I am the book club's hostess for January as well as the author of the month. We will be reading my novel, Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money. I'm going to set out some introductory material and outline some of the questions/issues I'd like to see us discuss in the coming weeks.
Before I talk about my book, I'd like to tell you my goals for the month. First, I'd like to develop a feeling of community and warmth that will flow into the Book Club's coming months. I'd like us to get to know each other and have a good time together. I'd like us to learn from each other. I'd like to get a different understanding of my book from you.
My primary intention is that we should have fun reading Numenon. If you don't want to follow the schedule I set out below, forget it. Same with the questions. Don't answer them unless you want to. If you think of other issues or questions, bring them up. This is a time to hang out and examine a very unusual story.
I want to hear from you, too. Would you please tell us a bit about yourself as we begin? What's your background? What attracted you to the book club? Add anything that you care to share.
WHERE DO YOU BUY NUMENON? A number of places. I've got a surprise in point one below: How to get Numenon free.
⁃ I've arranged for you to get an eBook of Numenon free through Smashwords. Go to the book's Smashwords page. Use the coupon code LV94U when you check out and the book will be free. The coupon is good through January 19th, and I can extended the date if people want me to. I believe Smashwords makes books available in almost every eBook format.
⁃ If you'd like a print version, you can buy Numenon here: http://numenon.com This is the gorgeous hardback book that won all the awards. It was originally $24.95. We're selling it for $9.50 plus shipping. I will inscribe the book any way you like, just note what you'd like me to say in the message at checkout.
⁃ Numenon is also available as an Amazon Kindle for 99 cents. And it's available as a hardback on Amazon at a bit more than we charge. (We make almost nothing on the hardback when its purchased through Amazon, by the way.)
Also––I am not a Jungian analyst or professor; I won't be leading this discussion as an academic or psychotherapist. I am an an author. I've got a fairly deep understanding of myself and the writing craft. Both halves of my brain have been educated: I hold Master's degrees in economics and counseling.
ABOUT ME:
If you've got a few minutes, the interview that Bonnie Bright and I did and which is linked here is the best introduction to me and my work. If you don't have time to listen to it, I'll give you a (relatively) short run-through here:
I was born in San Francisco. at the end of WWII. My father, a first generation immigrant, founded and owned what was the 10th largest residential construction company in the USA in its heyday. I grew up on San Francisco's Peninsula, in the heart of what came to be known as Silicon Valley.
Those were intoxicating years. Not only was I surrounded by the cutting edge of corporate culture, I had my father sitting in the family room. That was like having Secretariat parked on the front lawn. I learned about extremely successful people from my father and his friends. They moved at light speed and were more directed and effective than any people I've met since. Mine was a heady and thrilling existence, quite addictive. When I write about the upper end of Silicon Valley society, I do it partially from my own experience.
When I was eighteen, a drunk driver killed my father and my charmed life vanished overnight. I set about defining myself. How I could define myself was limited. Business was the only life-path my father approved. Even though he had passed on, his influence on my psyche was enormous. I majored in economics. I earned two degrees in the subject and worked as an economist for years. I was a doctoral student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
I left that program, but ended up working for the professor who taught Negotiation and Intervention at the Graduate School of Business. I coached negotiation and active listening with his students a few days a year for twenty years. That was a blast. As a result, I have an abiding love for MBA (Master's in Business Administration) students and MBAs. And negotiation. This shows in Numenon.
I left Stanford and started moving in a direction that better fed my soul. While working as an economist, I earned an MA in MFCC from Santa Clara University. There I learned about Jungian psychology and the transpersonal psychologies. Roberto Assagioli's Psychosynthesis fit my personal experience better than any other theory. Assagioli's egg diagram was almost a snapshot of my inner life. I've had unitive and other spiritual experiences since I was a young child. My first transcendent experiences occurred when I was a young teenager riding my horse through the redwoods of the Coast Range. I began a meditation practice in 1975 which accelerated and strengthened my spiritual development.
