Different Ways Into the Novel

The following voices represent different ways readers might enter The Narcissism of the Sacred. Each approaches the same story from a different place in life, and each notices something different first.

Jake, Plumber in Vermont

Rick, Lobsterman in Maine

Maria, Assembly line worker, Nebraska

Ethan, Engineer in Silicon Valley

Maya, Young college student (Idaho)

Rebecca, Professor of Sociology in Washington, D.C.

Danielle, Buyer, large chain of bookstores, New York

The Moderator opens the discussion with a general question:

What was your general impression of the novel? Who wants to go first?

Maria, assembly line worker:

Someone at work had it. I just picked it up.

What got me first were those lines people use...

Don’t worry, baby.

We've got this under control.

Nothing to see here.

It’s complicated.

You hear that all the time.

Keep things moving. Don't make it a problem.

And reading it, I kept thinking… yeah. That’s how it goes.

Then Isabel stops doing that.

In that class, when she tells them to close the laptops and just write what they actually think.

That’s where it hits.

Most people don't do that.

They won't.

You see something’s off and you don’t get into it.

You say what you're supposed to say and move on.

At work it’s like that all the time.

Something’s wrong. Everybody knows it. Nobody wants to be the one who stops it and says it straight.

So you keep your head down.

Do your part.

Keep your mouth shut.

Ethan, the engineer:

Reading it, I kept coming back to how most of us are trained to think.

You go through school, you get a job, you operate inside something. You learn how to function within it, how to contribute.

There’s always an incentive structure. You're paid, evaluated, promoted, or not.

Over time, that shapes how you think, whether you notice it or not.

Then you have someone like Galen.

He’s outside all of that.

No institution. No publications. No feedback loop telling him what counts as a good idea.

There’s no clear incentive for him to think the way he does.

And that’s exactly why he can see what the others can't.

The people inside the system think they're thinking independently. 

But they're still working within the same constraints, using the same language.

He isn't.

He’s looking at it like something built. Something you can step back from and examine.

Once you see it that way, it’s difficult to go back.

Because then you have to ask how much of your own thinking is actually yours.

Moderator: Did anything in it remind you of something you've read before?

Ethan (Engineer):

There’s a book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Similar in the sense that you're following someone thinking through things.

But this is more grounded. It stays tied to what’s happening.

Rick (Lobsterman):

Yeah, I never read that.

When I was in school I read some Carlos Castaneda stuff.

Had that same kind of feel to me.

This Galen guy…he sees things.

He’s got a way of talking where he’s not trying to convince you.

He just lays it out.

And you're sitting there like…where’d this guy learn all this?

He doesn't sound like anybody I've ever heard.

A carpenter who talks like that…explaining things through wood, through chairs… it’s a strange way to get at it, but it works.

I kept thinking, I wish I’d had a teacher like that.

Someone who could show you something instead of just talking at you.

You know… we probably ought to listen to carpenters more often.

They might actually have something to tell us.

Moderator: Rebecca, you'd like to add something?

Rebecca (Professor)

Yeah, I actually think that’s the point.

We're so used to hearing things a certain way that when it comes from somewhere else, we don't know what to do with it. 

I mean, think about it.

If a lot of what Galen is saying came from a college professor, it would go in one ear and out the other.

Because we don't talk like that. We qualify it, we soften it.

I’m a college professor—that’s what we're trained to do.

You don't just say something straight.

Even when it's true.

(She laughs) Especially when it's true.

It’s not really allowed.

Moderator: Danielle, you're kind of in that world—what do you make of that? The Zen thing, Castaneda… does that track for you?

Danielle (Bookstore buyer):

I mean, I hear what you're both saying.

That’s how people try to place something, just to get a handle on it.

But from where I sit, that’s where it gets tricky.

Because you only have a second to explain what something is.

And if it takes too long, or you have to qualify it—“it’s kind of like this, but also this”—people lose the thread.

This one… I don't know what I’d say.

It doesn't line up cleanly with anything.

Which doesn't mean it’s not good.

It just means it’s hard to get it in front of people.

We're always looking for those handles.

And some books just don't give them to you.

I'm not saying that makes it impossible.

Sometimes those are the ones you figure out.

It’s just… it’s not easy.

I think you almost have to flip it.

It’s less about what shelf it goes on and more about what it does to you.

For me it was that classroom scene, when she tells them to close the laptops.

Everything just… tightens.

You can feel she’s not supposed to be doing that.

But she does it anyway.

That book cover, the old photo, the man holding a fish, the two kids standing there by the river…

When you realize that’s the photo Isabel finds at the end.

I mean… how do you even categorize that?

What shelf does that go on?

Because it all lands right there. 

The whole novel is that one photo.

And you're standing in her place, looking at it—like… imagine being her in that moment.

Realizing what that means.

Where it came from.

The grandmother…what she held on to, to give Isabel years later....

That floored me.

If there’s a shelf for fiction that actually floors you, and doesn't just describe the polish on the floor…..

That’s where I’d put it.

Moderator: Okay… what would be a book like that, then? Something that floors you?

Danielle (Bookstore buyer):

The Bell Jar.

You're inside her head. There’s no distance.

Never Let Me Go, by the time it becomes clear what their lives are, it’s already too late.

The Road, the last stretch stays with you.

This does something similar.

Because Isabel doesn't resolve anything.

She takes the manuscript and puts it back under a tree.

Which raises the question...what would you do?

Everything around her rejects it.

