Customer Reviews (1)

Takes a lot of patients to read this book
After a couple of false starts, I was able to finally finish this book. I read it because I had seen "Cabaret" the movie and the play. I have not seen the play "I am a Camera" by Erik Von Deutten. However, I expected a faster moving story and really had to drudge through this. There are moments that you can identify with. However for the most part you feel like a third party. You may not want to identify with some of the characters.
Whatever is supposed to make this book good is lost in the details.

Well I read it but I am not sure I want to read anymore of his book. I feel a little cheated when one describes his use of English and the book is over before you find this. I feel a little embarrassed at not liking it with the praise it receives, but I guess you cannot like them all.
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Product Description
Jacob Ericson is a quiet, kind, and somewhat simple man who works as a ranch hand for crotchety Professor Carter and his crippled daughter,Sharon, in California's Mojave Desert in the 1920s. Jacob is a good man, genuine, honorable, but hardly extraordinary--until he miraculously heals a dying calf with his hands.

However, while he is content to cure the town's animals, it isn't long before he is persuaded to use his gift in other ways. When Sharon, whom he adores, begs him to heal her leg, he cannot deny her.

His acquiescence causes them both to be exploited. Sharon runs away to Los Angeles to pursue her dreams of stardom. Jacob follows her, hopeful that they will meet again. And they do--as miserable performers in a seedy stage show. While they plan their escape from the dreary stage life, Jacob is asked to heal a self-absorbed young millionaire. And with his assent, Jacob's plans, and all of his dreams, begin to crumble.

Written in tight, vivid, and seamlessly crafted prose, this previously unpublished tale by two of the greatest storytellers of the twentieth century shows the dangers a magical gift holds for even the noblest of characters.Amazon.com Review
This collaborative effort between Aldous Huxley andChristopher Isherwood, from a film project they were contracted towrite in the late 1930s, was discovered in a trunk at Huxley's estateby actress Sharon Stone, who was researching the author's work for afilm based on one of his short stories. Jacob's Hands is anovella-length film treatment for a script about a ranch hand who,after learning that he has the gift of healing, becomes disillusionedwhen he discovers that mending a broken body does not always heal atormented soul. The slim volume proves both mesmerizing and moving,and the use of the present tense lends an air of innocence and mysteryto the story, while the book's emotional undercurrents and passionsstir up deeper, troubling responses. Jacob's Hands is acomplex, disquieting modern fairy tale unlike anything else by eitherauthor, and a fascinating artifact of their Hollywood careers.--Michael Bronski ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Major talents "slumming" a bit for the movies
Saying that Huxley and Isherwood are slumming by writing a screenplay is really an unfair comparison to the Hollywood of then and the Hollywood of now. Hollywood has always produced junk, but back then they were also more likely to look for those scripts that wrote about the human condition, looking to make a picture that talked about bigger issues. The introduction and the product description on the back cover tell us that Isherwood and Huxley fled Europe for the comparative freedom of Hollywood.

"Jacob's Hands" really is more of a Twilight Zone effort than a traditional novel. It can best be described as a John Steinbeck type of simple 30 year old farmhand has the power to heal animals and most people with has hands. But, this wonderful gift has a lot of burdens, too.

The novel is clearly written for the movies. Lots of the description and scene-setting is done in that sparse style you'll see when reading scripts. Some of the characters are straight out of the stereotypes you'll see in movies from the 1930s (happy African American household servants and rich society women to name a couple).I found myself imagining a black and white movie in my head and found that it moved along remarkably well. It takes about as long to read as a movie would have to have watched the movie if it had been made. It was an enjoyable read.

Aldous Huxley and Christopher Iserwood collaboration
I discovered this while teaching Honors for three years.Our focus was to read a sampling of both Orwell and Huxley.Well, Sharon Stone "discovered" this book in the ancestral Huxley estate while filming a short story in England.At the time, I thought that this might well be her one claim to fame, but she has resurfaced as a fine actress.An amazing read and a filmscript within a book, we come across a farm couple from North Dakota who have escaped the Dust Bowl (Most of us went to Seattle or Yakima, Washington) and their farm hand/cowboy discovers that he has the power to HEAL!This goes beyond just you basic "Hot Hand", which is still popular up here, but he must then decide how to use these powers.A strong female heroine, also, and just a sad, sad and poignant book.My students, sadly, no longer believe in any sort of "Magic", so most really didn't "GET" the book!(Honors Students are awfully narrow, surprisingly!)Anyone with ANY appreciation of literature will love this short novel: it's a newly discovered masterpiece!Buy this book NOW from Amazon.com!Use it in your classes and pass it on to friends!

