The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People

by Robert Inchausti

"I think it is a powerful statement that deserves to be widely read and circulated. I could hardly be more enthusiastic about it. It hangs together compellingly and really does what it sets out to do." -- Maurice Friedman, San Diego State University

This book examines how the spiritual longings of ordinary people have shaped the most progressive political and cultural movements of the twentieth century and given birth to a new postmodern perspective on existence that recoups the traditional religious verities on the far side of both literary modernism and neo-Marxism. Inchausti focuses on figures who have been instrumental in defending the sacred traditions of indigenous cultures and oppressed minorities. He demonstrates that Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, and Lech Walesa share an ethic that is, at once, plebeian in origin and yet sublime in aspiration.

"The author has a heartfelt commitment to the people about whom he writes, which gives a luminosity to his accounts of their lives, works, and visions. There is pressing need in scholarship for writing that fuses the intellectual and the moral/spiritual; the author dares to push the moral and spiritual implications of the material he offers. The book comes to life in the accounts of the six persons he chooses to exemplify as the "ignorant perfection of ordinary people." At the same time, he never lapses into sentimentality; the moral/spiritual aspect is as rigorously presented as the best of scholarly analysis." -- Mary E. Giles, California State University

"It offers an imaginative, largely original, interpretation of ethical and political choice that is rooted in the portrayal of exemplary lives and made coherent by a postmodern vision of human possibility. It is very engaging, erudite without being 'academic,' and informed by a very strong intelligence. It is a work of cultural reconstruction that could be of great importance in the emergent political dialogue of the 1990s. I found it invaluable, and highly suggestive." -- Richard Falk, Princeton University

Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Born in Sacramento, California, Robert (Larry) Inchausti attended Sacramento State University and received his Ph.D. in English from The University of Chicago. Robert is the author of several books, the editor of two anthologies of Thomas Merton's writings, and another an of Beat Literature titled: "Hard to be a Saint in the City" was selected as one of the best books of 2017 by The Advocate. His first book "The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People" was nominated for a National Book Award by his publisher SUNY Press. And his book on classroom teaching, "Spitwad Sutras" is taught in teacher education programs across the USA. He is an Emeritus English Professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

"I am bourgeois to the core and plebeian beyond belief, and yet I am drawn to great writers and thinkers as my anti-type, my shadow, the voice of genius I never possessed. So I don't think of myself as a teacher or a writer so much as "an impersonator of profundities" inhabiting the wisdom of texts in the naked confidence that the value of the thoughts I express transcend the particular fraud that I am the one espousing them. It doesn't bother me when nobody seems to notice what I have to say because those anonymous, silent readers I know nothing about-- who value my books for their own personal reasons-- are enough to keep me going --- living on the wings of borrowed metaphors."

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

If by chance you are wandering through a used bookshop and you happen to come across this book, buy it, and consider yourself very lucky.