From Publishers Weekly
Poet, street minister, traveler and lover, Delattre ( Tales of a Dalai Lama ) has lived a rich life, and he recounts it in 92 two-page vignettes. Though the episodes stand on their own and Delattre encourages browsing, some readers may wish for a more developed narrative. Still, he tells amusing tales about his childhood and about people like the pest who prompted his friends to hold a fund-raising "Get Rid of Richard Night." He opened "an experimental coffeehouse ministry" in San Francisco and, as "the beatnik priest," was featured in Time and Newsweek. In Mexico, he barely escaped from two thugs and also met an Aztec-featured shoeshine boy who read Proust with his Francophile sailor father. Delattre married, divorced, found new love, studied and taught yoga, believes in UFOs and reports having a spontaneous orgasm after viewing a full moon. He has encountered the famous: he recalls concert promoter Bill Graham's beginnings, how author Richard Brautigan "could get drunk on anything" and how Neal Cassady died with Delattre's address in his pocket. In reaction to the latter news, Delattre decided, "I wanted to burn a slow flame, and last a long time." Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Writer, painter, and editor of Beatitude , Delattre has published two earlier books, Tales of the Dalai Lama (1971) and Walking on Air ( LJ 5/15/80). His latest offering consists of a series of one-page epiphanies, arranged chronologically, that record illuminating moments in the author's life. The sketches cover a wide range of subjects both public and private providing glimpses into Delattre's childhood, his marriages, and his life as a North Beach street minister. They also include brief portraits of Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Bill Graham, and Charles de Gaulle, among others. A love of life, a warm sense of humor, and a powerful spiritual yearning infuse these writings. Highly recommended.- William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNYCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Autobiography of a dharma bum, told in one-page vignettes and essays, each focusing on an epiphany of some sort. Countercultural life of the 50's and 60's forms the background of this memory grab bag by Delattre (Walking on Air, 1980; Tales of a Dalai Lama, 1971), a former ordained Presbyterian minister who once criticized his congregation by calling the institutional church ``the greatest impediment to spiritual life in America.'' Delattre's stunned congregation so welcomed the criticism that it let him open an experimental coffee-house ministry on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, where he became ``a kind of nondenominational street priest'' for beatniks and Zen folk looking for beatitude. Delattre first found his own satori when a sick friend announced the hour of his death and then died on schedule, holding the author's hand: ``I felt a hot electric surge flow up my arm, flower in my mind, charge my whole body with such an urge to laugh that I could hardly control myself.'' Serving spaghetti, coffee, bread, and wine to some 300 people nightly at the Telegraph Hill mission, Delattre became known as ``the beatnik priest'' and was heralded by features in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. But bad habits pursued him and things fell apart (including the first two of Delattre's three marriages). Appearing throughout his pages here are Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Bill Graham, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Brautigan, Albert Schweitzer, Nikos Kazantzakis, and the Dalai Lama and Tibetan priests, among others. At one point, MGM calls Delattre in as a consultant on the filming of Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans, in which Gerry Mulligan played the author as a jazz-priest. Pleasurable but familiar fare that might move younger readers more than older. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
In each generation there are individuals who live at the center of and help develop the principal themes of the age. Though many of these people are not widely known, their lives are exemplary and their influence among a generation's leaders is profound. Pierre Delattre has been, since the 1950s, one of these people, a voyager who remains in the vanguard.

Episodes consists of distilled moments of autobiography: Delattre has captured the humor, the edge, and the sudden illuminations of the defining moments of his life and his generation. These are tales of his encounters with Albert Schweitzer, Richard Brautigan, Charles de Galle, the Dalai Lama, and Neal Cassady, and of his ministerial work running a North Beach landmark; the Bread and Wine Mission, during the beat/hippy golden age.

These are mystical, cautionary tales by a humorist whose focus is on how superbly the divine is expressed in the ordinary. Delattre is a bit the philosopher, but more the theologian.

Pierre Delattre is a writer, painter, and teacher who currently lives in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains between Taos and Santa Fe. He is the author of two novels, Walking on Air and Tales of a Dalai Lama, as well as many stories and poems.


