By Apex Reviews
THE TOY BUDDHA, Book II of the BEGINNER’S LUKE Series, picks up where its predecessor left off: with the fearless Luke Soloman continuing his trek down the Experience Trail. In this compelling set of adventures, though, Luke’s journey is as much physical as it is metaphysical.
At a festive Halloween party hosted by his imaginary friend, Billy, Soloman trips out on acid. At the height of his delirium, Soloman witnesses a glowing Buddha statue passing nearby, but its significance seems, well, insignificant, and Soloman writes off the experience as per the typical side effects of a bad acid trip.
Time goes on, and Soloman’s inward quest for self-discovery takes a few quirky turns: he mysteriously grows six inches overnight, begins playing basketball regularly, and, inevitably has his heart broken by both his heart’s one true desire, Vanessa, and his trusted imaginary friend. In the midst of his emotional grief, he witnesses the Buddha once again only this time the statue actually speaks to him, offering only the following terse axiom:
“You can’t travel the path ‘til you’ve become the path.”
Before he has a chance to delve the depths of the statement, Soloman suffers a near fatal accident After he awakens from a dream-filled stupor, he reconciles with his friend and beloved, begins to mend, and eventually enjoys the pleasures he has heretofore only imagined with the lovely Vanessa. Unable to deny the significance of the Buddha’s recurrence in his life, though, Soloman soon ventures off again, on a continued search for even deeper meaning–if there is any at all.
THE TOY BUDDHA is an enriching sequel to BEGINNER’S LUKE, helping to further define the original tome, as well as make its mission that much more clear. Luckman’s writing continues to be emboldened by his charged plunges into the abstract, and his playful, yet sincere, treatment of the ethereal continues to make for an enlightening read. If Book III of this engaging six-part series is anything like its progenitors, Luckman’s cadre of devoted readers is destined to only grow.
Visit http://www.beginnersluke.com to download your FREE copy of THE TOY BUDDHA today!
By Alyce Mooreland
I told myself I wasn’t going to write a second review of the BEGINNER’S LUKE Series, by my old buddy Sol Luckman, but here I am again after being thoroughly taken by Book II, THE TOY BUDDHA.
Part of what I am is just plain nostalgic for my undergrad days in Chapel Hill, which Luckman calls in mock-homage to Thomas Wolfe Pulpit Hill. I, too, remember when “Pulpit Hill” was just a sleepy little university town, when there was always a free parking space and traffic jams were things cities had–the pre-Ben Folds Five days when the Pressure Boys and Snatches of Pink ruled weekend nights at Cat’s Cradle …
But I digress. THE TOY BUDDHA is honestly quite beyond any other novel I’ve ever read, though it has certain affinities to the sustained high-wire performances of novels like Tom Robbins’ ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION and Robert Coovers’ THE PUBLIC BURNING. Luke and Billy’s hallucinatory and madcap pursuit of the peripatetic Buddha, who suddenly and briefly reappears in 1987 in Pulpit Hill, as central as it is as a plot device, becomes virtually a sideshow compared to Luke’s by turns hilarious and merciless introspection in this imaginary novel-memoir that at times reads like a crazed voyeur’s wet dream.
Not that Luke is going crazy, though he could, and perhaps should, be–with a faux friend like Billy inviting a crackup to make F. Scott Fitzgerald weep in the wake of one betrayal after another. Admittedly, the jury remains out as to what Billy, a.k.a. William Morocco, ultimately represents. Is he a friend or a fiend? a visionary or a lunatic? Perhaps the most we can say is that he seems meant to mirror an older and more jaded version of Luke back to himself as a “cautionary tale” of the imagination gone sour.
In a word, THE TOY BUDDHA serves up a trenchant critique of the alarming tendency most people have to look outside themselves for meaning, be it spiritual or political–whether they’re giving away their power to a religion, a guru, an elected official, a savior, or the Buddha himself now back on the loose in these unprecedented pages.
“The Road of Experience leads to the Palace of Wisdom,” wrote Blake. Luke certainly finds himself disabused through his “experience” with Billy and the Buddha. The question is will this ultimately produce “wisdom”? I’m willing to bet it will, eventually, at least a little, and I can hardly wait to sink my teeth into Book III, PORTRAITS OF AN IMAGINARY YOUNG MAN.