My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion - Softcover

Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345452801 ISBN 13: 9780345452801

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2003

Synopsis

As a child growing up in the Hollywood Hills during the 1950s, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson thought it was perfectly normal that a guru named Paul Brunton lived with his family and dictated everything about their daily rituals, from their diet to their travel plans to his parents’ sex life. But in this extraordinary memoir, Masson reflects on just how bizarre everything about his childhood was–especially the relationship between his father and the elusive, eminent mystic he revered (and supported) for years.

Writing with candor and charm, Masson describes how his father became convinced that Paul Brunton–P.B. to his familiars–was a living God who would fill his life with enlightenment and wonder. As the Masson family’s personal guru, Brunton freely discussed his life on other planets, laid down strict rules on fasting and meditation, and warned them all of the imminence of World War III. For years, young Jeffrey was as ardent a disciple as his father–but with the onset of adolescence, he staged a dramatic revolt against this domestic deity and everything he stood for.

Filled with absurdist humor and intimate confessions, My Father’s Guru is the spellbinding coming-of-age story of one of our most brilliant writers.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Praise for MY FATHER’S GURU

“An uncompromising yet compassionate book . . . A coming-of-age memoir unlike any other.”
–The Toronto Star

“AN EXTRAORDINARY CAUTIONARY TALE .... about the enduring human impulse to imbue charismatic individuals with superhuman attributes.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Told with a mixture of humor and compassion. . . . Throughout this confessional book a grown man tells of an unusual, even weird childhood and the blind submission that consumed his family’s life.”
–ROBERT COLES
The New York Times Book Review

“My Father’s Guru is an interesting account of a warped upbringing made fascinating by the insight it provides into Masson’s adult life. He makes no excuses: in initially revering Freud and other authority figures, Masson realizes he was seeking new and better gurus that Brunton–and was fated to reject them pitilessly when they showed themselves, like Brunton, to be merely human.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Beneath the guru-bashing, the book is Masson’s poignant and loving indictment of his parents, worth reading for his psychological portrait of coming-of-age disillusionment.”
–Seattle Weekly

About the Author

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, ex-psychoanalyst and former projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, has written more than a dozen books, including the bestsellers The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats, Dogs Never Lie About Love, and When Elephants Weep. A longtime resident of Berkeley, California, he now lives in New Zealand with his wife, two sons, and five cats.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0345452801
• ISBN 13: 9780345452801
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192