Review: The Cutting Season by Arthur Rosenfeld
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An exotic literary thriller
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Review
by Frank Shatz
WORLD FOCUS LIFE ON THE CUTTING EDGE
Posted July 2007
No doubt,
the late Ernest "Papa"
Hemingway would have found a kindred spirit Arthur Rosenfeld. Like Hemingway,
Rosenfeld lives a life of adventure and courts danger. And both turned what they
experienced into raw material for their fiction.
Rosenfeld is a martial arts expert, a lecturer on the subject and the author
of nine books and countless articles published in such prestigious magazines
as Vanity Fair and Vogue.
He is also a motorcycle aficionado, a student of Asian culture and philosophy,
and his latest book The Cutting Season, a martial arts thriller, makes
him a pioneer in a new literary fiction category.
On his news/blog, Rosenfeld notes that
"the principles underlying the sublime martial art of tai chi are powerful
and transformative. These days, those principles are most relevant as life lessons
rather than as a fighting system."
The motivating force for Rosenfeld, to become an expert in martial arts was precisely
to learn how to defend himself effectively.
"I had an unfortunate experience in South America the summer I graduated
from Yale College," he said in a recent interview with the Gazette.
"Defending a woman from a drunken cop on the street in Quito, Ecuador, I
was pursued by military police, apprehended by men with swagger sticks in shiny
boots, and dragged off to a mountain prison."
During that fateful ride, Rosenfeld made a bargain with himself. "Should
I get out of the situation alive, I would learn how to hit a man so he stayed
down. My thinking was that if I had known what I was doing, the drunk would not
have awakened so quickly and gone for help."
In the years that followed, his training in martial arts, learning how to fight,
evolved into a process of learning how to live. "My inquiry into the hows
and whys of life grew deeper, and I found that Eastern thoughts, with their non-dual
flavor, their sense of a great oneness in the world, spoke to me from a true
place," he said.
He pointed out that the underlying principles that govern Eastern religions seem "linked
to the mystical and transcendent traditions of Judeo-Christian lore. I am driven
greatly by the desire to communicate the ideas I love to others, and to help
them use them, as I have done, to improve their lives."
Rosenfeld's writings and lifestyle are characterized by a "unifying theory."
"The unifying theory is the quest for deeper knowledge," he said. "Ever
since childhood, I have felt we are all only staring at the surface of the lake…
I feel we only use a tiny portion of our brains, that we are grievously limited
by our senses, and that what we are told to believe limits or blocks true understanding
of the world. Riding motorcycles, shooting guns, nurturing tortoises, slicing
with swords, swimming, kayaking, traveling to exotic locales, raising pythons,
and most of all reading and writing books, all of these have been attempts to
reach out, touch, and understand the world, and the laws that govern it, more
deeply."
It's no wonder that Rosenfeld was searching for new paths. His father, Dr. Isadore
Rosenfeld, is a world-renowned medical doctor, a professor of medicine at New
York Hospital Weill Cornel Medical Center, and the personal physician to such
personalities as the late Averill and Pamela Harriman, Aristotle Onassis, and
scores of others.
"I wanted to be a writer from the age of nine," said Arthur Rosenfeld. "Anything
else, whether medicine, law, business, academics, seemed limited and constrained
to me. My father supported my years of casting about with some worry and much
good nature. He applauded my perseverance in trying to make a living as a novelist
while at the same time looking keenly to see me on the bestseller list."
His father had turned "his enthusiasm for medicine into a passport to the
world and a way to engage and assist others."
Rosenfeld credits him and his mother, "a compassionate woman with a thirsty
intellect," as his role models.
But he credits his teacher, Master Max Gao Fei Yan, with showing him the way
to achieving that elusive inner peace. "He does a finer job of walking his
talk than anyone I know, of keeping his physical and emotional equilibrium, of
actually living the Eastern teachings in the context of the speed and greed culture
we call the Western world
All that he learned from his master and experienced himself finds its way into
Rosenfeld's books.
"I have been working for some years now to bring authentic, literary, martial
arts fiction to American shores for what may be the first time" he wrote
in a press release. "This is a challenging and ambitious project that draws
on decades of martial arts study, a deep involvement with Asian culture, history,
and perhaps most importantly, philosophy."
In The Cutting Season, Rosenfeld managed to fuse an action-filled thriller
with an expert's knowledge of martial art techniques, philosophical musing, and
the description of the double-life of Dr. Xenon Pearl, a brilliant brain surgeon.
Dr. Pearl, at a moment of self-reflection is quoted saying:
"I am a doctor. And the way things look now, I'm a schizophrenic doctor." Realizing
that he is both a doctor and a martial warrior, he follows the rules ascribed
by his two professions, "Do no harm…Honor your teacher… Cut without mercy…."
A reading by Arthur Rosenfeld, in the framework of William & Mary's Patrick
Hayes Writer's Festival, would provide students with an opportunity to learn
about a new literary genre. Rosenfeld also inspires audiences to look at life
from a different angle.
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