Wild Animus

by Rich Shapero

Quest with a young idealist for a bliss beyond fear in an unforgiving visionary wilderness, whose ruling deity portends sublime love or self-destruction.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Novels, Adult Fiction, Audiobook, Outdoors

315 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Rich Shapero’s novels dare readers with giant metaphors, magnificent obsessions and potent ideas. His casts of idealistic lovers, laboring miners, and rebellious artists all rate ideas as paramount, more important than life itself. They traverse wild landscapes and visionary realms, imagining gods who in turn imagine them. Like the seekers themselves, readers grapple with revealing truths about human potential. All of his titles—Beneath Caaqi's Wings, Dissolve, Island Fruit Remedy, Balcony of Fog, Rin, Tongue and Dorner, Arms from the Sea, The Hope We Seek, Too Far and Wild Animus—are available in hardcover and as ebooks. They also combine music, visual art, animation and video in the TooFar Media app. Shapero spins provocative stories for the eyes, ears, and imagination.

Reviews

[Mallory · Rating 5 out of 5]

(sarcasm alert- I don't actually think this book deserves five stars)

All you people who've been trashing Wild Animus, the fine and revealing work by Mr. Rick Shapero, have been looking at everything the wrong way. Just look at it positively, and you'll feel better about it.

For example, you could think about all the good things about it, like:

* It's shorter than "Atlas Shrugged"!
* If a genetically-modified polar bear attacks you with a flamethrower, you can distract it by throwing the book at its face, then run away!
* Makes a useful gift for people you hate!
* Finally provides an ending for the sentence, "Twilight is better than (fill-in-the-blank)."
* Perfect weight and balance for throwing at a roommate who won't fracking shut up and let you go to sleep!

Or, you could imagine that the tiny imperfections that mar this marvelous book don't exist. Imagine, for instance, that the protagonist isn't a completely selfish, moronic, insane idiot who does nothing useful at all, that the "love" "interest" isn't a horrifyingly passive victim, that the prose isn't so full of manure you could fertilize the entire state of Montana with it, or that this whole undertaking of reading "Wild Animus" isn't a complete waste of time that you could be spending on more valuable activities (i.e. castrating yourself with a handful of rusty nails, fighting a pack of rabid Dachshunds with nothing but a rubber chicken, jumping into a huge box of dirty syringes, swallowing a gallon of hydrochloric acid, electrocuting a Yuuzhan Vong with a car battery, running into an al-Qaeda hideout wearing nothing but a tuxspeedo and a shirt saying "Kiss me, I'm a Navy SEAL", etc.).

Just keep pretending this book isn't the worst thing ever, and it won't be!

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 1 out of 5]

Venture capitalist puts id firmly in anus. Becomes furry. Blathers.

[Nathan Oliphant · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was perfect, worth every penny I paid for it! My favorite chair leg was broken, and this provided just the right height to stop the wobble, so getting it handed to me for free as I walked across the quad was definitely worth it. As for the words in it, I can attest that they are in fact words, even though the order they are presented in makes for a terrible story. If I had to rate it based on the contents rather than its functionality, I would have to find a way to give it negative 8.3 stars. Fortunately, its function negates that need.

[Shannon]

Someone handed me a free copy of this book (they were giving away tons, I'm not special) as I was walking on the quad of the college I attend. I have not read it. I have tried to start it, but I was bored by it. Sorry, freebook. Even you being free doesn't make me like you.

[Sally Wolf · Rating 1 out of 5]

Please note that before you read any more of this review that it does contain a spoiler this is done for a very good reason to save you the effort of reading this book all together. This book is about a man who gets high on drugs then he dresses like a Mountain Goat from head to foot (yes I said Mountain Goat) and goes into the wilderness where he gets eaten by a pack of wolves. From what I can tell the author of this book was trying to portray the power of the wilderness but it was lost in the stupor of a dug induced banter that made no sense at all. Please do not read this book do not recommend it to friends and if you happen upon it walk away quickly so that you are not tempted to even pick it up. I got this book out of a free bin and now I know why it was there.

[Dorothy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really thought this book was going to fall into the "so bad it's good" category. I mean, come on, the tagline is basically "guy takes tons of drugs and thinks he's a sheep," it doesn't get better than that. I prepared myself for a twisted romp I could discuss with my friends and they would shake their heads, saying "gosh, Dorothy, you read the strangest things."

