What Do I Know?: Wisdom Essays

by Jack Remick

The essays in this book center around the questions of love, wisdom and knowledge through time. What is love in the twenty-first century? Is there a wisdom to marriage? Are our bodies "naturally wise"? What is the nature of orgasm? The meaning of sex? The author uses examples from ancient authors such as Pascal, Marcus Aurelius, and Descartes to clarify the issue of the decay of wisdom and the relation of nature to science, while at the same time drawing on present-time social and cultural mores to ask the enigmatic question-Is there such a thing as "stupid wisdom"? This is not a how-to book on becoming wise, but an interrogation of human wisdom in the Anthropocene. Will the "speaking word-ape" destroy itself as well as the environment it lives in?
The Maya word for writer is ah tz'ib . It is comforting to know that the craft has a past written in stone. As I write words on paper that are then digitized, I am confronted with the reality of impermanence. When electricity dies, my words will vanish and there will be no nuance of this ah tz'ib left. But the brethren of the rock will exist until there is no more stone.

206 pages, Paperback

Published August 10, 2021

About the author

Novelist, poet.
Author of--
Valley Boy, Second Edition
No Century for Apologies: Short listed for the Hoffer Grand Prize 2023
Citadel, the novel
Blood
The California Quartet:
The Deification--Book One
Valley Boy--Book Two (first Edition)
The Book of Changes--Book Three
Trio of Lost Souls--Book Four
Gabriela and The Widow (Winner "Best Women's Fiction" Orangeberry Virtual Book Expo; Montaigne Medal Finalist; Book of the Year Award Finalist)
co-author of The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery (with Robert J. Ray)
Satori-poems by Jack Remick
Doubles in a Game of Chance--a novel about a bureaucratic nightmare and a lost protagonist on a thankless quest.
Man Alone--The Dark Book
Songs of Sadness Joy and Despair for the Anthropocene--a pen in one hand, a razor in the other (Long poems and Josie Delgado)

Reviews

[Arleen Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his book of essays, Jack Remick once again challenges readers with a book that obliges us to examine our world and all we hold dear. Each essay explores these same questions from a new angle or in different context: "What is wisdom? How do you get it? How do you know you have it?" (p.33)
As a new grandmother, I am drawn to Remick's exploration of how and what we can teach our grandchildren in a rapidly changing world. I hear whispers of my father and find comfort in the suggestion: "Might wisdom be not telling another what to think or believe but telling the other, you must doubt, you must ask, you must question everything?" (p.45)
As I writer, I find nuggets of Remick's genius and generosity throughout this collection. And I am grateful.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review at The Seattle Star:

https://www.seattlestar.net/2021/11/r...