FISHERS OF MEN Reviewed on The Agony Column

07-20-10: Adam Elenbaas is Caught by ‘Fishers of Men’

Adam Elenbaas starts pretty much at Nowhere in his memoir ‘Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest’ (Tarcher / Penguin ; July 22, 2010 ; $24.95). It’s a complicated, twisty little memoir that manages to pack a wallop as Elenbaas explores his own life, which itself is an exploration. This sort of fractal vision is important to ‘Fishers of Men.’ You start your life, after all, inside. Then as you grow up, you go further inward.

From the get-go, there’s a raw feeling to this story of fathers, sons and belief. Not just in the scenario (Adam hovering outside the bathroom door as his father pukes his way through withdrawal from regular drugs in preparation for an ayahuasca ceremony), but in the language as well. Elenbaas writes prose that is snipped, clipped and compressed. But there’s an ache behind all of this convoluted revelation, one that we can all readily identify with.

The story is complicated and so is the exposition. Adam is the son of a Methodist minister. It may be a “like father, like son” scenario, but that only means that everyone is troubled. Adam certainly does not begin by following in his father’s path. Instead, he ends up in a search for sensation; sex, drugs, it does not matter because you cannot fill a void with a void. The first stage of his youth ends badly, but there’s a glimmer of hope that leads him to the world of the ayahuasca vision quest.

Elenbaas knows how to pull apart his timeline and put it back together in an order than makes for compelling reading. He’s a passionate write and even his religious beliefs come through as raw and authentic. He’s an unsparing chronicler of his own and others’ faults. But this only serves to make his revelations more powerful to the reader. As a writer, he knows that he has to create characters, plot, to do more than reveal. He has to find a story in his life and a way to tell that story. He manages to do so and the balancing act of avoiding pathos and self-pity.

‘Fishers of Men’ is also a fascinating journey into the heart of belief, that hard-wired attraction to the otherworldly. Raised as a Christian and inclined to believe thus, Elenbaas finds himself thrust into a very different vision of the otherworld. Readers explore and experience the ayahuasca vision quest with the writer. The synthesis that Elenbaas achieves is gritty and powerful, since he rounds us back and grounds us in characters.

Elenbaas is one of the folks behind Reality Sandwich, along with Daniel Pinchbeck. Reality Sandwich bills itself as “a web magazine for this time of intense transformation,” and this book keeps with those themes, but plays them out in a somewhat grittier fashion. Yes, there is a touch of evangelism about this work, but it’s subsumed in the more immediate story of personal transformation. ‘Fishers of Men’ is about the revelation of character, not a revelation of belief.

What’s interesting here is not just the ayahuasca vision, or the synthesis that Elenbaas achieves. What’s really gripping here, is that with a character-driven story, the author manages to offer an informed vision of vision. It’s that fractal effect. And one needs must remember Flannery O’Connor’s follow-through.

“If you’ve got a good car, then you do not need to be redeemed.”