Instead I found the disheartening tale of a mentally unstable, drug addicted sociopath who abuses and manipulates a damaged young girl (btw we constantly focus on how young she is/seems, to a creepy pedophile level) into abandoning her life and working multiple shitty jobs to fund his unsafe, unreasonable, unhealthy adventures into the mountains. Just as the main character strives to look past the facade of society, I looked past the "lol drug sheep" veneer and into the deeper, more disturbing elements of this book. Only once or twice does anyone suggest that he has a mental health problem, and it is blown over. He is even in a hospital, ranting naked in the reception area, and they allow him to leave and go about his life. Everyone constantly enables him beyond the point of reason, and some become a cult-like 'following.' At one point a conversation goes like this:

Wife: Honey, maybe you should stop taking so much acid. I'm worried about you.
Husband: YOU ARE LITERALLY DESTROYING MY LIFE. YOU ARE LITERALLY A PACK OF WOLVES HUNTING ME TO DEATH AND WILL NOT STOP UNTIL YOU FEAST ON MY FLESH. FINE, HAVE IT YOUR WAY, DEVIL WOLF WOMAN. I AM DONE WITH THIS MADNESS. I WILL BE HUMAN AGAIN. I'M JUST GONNA GO OVER HERE AND BURN MY MANUSCRIPTS THAT I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON FOR YEARS, I'M READY TO QUIT THIS DRUG SHEEP LIFE. *starts setting manuscript on fire.*
Wife: Honey, wait. The drug sheep thing is important to you. Don't set that on fire. Here, have some more acid.
Husband: I LOVE YOU. YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING. LET'S HAVE SEX.
Wife: I will follow you to Alaska and do whatever you tell me. This is fine.

Also, it could have used a bit more editing for grammar and repetitive word choices.

[Joe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I, like many other people rating this book, received a free copy at a book festival.

We all overpaid.

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was handed this book while walking through a Bay Area (SF CA) street fair. I think they were trying to drum up "word of mouth" business, but really, with a book this lame, I think they were misguided. Perhaps, if you're into drug-fueled hippie shamanistic naturalism, you'll enjoy the book. I did force myself to read the whole novel, but it was poorly written and painful to get through. The first clue it was going to be bad was that the prologue reveals the ending! That removed all tension or suspense. It was hard to care about his "journey" because I knew what was ultimately going to happen. Additionally, the protagonist is so misguided and enmeshed in his own reality, that I found nothing relatable (or even particularly believable). I don't want to say the character and the novel have no redeeming qualities, but they are so buried under bad prose and the character's complete idiocy, that they're hard to find and harder to care about.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the wierdest books I have ever read. I'll tell you the ending. A column of lava erupts from beneath his feet while he is dressed in a goat costume and wolves are in mid-air tearing him apart. Yeah...

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the absolute worst books I've ever read. I do not know why it's still being read. Oh, that's right, our book group got a bunch of copies for FREE from the publisher along with smoked fish. I don't think any of us liked it the book, but the smoked fish was good. Most of us still refer to it as "that book". Kind of like "that woman" regarding an obnoxious woman.

I saw a bunch of copies in the Friends of the Library saleroom. I take that as a sign we were not the only ones who found it icky.

[Catherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

The copy I read, being an advance reading copy, doesn't have this cover.

I sort of sought this book out, knowing a little of its Bookcrossing history, but not, at the time, just how bad many people thought it was. I'm sorry to say that I didn't think it was great either. I didn't think it was awful per se - I could see a certain fascination in the shamanistic blurring of identity - but it too coarse in its mysticism for my taste and with too little to counteract that.

I could not empathise at all with the complete submission to Animus/descent into self-destructive madness (take your choice of perspective) of Sam/Ransom, nor could I understand the role Lindy played in his revelation or her willingness to suppport him in so many ways for so long. And that is coming from someone with an uncanny ability to find and stick with partners who leave her broke (for those of you who know him, I feel duty bound to point out that Spike is one of the few who hasn't). Nonetheless Lindy did at least have enough of a backstory to make a little sense of her holding on when she had no hope of changing him, whereas we saw nothing of the 'raw' Sam to explain his developing monomania, unless one chooses to 'blame' the drugs - a far too facile (and inadequate) plot device. That so many of the community in which he found himself were, albeit eventually, impressed was also incredible: yes, a Messiah may be the most unexpected person, but Ransom's 'message' did not seem to be communicated to others, even Lindy, in any convincing or powerful way.

All in all, a shame - a compelling idea, with some wonderful descriptions of Alaska and real attempts to view things from the point of view of another creature (albeit with some slips), that is let down by characters that are totally subservient to the plot and style.

[Cade · Rating 1 out of 5]

Worst book ever. As many others have stated, it was also given to me. Got mine in Chicago outside the Art Institute. They had boxes of them. I didn't have anything else to read at the time. Honestly, I didn't finish it. I made it 1/2 way and just didn't care any more about acid trips, wolves, or goat costumes/hallucinations of wolves in goat costumes or whatever. I wanted to find the person that gave it to me and give it back. I actually went out and looked for them. They were gone.

I have kept books, sold books, donated books, lended books and just given books away. This is the first book I can think of that I threw in the trash.

Actually, the one interesting thing about this book is finding out where everyone else got their free copy. Who the hell paid to have these printed? There's got to be an interesting stoy there. Some publisher that knew they would lose even more if they tried to market it? Some ecentric rich old lady? A government fund?

[Ed Erwin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not nearly as bad as I hoped. I hoped this would be monumentally bad -- so bad it's funny -- but it is just ordinarily mediocre.