To Be Swallowed
The story goes that in 1997 actress Sharon Stone was reading the diaries of playwright/novelist Christopher Isherwood and discovered that Christopher has collaborated on a screenplay with novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley. She asked permission to search the estate, and in a dusty trunk was found a yellowed copy of Jacob's Hands. The best guess is that the fable had been written in the late 1930's, when (as the back jacket says), "a large sector of the intellectual community of Europe immigrated to the United States, to California in particular. What they found there was Nirvana - sunshine, freedome, mysticism, and the burgeoning movie industry." The two great thinkers met amidst this illectual Utopia and wrote this work together.

This is a short book, an easy read in an hour's time. As such, it is hard to say too much without giving it all away. Jacob is a good, honest, decent, sound, strapping young man. The kind of man that sees no ill will in others because he has none in himself. He learns as a farmhand on a California ranch that he has the power to heal. The power makes other love him, suspect him, and ultimately exploit him. He loves Sharon, the daughter of his former boss on the ranch. He meets Earl, a young millionaire with need of his healing powers. The three of them form a triangle that sort of reminds me of the ending of Ethan Frome (don't ask me why, though, since it's kind of a stretch).

The overriding theme, I believe, of the book is this question: is it more important to heal the soul or to heal the body? Are they ultimately connected or mutually exclusive? There is also some discussion of how sometimes we hold on to our illness, our weakness; we are wont to let them go. Because somehow they come to define us, and we survive more with the fear than we can live without it.

There is a brief introduction to the book by Aldous' wife, Laura Archera Huxley. It is useful in the fact that she gives some background into Aldous' thoughts on healing and the moral and religious implications of such a gift. It helps to set an informed backdrop to this interesting and thought-provoking fable.

The insights of Huxley ...
Interesting how Hollywood types embrace such spiritual ideas without commiting to one chosen path. This work starts with an incredible insight into some of Jesus' words yet speaks to healing as a natural and mystical experience. I'd think the Creator would be more included in the reasoning.
Well worth reading. Many, many thanks to Sharon Stone for recognizing the beauty of this fable and giving it new life at this end of the century.

weak plot, weaker characters
First off, let me say I enjoy most of Huxley's work.The style of this book is totally different from the usual Huxley method.I've never read anything else by Christopher Isherwood.This book starts out boring, and ends boring.That's really the sum of it.The characters are flat and extremely simple.In his early work (say, pre "Brave New World"), Huxley's characters are an embodiment of one single trait.However, they are always developed well, and their thought processes are complex while remaining within this one trait.This book has the same characterization - Jacob, for example, is moronically kind and simple (think Forrest Gump).There are also the classic evil tricksters, and so on.It's not done well at all, and I left this book with a bad taste in my mouth. ... Read more

Product Description
This comprehensive and accessible reference work serves Isherwood scholars who need quick access to people, places, novels, stories, essays and plays, introduces Isherwood to those who know little of him, expands the knowledge of the literate general reader, and refreshes teachers of literature with Isherwood details. Entries on Isherwood's most influential friends, including W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley and Stephen Spender, are significant. Included are all of the monumental "roles" Isherwood exemplified during his life--writer, rebel, gay-activist hero, and proud exponent of the Eastern philosophy known as Vedanta. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Two Literary Greats in China, 1938
This is the record of a train journey from Hong Kong to Shanghai, made by Isherwood and Auden between February and June, 1938. The writers had been commissioned by their publisher to write a travel book about the East, the choice of itinerary left to their own discretion. With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the pair decided to go to China. As Isherwood says in the foreword: "We spoke no Chinese, and possessed no special knowledge of Far Eastern affairs." Acknowledging that he cannot vouch for the accuracy of many of the things told him by the Chinese, Isherwood continues: "We can only record, for the benefit of the reader who has never been to China, some impression of what he would be likely to see, and of what kind of stories he would be likely to hear."