So it gets passed on.

That’s how something like that survives.

Moderator: Did anyone have anything to add to that?

Jake (Plumber): 

Yeah… I mean, for me it was Galen.

Just the fact that he works with his hands.

He’s a carpenter.

That hit me. Because that’s what I do. That’s what my whole family’s done—plumbers, electricians, all of that.

We're not… you know, we didn’t come up through all that academic stuff.

But it’s not just that.

It’s what happens to him.

That guy wanted something so bad.

You can feel it the whole time.

He’s trying to teach those kids something real.

Not just get through a class—like actually show them something that matters.

And you can tell he thinks it could change something, not just for them, but bigger than that.

He never says it straight, but it’s there.

He believes it.

And then when you find out about that book he was working on with Elias…

Man.

That killed me.

Because you realize what he was up against.

And what it did to him.

Moderator: Maya, you want to say something?

Maya (college student):

I totally got that.

And what that did to Isabel…

I think in a way she was in love with Galen.

The book never says it.

It never comes out that way.

But you could just feel that connection she had with him.

It was kind of mysterious.

It wasn't really spelled out, but it was there.

And then when she finds out not only that Galen was real, but that he drifted into the desert and killed himself after everything that happened...

I think that’s what broke her.

It broke me. 

Moderator: Rick?

Rick (Lobsterman):

That photo got to me, too.

I shoot photos too. Landscapes.

And when I’m out there, I’m not looking at it piece by piece.

I’m not standing there going, okay, that’s the sky, that’s the water, that’s the shoreline.

It doesn’t come at you like that.

I see it all at once.

It’s more like early morning, before everything’s sharp…

there’s this soft light, kind of gray, kind of blue, and the colors just start bleeding into each other.

The water’s picking up the sky, the sky’s fading into the horizon, the sand’s pulling in both of them…

And after a second you stop seeing separate things.

It just becomes one thing.

And you’re standing there, and it kind of hits you all at once.

You don’t even think about it, you just… feel it.

That’s what this book was like for me.

I can’t point to one part and say that’s it.

Yeah, there’s Galen, there’s Isabel, all that stuff in the classroom…

But that’s not really what stayed with me.

It’s more like by the time you get through it, it’s all kind of blended together into something you can't really pull apart anymore.

And if you tried to explain it to somebody piece by piece, you'd miss it.

Because what hits you is the whole thing.

Like a lump in your chest. It's something you feel.

Like when I see a landscape.

 It's whole, it's abstract. It's not an idea. It's not just one thing. 

It's something that makes you feel….human. 

When I go out on a hike with my wife. I'll pull out my camera and point it…and she'll say, "what are you doing, there's nothing there, and then, when I show her my photo, then she sees it, and then she says, ok, now I see it. Now I see what you see. I was looking at the trees. You saw the whole forest."

To see this book you have to see the forest.

Moderator: I've heard people say the book is anti-education, anti-institution, anti-university. Is that how you saw it?

Jake (Plumber): 

No, I didn’t see it that way at all.

It’s not against learning or any of that.

It’s against falling into line.

It’s against just doing what you're told, thinking what you're supposed to think, saying what you're supposed to say.

That’s what it felt like to me.

This might sound weird, but I really connected to Micah.

I could feel him thinking it.

Like Galen was saying something that reminded him of being in the military.

Not the workshop itself....more like what happens when you just go along.

The death, the dying…because you didn’t question it, you just did what you were told.

That’s what it felt like hit him.

That’s why he left the workshop. Galen walked out with him, touched him on the shoulder. 

That was love. Maybe not love. But care. 

Galen wasn't the kind of guy who talked a big game. 

He just cared. You could see it.  

Galen saw him. It was just too painful for Micah to go on, to see it so clearly.

I felt for him.

Moderator: Rebecca, looks like you'd like to say something.

Rebecca (Professor): 

I mean, let’s just say it straight.

Galen, yeah, he’s compelling. He’s real. 

You can even say he’s likable in a way.

But what he’s doing… he’s dismantling everything.

Not just the university. The whole framework.

This idea that history moves in these clean stages—this era, then that era—like everything just builds on itself in some kind of orderly way.

He’s basically saying that’s not true.

That something happened a long time ago, and we've been covering it up ever since.

And what we've built on top of that… all of it…

I don’t know.

It starts to feel like a way of not looking at something.

Like we've organized everything so we don't have to face it.

And then he comes in and says—look at us.

We're a wounded species.

And that’s the part that I think really hits Isabel.

Not just that she’s drawn to him—

but that he takes apart everything she’s built her life around.

And once you see it that way…

I mean, I don't know how you go back.

(beat)

It makes you feel like a fraud.

Honestly…

I feel like a fraud.

Moderator: Maya, you get the last word:

Maya (college student): 

Yeah… I hear what you're saying.

But if it just ended there, like everything’s broken and that’s it…

I don't think I would’ve felt the same way about it.

By the end, I didn’t feel that.

I actually felt… I don't know… some kind of hope.

Like yeah, he’s taking everything apart.

But he’s also showing something else.

That part where he tells them to go stand by the redwood tree…and reclaim their imagination...that stuck with me.

Because it’s not just about what’s wrong.

It’s about what you do after you see it.

Like we don't have to just keep repeating the same thing over and over.

If we keep thinking the same way, yeah, we're going to mess things up.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

I think that’s what he’s giving them.

And honestly, that’s what it felt like he was giving me too.