For many Protestants, “postliberal” theology has often also been an invitation to a more “Catholic” theology—a theology that is more properly ecclesial, written from and for the confessing, worshiping community. For instance, postliberalism has emphasized the extent to which “the Word of God” is the church’s book, rightly interpreted only within the stakes and interests of the confessing ecclesia. In a similar way, postliberalism has emphasized a role for tradition that counters the tradition-allergies of both conservative and liberal Protestantism. Thus one might suggest that Robert Barron’s wonderful book, The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism (Brazos, 2007), brings postliberalism back to its Catholic home. Drawing on the insights and intuitions of Lindbeck, Frei and others, Barron articulates a Catholic systematic theology that takes “the narratives concerning Jesus Christ as epistemically basic.” Thus his postliberal Catholicism is a narrative Catholicism, teasing out the implications of this for Christology and the doctrine of God, as well as ethics and epistemology—all drawing on a prodigious knowledge of the history of philosophy and theology. On top of all this, it is a downright lovely book, written with a kind of winsome literary flair that exhibits the inviting clarity of a master teacher. Highly recommended for sharp undergraduates; required reading for graduate students and scholars.
Taylor’s massive tome, A Secular Age, is one of those big, heavy landmark books that is destined to be a definitive classic. Taylor is out to tell a story about the emergence of our “secular” age, articulating a new kind of secularization thesis that also functions as a criticism of tired, triumphalistic versions that confidently predicted the steady withering of religion in our “modern” world. On Taylor’s account, secularity or secularization should not be merely identified with a diminishment in religious belief or the decline of religious observance. Rather, a “secular” age is one in which belief in God is no longer axiomatic. The shift that gave rise to secular modernity was a shift in the plausibility conditions of society such that even religious believers recognize the contestability of religious belief. In this respect, Europe (with little public religious observance) and the United States (rife with public religiosity and high religious participation) are both secular insofar as religious belief is considered one option among others. This shift in plausibility conditions makes possible the emergence of an “exclusive humanism” that, for the first time, imagines human flourishing without reference to transcendence. Essential reading.
For further discussion of Taylor's book by signicant scholars, visit The Immanent Frame.
With thanks to my good friend, Mark (my "music pusher"), I have been absolutely absorbed by Josh Ritter's new album, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter--like, I mean, seriously obsessed with it to an absurd degree. In particular, I just can't shake a stunning song, "The Temptation of Adam." It tells a fascinating, rather surreal story while at the same time exploring the aspects of the sort of "love" that only lives in sequestered situations ("desert island"-relationships, you might call them). The lyrics indicate something of the poetry, but this doesn't do justice to it as a song (with mellow acoustics). The YouTube video of a live performance captures some of this, but I would highly recommend splurging on the album. (And it really is an "album"--a throwback to the days when an album was a "work," a kind of sustained meditation on a theme. This album [plus bonus CD] have a symphonic quality about them insofar as one keeps hearing echoes and reprise. Great stuff.)
"The Temptation of Adam" Lyrics:
If this was the Cold War we could keep each other warm I said on the first occasion that I met Marie We were crawling through the hatch that was the missile silo door And I don't think that she really thought that much of me
I never had to learn to love her like I learned to love the Bomb She just came along and started to ignore me But as we waited for the Big One I started singing her my songs And I think she started feeling something for me
We passed the time with crosswords that she thought to bring inside What five letters spell "apocalypse" she asked me I won her over saying "W.W.I.I.I." She smiled and we both knew that she'd misjudged me
Oh Marie it was so easy to fall in love with you It felt almost like a home of sorts or something And you would keep the warhead missile silo good as new And I'd watch you with my thumb above the button
Then one night you found me in my army issue cot And you told me of your flash of inspiration You said fusion was the broken heart that's lonely's only thought And all night long you drove me wild with your equations
Oh Marie do you remember all the time we used to take We'd make our love and then ransack the rations I think about you leaving now and the avalanche cascades And my eyes get washed away in chain reactions
Oh Marie if you would stay then we could stick pins in the map Of all the places where you thought that love would be found But I would only need one pin to show where my heart's at In a top secret location three hundred feet under the ground
We could hold each other close and stay up every night Looking up into the dark like it's the night sky And pretend this giant missile is an old oak tree instead And carve our name in hearts into the warhead
Oh Marie there's something tells me things just won't work out above That our love would live a half-life on the surface So at night while you are sleeping I hold you closer just because As our time grows short I get a little nervous
I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I. Would we ever really care the world had ended You could hold me here forever like you're holding me tonight I look at that great big red button and I'm tempted
It's always a treat when voices that move, inspire, and evoke us come together on the same page of criticism: Who doesn't find an almost voyeuristic pleasure in reading living literary giants writing about other great contemporary literati? I'm a junkie for such criticism: reading Evelyn Waugh reviewing Graham Greene or P.G. Wodehouse, Joyce Carol Oates reviewing Don DeLillo--you get the idea. Those who enjoy the same intersections will find a treat in this Sunday's New York Times Book Review: Christopher Hitchens on John Updike's new non-fiction collection, Due Considerations. Not surprisingly, Hitch thinks Updike is just too damn nice.
