ie They are NOT coming from overseas !!
Wild Animus
- By Rich Shapero -
ISBN: 0971880107
Publisher: Too Far Independent Media, Woodside, California, USA
Published: 2004
Binding: SOFTcover 315 pages
Condition: UNread & been displayed condition! HERE in MELBOURNE! A private display
copy as illustrated!
Edition: FIRST EDITION: 1st printing 2004 (Advanced Reading Copy)
TIGHT, SCARCE SOFTCOVER ~ IN MELBOURNE ...
WHY do ebayers buy from US?
Because you KNOW what you're getting. My close up photos are of the actual item!!
Remains UNread - it was sent for review purposes by a publishing house - it was displayed in a private collection. It is Tight - neat, no inscriptions or marks within. Appears as in my photos - this is the exact copy!! A nicely preserved copy - superb!
No discernible shelf wear, the interior is tight and spotlessly clean with 315 pages. THIS is an 'Advanced Reading Copy'(stated on the back cover) sent for review purposes copy is the TRUE FIRST US Edition: FIRST printing! from 2004 - Number line: 08 07 06 05 04 . 5 4 3 2 1 - the US publishing by Too Far Publishing, Woodside, California. It stated on the back cover - ‘Advance Reading Copy Not for Resale’. Collectible, it’d be difficult to get closer to a ' first issue ' !!
SCARCE COLLECTIBLE 1st Printing edition - this is an UNread copy!!
In original pictorial SOFTcover binding, in publisher's glossy covers which are in excellent condition.
(Stored with 2020!)
Measures approx. 9¾ x 6¾ inches or 25 x 17cms
SYNOPSIS ....
How far would you go to find yourself? In Rich Shapero's provocative debut novel, a young man rejects a normal life to follow a wild, inner calling.
Sam Altman, disillusioned with the world of the 60s, has fallen deeply in love with the mysterious Lindy, a young woman who inspires him to seek the foundations of his heart. She understands his quest, and will do anything to help him realize it--no matter how dangerous.
Sam's unleashed and increasingly unhinged imagination drives them north to the remote Alaskan wilderness. On the unforgiving ridges of Mt. Wrangell, alone with his wayward ideas, Sam, who has renamed himself Ransom, gradually transforms himself into a ram--prey to a pack of strangely familiar wolves.
The mad pursuit leads from the wilds to civilization and back again. And when Ransom and Lindy return to brave the perilous mountain together, the truth behind his imagined transformation emerges. What they discover in those frozen heights threatens their love as well as their sanity and their lives.
More than an adrenaline-charged adventure, Wild Animus is a search for the primordial and a journey to the breaking point. It is a story of love and sacrifice, of obsession, of finding the limits of the heart and going one step farther.
Sam Altman is an intense young man with an animal energy whose unleashed and increasingly unhinged imagination takes him first to Seattle and then farther north, to the remote Alaskan wilderness. ...
After graduating from college, Sam Altman finds himself subject to an urge he doesn't understand, an urge drawing him away from civilization. Altman's unleashed - and increasingly unhinged - imagination takes him first to Seattle and then farther north, to the remote Alaskan wilderness. Sam has fallen deeply in love with the mysterious and powerful Lindy, a young woman who will do anything to help him realize his quest, no matter how dangerous. Alone with a driving need to uncover his innermost self, Sam gradually transforms himself into a ram - prey to a pack of strangely familiar wolves. The mad pursuit leads from the wilds to civilization and back again. And when Sam and Lindy return to the perilous mountain together, the truth behind his imagined transformation emerges.
Rich Shapero grew up in California and headed north as soon as he could scrape the fare together. Captivated by the staggering beauty of the Alaskan wilderness, and the dare of its dangerous side, his explorations have taken the form of meditations on transcendence. For Shapero, the primeval landscape tests not only human endurance, but the boundaries of the human spirit. Whether circumnavigating Chichagof Island by sailboat, dog sledding the arctic, or traversing 400 miles of mountainous terrain solo—as he did while writing Wild Animus—Shapero's focus has been on the exploration within. The real goal, he maintains, is a fresh discovery of ourselves.
The novel, Wild Animus, was published in 2004, and the accompanying music was completed in 2009. During that same period, Rich completed his second novel, and is currently working on his third. “The terrible thing is that for most of my life, I had very little confidence that any of these projects would ever see the light of day. It’s hard for me to believe it’s actually happening.”
Very Interesting read!
Reviews
From Publishers Weekly …. Shapero unwisely uses the prologue of his debut novel to divulge the ending, so the remaining 300 pages do little more than track one man's tedious journey toward acid-induced madness. Drug dealer Sam Altman, an unhappy and lonely student at the University of California–Berkeley in the late 1960s, meets and falls in love with equally unhappy and lonely Lindy at an antiwar protest. Attempting to evade arrest for drug dealing, the couple flee to Washington State, where Sam's chronic use of LSD leads him to cut himself off from his friends, change his name to Ransom and yearn to become "a fur-covered shaman, a wild ram-man, chanting the liturgy of surrender." The pair end up in Alaska, where she waitresses to support him while he writes a novel, masquerades as a mountain ram and imagines he's being chased by a rout of wolves. Though Ransom's hallucinations worsen by the day, Lindy and his few remaining friends are too intimidated by his behavior and unhappy themselves to intervene, leaving him to his tragic and inevitable end (which, of course, has already been divulged). Shapero does have a talent for vivid imagery, but this is still just a sad tale of a man whose drug addiction drives him and everyone around him crazy.
