Walking Through Walls: A Memoir

This book just misses being brilliant. It's eminently readable, more memorable for the oddness of the material than for lyrical style. In thinking about why I would downgrade it to four stars instead of five, I came to the realization that I lost a certain amount of sympathy for the author when Philip Smith displayed what was clearly jealousy of his father's romantic parners. As the center of his father's attention and the arguable inheritor of his psychic gift, he is not disposed to share. He makes his mother a sympathetic, if eccentric woman and he clearly loved her. The father, a popular 1960s-era Miami designer, discovers he has psychic healing abilities and more and more abandons his high-life contacts for the satisfactions of the spiritual world. This led to his whole-hearted devotion to his new passion and a lessening of the attention and luxuries he had previously showered on his wife. After Philip's mother was out of the picture because of divorce, she moved next door in lessened circumstances while Philip stayed with his father. Perhaps it is natural that he would resent another woman trying to replace his mother in his father's affections, but he displays an intolerant, even vicious side in his depictions of the companions who must have given his father some comfort. He turns them into harpies inhabited by evil spirits. Maybe they were, but showing less personal dislike and a more objective way of describing their dangerous spirits would have made him appear more tolerant and thus more personally attractive to most readers.There is a definite break in the two parts of this memoir (pre- and post-psychic awareness. The first part is amusing, lively, intriguing. If you don't believe in the power of the supernatural world, you're possibly not going to enjoy the second part. You might even think Smith's father was delusional. If you have an open mind to the power of suggestion or to the actual validity of psychic phenomena, it will hold interest for you and you will sympathize with the elder Smith's attempts to heal hopeless cases with the aid of entities from the beyond-- usually successful attempts, be it noted. The author, a normally self-conscious high-school student, becomes a believer despite his fear of being different. The posthumous discovery of an archive of psychic writings and personal records of his father's cemented this conversion. Despite his father's attempt to get him to use his own considerable psychic powers, Philip Smith never became a practitioner of the mystic healing arts. He chose instead to use his obvious artistic gift for painting, and now, writing. There is a bit of a non-sequitur while he veers off his father's story to write about his own life in New York's art milieu, which is almost like a subject for another book.One is left to wonder, if he truly believes in his father's unique powers and if he himself has the same gift, why not. Perhaps so he could bring us entertaining books like this one.

"Walking Through Walls" (a memoir), by Philip Smith is an effervescent and bubbly literary elixir for almost anyone. This is truly a fun book to read and yet one that will imprint upon your soul for some time to come.A very unusual story line for a personal memoir, but ironically closely paralleling my own life in so many ways that I found it uncanny at times.This is the story of the author's father, Lew Smith who initially worked as an interior decorator in Florida. His cliental included such notable characters as, Meyer Lansky, President, Carlos Prio, and a host of other notable mentions. However, his "part-time" job was that of a "Psychic healer". Lew Smith was the 1960's transcendental-esoteric and eccentric version of Edgar Casey. In fact, Lew apparently knew Casey's son quite well.Lew Smith was the embodiment of the "Dawning of the Angel Aquarius", complete with love beads, Nehru jackets, and Kundalini enhancing food diets. Despite his eccentricities, Lew Smith was apparently...'the real thing."The author's writing is clean, direct, and refreshingly crisp with cynical overtones that keep the reader turning pages and laughing out loud with almost every turn of the page; and the childhood stories growing up in this unusual environment, would make even the most liberal of today's child-care workers cringe with disgust.Although very comical in many ways the author's father was in fact, a truly gifted healer that affected hundreds of people's lives. From the study of "akashic" records, chakras, pendulum dowsing, to curing "incurable diseases", Lew Smith left a legacy that few will ever follow.Aesthetically, I was not impressed with the jacket design, and at times, the chapter sections were a bit long especially for a working individual (like myself), who found it difficult to put the book down after lunch break! Shorter chapters would have made easier stopping points for the sake of mental reference. There is only one photo in the book, and although it plays an important part in the story's ending, I would have enjoyed seeing a photograph of this amazing individual.This is a truly good story and well written book. It will perk your curiosity, enhance your own mundane world, enlighten your spirit, open your heart, and shine some light into this dark and treacherous world we now find ourselves enveloped within. If, you have an interest in people, life, and philosophy... purchase this book for your library.

Finished reading this book and found it amazing, astounding and absolutely humorous. The ending itself was just too fabulous to dismiss and ironic to say the least. What a life Philip Smith had with his father, a psychic healer extraordinaire. Lew Smith was so far ahead of his time and brilliant to say the least. To heal people that way he did back then and to find that his theories, charts, contacts with those in the afterlife feeding him the information and then Lew using it to help/save others, well we can only aspire to do half of that today...if the medical society would only listen.I am also terribly intrigued with the paintings Philip Smith does (after viewing his website). He actually incorporates his father's ideas, as well as Arthur Ford's, Chander Sen's, etc. It seems Philip is channeling all these people into his artwork and it is mesmerizing to say the least. Learning the various things I am through my associations with gifted numerologists, astrologers and psychic mediums, I can see what Philip's paintings represent and mean. Also on Philip's website are some of the drawings his father was directed to do of charts, diagnostics, etc. and the now famed pendulum he used. There are people out there who are totally gifted and Lew Smith was definitely one of them.Thank you Philip for sharing your fascinating life with your remarkable father, with us. If only we could have known him too.This book was very well written and not boring by any stretch of the imagination. To read something so in-depth and to have it to be humorous too is an added plus. It was like Maxwell House Coffee..."good to the last drop".

Really enjoyed this entertaining and thought provoking book