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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British World War II film by David Lean based on the novel The Bridge over the River Kwai by French writer Pierre Boulle. The film is a work of fiction but borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942?43 for its historical setting. It stars William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa. In 1997, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry. Two World War II prisoners of war are burying a dead comrade in a Japanese prison camp in western Thailand. One of them is United States Navy Commander Shears (William Holden), who has bribed the guards to get on the sick list to avoid more strenuous labour. He watches as a large contingent of new British prisoners led by Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) arrives, whistling the "Colonel Bogey March". ... Read more

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A thirty-one-year-old rock'n'roll guitarist decides to get married, only to begin an affair with Gretchen, a New York poet, and finds himself torn between letting his dreams die and having a steady gig. A first novel.Amazon.com Review
Tom Perrotta's first novel, The Wishbones, is all aboutthat much-maligned class of 30-ish men who still live at home withtheir parents, guys who make furtive love to their girlfriends--ifthey have them at all--in the basement rec room or the back seat of acar. But Dave Raymond, the protagonist of The Wishbones,doesn't waste his time on Star Trek reruns or computer games;he spends his weekends playing in a wedding band called The Wishbones,using the rapidly receding dream of rock stardom as an excuse to putoff growing up. The sudden death of a fellow musician sends Dave intosomething of a tailspin, however, and in a moment of weakness, heproposes to his longtime girlfriend, Julie. The engagement has hardlybeen announced when Dave meets Gretchen, a bridesmaid at one of theweddings at which The Wishbones play, and before long he's havingserious doubts about his own marital plans.

Everybody knowssomeone like Dave, but a real-life puer aeternus is rarely asentertaining as Perrotta's fictional one. Perrotta wisely surroundshis sad-sack protagonist with an array of entertaining supportingcharacters, from a joint-smoking priest to one of Dave's band-mateswhose life work is a musical based on Kennedy's assassination. By thetime The Wishbones winds down to its well-deserved end, readerswill be wishing for a second novel from Tom Perrotta soon. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (56)

solid
Perrotta is always fun to read. He has such an easy style and understands men and women. He often reminds me of Nick Hornby and this is similar yo HIGH FIDELITY in several ways. It isn't his best book, but it is enjoyable and smart without being pretentious or smarmy.

Fatal Proposal
Tom Perrotta has a very cinematic writing style. By that, I mean that he has a distinct way of starting nearly every episode of his story at its most dramatic moment, then flashing back to explain how it all got this way. Using this device, he skillfully avoids a linear, this-happened-then-that-happened unraveling of the tale.

The Wishbones tells the tale of a wannabe rock star, part-time musician battling it out in the strangely competitive subculture of wedding bands (or, as we often say in the trade, "casual" bands). As in all subcultures, this world speaks its own, peculiar language. In hotel ballrooms, quirky, idiosyncratic characters perform standard repertoires and utilize corny gimmicks, some donning bad toupees. Here we meet ferociously territorial lifers and up-and-comers just out to make the rent money. Perrotta speaks in an informed way on behalf of this odd community and his late-blooming protagonist, Dave Raymond (could this name be derived from Kinks frontman, Ray Davies?). Dave, who, at 31, has a pretty cushy thing goin', pickin' guitar on the weekends, still living with his parents in New Jersey. Then, he inadvertently asks his girlfriend to marry him. What was he thinking? That's when Dave's developmentally arrested life becomes considerably more complex.

Although lightweight, this is very readable stuff. As a fellow author and a musician -- not to mention a creature of the male persuasion -- I found this tale and these characters ringing true throughout. Perrotta is superb storyteller who invariably keeps me amused and turning those pages.

Rand Bishop, author of Makin' Stuff Up, The Absolute Essentials of Songwriting Success, and the novel/mock memoir, Grand Pop.