It starts with this guy living in Berkeley who gets tired of city life and wants to escape to a more natural setting where he can commune with nature, take acid every day, dress in a goat costume, climb a volcano, join a goat family, and get chased by wolves. How could I not read that? Apart from some minor details -- wool makes me itchy -- that perfectly describes me! I got hooked on that idea and before I knew it I was halfway through. I actually read the whole thing, ... and I regret it.

After you learn the basic idea, there is nothing more to it. The prologue already tells you that he will die in a volcanic eruption while simultaneously being eaten by wolves, so there is really no suspense.

I got this book for free. That is typical. If you paid money for it, you are unusual. The author has given out 1000s and 1000s, perhaps hundreds of thousands of free copies of this book in nice hardback editions. The crazy story of him giving away so many copies is far more interesting than this book itself.

If you only read one book about a man turning himself into a goat, please don't make it this one. GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human is much better, has pictures of the goat suit, and isn't even fiction.

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Free was too costly

[melydia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I want to say something nice about this book, but I'm having trouble. I will admit that heavy drug-usage and self-centered obsession with finding oneself are not things I can relate to, but that was the least of my complaints. The prose was overwrought with awkward metaphors and obscure adjectives, so bad that I could just see the author congratulating himself on his cleverness and originality. The dialogue was so forced that it made soap operas sound Oscar-worthy. The description was so flowery that it interfered with the story, making the narration clunky and hard to follow. The story itself took leaps and bounds through time, skipping over massive amounts of necessary exposition, transition, and even conversation - I lost count of the times two people would say meaningless sentences and then the text would say that they understood exactly what the other meant. That's fine, but I the reader was still completely lost, and after a while I stopped caring.

The characters evoked exactly no sympathy whatsoever: they're overemotional and completely irrational. The story revolves around Sam, a disillusioned Berkeley student in the late 1960s who has a strange obsession with rams and little concern for anything or anyone else but his own desires. His wife Lindy is a complete doormat, working a deadend job to fund her husband's drugs and solo trip to Alaska to research his book, incidentally called Wild Animus. The second she starts standing up for herself and asking, ever so timidly, that Sam (now called Ransom for some reason) make any effort in their relationship whatsoever, she breaks down crying and begs forgiveness for being such a bitch. She breaks down crying almost every scene she's in, come to think of it. Every character is constantly on the verge of an emotional collapse or breakthrough, which usually happens (the first time) very soon after the introduction of the character (then several times again after that). I wonder if everyone in the author's world is of weak emotional character except, of course, Ransom, who shows no emotions whatsoever.

It's a train wreck of poor writing. Even the bolded sections, which I guess were supposed to be spiritual chants, were of the literary quality of your average 15-year-old would-be poet. For a few chapters it was funny, then it became tedious, then annoying. I labored on, telling myself I wanted to finish it so I could write a thorough and fair review, but then I realized that the only reason I was still reading was because the prologue strongly implied that Ransom would die by the end of the book. I ultimately decided - about halfway through the book - that such drivel was not worth my time when the only thing I had to look forward to was the offing of the main character, which would doubtless be as poorly written, uninspired, and pointless as the rest of the story.

[Erika · Rating 1 out of 5]

***Disclaimer***
If I were to recommend this book to a spiritual Shaman, I would give it 5 stars. However...

I found the book somewhat ridiculous. It showcased stereotypical male self-centerdness even in the midst of a sacrificial relationship. The story was a complete disappointment without any overarching philosophical take-aways.

[Peter Derk]

I barely read it. I mean, it doesn't seem like it's for me. Way too mystical.

I DID write a pretty long column about just what the hell this book is and why it shows up EVERYWHERE.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link To My Column

[Antof9 · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is an Advance Reading Copy (ARC), received free as the result of a partnership between BookCrossing and the publisher of the book.

Read on the plane from Denver to Newark for a business trip. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the subject matter OR the way it was written.

This book was probably written sometime between the 60's and 70's (although not published till recently), as it happily discusses drug use and doesn't refer in any way to current conveniences such as mobile phones.

Summary: an LSD-using student tries to "find himself" in a very odd way. Over the course of his life, in various ways, he has an odd connection with a ram, and over time turns into/worships the ram. Unfortunately, as a messiah figure, Ransom (formerly known as Sam) isn't very messianic, as there is no one to save, no downtrodden, no nothing. Although it does appear that a group of people might be interested in him enough to follow him, he's really just too wacked out to follow.

Odds & Ends: I've always thought it kind of hackneyed when the main character in a book is an author, and ends up writing a book with the same name as the title of the one you're reading. It was cheesy with Judith McNaught; it's too hard to suspend belief for this one. It really bothered me that there is rock climbing while under the influence of LSD. Real mountain/rock climbers wouldn't do something so dangerous, and often speak of the natural high they get sans chemicals. The author loves to "verb" nouns (which bugs me), he uses "alright" a million times, and chooses "regalia" as the description for the animal skin that Ransom wears, every time it is described.

