Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
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Book Reviews of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
Book Review: Neuroscientist offers a fresh look into the afterlife...
Summary: 5 Stars
On Wednesday, July 8th, 2009, Lina Navarini and I attended a book review at Books & Books, Coral Gables, Florida. This book store chain has a calendar of events filled with exciting opportunities to get to know the authors of the books that will someday change our present day reality.
We go early enough to acquire the book to be reviewed and to enjoy the culinary expertise of the resident staff; for they have healthy choices for a quick dinner and or dessert. Last night, we enjoyed a turkey Panini with melted cheese and cucumbers served with a salad of mixed baby greens tossed in balsamic vinaigrette.
While we wait for the food, we read all about the author and a few chapters to get into the world offered by the author's experience and perspective. We were laughing because the author starts with a rather captivating chapter that provides a view to what the afterlife could be like, questioning the choices we make as we spend our time here on Earth.
His words made us realize how we waste our time doing a litany of chores, exercises in futility and the like; and yet, the time spent in true enjoyment of our lives is reduced to a few hours or days, and for the lucky few perhaps a few months.
We then walked over to the room prepared for the book review and sat first row. Slowly, the room filled to overflowing capacity in expectation of David Eagleman, who holds a PhD in Neuroscience, a field of study that delves into the most wonderful gift humans share, our brains.
The minute he starts to talk, Mr. Eagleman delights the audience for he tells that "the book was difficult to publish because no one had seen one like it, but once it was released, the book seems to be having an effect on his life that goes beyond his wildest dream, that he just got back from Australia, where a song writer, inspired by his book, wrote music for many of SUM's chapters and they read the book to its music, something he expects to replicate while in England late November to early December 2009, updates to be provided through the author's web site[...]
The author explains that his work provides thoughts to ponder on the perennial question of what happens after we die and a new way to think of death and the afterlife. Through vignettes that are brief and easy to read, the author probes into our greatest fears, purpose, loneliness and death. He does so with a twist for he presents his thoughts with humor and because we laugh, we engage in the meditation of our existence.
David Eagleman proceeds to read several passages from the book and opens the floor to questions. The audience was engaged, sometimes puzzled, one asked him what his religious background was... "Jewish, but from an early age I began to question many aspects of life and realized that depending on where we come from, we have a different version of a beautiful story that organizes our society in a common faith, and that while these are wonderful, in order to defend our point of view, we fight and go to wars over the subject of religion."
The subject of atheism surfaced and left me pondering on the fact that "we are all atheists" because in our certainty of the existence of our God, be that Jesus Christ, Mohammed or Buda, we do not accept that other religions are authentic and therefore in the eyes of those of a different faith, we are seen as non-believers.
Many afterlives are offered by the author, 40 fates that await us, offering great insight into the making of human nature that results in great knowledge, which upon reaching death demonstrates our great ignorance.
Got home and could not put the book down, therefore, if you want to enjoy humor, razor sharp wit while pondering on the meaning of life, this is the book to get. Finally, as he autographs my book he says... "a wonderful name, it is all about HOPE."
Book Review: Are We Open to the Possibilities?
Summary: 5 Stars
The late medical student-turned-author Michael Crichton captured the attention of millions with blockbuster novels and movie adaptations that fused science and science fiction to raise some jarring, yet thought provoking issues. Now comes David Eagleman, a young neuroscientist, to do the same, but in a more spiritually lofty and truly innovative way.
It would be easy to describe "Sum" as a breezy work, as it is comprised of 40 two-to-three page flights of fancy on what we might expect in the Afterlife. This slim volume can be read hurriedly, with a minimum of effort and several chuckles or knowing smiles, then placed on the bookshelf. To do so would be an injustice to Eagleman's superior imagination and to the underlying questions that he poses for us.
By examining what a Higher Power may have waiting for us, "Sum" does much more than amuse and entertain. By having us ponder the fate that may await us, we are given the opportunity to take just a moment or two to consider what we have done with our lives and what we can yet do with them. That point is immediately driven home in the first of Eagleman's 40 tales, in which the Afterlife consists of 18 days staring into the refrigerator, 51 days deciding what to wear, three months doing laundry - and 14 minutes experiencing pure joy.
If God is within us physically, the author asks, is he also in us spiritually? If we evolve and mature in our lives, what is the progression? Would we really, truly like to understand our stages of growth, or would we be repelled? Would we genuinely want to know what others thought of us on earth, or would we be content with the surface flattery and half-truths that pass so many times for constructive criticism or helpful friendship? If we want to leave a positive legacy on earth after we pass, does it matter what form that might take? Would we be happy struggling and growing as we did in human form, but doing so by literally becoming part of the earth? Would our threshold for boredom be pushed to the limit if we had the opportunity to be surrounded by a tried-and-true circle of friends and loved ones? Or might we find that confining, longing for the additional relationships that we never took the time to cultivate in our waking lives, terra firma?
"Sum" asks these and many other questions in sublime fashion, offering spiritual warmth, humor and an enveloping sense of Possibility to those willing to be just a little less doctrinaire and a bit more curious. Ending with a Benjamin Button-like moment, it challenges us to awaken from whatever inertia, ennui or pettiness we may fall prey to and embrace new ways of living. There must be at least 40 of them. If we are open to the possibilities of the Afterlife, can we not also be open to the possibilities of living?
"Sum" just may go down as the 21st Century's answer to Dante's centuries-old imaginings. I'm guessing David Eagleman's got a lot more locked inside him, just waiting to burst forth.
Book Review: An insightful, ingenious, 40-fold journey through the possibility space
Summary: 5 Stars
David Eagleman has accomplished something rather astonishing with his book SUM; he has managed to create a literary effort that is genuinely fresh, unique and unexpected. This collection of brief tales woven around the central theme of what might await in a hypothetical afterlife (or, rather, afterlives) is at once laugh out loud funny, intensely thought-provoking and guaranteed to stretch your mind if you're open enough to go along for the ride.
Personal favorites include the clever, witty "Narcissus," the surreal "The Cast," the ultimate careful-what-you-wish-for "Descent of Species," the entirely delicious "Graveyard of the Gods" and the take-a-good-look-at-yourselves "Absence," the warm and wry "Seed," and the ethereal, poetic "Search" (so beautiful it was almost enough to make me actually long for the immortality he describes). Some of the stories are dark, some hilarious, and a number of them have ironic twists, but they all share a common thread: all are brilliantly written and challenge you not only to think outside the box, but to kick the box aside entirely and go leaping joyously into the pleasures of exploring the unknown.
The fact that the stories address the afterlife is incidental; what each story really does is hold up a mirror for humanity to peer into, allowing us to consider ourselves, and the many-faceted aspects of human nature, from funny, new, often startling and always insightful angles. Chances are you've never read anything like this book, as there's simply nothing out there like it, at least nothing I've ever stumbled across. And I agree with the sentiments of the other reviewers--once you've read it, you'll want to share it with as many people as possible and read it over again yourself.
It's enough of a struggle to come up with an idea that pushes the boundaries of the expected, something that is challenging, entertaining and remarkable. Even more difficult, though, is to then execute that idea with the brilliance it demands. David Eagleman has done exactly that, though: dreamed up the astonishing, then demonstrated the depth of talent needed to make it come alive on the page. He has said that writing this book was simply his way of shining a flashlight around the possibility space; here's hoping that he goes on wielding that flashlight for many years to come so that we can continue to take a look along with him. SUM is a truly stellar effort from a very remarkable writer.
Book Review: Original, informative, interesting
Summary: 5 Stars
What an interesting idea. We all wish to know what, if anything, will happen when we die. The great Maimonedes, the first of all Jewish philosophers thought it mistaken and senseless to speculate about what we could not really know about. This is perhaps because he had a conception of Truth which meant he was not simply looking for a play of possibilities. Eagelman is not aiming at finding the single exclusive truth. His small story- essays are really games of a kind, little plays made up in his mind. But his mind is a special one as he is a well- known neuroscientist with a strong literary bent. So his little vignettes, essays, stories turn out to be often extremely interesting and informative. He opens with one in which the Afterlife consists in our having at one time all the time we did a particular activity or had a certain experience. All the moments of Pain are taken together as are all the moments of going to the Toilet. In another of the stories the Afterlife confines us to those people we knew in this world. There are no new faces and friends in the 'afterlife' and that makes in a sense a bit boring. One reviewer of these essays says that they really are a very intelligent reflection of this life, and not the afterlife. I would agree with that in regard to many of the essays. Eagleman enables us to see limitations in our own worlds and in our dreams.
As a game and as a fiction this work is first- rate. However in being a play and being a game it fails in one critical way. It does not do what it cannot possibly do i.e. really tell us what the Afterlife will be. For that we will have to get there, and then it might well turn out to be even stranger and more surprising than David Eagleman's finest and most interesting dreams.
Book Review: A delightful book full of paradoxes and unexpected insights
Summary: 5 Stars
Occasionally a book comes along of such originality that it stops you in your tracks, of such sharpness that it makes you think again about so many things and of such warmth that it makes you want to share it with everyone you meet. David Eagleman's Sum is just such a book.
Ostensibly a book about what happens after we die, ironically Sum is really an examination of what it means to live. After all the divide is perhaps not as great as we think and as John Keats once wrote, "Life is but a Waking Dream."
In the course of these 40 imaginings of the afterlife, Eagleman takes you on a long and varied emotional journey. Some of the Sums are absurd and surreal, others are poigant and poetic, others are funny and wild, some are neurologically cutting edge while others are dreamily abstract. It's an astonishing feat of the mind and to top it all, they are all written is this clear and limpid prose that is a joy and completely effortless to read.
I have a feeling that this book is going to become one of these word of mouth sleeper hits. There are at least 20 people I plan to give it to straight away and everyone I have read snippets of it to has immediately responded to its humanity and humour.
I'm sure that at least one or two of reviewers of this book will be tempted to write, "Greater than the Sum of its parts", because that is exactly what it is. Enjoy and dream and smile and weep.