Following find an interview with author David Zindell.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Splendor was published in June of 2015.
What’s the book’s first line?
I have always wanted to tell the story of our generation. We know who we are. We are stardust; we are golden; and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Why did the world get so screwed up? How can we best live in it? What can we do to find meaning and purpose in our lives when it seems we might destroy the earth?
As visionary as the author’s novels, David Zindell’s memoir Splendor interweaves the intensely personal and the spiritual into a brilliant tapestry of literature, history, science, and evolution. Both a philosophical thriller and an age-old quest ranging over millennia, it also recounts meetings with Timothy Leary, Robin Williams, Ken Wilber, and others famous, infamous, and unknown who shaped the true Greatest Generation known as the Baby Boomers.
From the terror of nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis to the shootings at Kent State and Virginia Tech, which touched the author personally, Zindell’s new book tells of how a writer seeks experience and how that is translated into literature – and how writing itself can be an expression of the mysterious evolutionary force called splendor. This is one person’s story and everyone’s, for the flowering of our inherent splendor that will lead to a new way of living on earth is really just the story of the human race and how we will find our way toward an almost unimaginably brilliant future.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
My daughters inspired me to write this book. I wanted them to know what kinds of questions my generation faced when it came to making the world a better place and what they might expect in trying to do the same.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
To change the way they see themselves and the world; to know that even when things seem the darkest, there are still infinite possibilities.