In his foreword, Theodore Ziolkowski tries to translate what famous author and 1929 Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann considered to be the parody of The Glass Bead Game, and having skimmed over the entire foreword prior to reading the novel, I am glad to find my reaction similar to that of Mann’s. Ziolkowski writes, “It is easy, too easy, to be sober and grave.” He says this like he is in agreement with Mann’s feelings and the foreword, from what I could gather, is really a pro-Mann and pro-Hesse writing, and it serves the start of the novel very nicely.

The book might confuse many readers because it is long and what some might consider overwrought. But, for those who consider it overworked, with this foreword the reader receives confirmation that his ideas of the text aren’t far-fetched or an insult to Hesse, but rather they’re in line with the thoughts of some great writers and most likely Hesse himself.

The determination that exudes from the young Knecht is most impressive as we find him being led along by the preceding Magister Ludi. Hesse writes, “Something was in the wind; he sensed it; but now it was far less a source of joy than it had been.” This sentence is in reference to the Magister’s feelings toward the young Knecht, who is seen by the Magister as being a young version of himself. And it is because of this that Knecht takes his part in a long line of Castalians. Knecht, as I’ve said, was born into the lot, losing his parents at a young age and displaying the tremendous gifts of the secluded sect.

Those in Castalia see things differently and react to situations much differently, but they still display normal human emotion, only in seclusion much like monks do. But all different vocations have their set of rules, their sets of personalities. Most of the people involved with the vocation have heard a calling to it and those who find themselves unfortunately a part of something to which they have not been called are left with nothing but feelings of torture which will expel them out of their thought-to-be calling.

The teacher/sage-pupil relationship is at the heart of The Glass Bead Game. Knecht, while taking his place in the Castalian lineage, witnessed the death of his mentor, the preceding Magister Ludi. He was given the honor of speaking at the Magister’s funeral. Hesse writes this of the occasion: “(Knecht) spoke only of the grace of such an old age and death, of the immortal beauty of the spirit which had been revealed through (The Magister Ludi) to those who had shared his last days.” Clearly Knecht looked lovingly upon the Magister and in many ways modeled his life after him, but I won’t go as far as to say that Knecht viewed the Magister as his savior. No, Knecht was really too bright to put something so simply because Knecht took what was necessary from every given situation; he was a genius concerning life, but even the genius of life had to endure his share of temptations.

Though, even when a man of intelligence and learned grace embarks upon the temptations which life has thrown his way, he does so with a personal strength and tremendous concentration which only those living in the present can exude. Knecht was a light house displaying brightness to all those who came near him both in his lifetime and then following his lifetime through his writings and the many stories of him that would emerge.

In The Glass Bead Game, Hesse takes us through Knecht’s whole life but only stops to describe in detail certain periods and, if we’re lucky, certain conversations in which Knecht had engaged. At the end of “The Legend” chapter, Knecht is with his new pupil Tito after having left Castalia for a life out in the world. They awake one morning and Knecht finds Tito outside near a lake. Hesse writes, “Knecht gave him a friendly nod.” This nod says much of Knecht, justifying the great descriptions that Hesse has given us of the man, “the legend.”

Hesse has a way of doing that in his stories, like all great writers do: justifying his descriptions by giving us gestures performed by the characters which serve as selling points to the reader. I’ve not come across a writer I like more than Hermann Hesse for that very reason; his characters are always thorough and only unrealistic to those not willing to dream along with Hesse himself.

The Glass Bead Game is one of my favorite novels and it might become one of yours too, but patience is required. I’m glad I read it.

In London’s early life, we find him recklessly finding his way, paying no attention to humanized rules, but obeying universal laws by necessity. He would have broken them, too, if he could. He wasn’t one to observe time schedules or to take notice of what others his age were doing and succumbing to the pressure of the masses. He joined a march on Washington, but did so after, “…it had already left Oakland for Sacramento.” He knew what he wanted and this knowledge was good enough for him. London rode the rails with the other unemployed who were headed to Washington D.C. to demand $5 million with which they could work to build roads. This human necessity to have money was at the heart of Jack’s mind. Money dominated him, both causing his hurried nature as well as torturing him later because of brimming debt.

