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
Yeah. Love/romance/staying together. Life's biggest mysteries.
Good to hear from you!
Hi, Joshua! Good to have you here in the book club. That's a really perceptive remark about Grandfather's anger. He thinks he's got the Meeting down cold and doesn't want to change it. Little does he know that the Great One has other ideas. And he's also gotten a bit slack, thinking Native ways superior. Big surprise. He's told to do something entirely different. Which he accepts. And then the power of his spiritual attainment overtakes him, and everyone else who's conscious.
A couple of things in that section are worth noting. GF's dream on Chapter 16, pg 101. He has a powerful dream of God––the white Buffalo––protecting him, followed almost immediately by the buffalo herd becoming his own followers, and tuning on him, probably killing him. He's had this dream as long as he's been doing the Meeting, and all his dreams and visions come true. So that will happen in this Meeting. He's very clear about the shadow side of spirituality and spiritual followers. They're his followers until they're tested, or a rumor about him starts, and then they'll turn on him, if not physically, by destroying his work.
I also like the area around page 91, where he's stunned that Paul Running Bird and how many others haven't captured a thing that he's been teaching or who he is. The have objectified him, made him into a shaman doll. He asks what he has to do to get through to people. Act like a rock star? Stand on stage raving? He resolves to take his time and teach the people the way they needed to be taught, not the way they want.
And the Great One blasts him with instructions that are outside his range of normal operation. He's thrown upside down.
Though I wrote this, I think captures something. The way we think we know everything. The darkness in the light. How blind some people on the "spiritual path" can be.
Behind this passage is something that bothered me a great deal. When I was writing this, at least two editors told me to do just what Grandfather's detractors have said to him––take out anything that isn't action. In terms of Numenon, that would mean cutting all scenes of rapture or inner life or contemplation.
The modern novel is like a screenplay: just enough description so that the action has a stage. That criteria eliminates most of the classics of world literature––they don't get off the starting blocks fast enough. Tolstoy, D.H. Lawrence, I don't know how many great writers would not have written if modern literary conventions had pertained to them.
I reacted to my editors' advice. I felt I would gut the book if I did as told. When GF is railing against those who want to change the way he works, that's me. Of course, the Great One immediately slaps that ego down.
I hope you don't think, "Boy, Sandy, you should have taken their advice," by the time we're done.
Very interesting that you notice GF's inability to keep his marriage going, Joshua. I was in a writing group led by a professor of literature at UC Santa Barbara (who was also one of the editors noted above). Leonard read this passage and said something like, "Wait a minute. He's supposed to be spiritually perfect, how come he can't keep a marriage going?"
Well, they're pretty hard in the best circumstances, and GF doesn't have the best. Huge cultural differences exist between him and his wife. And his People don't help much, either. Things have happened that he doesn't know about. Those are in the next book. And he's not spiritually perfect.
Let me tell you a story about relationships. This may be useful for several people. My husband and I burned about as hot as a couple can in the beginning. We fought about that hard, too. And we split up––loudly––three times in our early years. I was devastated, because we loved each other, but couldn't seem to get along.
My minister told me a story from her life. She had been her church secretary for many years. Suddenly, she felt an overwhelming need to go to the seminary and become a minister. She told her husband, and he told her, "If you do that, I'll divorce you."
She did, and he did. She found herself a single minister up in Canada somewhere, with an impoverished, falling down church. In not too many years, she built into a strong, vibrant spiritual community, bills paid, building repaired. She woke up one morning and it was as though the universe had pulled a switch. She knew she was done there.
She called the seminary and in 24 hours, they have a lovely couple, both ordained ministers, to take her place.
She made her way back to her old home and reunited with her husband. They remarried, with their grandchildren attending the wedding. And they lived happily ever after.
Jean told me, "If you're supposed to be together, Sandy, you will be."
Her story was like lightning bolt to me. I relaxed about my relationship. My husband and I have been married 32 years. I'd sign up for another 32. NOT to say that it wasn't work.
Re: Will. I really like him, too. He does have a moral center, and he does do things for those around him. He's one of the loneliest people I can imagine, with nothing in his background to really sustain him. He's been going on guts, and those are wearing out. I identify with him, too, Joshua. Maybe that's why I wrote him!
And–-thank God for therapy! I used to believe in universal therapy. Everybody should be in it. Then I realized only the top cut of people can benefit from it. Those who are willing to experience pain, who have the courage to look at their lives and tell the truth. Who can make changes in their thoughts and behavior. Who are willing to be happy. Therapy asks us to have the courage to be ourselves. Not too many have it.
Bravo for those who do.
Yes - Robert Moore says that if you get inflated, even if you're a spiritual guru and your inflation looks like "I'm a spiritual guru, I am so humble and wise", you're still up there on your high chair.
Haha, not at all! I love character driven stories and you are right about so many of the classics not making it past today's editors.
Thank you for this. It has helped me calm down as well. It helps to have a clear head about everything - anxiety only clouds your mind.
That definitely has to be the crux and the crucifixion of therapy. It takes all my resources to do just one of those sometimes.
Hi, Joshua and all!
The guru thing can be a trip. I've knew a very spiritual couple who had a guru. Two actually, they had two different gurus. And fought about who's guru was better. "My guru is better than your guru." Uh-huh.
