Jake Fades: A Novel of Impermanence »

David Guy teaches writing in the Hart Leadership Program and the Masters of Public Policy Program at Duke University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Autobiography of My Body and The Red Thread of Passion. His book reviews appear regularly in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other papers, and he is a contributing editor to Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Jake is a Zen master and expert bicycle repairman who fixes flats and teaches meditation out of a shop in Bar Harbor, Maine. Hank is his long-time student. The aging Jake hopes that Hank will take over teaching for him. But the commitment-phobic Hank doesn’t feel up to the job, and Jake is beginning to exhibit behavior that looks suspiciously like Alzheimer’s disease. Is a guy with as many “issues” as Hank even capable of being a Zen teacher? And are those paradoxical things Jake keeps doing some kind of koan-like wisdom . . . or just dementia?

These and other hard questions confront Hank, Jake, and the colorful cast of characters they meet during a week-long trip to the funky neighborhood of Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As they trek back and forth from bar to restaurant to YMCA to Zen Center to doughnut shop, answers arise—in the usual unexpected ways. 

Click here to listen to the author, David Guy, discuss Jake Fades on North Carolina Public Radio.

Publishers Weekly

An aging Zen master and bicycle repairman confronts his mortality and looks for a successor in this dharma-heavy novel by longtime Zen practitioner Guy (The Autobiography of My Body). Narrator Hank, in his mid-50s, accompanies Jake, his teacher of 22 years, on a weeklong trip to Cambridge, Mass., where Jake is scheduled to lead a retreat. Hank, though aware that 78-year-old Jake's beginning to slip mentally, is surprised when Jake starts talking about leaving a new Buddhist teaching center to him. Hank balks, thinking he isn't capable of filling Jake's spiritual shoes. As the pair tour the city's cheap restaurants and meet with Madeline (who is overseeing the conversion of an old house into the new Buddhist center) and a host of locals, Jake keeps the pressure on reluctant Hank. Though not much actually happens beyond talking and eating, Guy conveys, through Hank's koanlike interior commentary and Jake's dialogue, the subtleties of Zen practice. Readers into the dharma will find this novel worthwhile. (Apr. 10) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.