Author: Brian Joseph
ISBN: 1-59330-266-5

The following review was contributed by Jim  Curtiss. Click Here To Read More Of Jim’s Reviews

Every now and then a book comes along and grabs you. For the reviewer,
The Gift of Gabe, by Brian Joseph, is just such a book. Even though one
can recognize that Joseph's writing style is still developing, the story
he has to tell is arresting to say the least, and is made even more so
because it's loosely based on reality.

The gist of the story is that Joseph accidentally meets an old man named
Gabe, who lives in a forest cabin. Gabe, it turns out, is a philosopher
of sorts, and through a series of visits he leads Joseph to reconsider
the nature of reality. Gabe goes about his teaching slowly, introducing
Joseph to new books, poems and concepts, as well as playing music from a
variety of artists, the most notable of which are the Beatles and Jimi
Hendrix. Actually, it is primarily through Gabe's radical
interpretations of the mentioned songs that one tends to become
convinced of his perspective's veracity.

Gabe often tells Joseph about "the language", a manner of speaking about
the nature of reality which allows listeners to understand that the
artist in question has achieved a sort of illumination. For Gabe's
purposes, illumination refers to realizing the basic interconnectedness
of the universe. Once this is achieved, he maintains, the illumined
person in question feels compelled to communicate what he or she has
experienced. And due to the constraints of the human mind, "the
language" is a more or less uniform way of communicating that
illumination.

Gabe tells Joseph a story which nicely illustrates this idea: imagine a
town located in a valley in the middle of a mountain range. The citizens
of this town are content in their valley - it provides them with
everything that they need - and they do not see the merit of climbing
the surrounding peaks. When and if an individual decides to climb the
mountain for a look-see, the town's inhabitants discourage this
individual in one way or another. Because of this herd mentality, most
individuals do not undertake the climb. But those who do climb the
mountain are simply amazed at what they see when they reach the peak:
they notice that their town isn't all of life, that many other peaks lie
beyond theirs, and if they look really hard, they can see other people
on other peaks waving back at them.

For his part, Joseph is candid about his uncertainty: from the
beginning, he is unconvinced about the concepts Gabe presents, but is
nonetheless curious about his approach. By reading the books that Gabe
lends him and by critically listening to dozens of songs that he had
heard many times before, Joseph slowly comes to grant credence to what
Gabe has to say. In fact, Joseph's progression through skepticism,
doubt, reluctant acquiescence, guarded belief and finally acceptance, is
one of the concepts that the book so wonderfully captures.

Joseph begins the book with a note to the reader: "Ideally this book
would come with a soundtrack. That is not possible at this time. The
reader may be familiar with some or many of the musical/poetical
compositions mentioned. For the reader who chooses to explore further,
it is recommended that the songs be heard during the course of reading.
Many other books are mentioned within the text of this book. All are
recommended as further reading for those who are so inclined."

Because the reviewer happens to have a number of the mentioned music
tracks, he was able to follow Joseph's advice and listen to them as they
came up in the book: this was very helpful in illustrating the concepts
that Gabe and Joseph explore. Indeed, one of the reviewer's main
criticisms of the book - aside from Joseph's sometimes ambulatory prose
- is that it would greatly benefit from an appendix containing the
mentioned tracks.

For those interested in the interconnectivity of What Is, or even just
plain intrigued by how radically different others might view the world,
The Gift of Gabe is well worth your time.