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Title: The Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart by Julia Cameron ISBN: 0-87477-879-4 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: September, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (7 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Oh, come on, people. It's annoying subliterary junk
Comment: for imbeciles. Touchy-feely, logorrheic, preachy, phoney, mystifying garbage. Some of the underlying ideas are not illegitimate, but first, you'll have to sweat your booty off trying to undig them from under the thick strata of mind-numbing twaddle, and second (more importantly), these ideas are anything but original -- if one were to offer them unembroidered, you'd say what's the big deal, it's commonplace. So the lady took a few very simple, even trite ideas, couched them -- ineptly! -- in the greatest possible quantity of inane verbal fog, new-ageish in style and ungrammatical in formulation, stirred in a goodly number of totally unwarranted (at least as something uniquely new and therefore important) "exercises" -- and sold the resulting load of kitsch to the public. Which is what perplexes me most: look at all these laudatory, glowing reviews below! How can that be? This stuff is manifest rubbish!
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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Just What The Therapist Ordered
Comment: I know a therapist who uses Julia's Morning Pages technique in her practice. Then I stumbled upon this author's name and her book "The Artist's Way" in Sarah Ban Breathnach's books. So, of course, I picked up the Artist's Way at the library and started my own morning pages. That was 3 years ago. What has happened since? Well, I stopped doing the pages after 2 months (I was "busy") and I've been kinda wandering ever since. Lo and behold I stumbled upon this book, bought it used at a library sale and am back to those damn (ha-ha) morning writings. Well, I must tell you that this woman is a genius. Not only have these pages been quite an inspiration and a positive flow for me, but the "assignments" she asks you to undertake are life changing. I am a much more positive person and that shows in my writings. Let me stress to you that I am NOT a writer of any sort, my creativity has not shown it's full colors yet (they are dim, but they're there)and I get writer's cramp and I whine about doing it, but I DO IT and am a better person for it. As they say, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." I guess I am ready for Real Life. Thank you Ms. Cameron.
Rating: 5
Summary: Unearthing hidden treasure......
Comment: The Vein of Gold goes deeper than the Artist's Way does. (AW was just the tip of the iceberg.) There is about 19 weeks of work in this book if you take your time. You "write your life to right it."
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!
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Title: The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron ISBN: 1585421464 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: 28 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Walking in This World: The Practical Art of Creativity by Julia Cameron ISBN: 1585421839 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: 26 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life by Julia Cameron ISBN: 1585420093 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: 27 December, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal: A Companion Volume to the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron ISBN: 0874778867 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: January, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Transitions: Prayers and Declarations for a Changing Life by Julia Cameron ISBN: 0874779952 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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