He could easily have written Celestine as non-fiction, making a chapter out of each of the insights, but would more than a few thousand people have read it? The grand theme - an emerging humanity-wide consciousness - required a fictional narrative to make it really come alive, in this case an adventure story which carries the reader into the Peruvian Andes, where an ancient manuscript surfaces in jungle ruins. Redfield has admitted he is more of a social commentator than a novelist, and the book reads as if it is a set of ideas with the convention of a novel foisted onto it. This book is not highbrow literature, but on the other hand critical praise or condemnation is irrelevant for a large portion of the reading public - we want to know if our friends liked a book - and it was word of mouth that turned Celestine into a hyperseller. The first group of readers focus on the of the writing the second hone in on Redfield's messages, codified in the nine insights woven into the story. The two most common reactions to it are 'This is utter trash' and 'It changed my life'. The Celestine Prophecy was the biggest-selling book in the world for three years in the late 1990s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |