{"product_id":"an-ocean-full-of-angels-the-autobiography-of-isa-ben-adam-9781587315909","title":"An Ocean Full of Angels – The Autobiography of","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e[In the author’s words:] I have written almost sixty books, but this one is very different from all the others. For one thing, it took 20 years. I had to wait patiently for it to grow, like a tree. I was not in control of it; it kept changing, as I watched at it and let it do what it did, like an animal out of its cage.\u003cbr\u003e     It began as a much more philosophical, talky, rational, in-control kind of book. The plot and the characters were originally there for the sake of the words, the points, the philosophy. Then the story and the character happily took over, and turned it into the opposite kind of book, in which the words were there for the sake of the characters and the events of the story, even though it remained long and wordy, and philosophical.\u003cbr\u003e     Then I cannibalized the long and wordy original book by extracting the philosophi-cal passages and making no less than five other little books out of them: 1. \u003ci\u003eThe Sea Within \u003c\/i\u003eexplores the puzzle of humanity’s mysterious love affair with the sea; 2. \u003ci\u003eI Surf, Therefore I Am,\u003c\/i\u003e is a mystical philosophy of surfing; 3.\u003ci\u003e If Einstein Had Been a Surfer \u003c\/i\u003eis about what kinds of thinking have to be included in a Theory of Everything; 4. \u003ci\u003eA Refutation of Moral Relativism\u003c\/i\u003e; and 5. \u003ci\u003eIslamic Dialogs\u003c\/i\u003e. Some of these utilize characters that are in Ocean. But these are all books of philosophy that cluttered up the story, so I had to evict them from its premises. These five other books all fascinate me, and I hope they will fascinate readers, but not in the same way as \u003ci\u003eOcean \u003c\/i\u003edoes.\u003cbr\u003e     \u003ci\u003eOcean \u003c\/i\u003eis about connections: In the sense it is my “Theory of Everything”; it shows in a story the surprising, invisible, yet powerful connections among things. Philosophy, science, and theology can state, define, and argue for those connections, but story is more convincing because it presents them, shows them. That’s why story is more powerful than philosophy in convincing us. (How many Romans were converted by Christian theology? How many by the Gospel story?) No philosopher was able to convince me that “we are each responsible for all.” But Dostoevsky did: he showed it in \u003ci\u003eThe Brothers Karamazov\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[In the publisher’s words:] This is the damnedest novel you’ll ever read. It’s more an autobiography or a rumination on the state of man’s soul from an exciting and fascinating writer. I can only compare it to reading \u003ci\u003eThe Brothers Karamazon \u003c\/i\u003ethe second time, after you realize that the whole center section on the teachings of Fr. Zosima is the central core of the novel or, if you have a larger capacity for crap than I have, reading Ayn Rand’s \u003ci\u003eAtlas Shrugged \u003c\/i\u003ewithout becoming a cult member. It is belles lettres, metaphysics and physics combined, psychology, theology, and spirituality as related by a beguiling story-teller. It is like reading the last few pages of Hegel, without the suffering that it took to get there, or finally seeing the whole grand structure of Thomas Aquinas, when the theory of everything and the synthesis that ties all of life together become visible through the maze.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"St Augustine's Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51041524089175,"sku":"9781587315909","price":27.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781587315909.jpg?v=1750950632","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/an-ocean-full-of-angels-the-autobiography-of-isa-ben-adam-9781587315909","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}