Careless is a word perhaps best describing this wild man’s nature. But he did think of life in terms “better” and “worse,” as all politicians do. London knew where he was going as far as the physical destination each time he set out, but the wild man’s nature made him unconcerned with the elements along the way.

Writing of Alaska, journalist Rex Beach wrote, “There’s no drama up here, no comedy, no warmth.” How untrue Beach would prove those words. Even he would write successful books about the treacherous region both he and London would explore and experience to the extreme.

The adventurous London had money fueling his moves yet again. Not that he had any when he left for the Klondike, but surely his inspiration for leaving was both money and selfish desire. But the desire of which I write is not a horrible selfishness as can be found with athletes looking for the ball, but rather human will, with which some seem to be born more. But, for the sake of argument, some also live well past 40. In any event, London was there, a risk-taker, an unsure risk-taker, taking commendable steps for the reader’s benefit. He would not yet know it in Alaska’s snowy terrain, but what he was doing was providing entertainment, tugging on the rope which moves the curtain for his one man show, butterflies swarming about his stomach, but yet feeling the tug and resistance of that rope. We were, unknowingly, awaiting this storyteller’s appearance. He emerged, full-fleshed, later.

I can’t imagine many writers experiencing such warmth from the cold hand of New York publishers, today or then: S.S. McClure wrote, “If you will send us everything you write we will use what we can, and what we cannot we will endeavour to dispose of to the best possible advantage.”

The Klondike writings were Jack’s own cast shining star, illuminating the literary world in a flash, flying from California to New York and propelling London into what would prove to be his real career. His other rough careers were not for him but probably helped to kill him. Being a writer was only out of necessity for Jack. So many other physical trades went against him and he against them, but they paved the way for his stories of perseverance which bred great true stories of perseverance for others paying for their sweat but hopeful for more in their lives.

London was always an athlete and even wanted to be a professional prize fighter, but his body wasn’t built for it. Perhaps if he wasn’t made to be the family’s bread winner by the age of 14 he would have not taken the early lumps which knocked his physicality out of serious contention. Did London know better than to live a dangerous life?

London, the animal, puts himself into his arguably most famous story, The Call of the Wild. He seems to be Buck, rising as a persevering presence in whatever climate he is placed in by the human authority figures, proving his superiority over the flawed. Buck, the perfect beast, is either a template for Jack or Jack is a template for Buck. Either way, Kershaw observes London’s stories and reports on them with great summaries in A Life. He tells how Buck, “fearlessly attacks the tribe, killing several, then rejoins a wolf pack.” London wasn’t a human murderer. That is one of the few names London can’t fairly be called, but he murdered self-doubt and he murdered outside doubt, too, just like his dog Buck does in The Call of the Wild. Both bring heart to the snow, and the heat pumping through their organ melts people’s pre- and ill-conceived notions of them.

I don’t find London’s writing to be purely out of anger as much as it is from experience alone. He surely had enemies – most obviously documented here: Capitalism – but he really is writing for every one because not one person can stand up to their individual adversity. Though he would think of himself as superior, London still believed in a base and general human strength.

But depression loomed large in his life, right when he was “supposed” to be at the top of his game, after writing The Sea Wolf. Kershaw writes that in 1905 he began, “what he called his ‘long sickness’: a feeling that, despite all he had achieved, it had meant nothing.” He was spitting on success, claiming to never have liked writing, continuing to eat poorly. London was stubborn, living what he wanted and doing so humanely because after all, he was a man and writer for the people, having risen up from the people as a beacon of hope and a buoy on which people could hold. If London’s real life is a good enough tale – and it is – he provided any doubters with fictitious stories, but he didn’t want to, at least not most of the time.

If the life of a full-time adventurer existed, London’s resume and drive would make him the ideal candidate. But yet, finances haunted him who supported many other than himself and so his pen was busy, pushing out 1000 words daily, no “ifs,” “ands,” or “buts.” This routine is great evidence of how harsh London was, but also how generous. He wrote for others mostly, and he just happened to also be a beneficiary.

