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Praise For "Avatar Adi Da Samraj's The Mummery Book is a most extraordinary novel indeed. While contemporary postmodern fiction claims to have assimilated the most daring philosophical experiments of the twentieth century, too many contemporary authors have forgotten the spiritual substance of these experiments, so that their literary works remain mere exercises in style. Without the slightest bit of scholarly pedantry, The Mummery Book is devoted to the real problem that engages contemporary philosophy and political theory: finitude, mortality, the critique of egoic subjectivity, and above all the affirmation of life in the face of its apparently tragic character. "Framed as an allegory, The Mummery Book employs innovative syntax and narrative strategies to challenge and disable the linear rationality that we are trained to bring to texts, and that the allegory form itself seems to invite, leading to a reading experience that is nothing short of explosive (the "real" world of power and need dissolves into a mere mummer's play) and revelatory (a new, ecstatic relationship to life is glimpsed). "Those familiar with contemporary philosophy will recognize methodological and thematic parallels with the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida, as well with writers of fiction who have been inspired by this work. But unlike most postmodern fiction, style here is in the service of substance, while remaining playful. "This is a book that one will turn to again and again for the insight and pleasure it offers." —FREDERICK M. DOLAN, PH.D. |
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