Sunday, December 28, 2008

Press Release: The 21st Century Man

December 29, 2008

Fisher King Press Announced today,

Just Published:

Resurrecting the Unicorn: Masculinity in the 21st Century


A few months ago, Bud Harris phoned and we visited about the possibility of bringing one of his publications back into production. "What’s the title?" I asked. “Emasculation of the Unicorn: The loss and rebuilding of Masculinity in America,” Bud answered. My knees shuttered a bit before I crossed my legs. “We did quite well with this book and it has even been translated into Spanish,” Bud explained. “Well, send a copy and we’ll have a look,” I answered, thinking, holy Moses, how the heck are we gonna sell a book entitled the emasculation of anything?

The Unicorn arrived a week or so later. After reading the first 15 to 20 pages I was thoroughly convinced that this book had been written and originally published before its time, in an era when men were reading Robert Bly’s Iron John and desperately gathering in vain at weekend retreats in hopes of reclaiming their lost masculinity, in an era when we were just beginning to understand that something wasn’t quite right—when we were just beginning to realize that things were out of balance. The men's movement of the 90s withered and fell along the wayside, as so many fads do, but the issues at hand did not go away—instead, they faded back into shadowland. But as we know, sooner or later, these discarded images come back to haunt us, and that’s where Resurrecting the Unicorn comes into play.

In the present day, our culture's evolving masculine spirit seems to be sputtering out. Many 21st century men have been raised by women—without a masculine role model—and what they've learned about being a man has been defined by their mothers, wives, and outdated or distorted concepts from the 20th century feminist movement. As is the case for both men and women, without a strong masculine image our souls become fragmented and we lose our way. When we are in such a state of confusion and imbalance, we must begin again to search for the Holy Grail. The Grail is the symbolic container of the psycho-spiritual contents that can nourish, balance, and renew our lives.

All the compensatory posturing, chest-pounding or drum-beating in the world won't revive this great masculine spirit! This can only be accomplished by developing a deeper relationship to soul. The mental landscape of metaphors—dreams, stories, myths, fairy tales—deal with the eternal truths of human nature and are the language of soul. In Resurrecting the Unicorn, Bud Harris guides us deep into the realm of metaphors where we can examine the evolution and development of human consciousness and reclaim discarded, yet much needed, aspects of our humanity.

Bud Harris is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland. He and his wife, Massimilla Harris, are practicing Jungian analysts in Asheville, NC. Dr. Harris is the author of several publications including Sacred Selfishness: A Guide to Living a Life of Substance and The Fire and the Rose: The Wedding of Spirituality and Sexuality.

Fisher King books are available directly from Fisher King Press. Attention Booksellers and Libraries, our titles are available to you directly from Fisher King Press with industry standard discounts.

Resurrecting the Unicorn: 
Masculinity in the 21st Century
ISBN 9780981034409

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Press Release: The Creative Soul

With Great Pleasure, Fisher King Press announced:

Available February 14th, 2009

The Creative Soul: Art and the Quest for Wholeness
by Lawrence H. Staples

Who we most deeply are is mirrored in our artistic work. Our need for mirroring simultaneously attracts us to and repels us from our creative callings and relationships. It is one of life’s great dilemmas.

Artist’s block and lover’s block flow from the same pool. Often, we fear deeply the very thing needed to create original art, to experience intimate relationships and to live authentic lives: we are frightened by the impulse to be fully revealed to ourselves, and to others, as this most often entails exposing the unacceptable shadowy aspects of our humanity and risking rejection.

Mirrors in all their manifold guises permit us to safely see and experience ourselves in reflection and become better acquainted with the rejected, ostracized aspects of our personalities. Creative work is one of the few places where we can truly express and witness lost aspects of our authentic selves.

Within us a treasure beckons. This is what we spend our lives pursuing. What slows and distracts us is not the object we long for, but where we search. To find this precious gem, we must eventually return to our own creative spirits.

