Reviews
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THREE POP-CULTURE REVIEWS
l) The novel has all the elements of an absorbing thriller and
prime-time TV show. SMALL PRESS BOOK REVIEW
2) Whatever you want, whatever you may be looking for you'll
find in this one. THE BOOK WORLD
3) THE WEED & THE WINTER SOLSTICE provides something
missing in most fiction: an attention to characterization and the
details of psychological compromise and survival which lend
insight into a variety of rationales, motivations, and private
lives. THE BOOK WATCH
THREE LITERARY REVIEWS
1) A welcome addition to the library of outstanding fiction, THE
WEED & THE WINTER SOLSTICE was featured and highly
recommended in our TV special publicizing some of the best
books available. THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
2) A luminously dark tale of an for our time. José Argülles
3) Author Howard Cook presents several profound themes that
beg to be noticed and analyzed. Lovers of allegory will be in
heaven. WEST COAST REVIEW OF BOOKS. "Howard Cook"
<howard.cook84@yahoo.com>
IN OTHER WORDS
What did José Argüelles mean by "a luminously dark tale of an
for our time"? "Lovers of allegory" will give different answers.
The following quotations may be highly suggestive:
“The new worlds with whose life it is most urgent for us to make
contact are the spiritual worlds within ourselves, not the physical
worlds in outer space.”—Arnold Toynbee
"The awareness of the difficulties, pains, and dangers of the
period of transition should not overwhelm us and make us lose
sight of the positive aspects of the situation, of the great
achievements already made -- and above all of the wonders
which are approaching and which will be the glory of the New
Age. All obstacles can be overcome; all deviations can be set
right by the inrush of the new life, by the action of the new
tremendous energies which are operating with increasing
momentum.
"A new and higher type of man is manifesting, the 'planetary
man,' who has an immensely enlarged outlook and is rapidly
outgrowing the limitations of the past, whose sense of
'participation' goes beyond the planet, in an increasing
awareness of cosmic dimensions and relationships, towards an
ever-widening universality.
"The immense scope of man's progression towards a new and
higher level and the inspiring vision of an ultra-human condition
have been stated in a striking way, with the support of many
scientific facts, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his book 'The
Future of Man.' It should be read in its entirety, because no
separate quotation could give an adequate idea of the grandeur
and of the solidity of the author's conception. But we shall quote
a relevant passage from another book of his, The Phenomenon
of Man, New York, Harper Bros. 1959):
We are, at this very moment, passing through an age of
transition. The age of industry; the age of oil, electricity and the
atom; the age of the machine, of huge collectivities and of
science -- the future will decide what is the best name to
describe the era we are entering. The word matters little. What
does matter is that we should be told that, at the cost of what
we are enduring, life is taking a step, and a decisive step, in us
and in our environment. After the long maturation that has been
steadily going on during the apparent immobility of the
agricultural centuries, the hour has come at last, characterized
by the birth pangs inevitable in another change of state. There
were the first men -- those who witnessed our origin. There are
others who will witness the great scenes of the end. To us, in
our brief span of life, falls the honour and good fortune of
coinciding with a critical change of the noosphere.
Our earth of factory chimneys and offices, seething with work
and business, our earth with a hundred new radiations -- this
great organism lives, in final analysis, because and for the sake
of, a new soul. Beneath a change of age lies a change of
thought. Where are we to look for it, where are we to situate
this renovating and subtle alteration which, without appreciably
changing our bodies, has made new creatures of us? In one
place and one only -- in a new intuition involving a total change
in the physiognomy of the universe in which we move -- in other
words, in an awakening.--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The
Phenomenon of Man, p. 213, 214
">Email: "Howard Cook" <howard.cook84@yahoo.com>
Email: "Howard Edward Cook" <6212hcook@comcast.net>
423 435-8897
