Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Jacob's Hands: A Fable
    Jacob's Hands: A Fable
    Jacob's Hands: A Fable
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    Jacob's Hands: A Fable

    By Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Jacob Ericson is a quiet, kind and somewhat simple man who works as a ranch hand for crotchety Professor Carter and his crippled daughter, Sharon, in California's Mojave Desert in the 1920s. Jacob is a good man, genuine, honorable, but hardly extraordinary–until he miraculously heals a dying calf with his hands.

    However, while he is content to cure the town's animals, it isn't long before he is persuaded to use his gift in other ways. When Sharon, whom he adores, begs him to heal her leg, he cannot deny her.

    His acquiescence causes them both to be exploited. Sharon runs away to Los Angeles to pursue her dreams of stardom. Jacob follows her, hopeful that they will meet again. And they do–as miserable performers in a seedy stage show. While they plan their escape from the dreary stage life, Jacob is asked to heal a self–absorbed young millionaire. And with his assent, Jacob's plans and all of his dreams begin to crumble.

    Written in tight, vivid, and seamlessly crafter prose, this previously unpublished tale by two of the greatest storytellers of the twentieth century shows the dangers a magical gift holds for even the noblest of characters.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 3, 2015
    ISBN9781250102577
    Jacob's Hands: A Fable
    Author

    Christopher Isherwood

    Christopher Isherwood was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and autobiographer. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel that inspired the musical Cabaret; A Single Man (1964), adapted into a film by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which “carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement.” Isherwood died in 1986.  

    Read more from Christopher Isherwood

    Related to Jacob's Hands

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Sexting Scandal

      Jan 22, 2021

      Sexting Scandal
      1 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Oct 2, 2020

      Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to [email protected] for a chance to be featured – please try to ke

      8 min read

    • Article

      On Healing

      Sep 4, 2020

      In 2016 my partner and I bought a wooden cottage on 10 acres of land, on an ecotone where the woodlands meet the foothills of the mountains. The area had been logged relentlessly in the 1950s. One by one, the tall trees of the old growth cedar forest

      7 min read

    • Article

      Where There Is No Hospital

      Mar 8, 2022

      Where There Is No Hospital
      15 min read

    • Article

      The Business of Grief

      Apr 21, 2022

      In 2012, Creative Nonfiction’s book imprint, In Fact Books, published a collection of essays about end-of-life care. It was an incredibly meaningful experience for everyone who worked on the book, which paints, as Francine Prose wrote in her introduc

      20 min read

    • Article

      The Dark Side of Awe

      Jan 29, 2024

      The Dark Side of Awe
      10 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      loved best. Words I have neversaid. New sentence, at 80. Of coursenot more than his children, and their children. That goeswithout saying—but I want to lay down eachelement of love’s house. First,the hole, under—apple cellar, potato cellar,cellar to

      5 min read

    • Article

      Jesus Has Horses

      Sep 23, 2023

      Jesus Has Horses
      4 min read

    • Article

      Politics

      Jul 10, 2020

      Politics
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Zen Of Jane Hirshfield

      Sep 19, 2023

      The Zen Of Jane Hirshfield
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Secret Life of Grief

      Dec 3, 2013

      The Secret Life of Grief
      12 min read

    • Article

      BOLT FROM The Blue

      May 12, 2020

      BOLT FROM The Blue
      5 min read

    • Article

      Changing The Narrative

      Aug 20, 2019

      Changing The Narrative
      9 min read

    • Article

      Heart To Heart

      Jan 24, 2023

      Heart To Heart
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Nov 19, 2021

      Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to [email protected] for a chance to be featured – please try to ke

      8 min read

    • Article

      On Migraines, Pain, and Creativity

      May 22, 2023

      I collect famous migraine sufferers. I can trust them; they are a consolation. The post On Migraines, Pain, and Creativity appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Final Truth

      Jan 21, 2020

      The Final Truth
      5 min read

    • Article

      Your Saved-my-life Books

      Jan 1, 2024

      Your Saved-my-life Books
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Homecoming

      Jul 13, 2022

      The Homecoming
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Homecoming

      Jul 13, 2022

      The Homecoming
      9 min read

    • Article

      Let’s Talk About Death

      Dec 29, 2019

      Let’s Talk About Death
      8 min read

    • Article

      Taking Care

      Mar 8, 2022

      Taking Care
      19 min read

    • Article

      Nine Books About Aging, Growing, and Changing

      Jun 3, 2024

      This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Living in a body is an exercise in enduring surprise and accepting change. During our lifetimes, we spring leaks, heal, grow, get sick, and age. We wake up some

      8 min read

    • Article

      Family Room®

      Jul 26, 2022

      When veterinarian Dr. Marty Becker (Fear Free, page 24) learned of the many pets displaced during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he had to do something to help. He traveled to southeastern Romania, close to the Ukrainian border, where he worked with S

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Jacob's Hands

    3.5/5

    25 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      A little, sweet fable on the power and struggle of humanity. The characters are two dimensional which takes a little from the book, but the story sticks which is the point of fables. Overall, this book is a nice, quick read.
    • 5/5
      Audiobook..........This is a lovely story about the torment of having the gift of healing, yet struggling with people's seemingly never ending desire to take advantage of it. It also addresses the distinction and connection of mind and body healing. Jacob is a truly memorable character with very Christ-like attributes. Simple and profound.....great combination!

    Book preview

    Jacob's Hands - Christopher Isherwood

    Begin Reading

    Table of Contents

    About the Authors

    Copyright Page

    Thank you for buying this

    St. Martin’s Press ebook.

    To receive special offers, bonus content,

    and info on new releases and other great reads,

    sign up for our newsletters.

