[Bob_Huntley]

Is there anyone on this board, besides me, that feels that the book was less than the Holy Grail that it has since become?


Bob

[Dan Kelly]

As I said in that other thread, I read half of it -- and quit, never tempted to return.

Call me a heretic!

[Bill_McBride]

Generally incoherent but maybe that was just me!  

[BCrosby]

I was never tempted to take the book seriously. I've always thought the Shivas stuff was satirical. Unintentional perhaps, but a good satire on reading too much into golf.

It was a fun read. Until, that is, the metaphysics in the last half. I couldn't finish either.

Bob

[Craig Van Egmond]

Yes!  It didn't thrill me.

[Tom Huckaby]

As this thread is proving, my feeling is far more golfers dislike the book than like it.  Or at least those who dislike it sure are not shy about making their feelings known!

The shivas irons society is a bunch of wackos.. and I think they'd admit that and relish the title.  

All this being said, I loved the book - enjoyed the read - even the second half.  But I never thought of it as a life-changing quasi-religious tome, as some do... To me it was just a fun, and really weird, golf book.  And keeping it on that level, yes I did enjoy it.

TH

[Steve Wilson]

What Dan the Heretic Kelly said.

[Brent Hutto]

I never read it but I did download an audiobook version of it to my iPod and listen to it while driving back and forth to one of the Dixie Cup events. To my recollection it started out intriguing but a little to cutesy for my taste, got a bit better for a while in the middle and then just devolved into claptrap toward the end.

At whatever point there was a section about going to dinner at someone's house one evening and sitting around afterwards comparing metaphysical whatsits...right at the beginning of that scene was my last hope of anything remotely enlightening. The book is a relic of the 70's and kind of like some of those old, washed-out movies from that period it must have seemed like there was more to it at the time than was really there. What a depressing decade.

[Bob_Huntley]

Goodness gracious, I am delighted to have some confirmation.

It reminds me in a way of Essalen itself in the old days, thoughts of nudity, sex and possibly a whiff of the noxious weed but in the end, nothing but aimless prattling.

Bob

[Kirk Gill]

Both the book itself and the experience of reading it reminded me of the Carlos Castaneda books, for those of you who remember those. Initially intriguing, relatively entertaining, verging on utterly bogus, and ultimately a disappointment. In both cases I thought at the beginning that it was going to really go somewhere interesting. Little did I know that the most interesting part was already over, and it was all downhill from there.

[Tom Huckaby]

My point is being proven quite nicely.

 

Will any who enjoyed the book step up?  Or do I stand alone???

[Ken Moum]

I gave up on it fairly quickly, so when I discovered that Murhy was co-founder of http://www.esalen.org/ I realized why I was so unimpressed.

A woman I knew once gave me a copy of The Road Less Traveled because it had changed her life. It opens with "Life is difficult."

Okaaay...

I'm not the metaphysical type, I guess.

Ken

[George Pazin]

I've been picking on this book for the entire 7 years I've been on here, sometimes even to the point of being a little unfair to it.

By far the worst thing to come from the book, to me anyway, is that it seems to have spawned the notion that you almost can't write a good golf novel without mystical elements (happily, there are exceptions that prove the rule).

I suppose it's not the book or author's fault that we live in a copycat world, but if I never see another golf book that substitutes mystical crap for the soul of golf, I will be a happy man.

 

And I must also throw out my obligatory line to Huck: The gemme is about the walk!

[wsmorrison]

The key to appreciating that book is the heavy use of drugs (at least at some point in your life).  If you're gonna bother to read that book sober, of course it won't appeal to you.  Light up and enlighten up  

By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed the book.  I even read it twice.  I might even read it again.

I also liked Bagger Vance...though the movie was pretty lousy.

[Tom Huckaby]

Darn right it is, George.  But it was confirmed to me from the source Michael Murphy himself that if shivas lived in 21st century America, he'd play and ride rather than not play at all, at some of the courses where it's sane to ride.

 

In any case, picking on this book is all too easy, as shown in this thread.

I continue to stand alone.

Just remember though I'm with you in picking on those who want to make it a life-changing tome.  To me it remains a fun read, and if one keeps it on that level, pretty harmless.

TH

[A.G._Crockett]

My point is being proven quite nicely.

 

Will any who enjoyed the book step up?  Or do I stand alone???

I will!  I will!  I enjoyed it.  Harmless book that was a fun read for a golf nut.  Not a life-changing, "Holy Grail" moment, but I've read a lot worse that I enjoyed also.
BTW, there's a little book called "Quantum Golf" that is kind of an instructional version of "Golf in the Kingdom".  I liked it, too!  

I am what I am...

[Mike Hendren]

The book is a relic of the 70's and kind of like some of those old, washed-out movies from that period it must have seemed like there was more to it at the time than was really there. What a depressing decade.

Then again, there was disco.  

Mike

Burn baby burn.
-The Tramps

[Tom Huckaby]

AGC:

Many thanks, brother.  Standing alone is rarely fun.

 

TH

ps - I too read Quantum Golf and while it didn't change my life nor my game, it too was a fun read.....

[TEPaul]

"The key to appreciating that book is the heavy use of drugs (at least at some point in your life)."

Is that right, Wayno?

I guess that means you read that book so many times you memorized it, huh?


 



In my opinion, that book is just golf's version of that hippy-dippy flowerchild commune era of the 60s and 70s. The only good that weirdo culture did was to completely destroy every single thing any functioning pyschoanalyst ever learned or used.

[Bob_Huntley]

The key to appreciating that book is the heavy use of drugs (at least at some point in your life).  If you're gonna bother to read that book sober, of course it won't appeal to you.  Light up and enlighten up  

By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed the book.  I even read it twice.  I might even read it again.

I also liked Bagger Vance...though the movie was pretty lousy.

Wayne,

Is it possible to read any book when stoned? Just asking.

Bob

[Mark Bourgeois]

The key to appreciating that book is the heavy use of drugs (at least at some point in your life).  If you're gonna bother to read that book sober, of course it won't appeal to you.  Light up and enlighten up  

I'm not sure even Tim Leary "turned on" for purposes of reading a book, and I would guess reading fell lower still on the priority list of his disciples.  Definitely below spoon bending...

[A.G._Crockett]

AGC:

Many thanks, brother.  Standing alone is rarely fun.

 

TH

ps - I too read Quantum Golf and while it didn't change my life nor my game, it too was a fun read.....

Tom,
I STILL say "super fluid" very quietly from time to time while hitting range balls, and often find that I'm not getting completely to my Q point when I'm hitting a lot of high blocks or, alternatively, duck hooks.

[Dan Kelly]

I can see the cover of the next edition:

"Mystical crap!" -- Geo. Pazin

"Well, sure -- but harmless!" -- Tom IV Huckaby

"Perfect for the Heavy Drug User!" -- Wayne Morrison

[wsmorrison]

Tom P,

Hard as it is to believe, I know you never altered your state of mind.  However, if someone gives you the book, be prepared to smoke the thinking man's cigarette instead of that cancer stick you light up.  

Heck, I should give you a copy of the book after secretly planting some ganja on a hidden acre of your farm.  Then you'll be all set  

[Tom Huckaby]

Now now Dan, I would never agree that it's mystical crap.

Put me down for "fun yet harmless golf crap that shouldn't be taken as mystical."

And super fluid, brother AGC.  Super fluid.  That thought is a good one to come back to.

 

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