In this collaborative effort, Isherwood wrote the text and Auden contributed a substantial body of verse. There is also a very good selection of photos, mostly of people, both notable (Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Chou En-lai) and obscure (soldiers, peasants).

Throughout their journey, Auden and Isherwood were treated as dignitaries, shown every deference by the locals and granted numerous audiences with both Chinese and European officials. They seem to always be sitting down to tea with somebody! Except for the occasional Japanese air raid, the travelers never get all that close to the war. The front is always somewhere out there on the periphery. I didn't find the book particulary illuminating about the nature of the Sino-Japanese War. There are a few mentions of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army, but not much detail. That criticism notwithstanding, JOURNEY TO A WAR is a very interesting book for armchair travelers, and Auden and Isherwood are pleasant and amusing traveling companions. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1933, the novel portrays a series of encounters in Berlin between the narrator and the camp and mildly sinister Mr. Norris. Evoking the atmosphere in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis, the novel has achieved the status of a modern classic. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Alan Cumming has SUCH passion for Isherwood!
I have a bunch of audio books narrated by Alan Cumming, and I have to say that Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye To Berlin are the two best I ever heard.Maybe it's because that Alan was the Emcee in the musical Cabaret, for which these two books lent inspiration to.But for whatever reason, Alan brings you into the magical world of divine decadence in pre-war Berlin with Arthur Norris, the ideal of an enigma; Fraulein Schroeder, the chatty, light and amusing landlady; Otto and Anni, the next generation of Germans; and of course the narrator Chris.Alan knows what he's reading and because of his divine comprehension, he makes the recording sound so much more fun and enjoyable to listen to! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great anthology
Disclaimer:I didn't read every essay in the book.I picked and chose, and read the half of the essays (those that appealed to me).Fortunately, this book allows you to do just that.

This is a book about modern Hindu thought as it relates to spirituality and religion by a group of Western and Indian writers.Like many Vedanta books aimed at a Western audience, Christian ideas serve as reference points rather frequently.Much of this I think has to do with Ramakrishna's ventures into both Islam and Christianity, his return to Hinduism, and his message that one could find spiritual value in any of the religions.

There are many elements of the book that I found challenging and am not sure if I accept, but I also think that one reads a book like this to provide food for contemplation and thought, not to provide answers to questions that we accept without question.In particular the question of celibacy strikes me as inconsistent with how I look at religion and spirituality, in part because my view of concepts analogous to Brahman and Maya differ in fundamental ways from the contemporary Hindu approach.This isn't to say one side is right and the other wrong.They may well both be correct from limited perspectives.

On the other hand, I found many essays in the book to be quite interesting.Gerald Heard's essay "Return to Ritual" was quite striking and I found it resonated with me a great deal, and the general description of what drives folks from modernism towards Vedanta and other religions echoed elsewhere seems as valid today as when it was written.

Understanding religion in spite of years of Sunday School
For thirty years I have read and inquired about the major religious traditions in the world, studying them like the historical linguist I was, trying to find the common threads that would reveal to me the basic truths of the universe.I read history by Trevor Ling, theory by Bhagavan Das, practice by Tarthang Tulku and Lama Govinda, commentaries and scriptures in translation.

This collection of essays gathered by Christopher Isherwood is by far the most lucid commentary on the common currents between Christianity and the writings that form the basis of both Hinduism and Buddhism that I have ever found.The essays are short, mostly, only three to five pages and easy to digest in a short sitting.This is not a book that needs to be read cover to cover, but you will be tempted to do just that.Then you will want to read it again, but more slowly.

Mr. Isherwood, in a wonderfully written introduction asks the question, how does one achieve the divinity we are taught is already ours?The answer -- by ceasing to be oneself -- is not one commonly taught in church.(I was raised a Protestant).A rather spirited imaginary dialogue follows this answer, and it is supported not only by the Eastern teachers represented here, but also by the Christians, who illuminate areas of our familiar religion that we seldom explore.

I can't begin to do justice to this work.Just trust me.If you're looking for enlightenment, this is a good place to begin. ... Read more