With his documented busy life, London never devoted himself wholly to anything, making some wonder if he was perhaps over-adventurous. No one spends all his time with one hobby or habit, but when a man like Jack, who worked for himself with no man above him, keeps too many hands in too many jars, he doesn’t fully grasp anything, but that seems okay. After all, he is still wildly respected and influential in a variety of avenues from literature to politics to agriculture.

Perhaps Kershaw’s most entertaining moments come from London himself. The book has many letters written from Jack to others but it also comes with passages from London’s stories. From Martin Eden, “The pressure on his eardrums was a pain, and there was a buzzing in his head…Coulors and radiances surrounded and battled him and pervaded him.” We must receive these delicious samples in a biography of a writer. Missing from musician biographies are listening samples to coincide with the music being described. This of course is a much easier task for writer bios and we should be thankful because those bios exist that don’t provide the reader with writing samples.

This book, at times, reads like Kershaw is a salesman and he’s inserting proof of the cutting power of the knife by embellishing these letters and story paragraphs. Kershaw, as one finds, is definitely a raving fan in this book and it might be worth picking up some of his other writings to see just how obviously influential London is to Kershaw. Kershaw has received much praise for his work, not nearly as much as London did in his lifetime, so we’re told, but a bio of Kershaw’s climb to the top might be interesting.

Of course London’s literary and personal life – which were one in the same – wouldn’t have been complete without its detractors. Like just about everyone, London felt the crushing hand of criticism around his neck, but his was too strong to be crushed, though I’m sure the grip at least temporarily cut off some artistic oxygen. “As early as 1903 he had been attacked for alleged similarities between sections of The Call of the Wild and Edgerton R. Young’s My Dogs of Northland.” London was surely not a liar and didn’t claim to be drawing from other sources but, again, in this regard London’s ignorance showed through. And now, over 100 years later, no one really seems to care how much London borrowed to spin his exciting and relatable adventure tales. But academic circles wouldn’t accept him until years, decades even, past his death. Yet, London wasn’t writing for their “snobbish” approval: he wrote professionally and, it just so happens, honestly and with tearing passion, for even endeavors done for the attainment of money can be and are achieved with honest and raging desire. London, one must only need his writings to know, is proof of the co-existence.

London and his second of two wives, Charmian, would travel together on adventures, her being his “Mate Woman.” But she was too concerned for their future because of Jack’s being spread so thin that she couldn’t help but tear up when these sea adventures, during which Jack was accessible, ended. The two, though, did live a very happy marriage and she supported him wholly, even following his 1916 death. One can really sense the passion and affection the two felt for one another when he reads Kershaw’s book. The love spills out of many of the 305 pages, but when the feeling wasn’t love, it was still passionate and there is a tremendous mix of deep emotions that Kershaw beautifully relates in this book.

The passion didn’t end even as Jack’s life was coming to an end, largely because the 1000 words-a-day habit didn’t end even when he was plummeting toward death. This is perhaps because debt loomed so largely over London that the pen – his vocational tool – was his way of chipping away at the weight of the debt.

The deep pessimism Jack felt in 1914 is displayed rather well in his novel of the year The Mutiny of the Elsinore. Kershaw writes, “The book’s hero, John Pathurst, echoes Wolf Larsen and Jack at this most pessimistic, believing that the ‘chemical ferment’, as Jack described existence, is a struggle which ends in nothing more than death. This is an obviously depressing comment coming from a writer who writes of a sometimes depressed man. One must wonder if the word “manic” appropriately applies to London’s situation, but this ultimately doesn’t matter except for people who want to feel more like London, and even that is dangerous. One should write only like himself and encourage others to follow their own “adventure path.” I think London, though he had great heroes of his own, would agree that a life is one’s own unique experience.

I think Alex Kershaw’s Jack London: A Life is a great read for everyone, but be sure to prepare your goods for an adventure when you finish.

