Published by Counterpoint
April 14, 2015
"Besides having an unusual
upbringing—influenced greatly by a wealthy, angry father and
depressed mother; a brave, smart, and thoughtful housekeeper; a
taciturn, skilled groundskeeper; and bebop jazz player Buddy, who
taught him that “life could be improvised”—actor-writer Coyote was
an astute, remarkable young man, able to hear animals speak and
aware, early on, of the separation of mind and body. But he was also
crippled by a vow never to 'play,' to compete. This engagingly
written exploration of his life has a few, sometimes disorienting
blank spaces, but those are “covered in detail,” Coyote points out,
more than once, in his memoir Sleeping Where I Fall (1998)and
readers may prefer to start there for the full story. Still, there’s
plenty here, in anecdotes of caring for the hungry in his Digger
kitchens in Haight-Ashbury, befriending and learning from Pulitzer
Prize–winning poet Gary Snyder (and then following Buddhism for more
than 40 years), becoming a respected actor, and raising his own
family with the wisdom he carefully garnered as a youngster."
...Eloise Kinney
Peter's
Coyote's new memoir is just plain wonderful--richly textured,
beautifully written, sad, sweet, sometimes funny, always wise. It is
about childhood losses and joy, growing up, mentors, loyalty, the
search for Truth, survival, the sixties, the seventies,
transcendence, healing, disasters. It is told by a writer of deep
wisdom, self-knowledge and charm, yet I gobbled it up, like a novel."
...Anne Lamott
"As he showed in Sleeping Where I Fall,
Peter has lived a life most of us could only dream of. In this
insightful and beautifully expressed follow-up, we get a deeper view
not only of his own path, but of the currents underlying so much of
our own shared histories. Viewed through this prism of three
transformational relationships, his story is as moving as it is
fascinating. A remarkable book." ...Bonnie
Raitt
Kirkus Review:
An imperious and flawed father figure looms large in Coyote's
artfully rendered chronicle of his intriguing journey from confused,
privileged youth to enlightened Zen practitioner. Not long ago,
Coyote, international screen star and veteran countercultural
revolutionary, had a transcendental experience that he had arguably
been searching for his entire life. But while the author's Buddhist
practice is a vital component of his often descriptively brilliant
biographical odyssey, it is by no means the only one. Coyote's
story, the follow-up to Sleeping Where I Fall (1998), is as
much about a boy's initial introduction to the great wide world as
it is about one complex human being's lifelong hunger for inner
meaning. Coyote presents a fascinatingly intricate portrait of what
it was like being the peculiar scion of wealth and power. As a
child, the young Peter Cohon found himself languishing in neglect,
floating in the staid world of his conflicted parents, Morris and
Ruth. Soon, however, he was propelled headlong into a parallel
existence where he met lively figures hired to run the family's
Turkey Hill farm and Englewood, New Jersey, abode. "For the next ten
years [caretaker] Susie Howard was the North Star around which my
heavens revolved." The impressionable young boy eventually
encountered jazz legends, intellectual radicals and rough-hewn
outdoorsmen. In addition to an imposing gangster uncle, each of
these individuals managed to shape the boy who would later become
not only a central figure in America's nascent youth movement, but
also a dusty pioneer in communal living, a left-wing rabble-rouser
working inside the political system, and a struggling father trying
to support a family with a heroin monkey on his back. Astonishingly,
well into middle age, the author accomplished another remarkable
turn, evolving into the well-respected film actor many know him as
today. Presented with so many well-defined faces, there's guaranteed
to be at least one Coyote, and probably more, that readers enjoy
meeting.
Publishers Weekly:
Writer, actor, and political activist Coyote picks up from his
previous book, Sleeping Where I Fall, about his experiences in the
1970s, and details the rest of his life. Most important to Coyote's
narrative is his Buddhist practice; a Zen sense of impermanence and
placid acceptance permeates every page of this memoir, from Coyote's
birth and immediately rocky upbringing in 1941 to his contemporary
life at San Francisco Zen Center. Those unfamiliar with Coyote's
life and wishing to know more about his time with the anarchist
improv group Diggers will be disappointed; Coyote frequently refers
readers to his previous book, making this one difficult to
appreciate in its own right. But it's interesting to follow Coyote's
careful, step-by-step unraveling of his own psyche and emotional
constructs, and fellow students of Zen will especially appreciate
Coyote's breakdown of meditative retreats and flashes of
enlightenment.
