Gary Snyder joined his old friend, novelist Jim
Harrison, to discuss their loves and lives and what has
become of them throughout the years. Set amidst the
natural beauty of the Santa Lucia Mountains, their
conversations--harnessing their ideas of all that is
wild, sacred and intimate in this world--move from the
admission that Snyder's mother was a devout atheist to
his personal accounts of his initiation into Zen
Buddhist culture, being literally dangled by the ankles
over a cliff. After years of living in Japan, Snyder
returns to the States to build a farmhouse in the remote
foothills of the Sierras, a homestead he calls
Kitkitdizze. For all of the depth in these
conversations, Jim Harrison and Gary Snyder are humorous
and friendly, and with the artfully interspersed
dialogue from old friends and loves like Scott Slovic,
Michael McClure, Jack Shoemaker, and Joanne Kyger, the
discussion reaches a level of not only the personal, but
the global, redefining our idea of the Beat Generation
and challenging the future directions of the
environmental movement and its association with ''Deep
Ecology.'' ''The Etiquette of Freedom'' is an
all-encompassing companion to the film ''The Practice of
the Wild.'' A DVD is included which contains the film
together with more than an hour of out-takes and
expanded interviews, as well as an extended reading by
Gary Snyder. The whole offers a rare glimpse of their
extended discussion of life and what it means to be wild
and alive. |
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