Lunch with Buddha
Roland Merullo, 2012
AJAR Contempories
392 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780984834570
Summary
Heartbreaking in places, hilarious in others, Lunch with Buddha takes its readers on a quintessentially American road trip across the Northwest. That outer journey, complete with good and bad meals, various outdoor adventures, and an amusing cast of quirky characters, mirrors a more interior journey—a quest for meaning in the hectic routine of modern life.
Otto Ringling, who's just turned 50, is an editor of food books at a prestigious New York publishing house, a middle-of-the-road father with a nice home in the suburbs, children he adores, and a sense of himself as being a mainstream, middle-class American. His sister, Cecelia, is the last thing from mainstream. For two decades she's made a living reading palms and performing past-life regressions. She believes firmly in our ability to communicate with those who have passed on.
In Lunch with Buddha, when Otto faces what might be the greatest of life's emotional challenges, it is Cecelia who knows how to help him. As she did years earlier—in this book's best-selling predecessor, Breakfast with Buddha—she arranges for her brother to travel with Volya Rinpoche, a famous spiritual teacher—who now also happens to be her husband. After early chapters in which the family gathers for an important event, the novel portrays the road trip made by Otto and Rinpoche, in a rattling pickup, from Seattle, across the Idaho panhandle and the vast Montana prairie, to the family farm in North Dakota. Along the way, the brothers-in-law have a series of experiences—some hilarious, some poignant—all aimed at bringing Otto a deeper peace of mind.
During visits to American landmarks, they meet a cast of minor characters, each of whom enables Rinpoche to impart some new spiritual lesson. Their conversations range from questions about life and death to talk of history, marijuana, marriage and child-rearing, sexuality, Native Americans, and outdoor swimming. In the end, with the help of their miraculous daughter, Shelsa, and the prodding of Otto's own almost-adult children, Rinpoche and Cecelia push this decent, middle-of-the-road American into a more profound understanding of the purpose of his life. His sense of the line between possible and impossible is altered, and the story's ending points him toward a very different way of being in this world. (From the publisher.)
Read Roland Merullo's interview and Matthew Quick
Author Bio
• Born—September 19, 1953
• Raised—Revere, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., Brown University
• Awards—Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfction; Maria
Thomas Fiction Prize; Alex Award
• Currently—lives in western Massachusetts
Roland Merullo is an American author who writes novels, essays and memoir. His best-known works are the novels Lunch with Buddha (2012), Breakfast with Buddha (2007), A Little Love Story (2005), Golfing with God (2005), In Revere, In Those Days (2002), Revere Beach Boulevard (1998) and the memoir Revere Beach Elegy (2002). His books have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, German and Croatian
Early years
Merullo was born in Boston and raised in Revere, Massachusetts. His father, Roland (Orlando) was a civil engineer who worked for state government and was named personnel secretary by Christian Herter, governor of Massachusetts. In his 50s, Orlando attended Suffolk Law School, passed the Bar at 60, and became an attorney. Roland's mother Eileen was a physical therapist who worked at Walter Reed Army Hospital with amputees injured in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Later, she became a science teacher and taught at the middle school level for 25 years. He has two brothers, Steve and Ken.
Merullo earned his high school degree from Phillips Exeter Academy. After receiving a B.A. and M.A. (in Russian Language and Literature) from Brown University, Merullo spent time in Micronesia during a stint with the Peace Corps. He worked in the former Soviet Union for the United States Information Agency and was employed as a cab driver and carpenter. He taught creative writing at Bennington College and Amherst College, and was a writer in residence at Miami Dade Colleges and North Shore Community College.
In 1979 Merullo married Amanda Stearns, a photographer he met in college. The couple lives in western Massachusetts and has two daughters.
His first published essays appeared in the early 1980s. They include a piece on solitude featured in The Rosicrucian Digest and a humorous "My Turn" column for Newsweek.
Writing
Leaving Losapas, Merullo's first novel, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1991 and named a B. Dalton Discovery Series Choice. Publishers Weekly called his second book, A Russian Requiem (1993), "smoothly written and multifaceted, solidly depicting the isolation and poverty of a city far removed from Moscow and insightfully exploring the psyches of individuals caught in the conflicts between their ideals and their careers."
The works Revere Beach Boulevard, In Revere in Those Days, and Revere Beach Elegy are often referred to as the Revere Beach trilogy. Of In Revere, in Those Days David Shribman of the Boston Globe wrote,
The details are just right, and the result is a portrait of a time and a place and a state of mind that has few equals.This is a story that is true to life because it is about life itself, the tragedies and trials and travails, and even the triumphs, momentary and meaningless as they sometimes seem. This is a Boston story for the ages.
PBS correspondent Ray Suarez said,
I've never met Roland Merullo, or even read anything he's written before now. Yet today I feel as if I've known him my whole life.... At the close of Elegy, the reader is comfortably walking alongside a man who has grown into himself, accepted and embraced his past.
A Little Love Story, published in 2005, centers on a woman with Cystic Fibrosis. According to Bloomsbury Review (2005), the novel...
tinkers with traditional formula; the lovers are neither innocent nor naive, nor completely helpless in the face of their impossible barrier to produce a love story for the 21st century.... [The story] circumscribes a dramatic arc that takes in 9/11, media saturation, lecherous men in politics, ethnic family stereotypes, adult-onset dementia, and terminal illness in the relatively young. This is an utterly charming, beautifully told, completely affecting story that is one part love story, one part medical thriller.