Amusing but slight comedy
I'm a fan of Tom Perotta. I especially admire his ability to get ahead of social trends in his books. He seems to sense the "next big thing" and he's there, several steps ahead.
In this amusing but not overly demanding novel, Perotta gives us the archetypal character of Dave, a boy-man of 31 still struggling to grow up. Since this book came out in 1997, that character has become the stock-in-trade of Judd Apatow and his ilk. But Perotta was there first.
Dave is a rock star-wannabe who plays in a wedding band and lives at home with his parents. Sound familiar? It's a classic case of "failure to launch." He's been going out with Jennifer for 15 years since they were high-school juniors (with a couple of breaks).
One evening, feeling emotional after watching another ancient musician keel over and die, Dave proposes. No sooner does he take the plunge than he gets cold feet. And he meets Gretchen, the cool, poetic, Brooklyn-living, semi-intellectual who could be his true soul-mate.
One thing I've notices about Perotta's books is that after the skillful set-up, which seems to be pointing to a truly magnificent climax, he often cops out and settles for the conventional happy ending. Such is also the case here.
Perhaps that's fitting. A big climax may have been too heavy for a story this lightweight.
This book is amusing and Perotta has a good ear for dialogue as well as for the pulse of the zeitgeist (if I can mix metaphors). It's a pleasant read.

Wishin' and Hopin'
Reading "The Wishbones" by Tom Perrotta makes it easy to see the early evolvement of his man-boy characters that the author has perfected over the past decade.At the center of this novel is Dave Raymond, a 32 year-old wedding band guitar player who is seemingly content with his go-nowhere life until he mistakenly proposes to his girlfried.What Dave experiences afterwards is a journey of self-discovery among a landscape populated by music and an interesting cast of characters.

Dave Raymond is relatively content with his life, working flexible hours as a courier and playing regular wedding gigs with his band The Wishbones, although he is still vaguely harboring hope that he'll still get a shot at the big time.When he accidentally proposes to his girlfriend of "fifteen years on and off" Dave desperately searches for a way out of the mess but doesn't know if there is one.Then at one summer wedding he meets the woman who just might be the one he's always dreamed about - if only he weren't getting married in September.As Dave tries juggling two women at once, he winds up finding out a lot about himself and what he has come to expect about his life and his future.

"The Wishbones" is filled with Perrotta's trademark wit and irony and he counterbalances Dave's antics with those of his fellow bandmates.Yet the pages devoted to their stories and viewpoints is little and rather spread out.Some references seem extremely dated, even though the book is just over 10 years old, and for people who are not rock trivia know-it-alls, some of the musical references and descriptions may be confusing.The shift in tense for the last section of the book is an odd choice and has a disjointing although not necessarily distracting effect on the novel's ending.For fans of Perrotta, "The Wishbones" is a defining read, for readers can see the best of later characters in the lovelorn Dave who has refused to grow up for far too long.

(three and a half stars) A decent debut
Though not as good as subsequent novels "Little Children" and "Election," Tom Perrotta's first, "The Wishbones," already laid the groundwork as to why he has so many admirers: quirky characters in uncomfortable scenarios narrated in a snappy way.Here, the protaganist (Dave Raymond) is what one might consider a bit of a loser -- at age 31, he still lives with his parents, and although obviously intelligent, hasn't done much with his life.He messengers during the day, plays guitar at night for a wedding band known as "The Wishbones," and hangs out when he can with his on- again-off-again girlfriend of 15 years, Julie.The monkey wrench is thrown, however, when he finally (but still impulsively) proposes to Julie who accepts, and immediately meets Gretchen at a wedding, who's dramatically different than Julie, and whom he thinks he's fallen in love with.What to do?

An interesting story that kept my attention.Two things, though, stretched my belief.First, if Julie is so wonderful and beautiful, there's no way she's staying with someone like Dave for 15 years.Second, there was a scene in which The Wishbones mistakenly find themselves as a houseband for neo-nazis.I think Perrotta was trying too hard here and not staying true to the anally meticulous character "Artie," the manager and sax player of the band, who would never have contracted to be anybody's house band without doing a little research on who the band would be playing for.

In any event, Perrotta is one of the most fun authors around to read, and I'm one who can be included as a fan, even though I think he has yet to write that elusive five star novel (at least the way I rate things). ... Read more

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After his boyhood friend Messala's fanatic loyalty to Rome makes him a powerful enemy, Judah Ben-Hur is found guilty of an attempted murder he did not commit. His family is banished and he is enslaved on a warship. Through his ferocity in a raging sea battle, he is able to escape and become a horse trainer. To exact his revenge, Ben-Hur decides to compete against Messala in the Roman chariot races. They race, locked in a battle to the death. Barely surviving, Ben-Hur forsakes the sword for Christ and finally finds redemption. Winner of a record 11 Academy Award, including Best Picture and Actor (Charlton Heston). ... Read more

