Ambivalent Zen is a memoir by Author Lawrence Shainberg that describes his tangled history with the practice of Zen. This book could easily be subtitled Much Ado About Nothing because that is the conclusion I came to again and again as Shainberg described his journey through Zen. It never really provided anything but perhaps a momentary, at best, relief from the troubles of his daily life. It never offered any means of organizing his life and giving it him any sense of purpose. Nothing plus nothing times nothing equals nothing.

I will admit that this book has its moments. Shainberg uses an easy-to-read back-and-forth style, continuously shifting between his late adolescence and various periods of his adult life, as well as interspersing periods in the development of Zen practice both in the United States in the 60's-70's as well as its origins in Japan. And Shainberg's journey would make for a fun movie, so long as Woody Allen was cast as Shainberg and Pat Morita, in a version of his character from Happy Days, played Kyoto Roshi. ( )