After the Oracle
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
In 2016, Shane Anderson made a vow to live according to the four core values of the Golden State Warriors to escape a decade of defeats—including divorce, debilitating spinal surgery and a suicide attempt. The basketball team’s values of joy, mindfulness, compassion, and competition became Anderson’s guiding principles, providing him a lens to investigate a myriad of social, personal, philosophical, and political issues, such as homelessness, the promises and failures of rave culture, and the limits of self-help. Part memoir, part essay, and part chronicle of the greatest five-year stretch of a team in NBA history, After the Oracle depicts the makes and misses of one expat trying to make a life worth living.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this memorable debut, poet and sportswriter Shane shapes his favorite basketball team's philosophies into a novel outlook on his own life. He relates how he went from being a "jobless recent divorcé" in 2010 who obsessively followed the Golden State Warriors and was in need of a major life overhaul to deciding to use the one constant in his world to begin living with purpose. He did so by adopting the four guiding mantras—"joy, mindfulness, compassion, and competition"—that Steve Kerr used to lead the Warriors to an NBA championship in 2015. Structured chronologically, Shane's lyrical narrative links each mantra to events in his life, such as discovering joy in a promising new relationship, or reconnecting with his mother—whose experience with homelessness teaches him "joy is not a noun. It's in the verb"—and having compassion for a stranger whose partner died in the 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland, Calif. In detailing his yearslong effort to improve his life and mental health, Anderson's passionate fandom shines through as he parallels the Warriors' victories and defeats alongside his own, making this a particularly enjoyable tale for anyone who has followed the team's remarkable rise over the past decade. This evocative story deserves a wide audience.
