Choice Review

McPhail (communication, Univ. of Utah) warns the reader that his essays, "despite the density of vocabulary, the theoretical complexities ... and the philosophical nuances, are quite simply about love." This may be true, but primarily they are about language and the Zen process of rhetoric as a means to a coherent life of wholeness. The author seeks to extend the practice of thinking fostered in Robert Pirsig's celebrated Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (CH, Jul'74), and in every other "Zen and the Art of ..." book ever written, including Ray Bradbury's recent Zen in the Art of Writing (1989). Without discretion, he has devoured all the popular Zen literature (and there is a lot), and here spews it out, one precious saying after another. The book has detailed notes and a healthy bibliography, but it is uncertain of what it is really about. Academic analysis of postmodern deconstructionism joins with pop exclamations of journeying down life's path. McPhail's chief thesis is that the Zenist practice of language through koan and sutra practice is compatible with the ancient practice of rhetoric, for both offer "a glimpse of the coherent unity of existence that transcends the negations of rational language and dialectical logic." The "way" of Sophists, Taoists, and Zenists is integral with the "word." When he backs off from philosophical jargon, he gets into more interesting chapters that mix experience and thought (e.g., "To Grasp the Words and Die," "Beginners Mind," "Otherness"). It is a belabored task, with bits of insight rising out of pounds of the worst kind of philosophical and analytical rhetoric that runs counter to the real spirit of intuitive and experiential Zen. L. Smith; Bowling Green State University, Firelands College