From the Back Cover
"The Divine is in the ordinary."--Pierre Delattre

In each generation there are individuals who live at the center of and help develop the principal themes of the age. Though many of these people are not widely known, their lives are exemplary and their influence among a generation's leaders is profound. Pierre Delattre has been, since the 1950s, one of these people, a voyager who remains in the vanguard.

Episodes consists of distilled moments of autobiography: Delattre has captured the humor, the edge, and the sudden illuminations of the defining moments of his life and his generation. These are tales of his encounters with Albert Schweitzer, Richard Brautigan, Charles de Galle, the Dalai Lama, and Neal Cassady, and of his ministerial work running a North Beach landmark; the Bread and Wine Mission, during the beat/hippy golden age.

These are mystical, cautionary tales by a humorist whose focus is on how superbly the divine is expressed in the ordinary. Delattre is a bit the philosopher, but more the theologian.

Pierre Delattre is a writer, painter, and teacher who currently lives in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains between Taos and Santa Fe. He is the author of two novels, Walking on Air and Tales of a Dalai Lama, as well as many stories and poems.


About the Author
Pierre Delattre lives in an adobe house far up an arroyo in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains between Taos and Santa Fe. He's a writer, painter, and teacher. He is the author of two novels, Walking on Air and Tales of a Dalai Lama, as well as many stories and poems. He has taught writing at the Universities of Minnesota and Alabama for many years taught writing and aesthetics at the Instituto Allende in Mexico. He has worked in theater, film, and television and on a number of industrial jobs.

After taking his graduate degree in religion and the arts at the University of Chicago Divinity School, he ran a coffeehouse ministry in San Francisco's North Beach during the beat era, hosted a television series, "Against the Stream" and was an editor of the magazine Beatitude, which published many of the early beat poems.

Delattre has always had a special interest in the moral and spiritual aspects of emergent culture. He has been a teacher of yoga and of course relating the arts to spiritual disciplines.

He is currently exhibiting his visual art at the Art Ventures Gallery in Santa Fe and his rock art at the Cardona-Hine Gallery in Truchas, New Mexico.

He serves as a contributing editor of The Hungry Mind Review and of The magazine.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In each generation there are individuals who live at the center of and help develop the principal themes of the age. Though many of these people are not widely known, their lives are exemplary and their influence among a generation's leaders is profound. Pierre Delattre has been, since the 1950s, one of these people, a voyager who remains in the vanguard.

Episodes consists of distilled moments of autobiography: Delattre has captured the humor, the edge, and the sudden illuminations of the defining moments of his life and his generation. These are tales of his encounters with Albert Schweitzer, Richard Brautigan, Charles de Galle, the Dalai Lama, and Neal Cassady, and of his ministerial work running a North Beach landmark; the Bread and Wine Mission, during the beat/hippy golden age.

These are mystical, cautionary tales by a humorist whose focus is on how superbly the divine is expressed in the ordinary. Delattre is a bit the philosopher, but more the theologian.

Pierre Delattre is a writer, painter, and teacher who currently lives in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains between Taos and Santa Fe. He is the author of two novels, Walking on Air and Tales of a Dalai Lama, as well as many stories and poems.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Poet, street minister, traveler and lover, Delattre ( Tales of a Dalai Lama ) has lived a rich life, and he recounts it in 92 two-page vignettes. Though the episodes stand on their own and Delattre encourages browsing, some readers may wish for a more developed narrative. Still, he tells amusing tales about his childhood and about people like the pest who prompted his friends to hold a fund-raising ``Get Rid of Richard Night.'' He opened ``an experimental coffeehouse ministry'' in San Francisco and, as ``the beatnik priest,'' was featured in Time and Newsweek. In Mexico, he barely escaped from two thugs and also met an Aztec-featured shoeshine boy who read Proust with his Francophile sailor father. Delattre married, divorced, found new love, studied and taught yoga, believes in UFOs and reports having a spontaneous orgasm after viewing a full moon. He has encountered the famous: he recalls concert promoter Bill Graham's beginnings, how author Richard Brautigan ``could get drunk on anything'' and how Neal Cassady died with Delattre's address in his pocket. In reaction to the latter news, Delattre decided, ``I wanted to burn a slow flame, and last a long time.'' (June)

Library Journal