Well, Numenon does go on. I'm reading it again and enjoying it. But I know what my (relatively new) editor would do: slash at it with her golden machete. I used to get an edit back, look at it, and then run around the house screaming for a few days before realizing she was right. Now I look at what she does and see its brilliance.
I really dislike the dumbing down of literature, though. In the book market, I compete with people who write chick-lit (gag), romance (double gag), and cozy mysteries (which can be really good, as shown by Alexander McCall Smith of the #1 Ladies' Detective Agency). These genres sell more than I can imagine. That's the mass consciousness, wanting entertainment and nothing but.
Working with this book club––be prepared to blush, y'all––has been the most fun thing I've done since I started writing. I kid you not. Well, I do like being on radio and book signings. But the typical social media scene is like high-school on steroids. (This site is social media, just social for grown-ups)
"If you're supposed to be together, Sandy, you will be."
Aren't those great words? My minister was Jean Grover. She passed on not too many years ago. I will love her forever. I'm kind of hip-looking, I suppose. Jean was very conservative-looking, hair and suits and all. Blew my stereotypes. She just had it in the ways that matter. Wonderful woman. It's my pleasure to pass on Jean's words.
Therapy can be painful, but not participating in therapy is worse. Therapy really shows its worth when people get to be around 50. Those who have had therapy tend to be so much more insightful and generally nicer to be around. The rest tend to sound like country-western songs.
Now for my news. My designer and I have finished the interior of Lady Grace, the sequel to The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy. Not finished as in written, finished as in ready to to go to the printer. Phew. Lots of work to get that far. Then I tackle Sam & Emily: A Romance from the Underground, book number 3 in the series. It's also written and slogging its way through the publication process.(S & E is not your ordinary romance.) And I've begun the rewrite of Numenon's sequel. Plus I've got writing deals moving in three countries. Life is good.
So long!
How's everyone doing? Any reactions to the reading or Inside Job? Let me know.
Sandy
Hi Sandy and all--I've been swamped--and out of town--so haven't checked in in a few days but did watch "Inside Job" last week. To put it mildly, I was horrified. As a self-assessed "observer", I have this view of myself as being quite pragmatic and aware of what goes on around me. I always think I see (and can see) the negative and still take it with a grain of salt, but watching "Inside Job" I had a coming to reality about what's really going on with financial institutions. And even this past week I saw a post somewhere questioning whether banks were burying their heads in the sand before the recession!--when the actual truth is many MANY people in the industry knew exactly what was going on and went ahead anyway. It's such a devastating commentary on our culture.
Meanwhile, I spent the weekend at an ecological film festival where I must have seen 20 films--several of which focused on what multinational corporations are doing to the environment and the people who live there. One in particular, "The Naked Option" featured the Niger Delta and how Big Oil has just blatantly ignored laws that help protect the environment and have rendered the Niger river, the sole source of water for the inhabitants there, completely toxic--then refused to help the communities who are suffering as a result in any way. When you see how people that head up these companies (and usually the government officials they are paying off) get caught up in the greed and power, its so disturbing. At least in Numenon I feel Will has the seeds of goodness in him--sometimes I wonder if some of the corporate and government leaders have lost all capacity for humaneness--humanity....
You really had a shocking weekend! Looking at the evil we do is pretty horrifying. I've not gotten into the environmental impacts of industrial growth. It's so awful that I don't think I could bear a close look. Of course, the problem comes closer. We live near Santa Barbara CA, which has arguably the most beautiful coastline in the world. Except for the oil rigs, of course.
Oil platforms dot the horizon, telling us that Big Oil is right off shore. Thankfully, our diligent environmentalists have kept the oil companies from quadrupling the number of rigs. So far.
I can remember meeting one of my husband's old buddies from graduate school. They both studied urban planning, but Marcel went in a more mathematical direction. Which turned out to be the right one, career-wise. He got the international ecnomics job that Barry and his friends wanted, evaluating economic development projects. When I met him, he'd just quit to become a banker in Switzerland.
Why? His life had been threatened one too many times in developing countries. Special interests have a great stake in how economic development studies come out. Sometimes, offing the economist seemed like the way to go. Or scaring him so much he went to Switzerland. I had no idea that that was how the real world worked.
With all the spiritual light that humanity brings, we also carry darkness. Deep darkness. A few years ago, I was listening to the car radio. They played a recording of traders from Enron laughing about the old ladies they were driving out of their houses by the gas prices they were manipulating. They thought it was funny!
I talked to a psychiatrist about this. He said, "That is pure sociopathic behavior."
There it is. I'm going to put some questions down below about our last week's reading.
The school I atted once a month is near Santa Barbara!!!!
Hai Sandy, just love the book. Reading whenever I can. The people surrounding the main figures are very interesting to meet. How each of them combines spirituality and materialism in their own way. Like Melissa using her intellect to 'know' spirituality and lives out a materialistic life. Like Paul Runningbird, wanting to have a 'spiritual' life and practicing it in a materialistic way. I believe for any reader there will be someone to identify. Love the mule!
I love the mule, too! And the horses. Squirrel Brains is lacking in everything a horse needs, except heart. And the dun stallion has everything but a pretty head. And Paul Running Bird can't see the difference. I live on a ranch and have ridden most of my life. Horses have so much to teach us.
None of the "guys" are simple, just like most of the people I know.
Glad you're enjoying the book. I does have some dark places, which we'll come to next week, methinks.
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