DeConick A.D

342
GNOSTICISM OUT ON A LIMB
Figure 11.1 Shirley MacLaine as herself in Out on a Limb (1987).
He says to her, “Well, you could read some of the more esoteric books
on this wall, or you could just read Plato, Pythagoras, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Walt Whitman, Voltaire. They all wrote on this subject.”
In each new scene after this, we see Shirley hauling around books. We
see her sitting by the fireplace, in a window seat, on the floor, reading
book after book. She says in a voice-over, “From that day on I began to
read everything metaphysical I could get my hands on. It made me think
differently about the world and my own life in it.”
She had become the seeker of spiritual knowledge, a modern Gnostic
who realizes that to get to the fruit of the tree she has to go out on a
limb. No matter how uncomfortable or transgressive were the things she
was learning, she had to keep on reading.
As the film progresses, we see Shirley performing in Hong Kong. At
one point, she is walking along a local street deep in the city. She stops in
front of a bookshop window. Prominently displayed in the window is the
book Seeker After Truth , along with a number of other titles. We know