Shlain - The alphabet versus the goddess: the conflict between word and image

Praise for The Alphabet Versus the Goddess

Every once in a while, during middle age, we come upon a book we wish wed had the chance to read when we were much younger. So it is for me with this bold and fascinating investigation of the dark side of literacy. Shlain makes the startling claim that the advent of literacy ushered in the demise of goddess societies, and shifted the balance of power from women with their intuitive and holistic, right-brain orientation to the more concrete, linear-focused, left-brain men Both hemispheres of my cerebrum remained stimulated throughout.

Bart Schneider, The Washington Post Book World

Shlain invites us to do nothing less than re-examine the vast history of humankind on planet earth he mounts an argument that is persuasive and entertaining.

The Baltimore Sun

Give Leonard Shlain credit for giving the commonplace practice of reading its full cultural importance. In exploring the elusive psychology of literature, he reaches some ambitious conclusions.

San Francisco Chronicle

A stimulating read Shlain has produced a lively, readable and often suggestive tract. The ground traversed is immense, the horizons uncovered are often intriguing.

George Steiner, The Observer (London)

As provocative as anything published in the last decade Shlains thesis is shockingThe Alphabet Versus the Goddess is fascinating, vexing, provocative, and sometimes maddening.

Clay Evans, Boulder Camera

Leonard Shlain may himself be the quintessential fusion of word and image. With superb writing, he draws for us a fascinating account of the evolution of our male and female ways of knowing, of the cursesnot just the blessingsof reverence for the word alone. As a history and science lesson, this book is a vivid, breathing page-turner. As a threshold to a new perception of our history and our future, it offers both chilling reminders and great hope.

Clarissa Pinkola Ests, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves

A tour de force, with stunning new insights about gender relations, language and consciousness.

Michael Murphy, author of The Future of the Body

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess is as brilliant as it is well-wrought, an intricate weaving of past and present told in a story that is never less than absorbing.

Richard Selzer, author of Mortal Lessons

A fascinating, thought-provoking and original contribution to the literature on the goddess and her disappearance from our world.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., author of Goddesses in Everywoman

This is a bomb of a booka highly original, titillating thesis that will delight, infuriate, challenge and enlighten.

Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words and Prayer Is Good Morning

A bold and courageous work.

Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics

Moving rapidly from the mists of prehistory to the glow of the PC screen, Shlain offers an ambitious interpretive account of the entirety of human culture: a well-written, daring work of the imagination, worthy of debateand likely to generate plenty.

Publishers Weekly

Engrossing, occasionally poetic, and sure-to-be controversial.

Booklist (starred review)

Continually engaging a monumentally ambitious work that treats all history as a great struggle between the written word and the visual. A fascinatingly elaborate idea for readers to chew over.

Kirkus Reviews

An absorbing, provocative, and, ironically, highly literate work.

Library Journal

THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS

Leonard Shlain is the author of Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light, and a contributor to The Encyclopedia of Creativity (Academic Press, 1999). He has written for many publications and lectures. Chief of laparoscopic surgery at California-Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, he lives and writes in Mill Valley. His e-mail address is .

LEONARD SHLAIN

THE

ALPHABET

VERSUS

THE

GODDESS

THE CONFLICT

BETWEEN

WORD

AND

IMAGE

PENGUIN/COMPASS

COMPASS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1998

Published in Compass 1999

13 15 17 19 20 18 16 14 12

Copyright Leonard Shlain, 1998

All rights reserved

Portions of this work first appeared in The Utne Reader.

Illustration credits

Title page, pages 139 (both), 228 (both), 313 (all): Alinari/Art Resource, New York; 31: Muse dAquitaine, Bordeaux; 38 (top): Gift of Mrs. W. Scott Fitz. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 38 (bottom): Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete; 48, 56, 267: Runion des Muses Nationaux Agence Photographique, Paris; 60, 359 (top): Giraudon/Art Resource, New York; 62 (both): The British Museum; 123: 1998 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Seated Bather, Paris (early 1930). Oil on canvas, 64-1/4 x 51. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Photograph 1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York; 126 (left), 179: Mark Reynolds; 126 (right): 1998 The Georgia OKeeffe Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS). New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949. (52.203); 134 (left): Scala/Art Resource, New York; 134 (right): Gift of Edward Perry Warren and Fiske Warren. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 166: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florance Waterbury Fund, 1970. (1970.44); 201 (left) The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, Bequest of Florance Waterbury, 1969. (69.222); 201 (right): Courtesy of the author; 359 (bottom), 373 (both): Dover Pictorial Archives; 382: Joseph Nez Perce, 1903 by Edward S. Curtis (published in The North American Indian, Volume VIII), courtesy of Lois Flury, Flury & Company Ltd., Seattle, Washington; 410 (left): Courtesy of the Los Alamos Historical Museum Archives, Los Alamos, New Mexico; 410 (right): NASA

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Shlain, Leonard.

The alphabet versus the goddess: the conflict between word and image/Leonard Schlain.

p. cm.

includes bibliographical references and index.

EISBN: 9781101573914

1 Written communicationSocial aspects. 2. LiteracySocial aspects. 3. AlphabetHistory. 4. Language and culture. 5. Patriarchy. 6. Misogyny. I. Title.

P211.7.S57 1998

302.2244dc21 9821673

Printed in the United States of America Set in Minion

Designed by Francesca Belanger

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.