On The Record

Booklist

It's slightly more than a year after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. New Yorker Joseph Steiner, like thousands of other men and women, is still sorting through his psychological wreckage in the aftermath of the attacks. Since he has just lost his job as a television exec, he and his wife (a small-press publisher) decide to spend Christmas in Paris. Set against the backdrop of the looming war in Iraq, this is the story of a self-centered man forced to confront the fact that the rest of the world probably doesn't care about him as much as he cares about himself. But the question remains: What will Joseph do with his revelation? The author... packs a lot of insight into this slim, gracefully written book. A lot of recent novels have worked post-9/11 themes into their narratives, often in clunky, contrived ways. Here, the 9/11 context is crucial to the hero's personal dilemma, adding an extra layer of meaning to our universal grappling with questions of self and society.
—October 1, 2005

Publishers Weekly

Shepard, cofounder of Permanent Press, began writing music last year, at age 68, and has fashioned a memoir and CD set with his insights on the world. Without irony, he gives readers an intimate, in-depth look at his own life with some very personal anecdotes involving his friends and experiences. The work stems from an idea many people have toyed with: putting one's thoughts down on paper and hoping they mean something to others. Shepard's highly opinionated commentary on such topics as religion, abortion, war, why people lie, politics, fear, death, education, sex and marriage are thought provoking; even a section on his "serendipitous encounter" with the woman who hatched the idea for him to start a publishing house teaches an important lesson in the unanticipated ways of the world. And while Shepard groups his topics haphazardly, there are nuggets, such as his suggestions for readers to embrace their own contradictions and not to be part of the herd. The accompanying CD offers inspirational songs with lines such as "Your time's too short for fears or sorrow/ Live as though there's no tomorrow/ And serenity will fill your life." The easygoing music offers a striking contrast to Shepard's always passionate and at times fervent commentary. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A set of age pensees-complete with a CD arranging them to music-covering politics, music and living fully, from polymath publisher Shepard (The Reluctant Exhibitionist, 1994, etc.). "What makes you think anyone would be interested in your opinions?" asks a friend of Shepard's, and that's a question that ought to be posed to any essayist. But there are a lot of things Shepard would like to get off his chest, and it's rare that the unburdening doesn't produce food for thought. Intimate, unrehearsed-Shepard recommends that readers take notice, asking them whether they've overstayed the interest and joy of their work, whether serenity-the ultimate prize of life, the Buddha state of mind-has gone begging? Shepard is here to tell them to take a risk, that money is no compensation for boredom, that one ought to pursue what's personally meaningful, checking ego at the door, giving self-consciousness a holiday, taking aim at exploration and discovery despite all the inevitable missed notes. He is a student of his own medicine: he has run an elevator and squired a UPS truck; been defrocked as a psychoanalyst; experimented with drugs to unmoor his conventional thinking (and also lost a son to heroin). Shepard is a man of progressive politics, easily picking apart the war on drugs and the fatuous ravings of the Bush administration. As a partisan of compassionate, enlightened governing, he couldn't have a better target than the war in Iraq and the flummery of the "Clean Skies," "Job Creation" and "Save Our Forests" bills. He is wary of words, since so rarely can they get at the thrum of the matter; yet they can also be like a burr in the boot, irritating but demanding attention. Shepard's mentalenergy is something to behold. He suggests more than once that "Those who know don't talk / Those who talk don't know." His words have an import worth considering.