Demian is a story about a different kind whose intellect is brighter and whose vision is uncanny. Demian is the name of the intriguing character in this Hermann Hesse novel. Sinclair is the storyteller who, “cannot tell (his) story without reaching a long way back.” Those words open the prologue of the story from a man whose current age we never learn, but the story tracks Sinclair’s coming into a rare kind of adulthood, as Hesse’s novels often do. Anyone who has read Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund, and even, in a strange way, Steppenwolf, can recognize Hesse’s style that people like me eat up. I don’t know exactly what a person “like me” would be, but for the sake of the review, we’ll call us searchers, an awfully wide-ranging term, I know, but this style proves wide-ranging in popularity, so I guess I’ve just helped to identify the genius of Hesse, as has been done many times before.

The Nobel prize-winning Hesse first saw this book printed in 1919 but the U.S. didn’t experience the shortened title of Demian until 1948, two years following the reception of his award.

In Chapter 2, entitled “Cain”, Hesse brings Sinclair and the child prodigy Demian together. The two discuss Sinclair’s house and a particular decoration adorning it. Demian identifies it to Sinclair: “There’s something odd above the doorway – it interested me at once.”

Around this point in the story, Demian becomes interesting. I suppose in part because we already know he’s the title character of the book, but what further interests is the fact that he is identifying parts of Sinclair’s home which Sinclair himself wasn’t fully aware of.

Sinclair is reticent in discussion at first with the impressive Demian and his mysterious family but will eventually seek out the duo of Demian and mother. In the early chapters, one might say Demian was the addicting salt. After years between encounters, the soul-searching Sinclair craves Demian and obsesses over Demian, but it is Demian’s observant and mind-reading nature (and it is his nature) which draws Sinclair in. Sinclair is relatively weak at the book’s beginning; he’s a self-conscious child, after all, one who seeks his friends’ approval, but yet is burning with independence.

In what I would describe as unusual, storyteller Sinclair occasionally breaks the movie playing in our minds as the story unfolds and places us at his feet as he rocks in a comfortable chair, older and most definitely wiser. He says, “My memory fails me and I cannot be sure whether what I have described has not to some extent been drawn from later impressions.” These are strange but necessary departures from the tales of Demian and Sinclair’s meetings. They are purposeful because the humaneness which the statement possesses. Sinclair is clearly not some god who is all knowing. Sinclair is empowered by Demian, who is like his recruiter, but Sinclair is surely an emerging being, one who embraces fault openly after having experienced much torment from the harassments of bullies, but mostly his torment came from within himself. Sinclair’s inner drives – bringing us conveniently back to the story’s relatability factor – are what propel him. His visions are really his saving graces, his guide to making sense, where he is without rest but yet brimming with passion. Hesse tells us time and time again that passion, not outward success, is life.

Sinclair’s passage to self-realization, if we are to believe that self-realization is at the heart of this story, is riddled with suffering, and not an unusual suffering like a unique disease or of the most unfortunate tragedy. No, Hesse’s Sinclair character is brought to himself via nights drinking among pseudo-friends who never become enemies but who lack essential friendship qualities, as Sinclair defines friendship. Of the almost continual suffering, Sinclair tells us, “I can still remember tears springing to my eyes when I saw children playing in the street on Sunday morning as I emerged from a bar, children with freshly combed hair and dressed in their Sunday best.” The oppositional elements are lively in the above statement. Sinclair presents a portrait of himself which doesn’t allow for a vivid mental picture. His story tells little of his physical attributes, but this could possibly serve as an “insert self here” moment, whereby the reader doesn’t have to morph into a physical image not his own, but rather can see himself exiting bars and waking sweaty, and painting, and doing everything the narrator does. Hesse, largely, keeps his story familiar.

Music, and art in general, is present in Hesse’s stories, particularly Demian, Narcissus and Goldmund, and especially Steppenwolf. In Demian, not only is Sinclair a painter, albeit not vocationally, but recreationally still counts as an impetus for further life exploration. Sinclair paints from his subconscious which works for him while causing him much strife. The subconscious, as most people who’ve existed within it will tell you, is not always the easiest territory in which to explore. Sinclair is yet another victim of its dark alleyways, which ultimately, because of his resilience, led to a presumably better place.