I didn't understand most of what the author was trying to accomplish. At one point, it seems as if he is saying something, but then it wanders away. . .

"Do you mean people shouldn't have children?" Hank wondered.
"That's when we gave up," Calvin acceded with a sigh. "Stopped chasing our dreams and started nurturing theirs."
"I get what you're saying." Wasilla Bill spoke to Ransom with his head bowed. "My heart's cold as stone. Only whiskey warms me. When I'm drunk, I remember."
"This is sad." Doug's gaze darted among them, anxious and uncertain. His comment seemed to include both their malaise and Ransom's unthinkable remedy. "I can't believe having children is the end."

There are passages like this all throughout the book. In other parts, it reads like a write-by-number novel: "You're everything to me now." Sam's voice was meek as a child's. "I want our love to be my religion."

[Chana · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a weird book. My thoughts in the first 3rd of the book: "LSD meets Extreme Sports" , "Farley Mowatt on Acid and Gone Mad", and "I Am Ram, See Me Leap!". In the second 3rd of the book I became very concerned for and creeped out by Lindy. In some way she seemed more the core of this book than Ransom (Sam) and the wolf-gang connection had me feeling spooked. In the last 3rd of the book I was really wondering if I knew what was going on at all and I spent as much time wondering about the author as I did his odd characters, including Animus. I think it is about the search for G-d, both within ourselves and without. It seems crazy in the book; but in our world most people are involved in this search and we don't call it crazy even though so many people have died through it. Yet how can we live without G-d? That connection seems essential. The book is spooky, weird, sad and very different from most books. (Today: I think that my assessment in the first third of the book was probably correct. The book is the result of LSD and maybe some high altitude oxygen deprivation.)

[Manday · Rating 1 out of 5]

I understand why this is the worst rated book on Good Reads (that is also why I read it, but that is a different story).

What starts out as indulgent hippie drivel turns into ridiculous nonsense. The main characters are an acid-dropping mentally ill man who is convinced he is becoming a ram and a submissive pathetic enabling girlfriend who blindly follows him, sex being to be the only thing that holds their relationship together in any way shape or form.

I seriously don't even know why this book exists.

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried. I really tried. But I gave up on Wild Animus at page 189.

The story starts out with some promise, and even has one or two well-constructed sentences here and there, which leads me to believe that author Rich Shapero may learn to write someday. But the multitude of awfulness by far outweighed the few good bits. Execrable writing for the most part plus the gaping holes in the plot pushed the generous leeway I allow a first-time author past its outermost limit.

Ultimately I did not like Ransom and his drug-induced hallucinations, and I did not believe in his vision.

Plot problems: Where did these two broke college students get the money to leave Berkeley on a whim and move to Seattle? And how did they afford airfare to Alaska if Lindy was the sole bread winner? She waited tables! And let's not even get started on the character of Lindy -- wait, on second thought, yes, let's. Wimpish, cringing, insecure, verbally abusive, totally dependent on Ransom for validation of her existence and absurdly tolerant of his psychosis. Her character didn't ring true for a female UC Berkeley college student in 1968. Where was that woman's backbone? Her sense of self? And Ransom is plainly a candidate for a mental ward somewhere. One too many tabs of acid, my friend.

The reaction of the people in Alaska during and after Ransom's first trip to the volcano did not make sense. He was up there prancing around nekkid in a "Ram Suit" and they didn't call the nearest sanitarium? They wrote him letters of admiration? It was at this point I called it quits.

I appreciate Too Far Publications and BookCrossing for giving me the opportunity to read this. I only wish the book had been worth all the effort at promoting it.

[Lark KerBerethrou · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of this book when I picked it up, but as one who's always been intrigued by hippie culture, it seemed interesting. After reading he other reviews here on Goodreads I'm actually quite shocked that more people didn't like it. I barely noticed the drug use in this book, because to me that was not the author's intent. To me, this book was about finding yourself and exploring whatever strange routes that journey may lead you upon. Yes, there happened to be some drugs. But overall the feel I got from this book was not some drug-addled hippie nonsense as most of you seem to feel, but more of a getting-back-to-your-roots therian vibe. As someone who's very open minded and shamanistic myself, the things the character did in this book did not seem weird at all to me, but quite natural.

My only problem with this book was the dialogue. It seemed very unrealistic and deep-- and by that I mean, people in real life just don't say certain things to each other, especially not men to other men saying deep poetic things. It would have been fine if the author had added those things as an afterthought, a character thinking quietly to himself or something, but definitely not dialogue.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars for creativity, original characters (HE DRESSES UP LIKE A RAM, you can't say that's not original), the overall theme which I found to be inspiring, and the fact that it is one of very few books with a therian character. It does lose a point for the cheesy dialogue though.

