Time and Myth

The title thinly covers three essays concerned with human experience as a "myth," in the original sense of that term - i.e., as a story, or a series of stories within stories, containing, and being contained by, the various events in human life from birth to death. The trick, as the author explains, is to see all these narratives in their proper perspective, as adventures: a search for life, Gilgamesh-like; or a return home, like Odysseus. In each case, man finds that he faces the unknown, which is to say he faces God. How he responds to that unknown at each crisis in his life will determine his relationship to it. Within that time/frame, there are three moments in the story of man's confrontation with the unknown God: crisis or encounter; a moment of withdrawal for reflection; and a final moment of acceptance, or return, at which time man achieves "all-oneness" with God's creation and therefore with God. Dunne's staggeringly speculative approach to his subject is softened to a large extent by the grace of his style and the suppleness of his thought, and the book's literary and philosophical qualities will no doubt assure its critical success. (Kirkus Reviews)