Vein Of Gold (Paperback)

The author can't even write skillfully, she needs to work through Barzun's "Simple and Direct" or something similar. The book is incoherent: she starts the chapter "Clusters" with the words "This pilgrimage..." out of the blue -- what goddamn pilgrimage? you think, we weren't talking about any pilgrimages any time recently; this stops you dead in your tracks; you try to find out what it's about, you go further and further back and lo and behold, there is something fitting about pilgrimage -- two chapters back! Aw, shucks. Seems like we cut and pasted and forgot to clean up the text.

Not only is the writing bad, the editing in the book is just as abysmal; the stuff's simply ungrammatical at times, for example, on page 33 "What we can conceptualize and inhabit on the imaginative realm, we can manifest and materialize on the physical one." "Realm" literally means "kingdom", you can't do anything "on" a realm, it's gotta be "in" a realm. Strunk and White stuff... The book is full of this sort of things. And the burgeoning mystifications, this trance-inducing vagueness permeating the pages! -- "they dream toward the future and the future dreams back." What exactly does that mean, huh? Anyone?

Furthermore, the author has no feel for words whatsoever. Talking about entering some special creative state she tells us about some aborigines (for some unfathomable reason the word "aborigenes" is capitalized throughout) who say that they enter a state they call Dreamland. OK, that's an acceptable metaphor. But, as the author immediately confesses, she prefers to call it "Imagic-Nation". Phooey. One: this cute, "suitable for tradmarking" coinage is idiotic. Second, while the "land" in "Dreamland" correctly suggests an area/realm/location, the "nation" in this execrable "Imagic-Nation" connotes a community of people rather than a place -- while the context unambiguously implies the latter. I guess when one tries to feign originality, the meaning doesn't count.

The book is soaked in a laboured lexical opulence highly indicative of a mindless, mechanistic use of a thesaurus: "Our clarity in limning a desired outcome..." (p. 34). Limning?! Oh, for Pete's sake...

And to crown this all, there's probably a full quotation dictionary spilt on the margins of this book; many of the quotes trite, a number -- irrelevant, many -- from esoteric sources (Caitlin Matthews anyone? Elsa Gidlow? Holger Kalweit?) -- and at any rate, there are way too many of them. They fill the space, of course... The whole book is like that: the writing grates on the ears, it troubles and disturbs, it's physically painful.

That's about the literary quality, now onto the substance; I'll make just one example. With the air of letting you in on a huge discovery the author suggests that you must walk 20 mins a day. Why is that? Well, because you will then think in a special way. OK, thinking in a special way seems fine, but it's a trivial thing, isn't it? So the revelation is not about thinking but about walking. But what's so strikingly unique about it? Different strokes for different folks -- Nietsche did like to walk, but Proust did everything while reclining in his bed. So, the supposed magic of walking is entirely specious; it may work for one person, but not for another; once we concede this, what's left? That you should try to relax, concentrate, and then -- think? Do we need to read badly-written thick books in order to learn this?

Finally: have you ever seen a movie written or directed by Julia Cameron? Are there any acclaimed novels written by this author? What has she produced, other than a slew of "guru-advice" books and tapes? I can figure out why Oates and King write about creativity, but what qualifies Julia Cameron to teach? Isn't this book an excellent case of those who can -- doing, and those who can't -- teaching?

OK, enough; rant over. My Very Strict Evaluation(TM): this book is affected, crass drivel. Tastes differ, of course, but at the very least, do not buy sight unseen, take a look first.

This book continues the practice of the morning pages and the artist's dates but also gives you more assignments to do and more time to do some of them. If you are on the creative path to recovery I would highly recommend you work with this book.

You can jump right in but you might want to do the Artist's Way first. I faciliate groups using both books and find that the group energy adds to the synchronicity and security of having the same processes at the same time.

There are lovely quotes and sharing processes within the book. The sections are called "Kingdoms" and you explore and delve into your life story in a manner you may not have thought of yourself.

If you are on the creative pathway and want to move forward in your development --get this book!