Thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the ARC!

Christopher Hamilton’s "Rapture" is a book that seemingly tumbles out of the author as he excitedly explores moments of rapture in the lives and work of others. It’s an appropriately effervescent read, and it’s a shame that the book’s release through an academic publisher may cause some readers to assume it’s an inaccessible text.

Hamilton even suggests as much in his opening chapter, almost missional in his desire for the book to invite readers in. There are few things more earthy in their universality than the desire for transcendence, and the author is quite forthright in how he wants "Rapture" to be perceived. He invokes Hannah Arendt’s distinction between a discussion and a conversation, suggesting that the book is intended as the latter—it exists for the sake of itself as a site of dialogue. Readers can respond to it however they see fit, and Hamilton does his best to ensure that people have the freedom to do so.

If you’re struggling to pinpoint what rapture is, think about whatever makes you feel most present with—whatever seems to close the distance between—yourself and the world. For me, it’s writing, but it could be anything that causes you to see the self as an other and admire it—it’s recognition without obligation; it’s ego without arrogance; it’s surprise without uncertainty. This is the feeling that Hamilton hones in on, so even if some of the argumentation feels a little half-hearted, as if the titular force is a foregone conclusion, it doesn’t matter. It may even be the point. After all, rapture can go where reason cannot.

Hamilton seems so enthused—enraptured—by his subject that readers can’t help but feel similarly as he highlights its nuances across seven chapters. Rather than feeling like complications to a single argument, these chapters, which I briefly describe below, read like someone turning over a diamond to see all the ways it can refract light.

In chapter 1, we read about how Nietzsche’s illness inspired moments of rapture when it lifted. Hamilton considers how physically grounded our existentialism is, and how physical realities begin to eat away at the self. If you’ve ever woken up after a fever and felt more alive than usual—more present—that’s exactly what the author is getting at here. These are the rare instances where you meet the world in its unmediated form.

Chapter 2 explores Werner Herzog’s filmography and its preoccupations with people who live at the hem—not the margins—of life, testing the edges of experience to see if it will hold them. Few of us want interesting deaths, yet we want our deaths to mean something; there’s a human comfort in possible destruction, an intimacy with danger that invites rapture. In cases where these flirtations result in violent deaths, it’s a natural conclusion of that rapturous desire.

Chapter 3 is a conversation on Pierre Bonnard’s artwork and erotics, and while the chapter is sensorially exciting and raises some interesting points about art appreciation as a site of rapture, I think Hamilton’s through line slips a little here. Again, it almost doesn’t matter because this kind of celebratory looseness is fair game as previewed in the book’s introduction. Even so, I found myself wanting a little more time with these themes for them to fully come together.

Chapter 4 examines what might be called the “now, not yet” reality of life. We know things aren’t as they should be, but we also know that it’s impossible for them to be as they should. We need some degree of chaos, a chiaroscuro effect of requiring shadow to understand light. In other words, the meaning of life is just beyond our reach, identifiable but unattainable. In this chapter, Hamilton stresses the materiality of thought, almost evoking Bachelard as he explores how we need these spatial, earthy realities to make sense of abstraction. Critically, we cannot moralize this earthiness—you can be a good gardener and a horrible person.

Chapter 5 is about kissing!!! More specifically, it’s about the intimacy shared by the meeting of two faces—two selves. Hamilton waxes a little mystical here, and while his elevation of the kiss is emotionally resonant, it rings a little false if readers have ever been to a college party. I’m not sure the kiss is always—or even usually—so concerned with desiring a specific self. Even so, the chapter feels ambitious in its absurdity, and I do appreciate the idea that a kiss is magical because it is creative, as well as the concept of intimacy being linked to speaking and eating.

Chapter 6 interrogates the desire for self-erasure as redemptive act, particularly within the life and work of Simone Weil. Here, Hamilton examines the tension between Weil’s prolific output and her stated desire to obliterate her ego and move frictionlessly through life—she attempted to genuinely live like Christ, but at the expense of much of what makes us human. In this context, rapture is the desire to escape oneself—to be freed from the burden of being a self.

In the final chapter, Hamilton views the high-wire life of Philippe Petit as lived in “the spirit of rapture.” Petit is known for his performance art, which he describes as a compulsion—a reflex. With the life-or-death stakes of the high-wire, we return to some of the themes from the Herzog and Nietzsche chapters. The border of mortality is paper-thin, and there is no utility to the risks inherent in a stunt. It is the human at their most human by testing the limits of that humanity. Here, the author points to rapture as the counterpoint to tragedy—the latter is received unsolicited, whereas the former must be invited in.

If any of that piques your interest, I encourage you to read the book. For the sake of space, I had to simplify many of the themes that Hamilton so thoughtfully exegetes. Suffice it to say, by the final line of the final chapter, "Rapture" had become a self-fulfilling prophecy for me—a dangerous joy.