Courier Mail -
Saturday 7/10/2006
review by Shaun Charles
LIFE, the universe, and everything;
what's it all about? On a never-ending
quest for cosmic meaning Brisbane
writer, Phil Brown, has been asking
this question his whole life.
Poetry,
Catholicism, meditation, health
farms, psychiatry; Brown has done it
all, and it's now all down for record in
his latest book, Any Guru Will Do.
Of
course, Brown is not the first writer
to battle with the really big questions
of existence, but he's one of the few
to do it in settings such as
Toowoomba and Rockhampton. And
it's these familiar locations that, in
part, give the book its warmth and
humour.
In the chapter "What A
Bummer", Brown submits to a colonic
irrigation. He writes; "I was in a
shabby little room in Mermaid Beach,
next door to a brothel, having my
bowel sucked dry by a guy who
sounded like an extra on Hogan's
Hero's." And while we laugh at the
situations Brown places himself in,
there is, beneath the deceivingly
simple and laugh-out loud prose, a
writer deeply concerned with
spiritualism in a cynical modern
world.
Loosely charting the
chronology of his life, each chapter
highlights another quest. We see
Brown convert to Catholicism,
experience genuinely freaky
encounters with Gold Coast
evangelical Christians, discover
meditation in Rocky, and almost
starve himself to death at a dodgy
health retreat.
Funny, thought
provoking and eminently readable,
Any Guru Will Do is a charming piece
of literary enlightenment.
Shaun Charles