[JD Newick · Rating 1 out of 5]

(I originally wrote this in 2010)

It is my belief that the last decade, (2000-2010), will be looked at as a golden age of unsolicited attention-seeking. Reality TV was the watchword, and the internet finally came of age- with Big Brother, Pop Idol, Youtube, Myspace, Livejournal, Facebook, and the “blogosphere“, any untalented loser could put their lack of abilities to use and, in many remarkable cases, see their narcissism paid off with 15 minutes of fame- luckily with the ghost of Andy Warhol always keeping a close eye on the clock. This was the decade when ordinary members of the public finally found cheap and easy means of getting their voice heard, and their voice was a unanimous “LOOK AT MEEEEEEEE!”

Rich Shapero was luckier than most, in that he had the financial means to get his work directly into the public eye, bypassing the factor of sheer luck that Gareth Gates, Nasty Nick, and Chris Crocker needed to become well-known (anyone remember any of those guys? No? Not surprised). Already a Silicon Valley “venture capitalist” by the time he set to work on Wild Animus, he was evidently a very wealthy man. Wealthy enough, it seems, to not only self-publish hundreds of thousands of copies of his book; not only hire musicians, producers, engineers, and studio time to record three CDs worth of music to accompany the book; not only package the book and the CDs in very luxurious packaging; not only hire street performers to dance around in animal outfits as a publicity stunt; but to then distribute every single copy of the book across the world, and give it away for free.

Yes, Rich Shapero has spent six years giving his book away to unsuspecting people. I was lucky enough to be handed a completely free copy just before Halloween 2010, at the Student Union of Reading University in the UK.

It was still a bloody rip-off.

Nonetheless, being as I am staggered by the time, money, and effort that Mr. Shapero has put into pushing his book into the public eye, I feel it’s only fair to satisfy his cravings, even if only in my own particular and humble way. I’m not trying to feed his narcissism; only trying to understand him as a remarkable case study of it. This is a review of the book and the music, but I do hope I’ve made clear just what a shameless cry for fame and acclaim the entire endeavour has been. The circumstances surrounding the project are, in itself, hugely related to the artistic merits of it- as if the book, the music, and the obsessive self-promotion are all exactly the same to Rich Shapero.

Our author has apparently been in the world of high-tech business for decades, making it all the more surprising that he chose the printed word rather than more “information age” methods to disseminate his novel. He also studied English Literature at the University of California in the late 1960s- just like the book’s protagonist Sam “Ransom“ Altman. Students, California, late 1960s… hippies. Oh yes. This clusterfuck of a book, filled with Furry overtones, misogyny, LSD, gross sex scenes, self-harm, pseudo-Shamanic and Blake-bastardising spiritualism, casual racism and homophobia, and half-baked purple prose, is A Tale Of Two Hippies; and I definitely had the very Worst Of Times reading it.

The story starts in California, where Sam takes an awful lot of acid with his new girlfriend Lindy and decides, on the basis of a photo of a ram on a magazine, to drop out of university and move to Alaska. His aim is to be able to spend time in the Alaskan wilderness to try to capture something of the wild, free, and wise spirit of the ram. He forces Lindy to drop out and move with him, and she takes on two jobs to fund his trips, while he dresses up in the skin and horns of a ram and frolics naked on the mountains for weeks on end, with the assistance of LSD obviously.

Things take a downward turn. Although Sam (who insists on being called “Ransom”) is clearly spiralling into drug-induced madness and becoming a parasitic bully towards his girlfriend, the author gives us no hint that his behaviour is intended to be interpreted as anything other than his Romantic and spiritual method of divining some profound truth about love, life, death, and the supernatural. He gradually becomes more obsessed with “becoming” an actual ram- at one point he is found wandering around town naked, tripping, and singing. After being bitten by a wolf, he starts reopening his wound every time it heals, so that he can bleed on the mountain in an attempt to get closer to the God “Animus” that he believes is part of the mountain.

I will repeat that bit, in case you thought you misread it. The main character is arrested while wandering around on LSD, stark bollock naked, singing Shamanistic “chants” about being a sheep. He cuts himself, in order to press the wound against the snow of a mountain, to get in touch with the local God that he invented. At the climax, he tries to take Lindy to the mountain top, from what I gathered with the aim of jumping into the volcanic crater at the top together.

None of the other characters think this to be the slightest bit strange. They think it’s eccentric at worst, admirable and inspiring at best, indulging him 100% as he slips deeper into acid-induced lunacy. Not that any of the other characters have any kind of personality or independent thought of their own: they are cardboard cut outs, existing only to assist or praise Sam/Ransom in his descent into madness. At no point whatsoever does anyone ever try to suggest that he be locked up in a mental asylum. What’s worse is that the author himself never portrays Ransom’s behaviour as insane, or as dangerous to himself and other. The author, like Ransom, believes that he is taking the right steps in his voyage of self-discovery; that his actions show nothing but the heroic passion and determination of a powerful Romantic soul. Incidentally, can you say “author self-insertion”? Ransom seems to represent the author’s own bizarre worldview.

