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When yoga studios are ubiquitous and meditation apps are on millions of smart phones, once exotic terms like karma, zen, and nirvana have entered into everyday English, business consultants have appropriated the meditation terms "mindfulness" and "equanimity," and Buddha statues and Shinto shrines are common in American yards, we forget that things weren't always this way, and that what is now considered cliche was once unknown. So how did the spirituality of the East come to permeate the culture of the West? Answering that question is what The Orient Express is about.
To do so, Harvard scholar Randy Rosenthal explores the four works of fiction he finds most responsible for bringing Eastern religion to the Western mainstream: The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger, and The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. Through the lives of their characters, these authors introduced countless readers to the spiritual practices and philosophies of yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and the hesychast prayer tradition of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
A compendium of spiritual wisdom in the form of literary criticism, The Orient Express tells the story of these stories, providing illuminating context and clarifying misconceptions along the way.
Randy Rosenthal is the author of the novels Dear Burma and The Messiah of Shangri-La. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Boston Globe, The Jerusalem Post, The American Scholar, Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma, Tricycle, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and several other publications. He teaches writing courses for Harvard University and lives in Boston.
“The Orient Express takes its reader on an exhilarating romp through the lush literary landscape of Western spiritual culture. In prose as galvanizing as the novels he treats, Randy Rosenthal compels the reader to confront the perennial question of the Eastern wisdom he so warmly presents: Am I living in the best way possible? An absolute pleasure to read, The Orient Express doubles as an erudite crash course in Buddhism, hesychasm, and beyond.”
—Glenn Wallis, author of A Critique of Western Buddhism: Ruins of the Buddhist Real
“Randy Rosenthal offers readers an expert analysis with a refreshing and unwavering sense of wonder. His curiosity and genuine analysis highlight the reflexive magic of literature’s effect on the cultural and historical unfoldings of our world.”
—Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
“Deeply personal, absorbingly written, and refreshingly opinionated, The Orient Express takes us back to four classics of spiritual fiction from the twentieth century, novels which engendered for many of us our first, naïve attractions to the religious heritages of Asia, and shares the pleasures of engaging them anew with a bracing critical appreciation.”
—Charles Hallisey, senior lecturer on Buddhist literatures, Harvard Divinity School
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