Word: zen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...that it had become a force for oppression rather than freedom. He objected to its codes for correct thinking--codes he found unnecessarily restrictive. After leaving the Communist Party, Fast found a new school of thought with which to align himself: for the past 20 years he has practiced Zen Buddhism. He explains his attraction to Zen quite simply. Last week, looking slightly out of place but relaxed at a carefully-kept conference room at the Boston offices of his publisher, Houghton Mifflin, Fast said, "You get to a point where you've seen a couple of wars, prison...
Today Fast lives in a peaceful section of Beverly Hills, California, above the smog of Los Angeles, in a home heated and powered by 12 solar panels. At 63 he has written more than 50 books, including science fiction works, "Zen stories," and thrillers--the last under the pseudonym of E.V. Cunningham. His best-known works are historical novels such as The Unvanquished, Citizen Tom Paine, April Morning--all set during the Revolutionary War--and Freedom Road, a tale of the Reconstruction Era. But Fast will probably gain the most recognition from his latest novel, and from his two upcoming...
...pages. Almost any other author would have left Dan Lavette dead, his stomach perforated with ulcers. But Fast leaves him tanned, muscular and poor, smelling of fish and brine, married at last to the Chinese lover he would not wed before. One can almost see Fast the grinning Zen Buddhist, sitting in his solar-heated home, tying off the novel with a quote from Lao Tzu about the wisdom of stepping off the merry-go-round of ambition. "I'm not given to pessimism," Fast explains...
...recent years Fast has freed himself from the reins of historical fiction to produce three collections of short stories that libraries catalogue as "fantasy and science fiction," although Fast calls the most recent, Time and the Riddle, "my Zen stories." In these books he cuts loose and plays with absurdities. One tale relates how an American general in Vietnam, "Old Hell and Hardtack Mackenzie," accidentally shoots down an angel while blasting Viet Cong with his machine gun. Another tells of a hole that appears in the floor of a fourth-story apartment in Los Ahgeles, and how a sunlit pasture...
Twice a year they descend, a 10,000-strong army of the night, on New York University's Shimkin Hall. There they wait patiently in line to register, at $55 to $117 a ten-to twelve-week session, for more than 800 courses ranging from Arabic to Zen. The electronically minded can choose from among 75 courses that explicate computer wizardry; language devotees can immerse themselves in Gaelic, Serbo-Croatian or Swahili. There are more than 80 courses in the down-to-earth business of real estate. And a beguiling "Broadway Matinee" course offers tickets to four shows...