The Man in the Empty Boat
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
From the author of Iron & Silk comes a moving memoir of love and family, loss and spiritual yearning Anxiety has always been part of Mark Salzman’s life: He was born into a family as nervous as rabbits, people with extra angst coded into their genes. As a young man he found solace through martial arts, meditation, tai chi, and rigorous writing schedules, but as he approaches midlife, he confronts a year of catastrophe. First, Salzman suffers a crippling case of writer’s block; then a sudden family tragedy throws his life into chaos. Overwhelmed by terrifying panic attacks, the author begins a search for equanimity that ultimately leads to an epiphany from a most unexpected source. The Man in the Empty Boat is a witty and touching account of a skeptic’s spiritual quest, a story of one man’s journey to find peace as a father, a writer, and an individual.
Reviews with the most likes.
With rare honesty, Salzman offers a window into a writer's mind as he struggles with balancing family life, personal tragedy, and the creative impulse. Salzman's self-deprecating humor bears within it a real and moving journey toward inner peace and self-acceptance, one that is grounded in the realities of modern life.
Salzman is an author I found ten years ago, and, once found, was devoured. And then, nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. It's been a long time. I finally Googled Salzman and learned he'd written one book in the last few years, this one, this little memoir.
I got my hands on a copy at last. Happy to say that I devoured it, too.
It explains why Salzman has been so quiet. He suffers from anxiety. Panic attacks. And simultaneous writer's block.
It is the little story from a Taoist classic written twenty-three hundred years ago that has soothed his troubles, a story of a man in an empty boat. To sum it up, if a man in a boat is hit by a boat that is empty, the man won't get angry, so why can't we be a man in an empty boat?
Let's hope that Salzman can find a way to be that man in the empty boat and write his wonderful stories down, too.