Years passed; jobs and professions along with them. In 1993, had a personal crisis which shattered what I thought about myself and my world. I was devastated. I spent from 1993 to 1995 putting myself back together.
Two major events happened in 1995. I went to a meditation retreat. After that retreat, I had a mystical experience which lead to Numenon and my other work. This is described in the Author's Note in Numenon and in my interview with Bonnie Bright. I also I started writing with a writing group led by a local poet. Those events changed my life.
When I wrote Numenon, I was dealing with PTSD and trauma-related issues. The book has a darkness that reflects my interior state. I was also trying to get my arms around what had happened to me and explain the nature of evil. Be aware of this as you read.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
You can learn pretty much everything about Numenon through this link to my web site. The linked page offers a synopsis, information about the book's awards, reviews, an excerpt, a physical description of the book and more.
The book's "personal history" may be of interest to you. Numenon was released in 2008; it's been around for a while. Being the book's author has been thrilling. Numenon is my first novel; my second book. We entered it in a couple of book contests as an ARC (advance reading copy). It won the visionary fiction and religious fiction categories in those contests. I entered it in more contests after it was released. It ended up winning four more national awards.
I'm particularly pleased with the Silver Nautilus Award for Indigenous/Multicultural Fiction. The Nautilus Award was established to recognize books that promote spiritual growth, positive social change, and conscious living. Previous Nautilus winners include Thich Nnat Hanh and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Winning the Silver Medal in the IPPYs (Independent Press) Awards was also exciting. The IPPYs are the oldest and largest contest for independent presses. About 4,000 books were entered that year.
As a Kindle book on Amazon, Numenon jumped to the front of books about mysticism, ranking #1 in three categories of mysticism and hovering about the 1,000th level in Kindle sales ranking (out of, say, 900,000 books). It's an Amazon Bestselling book. Numenon also garnered five star reviews for years.
I'm not telling you this to brag: it's a cautionary tale. I didn't realize how extraordinary Numenon's performance was. It kept it's #1 position in mysticism for about a year with absolutely no promotion on my part. I became complacent, expecting the wave to continue forever. This was a mistake. I wish I'd taken a screen shot of its Amazon page when it was at it's peak.
Numenon has dropped in the rankings, but it's the same book with the same heart that was ranked #1.
TIMING:
The book has 448 pages. If we divide the reading evenly over the month, that would mean reading 112 pages per week. If we do that, we should be on page 112 on January 7th, 224 on the 14th, 336 by the 21st and finish by the 28th.
Don't feel bound by this, if you want to read ahead, please do. But, if you read ahead, please don't ask questions in the reading group that reveal content that other group members haven't reached. You can message me privately if you want to talk about something.
QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION POINTS:
Don't wreck your experience of reading the book by trying to answer these questions while you read. Let the answers and your viewpoints rise to the surface as you absorb the text. Numenon is a piece of art and a gestalt, not material for a quiz.
SOME QUESTIONS:
Compare & contrast Will Duane and Grandfather's psychological development. These are two very successful men in radically different fields. How did they end up so different?
Will Duane's psychic structure. What Jungian concepts do you see manifesting themselves in the book's first chapter? Subsequent chapters?
How would you diagnose Will?
Grandfather has had horribly traumatic things happen to him. How did he come out so well?
How would you diagnose him?
Two shamans exist in Numenon: Grandfather and Great-grandfather. How do they strike you?
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS:
Numenon brings up a wealth of issues highly relevant to our contemporary society. The following add greatly to our understanding of the book and what's going on around us.
Recommended reading/viewing:
"Inside Job", the Academy Award Winning documentary film produced, written and directed by Charles Ferguson. I believe that this film, which documents the causes of the 2008 financial crises, generated the "Occupy Wallstreet (and everywhere else)" movement.
The film clearly illustrates how our financial markets caused their own collapse because of greed and lack of discipline and morality. It makes complicated economic concepts easy to understand by use of graphics. It also illustrates the culture of the upper financial echelon, which is of interest to us as we study Numenon corporation.