I deliberately capitalised the word “Romantic”. The Romantic movement, lasting roughly from the 1770s to 1840s, was a reaction against the emphasis on science and reason which the Enlightenment had established. Beethoven, Wordsworth, Chateaubriand, Byron, Keats, Delacroix, Chopin, et al. encouraged a new outlook on the world. Art which examined the human soul, emotions, and the beauty of nature, would be more important in forming a better world than the cold logic and ideals that had created the disillusionment of the French Revolution and the grim poverty of industrialisation.

William Blake (1757-1827) in particular, encouraged not just looking at nature, but beyond nature, beyond what we can see with our five senses, and into what we can reveal to ourselves by means of imagination, visions, “poetic genius”, divine inspiration. Blake also believed in absolute freedom for all, not just political, but spiritual, emotional, and even sexual (though for him, sex should still be a matter of shared love rather than physical gratification). I dwell on the Romantics, and specifically Blake, because it is clearly their legacy that Shapero is attempting to channel. Blake is mentioned by name as Ransom’s favourite author, quotes from The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell pop up a few times, and much of Ransom’s garbled conclusions about love and life are based around Blake’s own (which are, of course, notoriously difficult for the newcomer to unravel and make sense of).

The difference is however, that while Blake was accused of being mad by contemporaries, he still led a normal life. He worked hard at his day job as an illustrator and printer, and was a very loving husband who treated his wife as his equal business partner as well as his soul mate. Ransom on the other hand is an obsessive sociopath; his girlfriend, a pathetic and sexist caricature of subjugated femininity, is forced to fund his mad schemes by working double shifts as a waitress; when she dares to try to bring him back to reality, he responds with verbal abuse and reduces her to tears. He has no redeeming features, she is an object of pity, and yet the author apparently expects us to see them as star-crossed kindred spirits with a higher purpose.

The way he demonstrates this is through sex scenes. Sex scenes are never pleasant to read. The only good example I can think of is from Douglas Adams’ “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish”- I can excuse this because a) Douglas Adams was a terrific author and b) the scene is more about the fact that the couple in question were flying as they were making love, rather than about the love making itself. Yet there are numerous sex moments between Ransom and Lindy. The worst is when they’re doing it in a field of sheep, and Ransom insists that they do it “like them”. So, on her hands and knees she goes, as he “mounts” her. One man’s yiff is another man’s emetic.

I mentioned the book’s casual racism and homophobia above. Yes, I know it’s set in the 60s, but that doesn’t excuse it. “I think Yasuda’s a queer” says Ransom at one point (I can’t remember who Yasuda is or anything about him). Well fuck you, Shapero! Call us “queers“ if you want, but at least I‘m not a creepy furry! As for the racism, I’m hoping it was a misguided attempt at political correctness-turned-tokenism. One chapter, and one chapter only, features “Ted Gloster, a tall black man”. That’s actually how he’s introduced. He doesn’t say or do much, but luckily he offers this moment which bowled me over:

Gloster pouted his swollen lips. “Shine, mistah?”

The Civil Rights Movement was still in full swing when the book was set, and this poor bloke has have nothing more interesting or useful to do than make an offensive joke about his own race.

Yes, the book is unbelievably pretentious, repulsive and unsettling, not only in its themes, storyline, and characters, but in Shapero’s writing style. A veritable purple rain of prose showers upon the reader. Unnecessary adjectives and adverbs abound. Barely a word is used that could not have been replaced with a less obscure one- Shapero’s thesaurus must have been dog-eared to buggery by the time he’d finished writing the book. The worst parts are the parts in bold and italic font- the passages which make up Ransom’s story and “chants” (the story follows Ransom, dressing and acting as a sheep, being chased by a pack of wolves, if you were wondering). The chants are in the form of odd little poems, and everyone around Ransom hears them spoken with awe and reverence. Example:

Gleaming spans life with thunderous grinds,

Crashing together. I rear on my hinds.

Around me you’ve bent

The blue ribs of a breathing tent.

In poetic terms, that’s in an AABB rhyming scheme. But look at the meter, imagine the words being spoken aloud. The meter is 9, 10, 5, 8. It doesn’t flow, it just sounds jarring and amateurish, especuially when recited as a “chant“. I can forgive good poets going a bit off with the meter occasionally, as it can make the poem more interesting- I recall Milton cutting a line short in Paradise Lost for dramatic effect, and the free verse of Blake and Ginsburg are brilliant. But every single “chant” is off-meter, nonsensical, and sounds like it was written by someone with no idea how good poetry works or sounds. And yet Shapero has an English Lit degree- granted, 35 years of the world of business lay between that and the writing of this book.

Yet the real corker is the prose parts forming Ransom’s story, which is also in bold and italic. Dull to read, not a single noun or verb without a redundant or meaningless adjective or adverb, and worst of all: a limited and repetitive stock of metaphors and even words. “Jolt”, “jerk“, “quake“, “cringe“, “blue”, “powder“, “hoarse pants”, “sulphur eyes”, are often used within the same page or even paragraph whenever we start reading Ransom’s thoughts. Yet these are supposed to be passages of intense action, of tension and excitement- Ransom is running away from a fierce pack of wolves. Overuse of extravagant language is an absolutely terrible way to build up drama- it does the opposite. It bogs the reader down. Flowery passages, when well-written, have their uses as descriptive moments, but they NEVER make a passage more exciting. Why on earth then, did Shapero save his most elaborate word choices for the parts of the book that are supposed to be the most thrilling?