Merullo’s early works have been termed thoughtful and reflective. "I think I am a person who cares about the emotional life of people...and so I spend a lot of time on the emotional experiences of my characters," he has said.
But Golfing with God, Breakfast with Buddha, American Savior and, most recently, Lunch with Buddha exhibit a more overtly spiritual theme—albeit humorous in tone. The seeds of this thematic shift can perhaps be traced to A Little Love Story. However, in the fall of 2008, Merullo surprised many with the release of Fidel’s Last Days, his first thriller. At the time, Merullo said,
I've had editors counsel me to write the same book over and over, and some readers who complained that I haven’t kept writing books set in greater Boston. But it would be like trying to keep a migratory bird in your backyard. I just want to go places, to see things, to observe the human predicament in different forms.... Like most novelists, I have a peculiar fascination with the way people behave and the psychological roots of, or reasons for, their behavior.
Merullo has won the Massachusetts Book Award for non fiction and the Maria Thomas Fiction Prize. He has been a Booklist Editor's Choice recipient and was among the finalists for a PEN New England / Winship Prize. In 2009, Breakfast with Buddha was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and American Savior was chosen as an Honor Book in Fiction at the Massachusetts Book Awards. Revere Beach Boulevard was recently named one of New England's top 100 essential books by the Boston Globe. The Talk-Funny Girl was a 2012 Alex Award Winner. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A]lternately hilarious and poignant...Merullo's detailed descriptions of the American Northwest keep the writing grounded even as its themes turn increasingly spiritual. Merullo doesn't try too hard to prove any spiritual points, however. As a result, Lunch is a moving yet entertaining and never histrionic account of how an ordinary American family—with a few extraordinary members in its ranks--deals with the overwhelming grief of losing one of their own.
Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
Lunch with Buddha examines questions that crop up sooner or later for many (most?) of us. Although Volya's wise lectures are helpful to Otto's search for answers, it is the variety of people they meet-and the attitudes [they] carry-that are what provide Otto with the evidence and reminders and motivation to decide to live a certain way.... Reading Merullo's novel, I couldn't help but think of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman—their great reverence for independent, passionate, non-conformist thought-the different drummer-but never without the accompanying respect for it in others.
Salem News
[An] engaging follow-up novel (Breakfast With Buddha, 2008).... Otto Ringling is a successful New York City editor who has built a happy, comfortable life with his family in the suburbs. But when his wife, Jeannie, dies, Otto's entire orbit is suddenly thrown off course. Along with his two college-aged children, his New-Age sister Cecelia, her eccentric, sort-of Buddhist husband and guru, Volya Rinpoche, and their enlightened 6-year-old daughter, Otto finds himself in the forests of Washington to spread his wife's ashes.... Volya teaches Otto how to let go.... One can't help but root for Otto, despite—or perhaps because of—his curmudgeonly tendencies.... [A] beautifully written and compelling story about a man's search for meaning that earnestly and accessibly tackles some well-trodden but universal questions. A quiet meditation on life, death, darkness and spirituality, sprinkled with humor, tenderness and stunning landscapes.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The main idea of this novel is a very somber one. How does the author use humor to soften it? Do you feel it’s appropriate to mix such a sad subject with humorous moments? Does it dilute or sharpen the reader’s empathy with Otto and his family?
2. How important is family in this story? At the end of the novel there is a shift where Rinpoche appears a bit less and other family members more. What did the author have in mind by doing this?
3. How does the author approach the sensitive subject of religious faith? Did you feel the book was ever “preachy”? If you have read Breakfast with Buddha, did you see any progression in Otto’s spiritual search? If so, how would you describe it?
4. What role does food play and does that role change at all as the book goes on?
5. What kinds of images and objects does Rinpoche use as spiritual lessons and do these work for you? Did you connect this with Emerson’s quote in the epigraph?
6. Is Rinpoche likeable and, if so, how is he made likeable? What don’t you like about him? About Otto?
7. This story is fiction, but it’s based on an actual road trip. In what way does that “factual skeleton” strengthen or weaken the novel? There are photos of the trip on the website. Did you choose to look at them? Did they correspond to the written descriptions in the book?
8. What are your thoughts about Shelsa? Landrea? Gilligan Neufaren? Rundy? Jarvis Barton-Phillips? What role or roles do these minor characters play in the novel?
9. It’s a risk to end a book with a solitary retreat. Was it effective for you? Did it fit the rest of the novel?
10. What role does Cecelia play in Otto’s spiritual education? Does his opinion of her change as the novel progresses?
11. What roles do Otto’s children play? How are they different?
12. What do you think of Rinpoche’s talk in Spokane? Did your opinion of it change as the book went on?
13. Is there an effort here to make a distinction between Otto’s spiritual search and the “powers” that someone like Landrea has? Is there a difference between her contact with Jeannie and Otto’s contact with Jeannie?
14. What role does the Spokane transgendered person play? When she speaks of troubles, and when Rinpoche mentions his worrisome dreams—where do you think that could lead in the future?
15. Why does the author mention roadside signs and radio programs so often?
16. If you read Breakfast with Buddha, how is Lunch with Buddha the same, and how is it different? Would you be interested in having Dinner with these characters?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
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