Lighthouse Editions Limited forthcoming: Summer 2004

PAUL BEEKMAN TAYLOR
~
GURDJIEFF'S AMERICA:
Mediating the Miraculous
~
With Preface by Roger Friedland

Abundant new written and oral source material has enabled Taylor to produce a work which sets G. I. Gurdjieff within the cultural and social contexts of America between 1924 and 1935 more accurately and fully than earlier biographical writings.

• Read an Extract called "Gurdjieff's American Oil Well"


• Read an Extract of the Preface by Roger Friedland
• See a photograph of the wedding of Eve 'Pete' Taylor and Jean Chevalier

His book:

• shows why 'America' is a focal point in his thinking
  
  
• chronicles his interaction with the New York literati - for and against his teaching - Lincoln Kirstein, Sinclair Lewis, John dos Passos, Ezra Pound, Thornton Wilder
  
  
• with architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the St Petersburg painter and scene designer Nikolai Roerich
  
  
• connections with American politician Henry A. Wallace via Orage and Social Credit
  
  
• Muriel Draper, Fred Leighton, and Nick Putnam all important players in Gurdjieff's American experience
  
  
• the influence of his teaching, via Toomer, on the 'Harlem Renaissance' writers.
  
  
• his problems with immigration authorities which forced his departure from the United States and ended his hope of establishing his Institute there
  
  
• the truth about how he survived in Paris in WW2
  
  
• the conflict of interests among his followers after his death, the resulting power struggles to organize and perpetuate his teachings
  
  
• his thought in the context of Modernism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Watsonian Behaviorism and post-war French Existentialism