In Review: A Sideways Look at Time

by Jay Griffiths

I picked up this book at Barnes and Noble just before Kim and I left for our Drive Across America, both because it was recommended by the Barnes and Noble staff, and because it looked like one of those physics books that waxes poetic or philosophical - which type of book I tend to like, dependent on the author.

The book, however, is more deconstructionist or sociological. The theme of the book, when it's boiled down, is that there is a wild, natural, circular, feminine time - time which ebbs and flows with the seasons, with the phases of the moon, with the menstrual period, with the cycles that appear in nature. This time cannot be easily broken into regular minutes and seconds, because each cycle may not contain the same number of minutes and seconds, but it is regular and reliable and our bodies and minds and souls are built to work off this kind of time. The other kind of time - regular, Christian, linear, and masculine - solar time, counted on cesium clocks, the kind of time that is money, the kind of time that regulates business and leaves no room for play - this Western time has colonized and is continuing to colonize Wild Time, and that is no good. It may make someone some bucks, but it leaves everyone unhappy.

Essentially, the whole book just repeats this theme over and over again; it's repetition and lack of any significant new idea after the first chapter is its biggest fault. It is philosophical and poetical, however, and Ms. Griffiths' turns of a phrase often rewards continued reading. The book is an interesting essay, but it's about 200 pages longer than it needs to be.