The Great Failure: My Unexpected Path to Truth
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
One of America's favorite teachers, Natalie Goldberg has inspired millions to write as a way to develop an intimate relationship with their minds and a greater understanding of the world in which they live. Now, through this honest and wry exploration of her own life, Goldberg puts her teachings to work.
Natalie Goldberg
Natalie Goldberg is a poet, painter, teacher, and the author of over ten books, including her classic, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within and Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir. She has been teaching seminars for over thirty-five years to people from around the world and lives in New Mexico.
Read more from Natalie Goldberg
Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOne Bird, One Stone: 108 Contemporary Zen Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWild Mind: Living the Writer's Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Living Color: Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Banana Rose: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Failure: My Unexpected Path to Truth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Great Failure
Related ebooks
Banana Rose: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life into Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mindful Writer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Writing Is My Drink: A Writer's Story of Finding Her Voice (and a Guide to How You Can Too) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Writer's Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writings on Writing Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming A Writer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writer's Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life, Second Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If You Want to Write Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5True to Life: Fifty Steps to Help You Write Your Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Art of Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Write from the Heart: Unleashing the Power of Your Creativity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Year of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of Inspiration and Encouragement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing of Fiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Religious Biographies For You
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waking Up in Heaven: A True Story of Brokenness, Heaven, and Life Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Passport to Heaven: The True Story of a Zealous Mormon Missionary Who Discovers the Jesus He Never Knew Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThat black Hasidic lady: a Memoir of a Dark-Skinned Hasidic Woman Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Quiet: My Story of Overcoming Anxiety and the Practices that Brought Peace Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHoward Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paul: A Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil in the City of Angels: My Encounters With the Diabolical Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Story of the Trapp Family Singers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Elisabeth Elliot Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Prayer Journal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Grief Observed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel: How Truth Overwhelms a Life Built on Lies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood Brothers: The Dramatic Story of a Palestinian Christian Working for Peace in Israel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Here I Stand - A Life Of Martin Luther Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not by Might, Nor by Power: The Jesus Revolution 2nd Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bonhoeffer Abridged: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Confessions of St. Augustine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Great Failure
10 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Natalie Goldberg is at her best as a teacher of both writing and zen and of writing as a spiritual discipline and practice. I first encountered her books around 20 years ago. Writing Down the Bones was all the rage in writing groups and of course, being contrary, I avoided it for a few years and then read both that one and Wild Mind (basically a re-run of Bones, but enjoyable). I found them invigorating, and loved the spiritual aspect, though her favourite methods didn’t work for me.The Great Failure, however, isn’t about writing nor is it about failure as a path to success. It’s a memoir about the two important men in her life and their failure to maintain appropriate boundaries, resulting in abuse of their positions, one as father, the other as teacher. It’s a divided book, not only in its subject matter, but in the success of the portraits.Her portrait of her father is nuanced and vivid. He was, as one would say in Yiddish, “a grober yung,” a boor (literally “a gross boy”). He had little boyhood himself, and was little cared for. As a man he was crass and oblivious to his crassness. He commented on his pubescent daughter’s body, he held her too tight, he made her uncomfortable enough to avoid being alone with him. A bartender, he had no understanding of his adult daughter’s career as a Buddhist teacher, but he was earthy and without pretension.During a visit to her home in the southwest, he sat outside to watch the sunrise at her command. When she asked him what he thought of it, he was nonplussed; it was a sunrise, it happens every morning. On another occasion she tried to teach her parents to meditate. After ten minutes of silence, she asked him if he’d noticed how busy the mind was, how many thoughts flit through it. He said he hadn’t thought at all, not a single thought. What was it like for him, she asked. It was like it always is when nobody is talking or doing anything, he said.He was loud, he was busy, he was vigorous, he was insulting, a grober yung who loved his daughter with all his heart. His simplicity, his complexity, and her forgiveness for all of it comes through vividly.It stays with me. And I envy her this possibility of forgiveness because, although her father failed in many ways it was out of ignorance, not intention, and there is all the difference in that.Her portrayal of her teacher, Katagiri Roshi, a zen master and founding abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, while sincere lacks the vibrancy and understanding she has for her father. Katagiri’s motivations and feelings in carrying on secret affairs with students are unknowns that Goldberg tries to fill in with guesswork. Her guesses are sometimes plausible and sometimes, for me, dubious. And the situation is different in another way; he was her teacher not ever her lover. The wounds are wounds of disillusion, and as disappointing as the disillusion is, it is a surface wound compared to what she experienced as a daughter.Perhaps better writing comes out of deeper wounds. I wonder what, as a teacher herself, she would say about that.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Another great memoir from Natalie Goldberg. She makes gold from everyday life.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This memoir was interesting, and I was curious about the relationships Natalie had with both her father and her teacher. Unfortunately, the book read like she was trying to work through her personal problems while writing it, so it did not connect well with me the reader.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This was my first encounter with Natalie Goldberg, and I found her intolerably whiny. I'm a big fan of stories about people realizing that their religious leaders are schmucks. However, Goldberg's guru barely qualifies in big scheme of things, and Goldberg's emotional reaction seems completely over-blown. There are some really interesting stories about her father.
1 person found this helpful