But, musicians also populate Hesse’s tales and Demian has the organist who Sinclair stalked as an admirer. The organist’s organ cry’s touched the deeply sensitive Sinclair to a point which seems to have mesmerized. Mesmerization or not, Sinclair undoubtedly was transfixed by what he heard from the street during one of his many therapeutic walks. Hesse writes, “I waited until the music ceased and then paced back and forth until I saw the organist leave the church.” I feel desperation was running deep in Sinclair but yet doubt was desperation’s running mate, which is so often the case.

The characters within Demian play interesting parts in Sinclair’s life, as characters traditionally do. But, what makes the characters in Demian so unique is they could be serving any number of services to drive the story along. Take the character Knauer, for example. Knauer looks to Sinclair for guidance, making Sinclair for the first time the sought-after as opposed to his more typical role as the seeker. Knauer doesn’t seem to play as pivotal a role in this book as those like the bully, Pistorius the organist rebel, or more obviously title character Demian. Hesse comments on Knauer, “Later Knauer slipped unnoticed out of my life.” This is well after Knauer has empowered Sinclair and maybe even flattered Sinclair by telling Sinclair that he was some sort of miracle in the style of Demian, one who is beyond the status quo and one to whom others are attracted should the person being attracted also be one of the seers, or perhaps superior intellect is the better descriptor. Either way, Sinclair is in contact with various unusual, mysterious people whose roles are sometimes almost random. But, Hesse has the reader ask, “What is random?”

The fearless apocalypse. But fearless is merely reserved for those, as Sinclair writes, bearing “the mark.” This mark is reserved for few and reaches beyond most people’s comprehension. For Sinclair, his mark, though I suppose was always with him, went unnoticed by himself as if it were a hard-to-find freckle. So much strength is exuded from the non-confident Sinclair who was a bit of an average person up until his desolate experience with the strange Demian brood, consisting in location only of Demian himself as well as Demian’s mother, who identifies to few as Frau Eva. Sinclair is among the few by the story’s conclusion but his arrival there took him approximately 20 years. This group in which the three belong is necessarily limited; without a small enrollment, the conflict disappears and so the tiny group would have no normalcy to stand out against, or surprisingly blend in with.

‘Live and let live’ is perhaps at the conclusion of the book. Hesse comments as Sinclair: “All of these faiths and teachings seemed to us already dead and useless.” This shows faith in what is to come. While others sit fearful, the small mark-bearers sit refreshed.

Read Demian if life seems strange to you.

Review by James Williams

“The Judgment” was started in 1912. Kafka was 29 and he wrote all night, finding energy and inspiration. He would write most of his stories after this in a similar fashion: sitting and pumping them out of himself, as if it was absolutely necessary, in one night. Kafka seems like many other creative people in this way; he searched for a particular momentum and, once found, just couldn’t let it go. I think it’s safe to say a century later that the literary world has been affected by these night-long rolls of Kafka. He is certainly the most interesting writer I’ve ever read, and this interest comes from how much attention he has received. Truthfully, I love the attention he gets, but something I find rather disturbing about Hayworth’s account of Kafka’s life is the reader never learns why Kafka has been given so much attention. I suppose he figures we’ll be our own judge of his writings, which I admire, but I’m still curious about the opinions of the more literary. So what is it about Kafka that interests?

Kafka wasn’t a very productive writer in the quantitative sense or even a writer by trade as his law school status shows us. Hayworth wrote, “In November Kafka resumed his legal studies, from which there would now be no reprieve until he graduated in 1906, and during the first year of settling down to law he wrote almost nothing.” Kafka hated this about his life, preferring to complain though, rather than to seek some sort of self-revival, which might have given him a freedom the likes of which he had before choosing any sort of vocation like Kafka had done by entering law school.

Kafka, as Hayworth notes throughout the book, was bullied by his father and so feared his disappointment even though disappointment was basically unavoidable and reciprocated. Kafka’s intense studies perhaps buried him even further into a life he didn’t want; the deeper he dove into the material, the less likely he was to get out. So, early on, Kafka was setting the tone for his life, a tone which is reflected in all of his writings, even those in his diary.