Library Journal:
Best known now as an actor, voice-over artist, and documentary film
narrator, Coyote (Sleeping Where I Fall) has lived a varied life. In
the 1960s he rejected his wealthy background by becoming a founding
member of the Diggers, an anarchist theater group based in San
Francisco whose basic tenet was that everything should be free. This
book, Coyote’s second, focuses specifically on his upbringing and
his discovery of Zen Buddhism. His early life was unpleasant, though
it seems to have taught him to be self-sufficient. Coyote’s father
was domineering, distant, and at times abusive, while his mother
suffered a nervous breakdown early in Coyote’s young life from which
she never seemed to recover. Zen helped Coyote rediscover value in
his life, after years of drug abuse and living in dirty and
impoverished conditions. He is very honest in describing his
initiation into Zen thought and practice, not making it sound either
easy nor entirely pleasant. In particular his mind struggles with
the formality of Zen. Having lived such an undisciplined and
unstructured life up until his early to mid-30s, it takes Coyote
some time to see the value in rules. VERDICT Remarkably forthright
and insightful, this memoir may inspire others to add a bit of Zen
to their lives.
Jonah Raskin, San Francisco
Chronicle:
As a memoir of one man’s adventures, it’s appealing because
it shows what happened to a generation caught up in sex, drugs and
political protest, and who dreamed the dream of the utopian ’60s.
Readers will probably come to this book for the personal
revelations and the behind-the-scenes look at famous people such as
Polanski. They’ll linger for the memorable language that shows that
Coyote is indeed a fine writer... The
stellar cover photo of Coyote by the famed Bay Area photographer
Chris Felver
suggests the anguish beneath the author’s handsome exterior.
Lou Fancher, San Francisco
Examiner:
Peter Coyote’s intriguing second memoir “The Rainman’s Third Cure:
An Irregular Education” displays one man as an entire cast of
characters: actor, activist, Zen priest, acted-upon child of parents
prone to caustic comments, and more... Proving that a skilled writer
can coax fertility from an already plowed field, there’s nothing
ho-hum about a second look, partly because Coyote’s life is
dramatic. From a glittery childhood with a rich, violent father who
was “a textbook of threat” and a mother who was distant when she
wasn’t expressing her distaste for life or for her son, Coyote spent
years mired in teenage rebellion and adult angst expressed in
self-destroying lifestyle habits...
Understandably wounded by his upbringing, his life has been a
yin-yang attempt to distance himself from his own experiences while
craving proximity to his center. A naturally gifted narrator,
Coyote’s writing about other people is more illuminating than his
exposition of internal thoughts and feelings – and that’s not a
criticism. His first-person, once-removed voice is an abstraction
that soars in sentences worth underlining and memorizing for when an
occasion calls for acute observation expressed with brevity. The
struggle between a spiritual and a status-seeking life behind the
lyrics in the Bob Dylan song that inspired the memoir’s title might
be Coyote’s narcotic for life. But each time he climbs another
mountain to look at the terrain, he’s grown a bit more lucid about
the peaks and valleys — and increasingly sage about their power.
Suzanne Gordon, Beyond Chron:
What these two books (Sleeping Where I Fall & Rainman's Cure)
highlight is that spirituality and political commitment are not
mutually exclusive choices. What Coyote’s life story teaches us is
that making peace with one’s inner demons can even lead to a deeper
and richer engagement with efforts to change the world.
KPFA:
The guiding metaphor in Peter Coyote’s new spiritual biography is
drawn from a line in an early Bob Dylan song. For Coyote, the twin
forces Dylan identifies as Texas Medicine and Railroad Gin –
represent the competing forces of the transcendental, inclusive, and
ecstatic world of love with the competitive, status-seeking world of
wealth and power. "The Rainman’s Third Cure" is the tale of a young
man caught between these apparently antipodal options and the
journey that leads him from the privileged halls of power to
Greenwich Village jazz bars, to jail, to the White House, lessons
from a man who literally held the power of life and death over
others, to government service and international success on stage and
screen... What begins as a peripatetic flirtation with Zen deepens
into a life-long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally the
road to Transmission—acknowledgement from his teacher that he is
ready to be an independent teacher. Through Zen, Coyote discovers a
third option that offers an alternative to both the worlds of Love
and Power’s correlatives of status seeking and material wealth. Zen
was his portal, but what he discovers on the inside is actually
available to all humans. In this energetic, reflective and
intelligent memoir, The Rainman’s Third Cure is the way out of the
box. The way that works.
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