally plainspoken and pungent, in keeping with his idiosyncratic vow "to be an a**hole for the rest of my life." That's a lot of honesty. (Mar. 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Sometimes spiritual writers make their mark by demystifying the mystical. Warner's (Hardcore Zen) effort goes beyond rendering Zen Buddhism itself accessible to showing how his own unglamorous and knockabout life indicates that special reverence for Zen "masters" is misplaced. Becoming the Answer is by two Christian activists whose work, together and separately, emphasizes the radical and communitarian aspects of Jesus's message; along the way, they offer new insights into the Lord's Prayer, John 17, and Ephesians 1:15-23. Fatica, the controversial speaker and focus of the HBO documentary Hard as Nails, espouses a more athletic, theologically conventional Christianity in his ministry. His is an evangelical Catholicism with a hectoring overtone that reinvents "muscular Christianity" for today's adolescents. Here he mixes memoir, story, example, and anecdote to drive his message of heart-conversion home. All are for most collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.