David Appelbaum

The title of this book set me to expect something rather fluffy - maybe Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul - valuable enough, but not very challenging. But I found the present book to require much more determined chewing. I haven't read much of Gaston Bachelard, but I think that is a lot closer to the approach Appelbaum presents here. Everyday objects are explored here, but interpreted in a vast context in which surprising links emerge. These links are explored but not in the more playfully superficial way that James Burke uses in his Connections. Here the links are followed into the depths. I confess, much of the time I found myself in water over my head. But this is not a work of mathematics where the whole structure is so tightly intermeshed that to miss one piece is to miss the whole. This book is a collection of short poetic meditations on a collection of theme, each treating phenomena as gateways to the profound. A lot of poetry goes right over my head, too! But I just keep reading, and in a sentence or two I can find my way back on track. Appelbaum is persistent in his exploration. He holds a topic long enough... maybe it's a bit like chromotography, where the different facets of a mixture are given the space to emerge and reveal themselves.

I can imagine reading this book every five years or so. I expect that wholly different aspects of the work will resonate for me, as my own path of exploration evolves.

This is a philosophical work but not a collection of points debated with the current crop of champions. There are quotes, but of Rumi, Upanishads, Shakespeare. Lao-tsu. I think Rilke appeared, so the occasional modern author. This is a timeless book. I cannot judge its merits sufficiently to guess whether it could sustain a readership over centuries. It is timeless in that its topics and approach are not tied to any short period, but will likely provide food for thought as nutritious in two hundred years as today.… (more)