Book Promo + Giveaway: The Boon by Eugene Uttley

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You are probably wondering what on earth this stone vase and "The Boon" is. Well, the stone vase is a stone vase. No suspense there."The Boon" is a new novel by Eugene Uttley. Intrigued? Learn more about it, and then enter the giveaway for one of ten copies of "The Boon" and $15 spending credit at The Book Depository.

Accompany Eugene Uttley on a mythological "hero's journey" to another world and back again, and join him as he articulates the prize that he won there -- The  Ultimate Boon.

Through his struggles in coping with schizophrenia, Uttley has come to know what he wants. Now he just needs to figure out how to get it.

This experimental open letter includes original and appropriated prose, poetry, song, prayer... memoir, travelogue, sketches of Uttley's present-day life, and literary exegesis. Its many sources and topics are ranging, but circle always back to the overarching theme of recovery from mental illness through better knowledge of self and becoming more whole, a complex process both mental and spiritual, which entails increasing awareness of connectedness to the greater whole, the infinite

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Please enjoy this excerpt from The Boon.

Looking again at Joseph Campbell’s many steps in the hero’s journey, I come to the step called The Ultimate Boon. It is the penultimate step in the quest, the achievement of the goal, the winning of the prize. It is not the end; there are five or six steps after it, including The Crossing of the Return Threshhold and The Freedom to Live, which is overcoming the fear of death. But what Campbell says about The Ultimate Boon is very interesting. It’s about God (or gods and goddesses) being the custodian of the prize. He says what the hero finds himself seeking is not God, but God’s grace, a “sustaining substance”:

"This miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the Imperishable; the names and forms of the deities who everywhere embody, dispense, and represent it come and go. This is the miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus, Yahweh, and the Supreme Buddha, the fertility of the rain of Viracocha, the virtue announced by the bell rung in the Mass at the consecration, and the light of the ultimate illumination of the saint and sage. Its guardians dare release it only to the duly proven."

I have the sense of having proven myself. Not to any mystical guardians or even to God, but to myself. I lasted the course of my year-long psychotic break and, like Job, I did not blame or curse God or my fate. I countenanced the loss of my station, my ability to work – and of practically all my possessions – with fairly good humor and temperament, if I do say so myself. And after I had endured the mental and spiritual maelstrom long enough, say nine months, I dedicated all my energies to making myself well. I had whipped myself into decently good shape by the time I finally sought professional help. All the medical people I’ve come into contact with and told my story to congratulate me on the work I’ve done to overcome my symptoms, and I take those congratulations to heart. Taming the lions of dysfunctional thinking, mastering and shepherding oneself, is not an easy task. Now I’ve just about got myself jumping through hoops.

By the grace of God, I know what I want. You guessed it: to be whole. To be mentally and spiritually whole and to cultivate an ever-keener awareness of connectedness to the greater whole. I’m not saying I’ve accomplished these goals. In fact. I’m pretty sure they’re not the kind of goals one ever quite achieves. But knowing them as goals, and being in the process of working towards them is sweet relief from the restlessness of heart I had as a youth. It’s a hollow feeling, not knowing what you want. To know is to have that hollowness filled, that vacant space occupied by a worthy ideal. Wisdom warns against desire, but there is power in wanting, power that can fuel the will and keep lit that precious torch, hope.

INvoke
knowing is hard to trust
for facts take faith
and faith I find
in short supply
but ficts I got
in spades



Thisclaimer
Now and again am I
of a mind to write
yet what have I to describe
who have known but a moment
of no moment and none
other than this?

In these two poems from the old chapbook, I see the aimlessness I felt at that time. Obviously it irked me enough to spur me to write about it. No facts, just ficts. Those ficts became trouble. Being delusional was like living fiction. Now, with faith, facts are easier to come by. Faith is a foundation, a solid base on which to build. In Thisclaimer there is a humility I like, but also that aimlessness. “What have I to describe?” Why, the workings of my mind! The goofy profundity of selected great works and the glorious trivia of the day-to-day here in Keats' vale of Soul-making...

Eugene Uttley is a lifelong reader and author (diapers and a typewriter). In addition to working on literary fiction, he is currently doing free and commissioned reviews of memoir and narrative & experimental non-fiction. He has a BA in English and half-an-MA in Literature. He's a sometime composition TA and ESL instructor and now a student again, of accounting. The author of two books on coping with schizophrenia (as he does), he's a fan (but not follower) of Carl Jung. Some authors who are dear, dear to him are Haruki Murakami, Charles Portis, Kingsley & Martin Amis, J.P. Donleavy, D.F. Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, Augusten Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Alan Watts.To contact him (with a review request or for any reason at all, really) please use mruttleysz at gmail dot com.

You can learn more about Eugene and connect with him here:

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The author is giving away ten (10) copies of "The Boon" and $15 spending credit to The Book Depository. 

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