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Chapters: Peter Sellers, Douglas Smith, Carey Mulligan, Andrew Sachs, Sally Hawkins, Roy Hudd, Jack Shepherd, Tom Conway, Simon Jones, John Bluthal, Tenniel Evans, Richard Vernon, Geraldine Somerville, Terry Molloy, Moira Lister, Graham Crowden, David Hatch, Judy Cornwell, Terence de Marney, Ian Brooker, Margaret Tyzack, Claudie Blakley, Carleton Hobbs, Felicity Montagu, Jacqueline Pearce, Omar Raza, Perdita Weeks, Sarah Lawson, Toby Longworth, Alexis Zegerman, Jeanne de Casalis, James Grout, David de Keyser, Rosemary Leach, Jack Train, Clive Merrison, Charles Collingwood, Debbie Isitt, Anthony Finigan, Sylvia Coleridge, Colin Hoult, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Heron Carvic, Souad Faress, Andy Secombe, Patricia Greene, Paul Brooke, Robert Duncan, Dominic Hawksley, Edmund Kingsley, Graham Roberts, Jackie Smith-Wood, Rosalind Shanks, Alison Glennie, Carl Prekopp, Crawford Logan. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 191. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Carey Hannah Mulligan (born 28 May 1985) is an English actress. She made her acting debut as Kitty Bennet in Pride ... Read more

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When Dinty Moore was fifteen and on a Catholic Youth retreat weekend at a monastery in upstate New York, he thought for a brief moment he might grow up to be a priest. Instead, over the years, he lost his faith. "Twenty-five years later, I found myself at the doorway of a different monastery," Moore writes. " And the monks? Well, this time the monks were Buddhists."

The Accidental Buddhist is the funny, provocative story of how Dinty Moore, as American as Huckleberry Finn, went looking for the faith he'd lost in what might seem the most unlikely of places: the ancient Eastern tradition of Buddhism. Like George Plimpton venturing into the world of professional sports, Dinty Moore enters the retreat centers, zendos, and meditation halls that have been taking root in every corner of America.

Moore takes the time to see what Buddhism has to offer the harried, hassled American of the new century.He explores the different varieties of American Buddhism, attends rallies, even tracks down and questions the Dalai Lama. In the process, much to his own surprise, he finds himself fascinated and moved by what he encounters.

For anyone who has wondered about the gorwing visibility of Buddhism, Dinty Moore demystifies and explains the contradictions and concepts of this most mystic-seeming of religious traditions, while putting it into an American context. Those already interested in Buddhism will find The Accidental Buddhist a plain-spoken, insightful look at the dharma in America.
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Customer Reviews (59)

Modest account of his year's search for dharma wisdom
The author spends a year pondering the shift to Buddhism among a few fellow Americans. He goes on retreat at a strict Zen monastery and a loose Therevada center. He interviews experts, visits a pair of struggling cushion makers, gets to ask the Dalai Lama a question at a talk at Indiana U., and intersperses a bit of his own personal quest for meaning after the God of his youth fades, but not the nagging sense of suffering.

I'd known of this book for a while, but the title and the author's name (beef stew?) made me think it was a quick send-up of facile gurus and silly posers. But a friend who shares my ethnic and religious background (also the same as the author as it happens) and my half-skeptical, half-intrigued approach to Buddhism as adapted by earnest Westerners recommended it. Often, it's been checked out from my library, so I had to wait. Thirteen years after it appeared, I finally got around to reading it.

It proved a worthwhile, often modestly told exploration--not so much about the factual basis for an Americanizing Buddhism (I'd been learning this the past few years), but of one man's middle-aged quest. It tends towards the under-promoted, less visible side of how Buddhism's filtering into American life, and this model for Moore fits better than the dramatic, shaved-head and mantra-chanting, incense-wreathed scenarios most Westerners associate with dharma. Moore looks for what can replace his lapsed childhood faith-- as guidance towards confronting and enduring the big questions that haunt many of us, dissatisfied and wandering.