Topics explored in THE CREATIVE SOUL include:
  • OPPOSITES AND CREATIVITY
  • THE CREATIVE INSTINCT
  • OUR UNIQUE IDENTITY
  • SOME ELEMENTS OF CREATIVITY
  • SOME PREREQUISITES OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS
  • LA PETITE MORT
  • GIVING VOICE TO THE MANY LIVES WITHIN
  • DREAMS AND ACTIVE IMAGINATION AS TRIGGERS TO CREATIVITY
  • CREATIVITY AS AN INNER PARENT
  • CREATIVITY WITHIN BOUNDS
  • THE CREATIVE GAP
  • THE POWER OF SMALL
  • CREATIVITY AND INDEPENDENCE
  • ART AND THE QUEST FOR WHOLENESS
  • THERAPY AS ART
  • FEAR OF SELF-REVELATION BLOCKS CREATIVITY
  • INTIMACY AND CREATIVITY
  • THE IMPORTANCE OF MIRRORING
  • CREATIVITY, GUILT, AND SELF-DEVELOPMENT
  • CREATIVITY AND LONELINESS
  • LIFE AND THE TENSION OF OPPOSITES
Available from your local bookstore, from a host of online booksellers, and directly from Fisher King Press: The Creative Soul: Art and the Quest for Wholeness by Lawrence H. Staples / ISBN 13: 978-0-9810344-4-7 / Publication Date: Feb-2009 / Order your copy by calling  +1-831-238-7799.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

A Reliable 21st Century Companion

Menopause Man  USA Today by Grady Harp

"Mel Mathews is a sensitive observer of the human condition, with an emphasis on the Male Human Condition of our time. He has created a character in Malcolm Clay that is a baby boomer Holden Caulfield, a variation on John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom, and he manages to take us by the hand and lead us through the bumpy terrain of current interpersonal relationships as well as anyone writing today.

"We first met Malcolm Clay in Mathews' first novel 'LeRoi' as a middle aged man trapped in a successful but boring occupation who becomes stranded in a dusty little truck stop where he is forced to slow his pace to adjust to the fertile characters he created there. Well, now Malcolm is living in Carmel, California, having been divorced, forgoing his childhood entrapping religious heritage, traipsing through many brief and physically oriented affairs while deciding to change his life as an alcoholic tractor salesman to that of a reformed AA writer ('..he didn't think anyone should be called an addict, alcoholic, codependent, or any other of the pathologized clinical diagnosis that propelled a person into another lie'). His existence is populated in this gorgeous coastline area of California by all manner of women and men whose connection to life is through tenuous strings tied to fairly shallow buoys. Most of the novel is conversational, with Malcolm discovering the intrinsic personality defects of characters ranging from his landlady Mrs. Shams to men on the make to physical therapist Jenny who manages to keep a physical distance between the lusty but controlled Malcolm and her fragile, purging diet, Zen-like self.

"What Malcolm discovers in this 'quasi-rake's progress' is his inner feminine 'who has been waiting for me to come for her so that she can breathe new life into me, animate me, and give me a new meaning.' Women 'never lied because of the devastating moral injustices it caused. Instead of lying, they just accidentally forgot to tell the important stuff'. All this is a journey so well written that the novel calls for pause to enjoy the sheer ebullience of the verbiage. Mel Mathews is a fine writer, finding his way through life in these times. He is a reliable companion on the trek we all are taking. And now on to the next volume in the series, 'SamSara', addictively!" by Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA)

Saturday, December 13, 2008

A Powerful Kick at the American Way of Life

"LeRoi is ostensibly a novel, and not overtly psychological, but it lays bare the psychic plight of a middle-aged salesman looking for meaning. It is a powerful kick at the American way of life—ambition, success, money and power—but it is redemptive in the narrator's search for internal Eros and an outer relationship he can trust himself to believe in."
—Daryl Sharp, Publisher, Inner City Books

 learn more about LeRoi and The Chronicles of a Wandering Soul series at fisherkingpress.com