My character Will Duane isn't based on a real person. He's a composite, partially my dad, partially people in the news. And partially my neighbors. I lived in the Town of Woodside, bedroom to Silicon Valley's finest, for fourteen years. People like Will Duane were all around me.
When I wrote Will and his lifestyle, I thought I was absolutely over-the-top in describing his behavior in every direction. "Inside Job" shows that I under-wrote the character. In all likelihood, Will would have been more flamboyant, ruthless, and immoral than I show him.
The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America by John D. Gartner PhD. This illuminating book explains a lot about Silicon Valley and its "movers and shakers". I'll bring it up in subsequent weeks.
Well, that should be enough to get us going. Let me know what you think/feel about the book and what I've written above.
And enjoy Numenon. One of the reviewers called it ". . . an amazing trip into two worlds."
Have a good trip! I'll be checking in often––feel welcome to come and hang out. I've got more material for the coming weeks . . .
Sandy Nathan
Replies
hi Sandy
You gave a suggestion for pages to read up to each week. As I'm reading on the KIndle,could you give an indication what chapter that would be up to please.
Cheers. Sue
Ah. The old "how many pages does this equal on my Kindle" problem. I got my Kindle and the book and tried to search for Kindle locations so I could be exact. My elderly Kindle refused to perform.
But it's pretty straightforward, counting on chapter numbers and pages.
Week 1-- Suggested to 112. I'd go through 110, which is the end of chapter 17 and beginning of 18.First words are: He had his orders.
Week 2––Suggested to 224. I'd go through p. 222, which is the end of chp. 35 and beginning of 36 First words of 35: Grandfather had gotten away with it
Week 3––Suggested to 336. I'd read through 336. 337 is the beginning of 58 First words are: Trotting back toward the
Week 4––To the end!
You should be able to search for the chapter numbers or the first words of the chapter. If that doesn't work, I'd just eyeball the line across the bottom. Stop reading when it's 1/4, 1/2, 3/4ths, and end of book.
Sandy
Sue -- I just found out that my kindle reader on my iPad actually includes the page number on the bottom of the page nest to "location". Not sure if that is universal upgrade or not ...... (my original Kindle did not do this)
You have an iPad!? I want one really a lot. I have a funky old Kindle that doesn't sort any more.
So you're all set.
Hi Deb,
Thanks for that. After I posted this message I was playing around with it and discovered that the page numbers come up down the bottom when I press the menu button. Hooray for pressing random buttons to see what happens.
I'm some kind of intuitive. Can't remember which. But! I just found this great Jungian type test designed by that prof. I mentioned a while ago. I can retest myself.
We intuitives aren't mainstream, that's for sure. Here's an article I wrote about Jungian type for writers.http://www.yourshelflife.com/?p=301 The bottom line with it is that we're in a minority, so the intuitive writer has to adjust his/her writing style if he/she wants to hit a big market. We're out of step with the popular culture.
When I was in that PhD program, I found myself surrounded by people, men mostly, who were in the 99th percentile of mathematical aptitude in the GRE or any of the standardized tests. These were PhD students, not MBA. Really nice people. Likeable, humble. They thought in terms of differential equations. That was natural. And shocking. I realized what that aptitude meant.
I'm sorry you're going through your dark night. Having been through a bunch of them myself, I can say they end. It just doesn't feel like they will. And you can experience the divine in the middle of one. Maybe even more.
And now I have to figure out the BISAC code on a manuscript, correcting a mistake. But first I have to find the file. And then . . . Well, my new book is almost ready.
Hi, everyone! I want to tell you a story, a gift to members of the book club. I haven't told this story to anyone, though my friends and family lived through it with me. I think it's funny, though it wasn't at the time. It concerns Numenon's extremely long Author's Note.
