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The world and the bo tree / Helen Bevington.
LIBRA PS3503.E924 Z477 1991
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Bevington, Helen, 1906-2001.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Bevington, Helen, 1906-2001.
- Bevington, Helen.
- Authors, American--20th century--Biography.
- Authors, American.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Autobiographies.
- Physical Description:
- 211 pages ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Durham : Duke University Press, 1991.
- Summary:
- So writes Helen Bevington in The World and the Bo Tree, a book that describes her travels lightly taken amid the turbulence of the 1980s. The "world" of the title is the one everybody knows, a fairly troubled, even threatening place to inhabit these days. The bo tree, which has flourished for centuries in India and Asia, is itself a meaningful symbol of peace, since under it the Buddha sat when he gained enlightenment and sought thereafter to share it with the world.
- The book fashions a delightful fabric, a weave of exotic journeys and chaotic recent history. While we travel with Bevington to and from various destinations in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, China, and elsewhere, we are conscious of the look of the world at home in striking contrast to the serenity occasionally glimpsed in distant places. At home she reminds us of such global disturbances as the demise of the Equal Rights Amendment, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and the possible destruction of the planet. Abroad, on some quest of their own, we may encounter such fascinating passersby as Mark Twain in Bangkok, Lord Byron in Italy, Goethe in Sicily, Marco Polo in China, Isak Dinesen in Africa, and Gladstone in the Blue Grotto of Capri.
- Against the backdrop of the world, Bevington discovers moments of peace in unexpected and unlikely places -- visible, she says, in Tibet or on the road to Mandalay, in the look of the midnight sun, or in the silence of Africa. Fleeting and elusive though these moments are, they are real and in themselves strangely enlightening.
- Contents:
- 1980 1
- The new decade
- Creationists and Survivalists
- Spring in North Carolina
- Captain Cook's wife
- Carter and Reagan List-making
- Death of John Lennon
- 1981 7
- A year of failures
- Reagan and the fifty-two hostages
- Reagan shot
- Walker Percy, The Second Coming
- Modesty in authors
- Journey to South America
- Constable and Turner Vermeer at Ken Wood
- Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man"
- 1982 25
- A Taoist
- Resolutions for a private world
- Cardinal and shuttle
- Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth
- "Endgame"
- Archibald MacLeish's death
- Reston's prediction "Flight"
- On fear, boredom, tears, courage
- "Formerly" Philosophers
- On autobiography
- Death of ERA
- Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk
- Workshop on Christmas stress
- 1983 36
- Man of the Year
- Talk show on aging
- Donald Frame on Montaigne
- Journey to Sicily
- To Italy
- Milan Kundera
- To Worcester, New York
- "Childhood"
- Mermaids
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies
- St. Jude oil
- The day after "Encounters"
- Journey to Spain
- 1984 73
- Orwell's 1984
- Joyless travel writers
- "Wisps of March"
- Notes on writing
- End of sex revolution
- Guess Road
- "Inventory"
- "Aerobic dancer"
- Jan Morris
- Journeys
- The quick comedians
- "Charity Begins at Christmas"
- 1985 82
- African safari
- Absentminded Adam Smith
- "A Passage to India" and The Raj Quartet
- Toronto and a miracle play
- The Grand Tour versus tourism
- Reading travel books
- Looking for paradise
- Journey to China
- To Tibet
- 1986 140
- "Out of Africa"
- The shuttle Challenger
- Time for meditation
- Ray Bradbury's valentine
- Robert Penn Warren, poet laureate
- Gadhafi, Duchess of Windsor, Chernobyl
- The big bang theory
- Lady Liberty
- Talk about men and women
- John Ruskin and Effie Gray
- Dream of the year 2000
- 1987 151
- Reagan's optimism
- The Buddha and the bo tree
- Freya Stark, traveler
- Images of travel
- Journey to the Midnight Sun
- Iran-Contra affair and Oliver North
- Keeping a journal
- Voices
- Beryl Markham and Isak Dinesen
- Saint Jerome
- Van Gogh in heaven
- Gorbachev and Raisa
- 1988 176
- Why write?
- Byron's birthday
- Good teachers
- Helen Gould
- Gramercy Park
- Littleness and bigness
- Lemurs Postcards
- Nowhere is a place
- Goodbye to liberals
- You Can't Take It with You
- 1989 187
- The new president
- Study of rights
- The Road to Mandalay
- Singapore
- Bali
- Java
- Democracy in China
- Peaks Mary Kingsley, traveler
- Poetry revival
- Good news and bad news.
- ISBN:
- 0822311534
- 0822311658
- OCLC:
- 23143435
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