As is obvious from reading the Hayworth book, Kafka kept a diary which varied little in content throughout his keepings. Most of what we’re given – and we are provided by Hayworth with direct diary samples – is about the despair and hopelessness from which Kafka suffered. His failure feelings were not limited to one particular area of his life, but instead consumed almost all areas of his life. His difficulty in social situations contributed to his difficulty in love and these were perhaps both a result of discomfort in his family with his parents, and they likely are the reason he spent his life doing a job which robbed him of his energies as a creative writer. His life, on paper, seems like one great downfall, but the complaining is laid on so thick that one begins to feel agitated by the endless bellyaching after awhile. Because the fragments that made up his life and most of our lives are so interconnected, I wonder if positivity and hope would have shown themselves in his writings if one area — for instance, his permanent residence – were changed significantly. Though, as I have written, we receive other subject matter as well.

Kafka took well documented vacations from his job at the institute and his writings while on holiday are those most likely to stray from the beaten path of self-deprecating text that the reader becomes used to and, quite frankly, sick of. One of the best examples comes from his joint vacation with Max Brod on which Brod encouraged Kafka to record everything he saw. In a diary passage selected by Hayworth, the reader finds ramblings describing some sort of outdoor event and Kafka provides very vague descriptions, but one must hesitate to be overly judgmental of a writer’s diary. I would guess, based on Kafka’s self-hatred, he wanted no one to read these accounts of what he’d seen. At times, it feels like a crime to be reading these diary entries at all.

Kafka frequented the theatre, but also consumed plays in text form: “On 24 October he saw Yakor Gordin’s play Der wilde Mesch, and the following day Lowy read to him all afternoon from Gordin’s play Gott, Mensch, Teufel (God, Man, Devil) as well as from his own diaries.” Being surrounded by literary companions is part of the reason Kafka is read so often, maybe even read at all. Not just because they encouraged him to write, but they also had a hand in publishing and so what Kafka saw as worthless, others saw as having great potential.

In Kafka’s life story we find many different women with whom he kept in touch, but none of them is as prominent as Felice Bauer. Her communication with Kafka takes up much of the book’s pages and appropriately so; she stirred up so much emotion in him that it compelled him to write. What the reader might take from this is further proof of Kafka’s self-tormenting. In his fiction writings, he wrote nothing of love with or for a woman, but rather stories which reflect no such thing.

Even in Kafka’s promising relationships he found great suffering, though the literary world seems richer for it. Kafka, who wanted most of his writings burned (and some of them were), probably never dreamed of nor wanted to be read on such a grand scale, but the proof of support was present even in his lifetime as those who did have the pleasure of reading his work or having his work read to them really supported it. Of course, that didn’t seem to phase the author as he continued to suffer from depression…but, he also continued to find reason to write.

Hayworth discusses some of Kafka’s works in greater depth. One of the best examples is with one of Kafka’s better known samples, The Trial, or Der Prozess. Hayworth writes, “The story is more like a parable than the final chapter of Der Verschollene or ‘In der Strafkolonie’, and the cathedral context arouses expectations that it may have a religious meaning.” Hayworth’s speculations will prove more interesting to those familiar with Kafka’s whole catalog and not with the more popular Kafka writings (Metamorphosis, The Trial). It would be unfair to criticize Hayworth’s understandings, though, because his knowledge and research of Kafka is so well documented in the book that one has reason to believe his interpretations of Kafka’s writings are worthwhile. My point is simply, having not read much of what is cross-referenced, there is not much ground for return comment.

I recommend “K: A Biography of Kafka” to people who have read Kafka. The book will be somewhat boring to those unfamiliar with his writing because his life was relatively uneventful and rather redundant. Those who find the man’s writing interesting, however, may enjoy learning what influenced the man to write it.

Within the Review are 14 fiction stories, 15 poems by six poets, and three essays.

