Meetings with the Archangel - Hardcover

Mitchell, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060182458 ISBN 13: 9780060182458

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1998

Synopsis

Centering on the narrator's own spiritual growth, this unique, warmly humorous look at the search for enlightenment examines such questions as what or who God is, what love is, how people should live, and how they can overcome evil. Tour.

About this title

Review:

It's as if Stephen Mitchell had been working on three books and decided that instead of finishing them separately, he would just combine them into one. There is the fictional story of a Jewish man who has the jarring experience, while high on broccoli (prepared in the secret Hasidic fashion), of identifying himself with Hitler. He exterminates Jews and feels proud to have done it. Subsequently, in the back of his mind, he is preoccupied with unraveling the problem of evil, a process that leads him to Zen practice and a brilliant account of its tribulations and rewards. Then there is the nonfictional essay "Against Angels," an erudite lambasting of the popular fascination with angels. We get not only a summary of it but a philosophical history, an outline, and extensive passages. The third story is of a man's encounter with the angel Gabriel, who doesn't know why he's there, but who initiates the man into the orgiastic bliss of archangeldom and troops him through the heavens--and the resemblance to the Divine Comedy doesn't stop there. What (barely) links these stories is that the Zen practitioner is the author of "Against Angels" and, ironically, the one to whom Gabriel appears. If there is an abiding theme, it is that the suffering of humanity is redemptive. In this first fictional outing for Mitchell, it is his laid back, whimsical tone that really holds it all together and makes each story worth reading for its own sake. --Brian Bruya

About the Author:

Stephen Mitchell attended Amherst, the University of Paris, and Yale. His many books include The Book of Job, Tao Te Ching, Parables and Portraits, The Gospel According to Jesus, A Book of Psalms, Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, and Genesis. He is married to Vicki Chang, an acupuncturist, herbalist, and healer.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0060182458
• ISBN 13: 9780060182458
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256