I think I’ve summed up what’s wrong with the book pretty well. I’m scanning my brain for any redeeming features, but not finding any. Badly conceived, badly written, and badly edited nonsense, from a clearly very vain man with more money than sense or talent. But what of the music? Three discs worth of music in fact, each song accompanying a scene from the book itself.

The lyrics, to begin with, are taken from Ransom’s chants and story (I could never tell if the prose parts were from Ransom’s manuscript or his hallucinations, but who cares?). So they’re terrible. The music itself? The session musicians, whom Shapero hired by the dozed, are capable, and it’s well produced stuff. The genre is fairly folk-y, with vocals and acoustic guitar from Rich Shapero himself. Nick Drake sprang to mind while listening to it, though only in terms of its broad style. The music is in fact very dull. Every song sounds the same, and they seem to run into each other. I’m fine with songs that don’t fit a fixed verse/chorus structure (I’m a Zappa fan and a huge metalhead, for fuck’s sake), but these songs seem to lack any memorable melodies, chord progressions, hooks, or anything. They just drone tediously, going nowhere, never drawing the listener’s attention. Rich Shapero is not too bad at simply strumming the chords, but he can’t write an interesting song at all. Almost as bad is his voice- off-key mumbling occasionally trying to put on a more gruff “rocky” sound and failing. I mentioned Nick Drake (who I actually love)… I’ll clarify that comment, and say that the music sounds like Nick Drake if he had lived to become a useless, creepy, egocentric weirdo.

What good can be said about this train wreck of a “storytelling experiment“? It’s taught me a lot about how NOT to write and promote a book- if and when I finally get around to writing a novel, I’ll always have the mistakes of this book to learn from. It’s inspired me to re-read William Blake in the near future, if only to assure me that this kind of crap isn’t what the great poet had in mind. It’s pleasant proof that money can’t buy everything- certainly not popularity or critical acclaim as an author or musician (check the Amazon.com reviews as proof of this). Hmmm. I suppose at the end of the day, reading a book we hate makes us realise what draws us to the books we love- just like with films or music.

Above all though, it’s a fascinating warning in narcissism. Shapero has been desperately foisting this book upon the world for around six years now, to no avail but doubtlessly to great personal expense. His apparent obsession with becoming a respected author is a stark lesson that success in one field (say, business and investment) doesn’t make success in another field (say, literature and music) a foregone conclusion. Control your ego. Don’t assume you can become an artist by means of brute financial power.

Don’t write a book as shitty as “Wild Animus”, and for God’s sake don’t even bother reading one.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

It had so much potential with topics like disillusionment, relationships, nature, emotions, running away from it all, a gorgeous setting in the Alaskan wilderness. And then it just went way beyond odd when the main character evolved into a wolf.

This was no tale of the macabre, instead what it was likely supposed to be was a story full of hidden meaning and messages. Unfortunately it became instead simply a novel that was lost when the writer hurled us over the edge.

Disappointment was my overall feeling when, after reading half and skimming more, I finally set the book aside unfinished.

Imagination is one thing but hitting the reader over the head with it is another. I'd love to read something by the same author if he decided subtle is better than outlandish.

[⋊ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this book and everything it promised. I still do. An escape to Alaska. A bond with the primal. Man versus nature becoming nature. Selfless, devoted love in an unforgiving place. A hero's journey on the mountain. The academic attempt to quantify the beauty and mystery of the wilderness. Vision behind the veil. An escape from the pitfalls of modern society. Peace, quiet, and revelation at the end of the path.

I trudged through the angst-filled undergraduate rambling of the first few chapters that built a foundation of egoism and self-centred self-pity for the cast to stand on. I camped on the peaks of a love built on self-interest, bonding two lovers by the mere thread of dragging each other as far as possible before the other breaks. I swam through the rivers of multi-page shamanic ramblings that flowed from a gushing, roaming source - restricted to ontological questions posed, but rarely tackled.

The wounds carried by the main characters of this novel are introduced briefly as a fabric to cover their drug-assisted infatuation with each other. Nearly every major plot related discovery made by them is done under the influence, with the supposed lessons never being integrated into anything beyond the next self-destructive finale. Their escape brings them closer only by virtue of isolation. This book, much like the journey undertaken by the main characters, was fraught with cliffs and ridges of half-revelations which served only to inflate the final destruction of all parties involved. The imagery is vivid and fanciful, but serves little purpose beyond wooing the reader into overlooking the lack of depth to the flora and fauna of this narrative mountain. Shapero masterfully absolves himself and the plot from the responsibility of posing any concrete theses.