If, like me, you enjoy reading in literary and political magazines outside of the mainstreem, consider signing this petition:
On July 15, the postal rates for many of this nation's small magazines increased by 20 to 30 percent, due to a decision made by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) that turns against more than 200 years of postal policy.
We believe this issue to be of such importance to small intellectual publications on both the right and left that we felt it imperative to alert our readers. This rate increase has the effect of shifting costs from the large publishers, such as Time Warner, to smaller publications, such as The New York Review, Commentary, The National Review, and The Nation. These unfair and onerous rate hikes threaten the future of many smaller, independent publications.
Congressional hearings have been scheduled for next Tuesday, October 30. Prior to that, we are requesting that all concerned readers sign a congressional email petition that can be found here: http://www.freepress.net/postal/
Free Press, working with a wide variety of small publishers, is hoping to collect well over 100,000 signatures by the end of this week in order to get the attention of the committee members prior to the hearing. We hope you will join in this effort. These new postal rates threaten the existence of the small independent magazines and journals that are so important to a free press and a vibrant democracy. Thank you for your help.
On a rainy afternoon a couple weeks back, my wife and I curled up at Shuler's, a local bookstore. I found the latest issue of The Paris Review and was immediately sucked in by a fascinating interview with Norman Mailer, part of their "Art of Fiction" tradition of interviews with leading writers. Mailer is typically irreverent and spiritual at the same time, a kind of avant-garde conservative. The interview is a riot and filled with some absolute gems about matters including style, God, character development, wives and ex-wives ("every wife is a culture," Mailer remarks), the absence of a generation of critics to succeed Wilson, Kazin, and others--and much more. A wonderful read.
Today I went looking for the interview online (I couldn't quite afford to drop the twelve bucks for the journal) and found a veritable treasure trove: the journal has made available dozens and dozens of past "Art of Fiction" interviews since 1953. And they're being made available (many downloadable as .pdfs) absolutely free! A fantastic resource that will have me sidetracked for days.
I'm not sure what it is about this surname, but to my list of "favorite poets named Wright" (James, Franz), I have recently added Charles. I only recently encountered his work: first in the summer issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, then, about a week later, on the new arrivals shelf at the Grand Rapids Public Library where I picked up his recent collection, Scar Tissue.
Wright does a wonderful job of capturing the colloquial in ways that honor it without making it "high falutin.'" I hear in him a chronicler of sides and spaces of American culture that don't often receive the attention of poetic homage. VQR very generously provides access to one of my favorites, "Cowboy Up" and "The Gospel According to Yours Truly."
Cowboy Up Charles Wright
There comes a time in one’s life when one wants time, a lot of time, with inanimate things. Not ultimate inanimate things, Of course, but mute things, beautiful, untalkbackable wise things. That’s wishful thinking, cowboy.
Still, I’d like to see the river of stars fall noiselessly through the nine heavens for once, But the world’s weight, and the world’s welter, speak big talk and big confusion.
The Gospel According to Yours Truly Charles Wright
Tell me again, Lord, how easy it all is— renounce this, Renounce that, and all is a shining— Tell me again, I’m still here, your quick-lipped and malleable boy.
(Strange how the clouds bump and grind, and the underthings roll, Strange how the grasses finger and fondle each other— I renounce them, I renounce them, I renounce them. Gnarly and thin, the nothings don’t change . . .)
I finally had an opportunity to read Lamin Sanneh's wonderful little book, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West. Sanneh, of Yale, is one of the leading voices reminding Western & European Christianity that it doesn't "own" the Church. And the book is written in the very engaging format of a dialogue, which makes it almost breezy (why don't more of us adopt this strategy?).
The book is a very helpful corrective and antidote to those (like myself!) inclined to a dreamy notion of Catholic liturgy and orthodoxy as the panacea for all global ills. While Sanneh is very interested in considering how world Christianity contests the secularism of the West, the shape of this "counter"-narration is very different from Western and European Christian critiques of secularism (as in Radical Orthodoxy--though I also think there are some important resonances).
According to Sanneh, the most interesting explosion of world Christianity bears little genealogical relationship to colonial missionary endeavors (which gave us "global Christianity", the globalization of European Christianity, not "world" Christianity, which springs from the bottom up). Rather, the most interesting movements of Christianity in the global South are indigenous. However, the current explosion owes one important factor to western missionary endeavors: the translation of Scripture into the mother tongue for different global contexts. The result, according to Sanneh, was that once colonial presence withdrew from these regions, Africans (for instance) were free to encounter the Gospel as Africans because they had the Bible in their mother tongue. And according to Sanneh, these contexts were especially primed for the Gospel precisely because their indigenous and primal religious sensibilities made them open to the dynamics and enchantment of a creator God who would come to inhabit history, would suffer, and rise from the dead. In other words, primal religions functioned as an especially fertile and open horizon for the reception of the Gospel--but now "discovered" indigeneously, and thus not freighted with European colonial baggage.