Here's a bit about publishing: When a book first comes out, I've found that it usually will get really good reviews, because the people who are drawn to it are its true audience. Or maybe my marketing works. As it's been out longer, lots of people read it, people who aren't its intended audience. People who are sure to hate it. And then its ratings drop.
For a long time, Numenon had all five star reviews on Amazon.
And then other reviews appeared. "I hated this book from the Author's Note on," said one. “Why did she need to be write all this stuff? Has she been abused by someone?"
This is why and how I wrote the Author's Note. Numenon is my first novel. It's about spirituality and particularly Native American spirituality and experience, focused on one of their shamans. Because of what the majority society did to Natives, their shamans, and religious practices, this is a really loaded area for American Indians. An area where tact and good manners are essential.
I was scared about putting the book out, knowing how explosive it's content might be, but driven to do so.
I've been working on Numenon and its related books since 1995. I wrote straight ahead, finished a book, and then researched it afterward. When I wrote The Bloodsong Series, my creativity was burning so hot that I couldn't stop. I wrote until I couldn't move my shoulders, every day for years. (I've got nine or so siblings to Numenon on my hard drive, waiting to be put in publishable form.)
When I researched the material I'd written, reading and doing scholarly investigation, I found that I was accurate but tended to understate the situations. The Indian Schools, for instance, were worse than what I describe. If I found any errors, I fixed them.
Mostly I became aware of unfamiliar cultures. I'm from Silicon Valley. What did I know about American Indians?
During this time of fact-checking and research, "by purest happenstance," I went to a meditation retreat. This was a large event, attended by hundreds or thousands of people. There, also "by purest happenstance," I met two members of the clergy of the American Indian Church and spent a considerable amount of time talking with them.
Members of the American Indian Church practice traditional Native American spirituality and indigenous rituals. Some may regard Christianity as "the oppressor's religion." These feelings can be incendiary, which I found out.
Whoosh! When I started talking about my book project with the Native clergy, it was like one of Grandfather's whirlwinds arose between us. All three of us trembled with energy. They talked about white people writing about Indians. My jaw dropped and eyebrows rose as I listened. They talked more.
"There was a white woman who wrote stories about Indian 'boys and girls'," romances, I guessed, "some of the women on the reservation didn't like what she wrote." A long pause. "They did something to her." Another pause. "It wasn't very nice. I won't tell you what they did, but it wasn't very nice."
By this time, I'd gotten that whatever it was, I didn't want it to happen to me. I wasn't scared anymore, I was terrified.
So I wrote the first portion of the Author's Note, outlining the perpetrations against Native religion and spirituality, and a few other things. I passed it to one of my dear friends, who is of Cherokee descent, who passed it to her friends on the reservation. They loved it.
The Author's Note was in. I felt marginally safer, though I still worried about what happened to that woman.
But then I talked to our attorney, telling him what I just told you.
"Oh, no. You shouldn't worry about the Indians. But if any of those Silicon Valley CEOs reads the book and thinks you're writing about him, they will sue the s*** out of you. They're very aggressive and a lot of them have very brittle egos.”
Oh, good. They could get me from either direction.
So I wrote the other half of the Author's Note, making clear that Numenon Corporation, Will Duane, and everyone he knows, including his dog, which he doesn't have, is FICTIONAL. I made them up.
And so, Numenon has one of the longest preambles in the universe. Which I consider hysterical now, but really didn't then.
But it's worked. I haven't been assaulted or sued yet.
That is the true story of the front hunk of Numenon, a special treat for being in the Alliance Book Club. The guy who wrote that critical review will never know this.
I have another true story to tell about how the book got its name. That's for later.
Thank you for sharing this. So sad...our society power trip and the potential to ruin another over an ego issue!
You're welcome. It feels good to share it.
That's funny. And yeah, definitely strikes as being only funny somewhat AFTER the event :)
And you answered my question I think about your friend and the visit to the meditation retreat. Hooray for beautiful happenstance :)
-
4
-
5
-
6
-
7
-
8
of 11 Next