Naomi Wolf

The Treehouse by Naomi WolfMy father is a tall, craggy bear of a man.He is a visionary poet who holds the secrets of the universe within his heart.

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Naomi Wolf - The Treehouse
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Naomi Wolf - The Tree House

Noami Wolf - What the Hell!?The Tree House

The feminist who has always made her personal experiences the big story has written a new book about how people need to nurture their inner artist to be happy.Has she got a daddy complex?Mid-life crisis?Is finding the meaning of life the new path of Western feminism?Or are we too hard on feminists?Wolf has been touring Australia promoting her new book - The Treehouse.
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However, as a young feminist and Marxist, Wolf rejected her father's love of the Western literary canon and, more important, his humanism."He really believes we can all understand each other if we tell stories to each other -- black, white, Muslim, Western," Wolf says.
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Naomi remembers fondly a year her family spent van-camping in Europe when she and her brother, Aaron, were tots.
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A lot of people had high hopes for Naomi Wolf (including Naomi Wolf).
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Since then, Wolf has written several other books, each one more pious and self-obsessed than the last.Her new effort completes this journey.Where once there were facts, now there is intuition; where once she dished up hot anger, now there is cosiness.
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Leonard Wolf, Naomi's 80-year-old father, is a poet, teacher and former resident of Haight-Ashbury.
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They say all girls are a little in love with their daddies; well, Naomi has got it really bad.Feeling that her life has been too frenetic for too long, and having just purchased a darling little wooden house in upstate New York, she invites her father to help her build a treehouse for her young daughter.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7824668/He changes people's lives because he believes that everyone is here on earth as an artist; to tell his particular story or sing her irreplaceable song; to leave behind a unique creative signature.He believes that your passion for this, your feelings about this, must take priority over every other reasoned demand: status, benefits, sensible practices.This book is about why he believes this, and what this belief does to the people around him.Most of all, it is about the power of the imagination.My dad makes Xerox copies at Kinko's of the phrase Verba volant / Scripta manent - "Spoken words fly away, but writing remains" - meaning, get it down, do your creative work, whatever it is.He passes out the Xeroxes to everyone he thinks needs reminding: his grandchildren, his acquaintances, the guy at the cleaners.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyands
ociety/0,,1696382,00.html#article continueThe book runs on three tracks: the self-help advice that makes up the 12 chapter headings, the account of a lyrical summer spent with her poet/ philosopher father, and biographical reminiscences about his life and her own.The treehouse, while actual, also serves as an allegory: "maybe one has to build a treehouse internally", for Wolf is striving to get back to simple things, stripping away the dross of ages to find the clear grain of the wood beneath.
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Wolf is one of the leaders in the field, full of how-to perceptions that perhaps she doesn't always heed herself.But the messages are no less sound for being obvious, and if you're locked in a mediocre job, partnered to the wrong person with no space to pursue your passions, then this book's advice will read like pearls of wisdom.Alternatively you could dismiss it as "all right for some" and turn away in despair.The book's saving grace is the portrait of her father, Leonard Wolf, a "wild visionary poet" of some 80 years whom Naomi clearly adores.

FEATURE TOPIC - Naomi Wolf, what the hell?!
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Wolf has been touring Australia promoting her new book - The Treehouse.
...
However, as a young feminist and Marxist, Wolf rejected her father's love of the Western literary canon and, more important, his humanism."He really believes we can all understand each other if we tell stories to each other -- black, white, Muslim, Western," Wolf says.
...
Naomi remembers fondly a year her family spent van-camping in Europe when she and her brother, Aaron, were tots.
...
A lot of people had high hopes for Naomi Wolf (including Naomi Wolf).
...
Since then, Wolf has written several other books, each one more pious and self-obsessed than the last.Her new effort completes this journey.Where once there were facts, now there is intuition; where once she dished up hot anger, now there is cosiness.
...
Leonard Wolf, Naomi's 80-year-old father, is a poet, teacher and former resident of Haight-Ashbury.
...
They say all girls are a little in love with their daddies; well, Naomi has got it really bad.Feeling that her life has been too frenetic for too long, and having just purchased a darling little wooden house in upstate New York, she invites her father to help her build a treehouse for her young daughter.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7824668/He changes people's lives because he believes that everyone is here on earth as an artist; to tell his particular story or sing her irreplaceable song; to leave behind a unique creative signature.He believes that your passion for this, your feelings about this, must take priority over every other reasoned demand: status, benefits, sensible practices.This book is about why he believes this, and what this belief does to the people around him.Most of all, it is about the power of the imagination.My dad makes Xerox copies at Kinko's of the phrase Verba volant / Scripta manent - "Spoken words fly away, but writing remains" - meaning, get it down, do your creative work, whatever it is.He passes out the Xeroxes to everyone he thinks needs reminding: his grandchildren, his acquaintances, the guy at the cleaners.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyands
ociety/0,,1696382,00.html#article continueThe book runs on three tracks: the self-help advice that makes up the 12 chapter headings, the account of a lyrical summer spent with her poet/ philosopher father, and biographical reminiscences about his life and her own.The treehouse, while actual, also serves as an allegory: "maybe one has to build a treehouse internally", for Wolf is striving to get back to simple things, stripping away the dross of ages to find the clear grain of the wood beneath.
...
Wolf is one of the leaders in the field, full of how-to perceptions that perhaps she doesn't always heed herself.But the messages are no less sound for being obvious, and if you're locked in a mediocre job, partnered to the wrong person with no space to pursue your passions, then this book's advice will read like pearls of wisdom.Alternatively you could dismiss it as "all right for some" and turn away in despair.The book's saving grace is the portrait of her father, Leonard Wolf, a "wild visionary poet" of some 80 years whom Naomi clearly adores.

Naomi Wolf completes her journey from radical feminist to cosy mum with a collection of her father's homilies, The Treehouse, says Rachel Cooke
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by Naomi Wolf
...
A lot of people had high hopes for Naomi Wolf (including Naomi Wolf).
...
Since then, Wolf has written several other books, each one more pious and self-obsessed than the last.Her new effort completes this journey.Where once there were facts, now there is intuition; where once she dished up hot anger, now there is cosiness.
...
Leonard Wolf, Naomi's 80-year-old father, is a poet, teacher and former resident of Haight-Ashbury.
...
They say all girls are a little in love with their daddies; well, Naomi has got it really bad.Feeling that her life has been too frenetic for too long, and having just purchased a darling little wooden house in upstate New York, she invites her father to help her build a treehouse for her young daughter.

The idea is that as they work, they will talk.So Leonard digs out notes from lectures he used to give at San Francisco State University.They have titles such as 'Be still and listen' and 'Your only wage will be joy'.Naomi is breathless with humility and hope: 'I realised - slowly and painfully because I did not want to at first - that everything sensible that had ever guided me rightly was there in them.'

There follows a series of epiphanies for Naomi, the majority of which stem from her sense of achievement at learning the small ceremonies of DIY.She marks her progress from over-busy professional to newly caring and creative mum, wife and daughter by doing such things as laying a patio.But she really knows she's out of the water when she buys a Crock-Pot slow cooker and tries to cook a stew.

Daddy's lessons are good, you see; they get her back on the straight and narrow.I wonder how she was able to get them down on paper without throwing up.His so-called 'wisdom' belongs not in a Virago paperback, but in a Hallmark card.