The Wisdom of Donkeys

Title:

Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World

Author:

Merrifield, Andy

Subject:

Nature

Travel

New Age

Nonfiction

Description:

A literary ode to peace, presence, and fulfillment inspired by a walk taken with a most surprising creature."The demon of speed is often associated with forgetting, with avoidance . . . and slowness with memory and confronting," observes Milan Kundera in his novel Slowness. With that purpose in mind-a search for slowness and tranquility, Andy Merrifield sets out on a journey of the soul with a friend's donkey, Gribouille, to walk amid the ruins and spectacular vistas of southern France's Haute-Auvergne. As Merrifield contemplates literature, science, truth, and beauty amid the French countryside, Gribouille surprises him with his subtle wisdom, reminding him time and again that enlightenment is all around us if we but seek it.

Publisher:

Bloomsbury USA

Bloomsbury Publishing

Date:

2009/05/26

Digital Format:

READ IN BROWSER

ADOBE EPUB

KINDLE

Language:

English

ISBN:

9780802718723

Summary

A literary ode to peace, presence, and fulfillment inspired by a walk taken with a most surprising creature. "The demon of speed is often associated with forgetting, with avoidance . . . and slowness with memory and confronting," observes Milan Kundera in his novel Slowness . With that purpose in mind-a search for slowness and tranquility, Andy Merrifield sets out on a journey of the soul with a friend's donkey, Gribouille, to walk amid the ruins and spectacular vistas of southern France's Haute-Auvergne. As Merrifield contemplates literature, science, truth, and beauty amid the French countryside, Gribouille surprises him with his subtle wisdom, reminding him time and again that enlightenment is all around us if we but seek it.

Author Notes

Andy Merrifield is an independent scholar and author of eleven books and numerous articles, essays and reviews in The Nation, Harper's Magazine, New Left Review, Adbusters, Brooklyn Rail, Radical Philosophy and Dissent . He has spent decades teaching and writing about urbanism, social theory and literature, both inside and outside of a conventional university setting. He has also published three intellectual biographies on Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord, and John Berger. He is a regular speaker at scholarly, literary and political events on and off-campus. Over the years, he has led a somewhat nomadic existence, residing in the UK, the US, France and Brazil.

Reviews (2)

Booklist Review

Donkeys are misunderstood. At least, that's the impression left by Merrifield's gentle meditation on life, art, and the meaning of beauty, which crucially involves journeying through the hills of southern France and daydreaming in the open air with floppy-eared Gribouille's faithful companionship. Merrifield's donkey recalls another, more famous member of the breed, Robert Louis Stevenson's Modestine in his Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. Merrifield references Stevenson's travel classic often, also mentioning the work of other artists, including Cervantes, filmmaker Robert Bresson, G. K. Chesterton, George Orwell, and Anne Sexton, in which donkeys were important characters or the image of a donkey was an effective device. Even the Old and New Testaments and the Qur'an are cited. Watching donkeys graze in the middle of nowhere is, Merrifield concludes, a type of therapy. He discusses donkeys' habits and idiosyncracies, especially their distinctive braying, and insists that when you're with a donkey, time slows down. Can a donkey be a philosopher? Merrifield believes so and, with this modest, lovely little book, makes us believe so, too.--Sawyers, June Copyright 2008 Booklist

Library Journal Review

It is too seldom that the Spiritual Living section of LJ has an opportunity to read and review a real love story, but this is such a book, the affecting and eloquent account of a man and a chocolate-colored donkey named Gribouille. Merrifield, author of important biocritical studies of Henri Lefebvre and Guy Debord, as well as Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City, tells the tale of his wander through the Haute-Avergne in southern France, learning the ways of his patient, strong, and stubborn donkey companion, who gradually shows him that "real happiness comes in unforeseen places, through surprising twists and turns, through honesty." Highly recommended. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.