"A powerful and complex book." - Library Journal, September 1, 2004
"Reading WILD ANIMUS is like climbing, skiing, or intense adventuring. It puts you in the 'time is now' state." - Mike Libecki, World-Class Mountain Climber/Contributing Writer, Climbing Magazine
Fans who want something different . . . will take immense pelasure with the well-written, deep WILD ANUIMUS. -- www.blether.com by Harriet Klausner #1 Ranked Amazon Reviewer
I Actually Liked the Book, ………….. This book is strange. You have to read it with an open mind as reading it with a closed one, with all your judgments ready to lash out, will only push you away from the book.
Yes, there are drugs and hallucinations involved but there is a meaning behind the book and personal discoveries along the way. The themes of love, surrender and sacrifice play an important role in the book, as well as the pursuit of growth and of illusions.
If you can see, then this book may reveal new understandings or insights. If you're not able to grasp the meaning, then you will miss the point and see the book for what you want to see it as. Not every will understand the story but then again, what kind of world would we live in if we agreed about everything?
There is a lot of symbolism and that is what carries the book, the meaning behind face value.
Literature is an art, and as art, there are many types of interpretations and feelings that people get from it. If you don't understand a certain piece of art, for whatever reason you come up with, then maybe it's just not for you.
I found this book to be great, especially the relationship between the ram and the wolves. It gives a different insight on how we relate to each other, how we affect and interact with each other. Mix that in with love and you get the notions of surrender and sacrifice, which are key to any relationship. You will also are hit with dreams and the pursuit of the self and the question of whether the dream is just a bad fantasy that may break apart our relationships or will it allow us to reach the next level of happiness.
Wild Animus is a story for those prepared to take the adventure. Enjoy!
EXCELLENT multi-use tool!,……… It served quite well as a monitor riser for my LCD screen.
My friend and I needed a book to add weight for a tofu press.
Pages 200 to 225 made wonderful firestarters when covered in paraffin wax.
One night, we took the cover and walked around the downtown Seattle area hiding our faces behind it and saying "Wooo, wolf eyes, scawwy wolf eyes", while three people behind us kept asking people "Have you seen the walruses?" in Scooby-Doo voices.
One night we drank too much and began reading the worst prose we could find in voices like Darth Vader and Mickey Mouse over a microphone to loud techno music. People apparently loved this prose more than Lynne Cheney's book on lesbian sexual relationships.
The cat ate pages 123 to 127 when we ran out of catgrass for him to chew.
The door below sometimes slams shut when coming in and out of the apartment, so rather than going out to buy a doorstop, we use the book!
Every so often you can pick a random phrase out of it that makes you howl with laughter.
Handing it to someone who's taken more than six hits of acid in their lifetime and asking them whether it's accurate in the description is highly amusing - especially when you get their faces to screw up like you've just asked them to kill the baby Jesus with a rusty spork.
It is an excellent candidate for book frisbee on a sunny afternoon in the park.
I take it with me when camping in the case that I run out of toilet paper.
Gosh, I'm sure I could find more excellent uses for this most entertaining book. If paper cuts were something desired, I'm sure you could add that as a bonus, since the cheap paper on the books provides HUNDREDS of those to the reader.
However, you might not want to expose your cortex to the language. It puts me in mind of the Douglas Adams characters, the Vogons, whose poetry is only the third worst in the galaxy. That, in of itself, is a distinction.
Like the movie Showgirls, this book is so jaw-droppingly bad that it's an entertaining read just to see how badly a book COULD be written. It's not just a gigantic cliche, it's a cliched parody of every 1960s novel or poem written by every poet or writer seeking truth within the American experience.
So if nothing else, it's a marvelous book to be used for anything except reading.
Read The Book For Yourself, …… I found this book to be refreshingly original, charged with rich metaphoric language, and containing an important message: "Bliss beyond fear." It is not a lengthy read, which is also refreshing in the world of bloated fiction. I will admit that the book isn't for everyone. If you're not into transcendental shamanic experiences involving psychadelic drugs and anthropomorphism, well then, you may not enjoy the story. The writing itself is very evocative in its descriptions of the Alaskan wilderness, and I was especially moved by Mr. Shapero's characterization of the relentlessly pursuing wolf pack and indeed, the primal earth forces he dubbed "Wild Animus."
Most of the reviews of this book are so charged with vitriol, that I wonder what this book had done to offend so many, so easily. I wonder if any of these reviewers are actual literary critics? Are they writers themselves? Self-publishing haters? Personal enemies of Mr. Shapero? I am amazed to see such a loathing consensus over one book. I challenge readers to look beyond the utilitarian uses of this book (i.e. coaster, tofu press, etc.) and give it a shot.
Marvellous Reading!
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