    Or visit us online at

    us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

    For email updates on Aldous Huxley, click here.

    For email updates on Christopher Isherwood, click here.

    The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

    To Heal or Not to Heal

    BY LAURA ARCHERA HUXLEY

    Healing was a subject of enduring common interest for Aldous and me. We discussed a wide range of healing methods: old and new, accepted and not accepted, and even the unacceptable.

    Aldous told me that his great friend, the modern mystic Krishnamurti, had the power of healing—but stopped using his gift when people who were physically healed often made no changes in their emotional and spiritual lives.

    Years later, in an unexpected and certainly one of the most extraordinary dialogues I ever had, Krishnamurti expressed his startling view about healing. I asked him how he dealt with the problem of alcoholism. He said nonchalantly that it had happened quite often that people, after one or two interviews with him, stopped drinking. When I asked how this came about, he said he did not know. He quickly dismissed the subject and was silent.

    His silence lengthened and deepened. Silently, he was holding my eyes with his dark, burning look.

    I don’t know how long the silence lasted, but I shall never forget its intensity. Then, with overwhelming passion, he exploded:

    Those people who go about helping other people—they are a curse.… I am not a healer or a psychologist or a therapist or any of those things.… I am only a religious man.

    Although based on a profoundly different principle, Jacob the Healer also is a religious man. To heal or not to heal is the question tormenting him. To give physical health to anyone in need, to provide indiscriminately the boundless energy of which he is the privileged transmitter … should he first heal the body or care for the soul?

    For Jacob, this is a true dilemma, for not only is he a devotee of the Pentecostal Church, but also he had the experience of healing two persons whose souls had not benefited from the healing of their bodies. Thus he ponders: should a healer choose the healing of the soul—or of the body? And, anyway, are they separate?

    Did Jesus select the recipients of his healing according to the state of their souls? Jesus, who proclaimed, Judge not lest ye be judged. These and other dilemmas float through my mind as I think about Jacob’s Hands.

    This cautionary tale was resuscitated by the intellectual curiosity of Ms. Sharon Stone, who read in Christopher Isherwood’s diaries of his collaboration with Aldous on a screenplay and searched for it. In a seldom-explored large box full of precious souvenirs, I found the yellowed manuscript of Jacob’s Hands that Christopher had sent us after the 1961 fire which totally destroyed our house and everything in it—only the wood for the fireplace was saved.

    In Jacob’s Hands the authors stimulate questions, present dilemmas, evoke enigmas which I face but am not ready to answer, solve, or unravel. Furthermore, might it be possible that, by now, Aldous and Christopher have found answers and solutions elusive to them when they were alive?

    I also wonder if they anticipated the vast changes from the laying on of the hands of the 1940s to the various methods included in today’s integral medicine. Back then, healing by touch was generally limited to religious settings, and was performed by what were perceived as fundamental extremists. Now there are two hundred American hospitals where therapeutic touch has been embraced in their routine. Therapeutic touch has emerged as a sophisticated and specific technique with trained practitioners governed by professional associations.

    More important, the general area of healing has exploded from the field of the miraculous to the integration of practices from a rich, varied cultural and religious background involving different states of consciousness. It now includes meditation, music, movement, rituals, structured disciplines, and inexplicable spontaneous events.

    The dilemma of whether to heal or not to heal is no longer a question. The question now is: to which school, seminar, or workshop I should send my check? Which approach is best suited to me?

    Just glancing at my mail, I see the number of choices is impressive: Healing Journeys, School of Healing, Journey into Healing, Healing Process, The Business of Healing, Stories That Heal, Pleasure Healing, Spontaneous Healing, Psychedelic Healing, Distant Healing, Healing Sounds, Boundless Healing … and more.

    The rich variety of healing methodologies is natural, for the world of healing encompasses everything from surgery to a walk in the country, from a pill to a poem, from scientific discovery to an orgasm, from a well-cooked risotto to a mystical experience, from orthodoxy to freedom from orthodoxy, from a prayer to a gift of money—the world of healing is wondrous and limitless, immanent and transcendent—it is the fusion of Life Energy and Loving Intention.

    To many people, the healing experience reveals the unity of body and soul. For centuries, throughout thousands of volumes, the relationship between body and soul has been debated. In just four lines of poetic insight, William Blake, the visionary mysic, states precisely and luminously the oneness of the body/soul in this age.

    Man has no Body distinct from his Soul;

    for that call’d Body is a portion of Soul

    discover’d by the five senses, the chief

    inlets of Soul in this age.

    PROLOGUE

    A car is traveling along one of the roads which cross the Mojave Desert, skirting the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

    Presently, it leaves the highway and turns uphill, along a rough dirt road. The slope is dotted with Joshua trees, striking still, fantastic attitudes. Higher up, there are thickets of juniper.

    The road gets worse and worse, deeply furrowed by mountain rains. It winds through a narrowing defile and climbs a flat shelf of land above the canyon. The flat land is cultivated. There are fruit trees, leafless at this season.

    The car stops in front of a gate. The driver, a man in his late thirties, leans out of the window and shouts:

    Is this Mr. Ericson’s place?

    From the other side of the gate, a middle-aged man looks up from the beehive over which he has been bending. He wears the veil and gloves of a beekeeper, so that we cannot see his face. He walks to the gate and opens it in a leisurely manner.

    Jacob’ll be feeding the chickens, I guess. His pleasant, good-humored drawl reveals that he is a Negro.

    Bees are crawling all over him. Some of them fly off his arms, and one flies into the car. Next to the driver sits a woman, well-dressed and still attractive. Her makeup does not conceal the fact that she is no longer young.

    She flaps irritably at

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1