Grand

March 15, 2020
The National Book Award winner fleshes out 10 ideas on the art of life for his grandson, Emery. Johnson knows that he will want Emery to be a thinker, to "realize that it is every serious thinker's job to sustain the frail light of clarity and reason in the ever-present darkness of ignorance, superstition, ideology, dogma, prejudice, and demagoguery." But as he proceeds through life, hunting and gathering the experiences that will continuously shape him over the years, the author wonders if there are "some things that are timeless or come close to being so"--knowing himself through self-examination, which will be "necessary for him at every stage and season of his life, because he is a process, not a product." Johnson draws on his many experiences throughout his rangy and inquisitive life, a life he frames as a source of his guidance: the examples of his family members who struggled against and overcame the daily bigotry that infested their lives; his years as a young political cartoonist; his college years in the early 1970s and his doctorate in philosophy; his time as an English professor and literary scholar; and his practice of Eastern philosophy and martial arts. He uses all of these experiences to create valuable lessons and tools, including egoless listening; letting things go ("we live best when we are devoted to giving, not to accumulating"); the beauty of love, both of self and of others; that pain is an inevitable part of life, but we are free to decide how we will react, in suffering, vengeance, or empathy; that our intentions are critical to our way of being. Johnson digs deep, but he is never obscure, presenting these ideas in context in order to properly explain why he thinks they are important. Demanding, bighearted, and generous--we should all be so lucky to have such a grandfather.

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