One of my favorite short stories is by Canadian resident Esi Edugyan entitled, “The Mosque at Larabanga”. The story finds the main character encountering a tall African woman in her childhood kitchen. The reader will be intrigued by this tall character who longs for home after years of being a stranger in Canada. Edugyan’s style isn’t anything out of the ordinary, writing every-writer sentences like, “Smiling at me, the stranger turned and spoke to my mother.” This direct style works well in the story, which is one of the only stories to take place outside of Africa. Having a foreigner’s perspective was quite nice in a collection of stories based almost entirely in Africa, as the album’s title indicates. As a Canadian herself, Edugyan can undoubtedly be seen in this story and this is likely the reason it works so well.

This book was entertaining at times but at other times I found the styles presented to be confusing, as if they were overly creative. However, they are worth reading yourself.

 The cave is located in the hills west of Jerusalem in a village called Ain Karim. The House of Zacharias and Elizabeth (John the Baptist’s parents) is linked to Ain Karim in some texts from the sixth to the eighth centuries. The cave was discovered in 1999 with many drawings inside it, which are shown in both black ink drawings and actual photographs in the book. Two that stand out are the figure of John the Baptist and “a life-size representation of a right arm flanked by two crosses.”

Gibson typically provides support for his theories, such as his justification of John the Baptist’s legendary clothes. Gibson cites religious texts as well as what would have been John’s surroundings as support.

The same cave, “appeared to have been occupied in the first century AD by a strange group of people with a lifestyle unlike anything that any of us (Gibson’s crew) encountered before at sites from this period in the Jerusalem hills.” Gibson is referring to the observance that the inhabitants seemed to only use his cave for baptism procedures. He uses the word “unusual” to describe these apparent happenings in the recently uncovered cave. The events took place in the Early Roman period for the time span of 100 years or so (“from the end of the first century BC to the early second century AD.”)

Trying to better understand the actual use of the cave, Gibson intelligently informs the reader of three different baptism practices as read about in the Acts of the Apostles.

 The book’s “Conclusion” takes place 119 pages before the Bibliography, but the “Conclusion” chapter is only to be understood as the conclusion of his discussion about that particular cave. The reader, throughout “The Cave of John the Baptist,” is relocated many times – too many times. Without a reasonably drawn map, the places being discussed aren’t easily placed within the mind of the reader. This is one of the few problems I have with the book.

 The final portion of the book is devoted to the followers of John. Gibson likes to place locations in religious text in modern spaces, like so many have done before him and like so many will do after him. Without any doubt, I trust Gibson’s archaeological intellect as his noted credentials and literary thoroughness speak for themselves.

 The tomb of John the Baptist was located in Sebaste during the Byzantine period. “This area was originally just outside the ancient city of Samaria/Sebaste and was being used as a cemetery during the Roman period, if not earlier.” This book has many archaeological period-references, so many that I had a tough time following them as well.

 The aforementioned heads of John the Baptist are brought to light near the end of the book, at which point Gibson discusses his and others’ risky journeys around the holy land. The purpose of the journeys is to obtain knowledge and rightly so – these archaeologists, accredited as they are, must keep tabs on supposed finds, which are often proven fraudulent. The journeys described help to convince me of the accuracy of Gibson’s findings.

 The book should be read by people with a religious interest. I understand that archaeological finds aren’t a justification of miracles from religious text but people like Shimon Gibson claim that John the Baptist did take up residence in a cave west of Jerusalem when he wasn’t out in the wilderness dining on locusts. My largest complaint is the seeming lack of attention from Gibson, who wanted to discuss supposed John the Baptist artifacts instead of what could be proven.

People enter and exit Yunior’s life like people enter and exit every person’s life. Yunior is similar to many protagonists in that there is a powerful sense of conscience in his first person accounts. He, like his father, understands temptation: what it feels like, what it is to submit to it, and even what it is to resist it. He has sexual encounters of variety and needs to better understand them if he is really going to improve his well-being in a general way, but yet he seems afraid to delve deeply into his thoughts.

Ramon, Yunior’s father, flies south to pick up his family once his more recent family turns sour, a move familiar to those who’ve known Ramon for a long time. He is always running from something.

This book should be read by people who have experienced the acidic side of temptation. In short, read it if you are human.

A preview of the book can be found on Google Books.