The Wisdom of Donkeys: Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World | 
 enlarge | Author: Andy Merrifield
Publisher: Walker & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $9.85
You Save: $10.10 (51%)
New (38) from $9.85
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 153921
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0802715931
Dewey Decimal Number: 158
EAN: 9780802715937
ASIN: 0802715931
Publication Date: February 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand new, tracking provided, ships next business day!
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Product Description
A literary ode to peace, presence, and fulfillment inspired by a walk taken with a most surprising creature.
“The demon of speed is often associated with forgetting, with avoidance…and slowness with memory and confronting,” observes Milan Kundera in his novel Slowness. With that purpose in mind—a search for slowness and tranquillity—Andy Merrifield set out on a journey of the soul with a friend’s donkey, to walk amid the ruins and spectacular vistas of southern France’s Haute-Auvergne. The purposeful pace of the journey and the understated nobility of Gribouille, his humble donkey companion, allowed him to confront himself as well as to consider the larger mysteries of life—insight he now shares in his enchanting book, The Wisdom of Donkeys. As Merrifield contemplates literature, science, truth and beauty, and the universality of nature amid the French countryside, Gribouille surprises him with his subtle wisdom, reminding him time and again that enlightenment is all around us if we but seek it. Traveling with Andy Merrifield and Gribouille, we’re reminded of the contemplative and exquisite benefits of nature, passive adventuring, and wild spaces.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Be Patient - That's the Point June 9, 2008
Merrifield sets out on a walking tour at a donkey's pace. He invites the reader along. And that's the point.
Don't read this hurredly. But be prepared to reconsider life in the fast lane and to fantasize about time in the south of France.
Merrifield quotes George Orwell's Benjamin -- "Donkeys live a long time; you've never seen a dead donkey," and it all makes so much sense.
 Blah Blah Blah - Donkeys June 3, 2008
"The Wisdom of Donkeys" is a good attempt at a novel idea, but it falls short of conveying any coherent meaning. It reads like a travel-logue mixed with high-school book reviews (repeatedly regurgitating scenes from Don Quixote de La Mancha). And what's worse, the author tends to wander off inside his own mind. The result is that the reader gets some lame James Joyce stream of consciousness about donkeys and life. Having said all that, the book is a good idea, and has its moments, but I wouldn't highly recommend it.
Persuaded by Patience May 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of those rare books you hope will never end, so full is it of warmth and humanity.
Paradoxically, these virtues make it difficult to write about, because they are subjective and fuzzy round the edges. But I want to try, since I was wonderfully moved more than once in my bedtime reading.
A simpler plot would be hard to imagine. The author takes a rented donkey on a walking journey through the byways of the Haute Auvergne region of southern France. As the two meander along tracks and paths, Andy Merrifield, a former Geography teacher in British and American universities and author of the biographies of two 20th century French philosophers, and Gribouille, his donkey, form a kind of symbiotic relationship (though it may be that Andy needs Gribouille more than Gribouille needs Andy).
Throughout the story, the author makes reference to donkeys in literature, philosophy and religion, citing Cervantes, Spinoza, Anne Sexton, Schubert, Dostoyevsky, the Old Testament, the Koran and Aesop (among others), which provides a counterpoint to the journey that man and beast make together.
But it's Andy's feelings for Gribouille that make the story, for me, so touching and rewarding. He finds in his donkey the values to which he aspires--of patience, of calm, of acceptance of suffering, of forbearance, and for therapy (making the point that animals such as donkeys can be used fruitfully in homes for the aged, or sick).
There is great strength in the writing, unsentimental, romantic, perhaps, but, shining through, a calm smile of resignation at the folly of the world.
This is a book I shall treasure, and return to.
donkey wellness March 31, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This little volume offers forty meditations on a donkey, many often offered to a donkey, as the author on his walk through southern France has only the long ears of his donkey, Gribouille, to enchant. Merrifield sees the donkey as our double as well as the "nemesis of our frantic age." The author also notes the therapeutic properties of donkeys and the reverie they inspire as one waits for them to decide what's next. Guiding lights are Dostoevsky's Myshkin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sancho Panza, Gaston Bachelard and Anne Sexton. Little stories about the author are woven together with stories of his donkey friend and of his readings, reflections and meetings with people who feel for donkeys. Some sweet pages tell of a donkey healer in Egypt who helps the rural farmers keep their helpmates as healthy as they can afford in the difficult circumstances they survive. Either donkeys are incredibly soulful, longsuffering companions on this earth or we humans are fabulously adept at overlooking our anthropomorphic idealizations in search of exemplary conduct. No matter the case, the result is a pretty one and very peaceful. The author now happily revels in the French countryside and reviles the former realities of his rat race life in New York City. This book is one of those whose itinerary and distances have only little relevance to the journey of a generous mind and meditative days spent with donkeys.
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