My favorite chapters are the sixth, "Catholic Boy Zen," and the ninth, "The Plain-Spoken Theravadan." He talks to Fr Robert Jinsen Kennedy, a Jersey Jesuit, who combines Zen with Catholicism. Their conversation intelligently addresses the lack of maturity in much of the way Catholicism had been presented to those of Moore's generation, about the last to get a pre-Vatican II version of a negative "thou shalt not" mindset combined with a simplified version of God and Jesus manufactured for easy transmission to a billion followers. Moore acknowledges his current attraction for Buddhism may be an over-reaction to his childhood Catholicism, and even the Dalai Lama's own caution for Westerners not to over-romanticize Buddhism as opposed to their "Judeo-Christian" mentality hits a nerve inside Moore as he listens to the Tibetan leader respond to his own question in Indiana.

Chapter nine reveals a growing comfort with dharma. Moore takes pains not to glamorize those who adapt Buddhism. He's well-read in the field, but his sources remain largely invisible, as he aims for an accessible, jargon-free presentation that any reader can understand. (A glossary of a few terms is appended.) He concentrates on overcoming his "rock" within, his resistance and his angst, his entrapment in the cycle of suffering, of keeping anger in, familiar to many Irish Catholic males of at least a certain age and upbringing.

His life has compelled him to look for what is missing, what has led him to find out more about Buddhism. He attempts to get over the "if only" postponement of happiness that permeates our mental habits. He compares this to rushing down a hiking trail eager to finish while missing the sights and sounds; he drives down the interstate and thinks of how its engineering detracts from distractions, but also blurs any sense of the journey's own beauties and discoveries. He fears he will zip past forty-five years of work and worry the twenty years of retirement over lost opportunities. This challenges him to slow down, to appreciate wisdom.

He tries as any meditator to silence the restless "monkey man" inside, before calming down: "Maybe enlightenment is when the monkey just sees the sunset, and then, when the sunset ends, the monkey just looks at the stars." He knows full well a few hours at practicing Buddhism over a year will not bring about dazzling illumination. But, after a successful second Zen retreat, he glimpses more than he'd started with. "You can't slow the brain down with a few brief attempts any more easily than you can stop a speeding freight train with a white picket fence.: However, he adapts well to sitting still, to his astonishment. While no dramatic changes occur in his life, he grows calmer, more equitable, and perhaps happier.

This is a quiet, rather than self-promoting, journey towards insight. Perhaps too low-key for eager inquirers, but I found this at the right time and if in the right mood, this should satisfy the patient, quiet seeker. Moore concludes that, concerning God's existence, he's not going to worry. "If there is a God, I should live my life according to principles of kindness, compassion, and awareness, and if there is no God," the same principles apply, his summation of an intimate Buddhist perspective.

Love it ... was just the right thing for me
it was just the right "let me take you along on my journey" book ...for me.
i highly recommend the book for those who have thought about buddhism ...
it is not a book that will answer all one's questions ..
but is a great sign post on the path.

A good read, but not life altering
Moore makes Buddhism more accessible than any other book I've approached on the subject. I appreciate his research and frustration, his willingness to put himself out there. Unfortunately, it was a little bland. The reviews here on Amazon built the book up a lot. I liked it but wasn't blown away. Inspiring, nonetheless.

Just a delight!
In brief, this is a fun, easy and gentle introduction into the world of Buddhism. There are very few books I'd like to read twice, but this is one. It contains many memorable and quotable passages.

Very fun
This book is, quite simply, a romp in the playground. It is one man's journalistic adventure to discover American Buddhism by visiting tiny, probably unknown sects in unlikely places (some of them more welcoming to American life-style than others). He finds Americans from Iowa quietly hammering away at their own monkey-mind one day at a time.He discovers blowhards in NYC faking it at an event in Central Park.He visits both Tibetan and Theravadan Buddhist retreats.He interviews a couple that have been struggling to live decently by selling Buddhist knick-knacks while living a true Buddhist lifestyle free from normal pleasures and the clinging that it entails.The full spectrum of American Buddhism is covered masterfully.

The crux of the book is Dinty Moore's playful writing style.Rarely have I found a book that contains subject matter that fits so well with the style of the prose.True Buddhists can laugh at themselves and their own inadequacies; in that regard, we find that Dinty has absorbed the Buddhist spirit.Hopefully he is able to spread the word and help other Americans live better lives in a country that has values very much at odds with Buddhist values. ... Read more

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A Brief Hisory of the Hawkins family. ... Read more