This is an unpleasant truth to Americans gathered at the altar of individualism, and Whyte turns away from it. For all his talk of the inner life, Whyte is rather taciturn about such moral choices, and avoids the question that Buddhism asks so relevantly about right livelihood. The Heart Aroused is contemporary, inspirational writing, following Robert Bly's lead in looking to story and myth for older life lessons we may have forgotten. Though Whyte shares Bly's concentration on the story of the American male, he doesn't burrow deep into the texts the way Bly did in Iron John, and he looks for allegories indiscriminately. He does do an excellent job of describing the fading half of the moon that we face again and again in our cyclical lives.
Soul loves the journey itself.
Ultimately, Whyte's prescription is that soul-centered people will find a creative and adaptable balance in their corporate work to the benefit of their corporation. It is a pleasant tranquilizer, and if a poet gets paid to deliver it and employees get to spend work hours receiving it laced with poems and talk of the soul, so much the better. Kent Chadwick's Northwest Books is a regular column about writers and books from the states and provinces of the Northwest. Copyright 1995 WFP Collective, Inc.