Spiritwalker: Messages from the Future by Hank Wesselman

Did you ever pick a book up in the mystic/new age section of a bookstore and have a blurb explain to you that the mere fact of you touching the book meant you were destined to read it? That kind of marketing always pissed me off. Now I can add a new pet peeve - books recommended by computer at online bookstores.

So being the good GenX human that I am, I am always susceptible to marketing and secretly enjoy it, even when outraged. Amazon decided that I had to read Spiritwalker, based on my past purchases, no doubt. And the blurb was fine, told me it was about tales from the future, didn't insult my intelligence any.

And I did enjoy the book when I started reading it. Hank Wesselman, an anthropologist on sabbatical, decides to wisk his wife and newborn to the tropical property they've bought from friends near the mouth of a volcano in Hawaii. So we are off to a good start, as he and his wife are clearly people who do stuff and aren't afraid to be unconventional.

Anyway, he begins to have this odd sleep paralysis. He explains with some relish that it usually occurs after he's given his pregnant wife a massage to help her sleep, although invariably this soothing massage turned to passionate lovemaking. (As a pregnant reader in need of a back massage this bit made me feel rather testy, like 'maybe her back would be less sore if you didn't keep jumping her in the middle of the night', but I digress ...)

Soon these dream experiences turn into long, intricate stories of life through the ideas of a man in the future, a dude called Nainoa. It's kind of like "Being John Malkovich" but the portal he's found is into an incarnation of himself in the future (maybe) or the life of a descendant of his (since all this occurs when he is reproducing and making new babies?). Up to this point, I don't have too many problems.

But then his tone becomes paternally godlike as he explains how and why the world is now a Stone Age place and our entire civilization has been lost. The science of all of this, how it happens, contains ethnocentric Los Angeles phobias (earthquake anxiety, ports gone therefore no oil or gas shipments, therefore the end of life as we know it - what, no cars?! Whatever happened to hydro power?). Well, how can you read someone's dire predictions that your entire civilization will go the way of ancient Egypt without being mildly insulted? Never mind that the entire thing implies a very linear, Darwinian sense of time, something you'd think he might decide is limiting, given that he time travels. Like, duh. Oh, whatever.

I couldn't help thinking that perhaps he'd instead been dreaming the book he was writing, a premonition of his own creative process. I am open to the possibility that somehow he entered the head of himself in thousands of years, but the Tarzan movie he sees down the line started to get on my nerves. Anthropologists are not immune to a tightly culturebound perspective, non? And the writing became a bit pompous as we were all going to be warned by the chosen, so after all, I was annoyed with Amazon since I was going to recommend this book to some friends but changed my mind as it all progressed.

---

Leave a comment

name
email (if you want to be notified)
<-- Please retype the word you see here:
Notify me when someone replies to this post?

---