Initially, Shapero appears to have a suburban appreciation and understanding of the wilderness, which seems to grow ever so slowly as the story progresses. After learning that this book was written in tandem with Shapero's journey through Alaska following his exodus from California, the caged zeal breaking through the page becomes forgivable. Shapero writes with a grand respect and appreciation for the animals and nature encountered in this book, and doesn't shy away from bold, graphic sequences of ethereal visions.

The most redeeming aspects of this book beyond the spine are the accompanying music written by Shapero for the novel, and the Art Brut paintings done by François Burland - both in parallel with the poetry sewed throughout the book. These 39 acoustic songs brought me closer than the book to the essence I believe Shapero tried to capture, and Burland's art emits a primal haze chanted onto canvas that pairs wonderfully with it. Unfortunately, this is a review for the book.

I forced myself to finish this story, but I will not force myself to enjoy it in hindsight. While this arduous and revelatory journey may have been Shapero's, it was not mine. Ultimately, the view from the top of this mountain was limited by the disingenuous path that led to the peak.

Perhaps that introspection was the purpose of this book.

[Kendra · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are some great books out there and there are books you have to hold your nose to read. This book tells the ending in the prologue and I just couldnt wait to get there (the end, that is). When I finally did, the book just stopped...no closure of any kind (you know, because they told how it ended in the first page). The prose was horrible and I cannot fathom how a book with so many adjectives could be so utterly boring. The main character is entirely one dimensional and completely useless while his love interest is hideously needy and makes any self respecting woman over the age of 12 insulted with her lack of initiative. She sent feminism back 50 years (and it's set in 1968). My head hurts from all the cringing my face did during the reading. I asked myself how on earth this book got published and when I looked up the publishing company on a hunch, guess what I found? The author owns the publishing company. I figured that's the only way it could have been printed. The reviews of this book have more literary worth!

[OskariF · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book from a University Book Exchange shelf solely because I thought the name and the cover of the book were cool. I also was intrigued by the shamanistic-mystic journey of self-discovery that the back cover of the book promised.

In the end that promise fell several steps short. While the basic idea, attempting to get closer to nature and your "true self" via drug-induced trance isn't a bad plot, its execution didn't work for me at all. The parts where Sam/Ransom was "transformed" were steeped with fancy words and inexplicable incidents that both felt awkward and out of their depth. Profoundness turned to obscurantism and slight cringe.

The characters didn't appeal to me at all. Sam/Ransom himself seemed, in the end, to be just a druggie with a possible mental health issue and a deathwish. His obsession with his self-discovery seemed more and more to take a form of dangerous delusions than genuine advance towards the inner self. This might have been a deliberate motive of the author, but I felt that the original intent of the writer felt more genuine than what the actual end-result was.
The protagonist's relationship with his girlfriend was more abusive than committing. Again I feel that their relationship was supposed to be difficult and sacrificing, but it only came out as Sam abusing Lindy, dragging her more and more into his delusion and strange cult than keep her as a companion on their journey.

The ending was actually somewhat brave, the author was not afraid to deny his protagonist their prize. It was a bit confusing though, because a part of the ending was put right at the start, so at the same time the ending is spoiled, but you are also required to go back and read it again at the beginning, in case you forgot it.

I'm not against portrayal of unhealthy issues and phenomena in books. If the book would have been about a mentally ill person dragging his loved ones into a dangerous cult, it might have been an interesting read. Now, however, the author has seemed to intend wildly different conclusions that I were able to take from the book, so the result only seems hamfisted, questionable and bad.

[Myridian · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was self indulgent dribble. It was just interesting enough for me to actually finish, but I really disliked most of the characters, and felt no sympathy for their story or their struggles. In essence I thought they were all tragically stupid, and it's people like this that waste most of the resources of the world. Essentially the story is about a young man who is convinced that he's tapped into God (through acid, of course), and he does get a number of people (including a dependent personality disorder girlfriend) to buy into his acid trip, but ends up committing suicide in the process. And the amazing thing is that this whole story is presented as if it has some heroic value. The author's picture is on the back of the book and he looks like a fairly reasonable guy. I kept expecting him to apologize for the absurd stupidity of his story, but apparently he thought there was value in it. I can't see why.

[Jason Whittington · Rating 1 out of 5]

The main character is often taking drugs to induce visions. Throughout the book, I felt the author was also heavily involved with drugs during the conceptualization and writing. I did not become attached to any characters. I never comprehended any sort of overall message, lesson, or value to the story. I only finished reading it because I couldn't believe the book could be as bad as it was, and I convinced myself there must be some twist before the end of the story that would make it all better, but it never happened.

[Judy · Rating 1 out of 5]

OMG, this was truly awful! I can't say anything good about the actual story -- it consists of one long acid trip that ends, naturally, in disaster. But since Shapero uses the prologue of his novel to divulge the ending, the remaining 300 pages are totally not worth the trouble. Don't waste your time. The one redeeming aspect of the audio version is that Peter Coyote is doing the reading. I only got to page 85.