Groovy Gurus: re-essaying the wisdom that sends a young man down unanticipated paths.

I went through a bit of a rough patch in my mid-20s. Nothing remarkable — closing the door on a significant relationship, and reconfiguring all the others. Mid-20s stuff, and I was hurtin' in that mid-20s fashion.

I stopped listening to rock 'n' roll and started listening to jazz. That helped.

I also started reading self-help books.

Most were actually unhelpful — Alice Miller, especially (I have to wonder if her wounding theories didn't in fact add to DFW's woes). But a few cut through the fog to boost my internal wherewithal.

[Takes deep breath...]

I forgot to mention: this was 1991. Just bear that in mind, please.

M. Scott Peck had several books on the NYT bestseller list. I read The Road Less Traveled, and I grokked it. “Life is difficult” — yes! It is, it truly is...

Here's another quote, from another book that was big in '91:

What does it mean when a man falls in love with a radiant face across the room? It may mean that he has some soul work to do. His soul is the issue. Instead of pursuing the woman and trying to get her alone, away from her husband, he needs to go alone himself, perhaps to a mountain cabin, for three months, write poetry, canoe down a river, and dream. That would save some women a lot of trouble — Robert Bly, Iron John

Dude — yes!!

A friend had a shack in the pines near Peterborough. I couldn't afford three months, but I did have a week of paid vacation coming to me, so off I went. No mountain, no river (certainly no phone), but plenty of solitude, notebooks and pencils. I supercharged my mythopoeic ass and returned to the city a stronger man.

So: helpful words from fellas who wanted to be helpful to other fellas — readers who were younger and more adrift than they. Readers like me. Mission accomplished.

"Now me want cookie!"

But, you know, a fella keeps reading and if he's actually taken some of these mythopoeic lessons to heart he reads widely and he reads deeply. And he eventually goes back to the words of the early sages that sent him on this journey and he re-essays their worth. And perhaps what once struck him with immeasurable force in a time of youthful crisis may, upon deeper reflection, be worth little when the reader finds himself on the other side of said crisis. He may read more of these men's words, and listen to accounts of their behaviour as they aged and did not go gently into that good night. And the reader may think, with some justification, “Yeah, that is just a little whack.”

If you don't kill the Buddha, he'll do the job for you.

Look, Jordan Peterson is not my bag of meat. But I get why he's a very big deal right now — he's Robert Bly on steroids, a digital media Lenny Bruce, clean and sober but jonesing on Jungian archetypes.

The "Groovy Guru" of KAOS -- I'd almost swear that's a MacBook to the left.

And I totally get the controversy. For the uninitiated (really?) let me sum it up — “You're not listening to what he's actually saying.” 

And both sides are right.

I won't address the nay-sayers, except to say, wow, do you ever have a shitty grasp on mythopoeic essence — your novels read like the hackneyed screeds that sent me screaming from the church pew. (I'm digging your comic books, though — keep it up.)

If you're an avid Petersonite — keep working through his syllabus, bucko (hey, he's big on Frye!). It might be in a year or two or it might be next week, but you will reach a point where you'll be glad you did the further/deeper reading.