Books by Brights
Portrait Of A Seeker Of Essence
Author: Russell Kolish
ISBN: 0-9153-9738-5
To Purchase: Amazon USA [Kindle] / Amazon UK [Kindle]
Description
The story of Gableplunk, the main character, is a fascinating synopsis or overview of all the searching for the self books of the last seventy years. It touches on many of the major ideas of this genre and improves on them with more detail in keeping with our post postmodern times. It's a story about a songwriter experiencing the puzzles of his existence, about individuality, its complexities and contradictions and about the illusions of identity. The author's writing style is often beautifully rhythmic and lyrical, his prose very emotional. His odd choice of revealing the character's thoughts brings a sense of immediacy to the character's journey of self examination and clarifies the changes he makes in order to more completely express/manifest his newly emerging self.
The title is appropriate and promises exactly what the book delivers: a state of fundamental mind like the sensation one gets while looking at a work of conceptual art. This state of mind is, of course, Gableplunk's, but the author writes cleverly enough to help the reader experience that state of mind for himself. The last chapter is unique and powerful in the way it moves the reader's mind from the concrete considerations of Gableplunk's life to more abstract mental and spiritual spaces or I should say spatial-ness, an effect of actually feeling your mind expanded beyond its usual boundaries. Really extraordinary.
About the Author
The Author, having earned degrees in Engineering Science and Computer Science worked in Technological consulting, international trading, banking and business.
In his artistic life he is also a musician, writer, lyricist and songwriter.
In his youth he studied zen for six years. It became a life-long influence which is reflected in the novel.
Currently he’s doing some recording again as a pastime - recording the songs in his ‘Portrait Of A Seeker Of Essence’ novel. Writes occasionally. Might write another novel at some point. Lots of ups and downs - all in all, though, only minor dissatisfactions in life- learned a lot, still learning.
