Virtual Tibet ; Searching for Shangri-La From the Himalayas to Hollywood

New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2000. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. x, 340 pages. Inscribed on the fep by the author on the title page. Inscription reads For Chas: with many thanks for allowing your offices to be use. Orville Schell May 18, 2000. Contents includes Introduction--My Tibet and Ours; Part I: Tibet as Place and Myth; The Kingdom of the Screen; The Dalai Lama Comes to Hollywood; Tinseltown Tulkus; The Evangelist; The Explorer; Gateway to Virtual Tibet; Part II: My Argentine Hajj; Bring the Gospels to Lhasa; Hacienda Brad; First among Few; Lhasa at Last; Filling in the Blank; Illusion and Reality; The Land of the Spirit; The Annunciation; and The Last of the Questers; Part III--Where the Virtual Heinrich Harrer and the Real Brad Pitt Diverge; Coping with the Real Heinrich Harrer; The Chinese React; Tibetan Questions; Virtual Tibet Meets the Real Public. Also includes Bibliography, Acknowledgments, and Index. Orville Hickock Schell III (born May 20, 1940) is an American writer, academic, and activist. He is known for his works on China, and is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. He previously served as Dean of the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The Dalai Lama meets The Player-from the Himalayas to Hollywood, a fantastic journey into the West's longstanding dream of Tibet. What has made remote, mountainous Tibet and its only real celebrity, the Dalai Lama, so abidingly fascinating to the West? From Marco Polo's vision of Tibet as a land of enchanters to James Hilton's dream of Shangri-la in Lost Horizon, why have Westerners projected their yearnings onto that inaccessible place as onto no other corner on earth? In Virtual Tibet, Orville Schell, one of the preeminent experts on modern China and Tibet, undertakes a strange and wondrous odyssey into our Tibetan fantasies. He recounts the spellbinding tale of the Western adventurers, explorers, and spiritualists who for centuries were bent on reaching forbidden Tibet and the holy city of Lhasa. At the same time, Schell leads us on a riveting present-day journey from Hollywood dharma study groups and Beastie Boy "Free Tibet" concerts to a re-creation of Lhasa in the high Argentine Andes, which was the extravagant set of Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt. As the past and the present, ancient customs and the superstar culture collide, Schell sheds light on the danger of blurring virtual and real worlds. A fabulous spectacle, peopled by celebrity Buddhists and Tibetan bonzes, Yak wranglers and high-powered publicists, Steven Seagal and the Dalai Lama, Virtual Tibet is an elegantly written work of extraordinary charm, power, and insight.