Just So

January 20, 2020
Five lectures from self-proclaimed “philosophical entertainer” Watts (1915–1973) are collected in this comprehensive, approachable work. Though the language is sometimes delightfully dated—Watts is very concerned about “hang-ups” and calls those who cannot withstand the uncertainty of life “squares”—his general ideas (developing a relationship with the vagaries of the universe, as discussed in his lecture “Going With,” or, in “What Is So of Itself,” learning to trust the intuitive “unborn mind”) still resonate. However, Watts’s idolization of Chinese approaches to technology and nature feels rose-tinted, and Watts’s hopes that transportation technology would eliminate war and that electronic connectivity would connect people in a way that would allow one to “give up all worries concerning ownership” and eliminate the impact of “dirty little secrets” are naive in retrospect. Statements like “when we are adequately fed and sheltered, there isn’t anything missing” remind readers to keep life simple in order to find solace. While those new to the ideas of Western Zen will probably find contemporary authors more to their taste, this insightful survey will appeal to Watts’s fans.

January 15, 2020
Playful and prophetic dispatches from the intersection of philosophy and spirituality. Watts (Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide-and-Seek, 2017, etc.), who died in 1973, loved to startle his readers by exposing their erroneous assumptions about themselves and the world. Nothing in his latest posthumous publication will shock Watts initiates more than his assertion that, "ideally, you only attend one seminar or read just one book and never have to come back to me again. It's not the best business model, but as far as my livelihood is concerned, there are always more people out there foolish enough to pay attention to me." With Just So, Watts is closing in on 50 books to his name, most of which cover Zen, Taoism, Vedanta, and Christianity mixed with British and American cultural criticism. That the author is witty and insightful on these themes is why readers return again and again to only slight variations on them. To adapt one of his best-known sayings, "the point of reading Watts is not to learn something from him; the point of reading Watts is to enjoy it." So his son, Mark, has a solid platform to keep turning out these volumes assembled from archived lectures (the number of posthumous volumes has now surpassed those Watts himself saw through to publication). The challenge for such a project is to get the lecture segments to cohere into something that feels like a book--and hopefully one that offers something that lectures themselves, which are readily available online, do not. On this count, this latest mostly falls short, but the author's charming style is enough to overcome the book's structural shortcomings. He's as good as he ever was on ecology, the self, and what does and does not make for a good life. No surprises here--just vintage Watts.

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