THE SANDSTONE PAPERS: ON THE CRISIS OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE.
Hillsdale: Sophia Perennis, 2005. Second edition. 200 pages. Item #10281
Paperback in new condition.
The format of The Sandstone Papers is a Conference on 'The Crisis of Contemporary Life' held at a college on the California coast. Twenty speakers were invited and six papers were selected for publication by an editor, John Street, who attended the Conference, writes the General Introduction, the introductions to each paper, and keeps a personal journal recounting his private voyage of self-discovery inspired by the papers. The papers are written in six different styles of prose, and, of course, the whole thing is fictional—although after its first printing in the late 1980s several people sent letters to the publisher addressed to the 'speakers'&mdashwho include a psychologist, a nun, a Marxist professor, a professor of Philosophy and Romance Languages, a 'beat poet', and an anthropologist, each with their own angle on the crisis. As I point out in my introduction to the second edition, all six are profoundly religious people, convinced that 'the roots of things, like the answers to our more compelling questions, lie deep.'
Price: $20.00