The Journal of Martin Quinn: A Mythopoetic Quest

By Joel B. Reed

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1585005460
• ISBN13: 9781585005468
• Release Date: December 1995
• Publisher: 1st Book Library
• Length: 628 Pages
• Weight: 1.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.1" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Must read!

This is a great book, providing insight to the cultures of the Southwest as well as many spiritual lessons. You could read this book several times and learn something new each time. The author did an excellent job of handling his characters with realism, the language of the Southwest as well as it's customs are captured well. The book spans several decades, each revealing the current situation with honesty and clarity. I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about himself/herself.

Three books in one!

As a one-time bookstore owner, I still recognize reader appeal, and this book has it! It's a romantic adventure, a finding himself novel, but most of all (and the best part to me), it is a spiritual book. The American Indian Spirituality is particularly effective and moving. I highly recommend this book.

Not Just Preaching to the Choir

The Journal of Martin Quinn: a Mythopoetic Quest presents as a "man's book" but we women can appreciate it too. Through the eyes of the protagonist we learn what it is to move through different cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions and philosophical states of mind. Martin's brains, looks and personality open doors for him wherever he travels, yet his private angst makes of him a perpetual outsider, trapped in a bleak interior landscape where the love he seeks is perpetually out of reach.Reed's depictions of intertwined lives ring true, whether deployed in the arid beauty of the American Southwest or in exploding crucibles of conflict in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Joel Reed has the rare gift of being able to portray the thoughts, feelings and experiences of non-mainstream characters with a startling immediacy that deconstructs facile assumptions about "Us" and "Them".I believe this book can engage and intrigue readers along an extended continuum, ranging all the way from fanciers of Carlos Castaneda's mysticism to devotees of the hard-edged journalism of Ruark and Hemmingway. Yet, there is much in this text which speaks to the alchemy of human relationship, and which resonates with very different bodies of literary work entirely -- such as those of Alice Walker and Dorothy Allison.

Manchild of the 50's and 60's in the Great Chihuahuan Desert

Anyone who came to adulthood, wish they had, parented one, or are perplexed by them, will not be able to put down The Journal of Martin Quinn. Understanding the manchild in the Chihuahuan Desert has been attempted but never as successfully as by this Reed guy.

A journey to a sunrise

I was asked by a friend to read "The Journal of Martin Quinn." and I did so considering it to be one of those, "if I must" type of chores. Imagine my delightful surprise in the first three pages, that this book became a "I must" read as much of it at one sitting, then pick up first thing the next day. Mr. Reed takes his readers on a warm rich journey through history, experiences and culture. I felt as if I was 17 again and in the American Southwest as it was in the 1970's. This Illustration of the periods of terrorism, racial and civil unrest are acurately portrayed without loosing the story of one man's search for himself. Martin Quinn is the essential everyman who lives and matures. This is the type of book I would take with me on a solo boat trip around the world. This is a book I would a friend, relative, my son and know that I had given him some good reading, and something useful.