An Unlikely Prophet: A Metaphysical Memoir by the Legendary Writer of Superman and Batman (signed)

Alvin Schwartz

ISBN 10: 1594771081 / ISBN 13: 9781594771088

Published by Destiny Books, Rochester, VT, 2006

About this Item

Book in color photo illustrated wraps has minor shelf-wear, tight, bright, and unmarked. Signed in crabbed, old-man's handwriting on title page.

Seller Inventory # 004425

Bibliographic Details

• Title: An Unlikely Prophet: A Metaphysical Memoir by the Legendary Writer of Superman and Batman (signed)
• Publisher: Destiny Books, Rochester, VT
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594771081
• ISBN 13: 9781594771088
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

A profound investigation into the shifting nature of identity and reality

- Looks at the ways thought is embodied and how it takes on a life of its own

- Shows how Superman, an archetype of popular culture, is a perfect example of the nonlocality of quantum physics

Writer Alvin Schwartz received a great deal of attention from fans when he began talking publicly about his seventeen-year stint writing Superman and Batman comics. One of the individuals who contacted him was no ordinary fan, but a seven-foot Buddhist monk named Thongden, a tulpa or individual who was thought into being by a Tibetan mystic. Thongden put Alvin Schwartz on the path without form, an amazing journey he took in the company of Hawaiian kahunas, quantum physicists, and superheroes. Superman, as it turns out, is also a tulpa, a being created by thought that takes on a life of its own and, in Mr. Schwartz's words, is an archetype expressing the sense of nonlocality that is always present in the back of our minds--that capacity to be everywhere instantly. Superman is one of the specific forms that embodies our reality when we're at our highest point, when we're truly impermeable, indestructible, totally concentrated, and living entirely in the now, a condition each of us actually attains from time to time.

Alvin Schwartz's story is a personal journey through a lifelong remembrance of synchrony, inspiration, accident, and magic. As it unfolds it puts into vivid clarity the saving grace that inhabits every moment of our lives. The author travels as a stranger in a strange land, whose greatest oddity is that this land is our own.

About the Author

Alvin Schwartz (1916-2011) wrote Superman and Batman strips as well as many other DC comic-book titles during the 1940s and '50s. In 2006 he received the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. He was the author of An Unlikely Prophet and The Blowtop, which was described by the New York Times as the first conscious existentialist novel in America. He also wrote a number of screenplays and some 30 docudramas for the National Film Board of Canada.