This is a fascinating story, and Sanneh, though emphasizing indigenous Christianity, is not simplistically anti-European precisely because he sees their role in translation. (I think he would also have to concede the formative role of 'Western' Christianity in shaping the very shape of the canon of the Bible that would later be translated into these mother tongues--but perhaps, in fact, the formation of the canon already included African and Asian voices.)
I do worry that there remains a hint of a new Christendom project latent in this story, but nonetheless, it is a story that needs to be heard far and wide in the West.
While, fittingly, on the beach, I finished Ian McEwan's latest, On Chesil Beach. Lingering in the ambiguous space between novella and novel, the book is exquisite. McEwan sketches worlds in fine-grained detail, but does so with a minimalist, almost sparse style. What I found most intriguing and remarkable, however, is his command of time. It is the rhythm and cadence of the novel that struck me. In the course of a focused, slice-of-life story about a wedding night, he also manages to narrate two complete lives. And he does so without having to resort to tricks or gimmicks like flashbacks. Instead, the story wends from past to present to future to present without missing a beat, and without the least jarring of the reader's temporal sensibilities. One of the summer's few "beach" reads that will repay re-reading.
Gary Greenburg's fascinating Harper's article, "Manufacturing Depression" (May 2007) prompted me to take down off my shelf a volume with some dust on it: the Modern Library edition of The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. For the first time I read A.A. Brill's Introduction to the volume, which is both a pretty decent summary of Freud's psychoanalysis as well as Brill's recounting of his personal history with Freud--which coincides with the immigration of psychoanalysis to America, which was engineered by Brill as both Freud's first English translator and as founder of the New York Psychoanalytic Society. Freud recounts Brill's role in the final piece in this volume, "The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement." Freud was surprised by how well psychoanalysis was received "even in prudish America" (p. 950).
I finished Freud's "History" last night. While it is constructed as a bit of a martyr's tale, it is also an illuminating glimpse into the early debates. Especially helpful for me was Freud's account of the "seccession" of Jung who, on Freud's account, shrunk back from really being honest about the role of infantile sexuality in the development and formation of neuroses. Instead, Jung "spiritualizes" the libido. This, in fact, is a constant refrain in Freud: those who failed to follow his lead (also Breuler as well as Jung's "Swiss School") were too frightened to deal with the taboo of infantile sexuality. So Freud's "History of Psychoanalysis" is, in large part, a psychoanalysis of his opponents--which he freely admits, along with the risk (viz., that one opens oneself to a "psychoanalytic" response, p. 964). What surprised Freud is that someone could lose their psychoanalytic salvation: "I had not expected that anyone who had mastered analysis to a certain depth could renounce this understanding and lose it" (p. 963). With this sort of tone, I was almost waiting for the Master to break into parables about seeds, sowers, rocky ground, and birds of the air.
Whatever we have come to conclude about Freud (his theories are now roundly--and justly--criticized), I think we still need to appreciate how dramatic and powerful Freud's vision was. To read the work on dreams or sexuality is to see someone who is grappling with phenomena in incredibly attentive ways. In an almost phenomenological way, Freud was really attending to "the things themselves" (though like Husserl, he thought he was just "observing;" only his opponents he thought were "interpreting"). In sum, Freud articulated one of the most powerful and comprehensive mythologies of the last century. He sketched a nearly comprehensive story to account for phenomena that others had not.
In fact, what we have to deal with now is what Heidegger would call the "sedimentation" of theory. While Freud's theories have been discredited, psychoanalysis has sunked so deeply into the communal psyche of America that we end up constructing our experience according to Freudian rules. Thus "prudish America," heir to Puritanism and neo-puritanisms, is wont to repress so much, only to have it return. We thus end up replaying Freud in our everyday pathologies, even though we "know" better.
While over here in the UK I finished Graham Greene's Brighton Rock--set in the seaside resort town with a seedy side (think Atlantic City with accents), in the early 20th-century. It's a pretty streamlined treatment, and becomes quite brisk in the latter part of the story (one gets the feeling that Greene had a screen treatment in mind as he wrote the book--though it's clear that a film version could not have done justice to the closing drama and interiority). But what stands out is stunning character invention and development, particularly in the diabolical Pinkie, but also the self-confident Ida who, in a way, bears remarkable resemblance to the "earnestness" Alden Pyle in The Quiet American.
I won't be able to reproduce the layers of religious themes at work in the book, but perhaps a quote from the closing few pages captures how Greene sees sainthood tottering on the brink of demon possession (whereas Ida's world of moralistic certainty is actually never near to God). In the words of an anonymous priest:
He said gently, 'Corruptio optimi est pessima.'
'Yes, father?'
'I mean--a Catholic is more capable of evil than anyone. I think perhaps--because we believe in Him--we are more in touch with the devil than other people.'
Speaking of memoirs: after pointing me to Taylor's Leaving Church (and having the same concerns), my wife passed along Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (a National Book Award winner). In addition to Didion's literary depth, the book offers several other contrasts.
The year of "magical" thinking follows a horrific sequence at the end of 2003 in which Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne find their daughter on life support. Returning home from one such excruciating visit, Dunne suffers a massive cardiac episode and dies. It is weeks before Didion's daughter regains consciousness and can be told the terrible news--only to then later suffer a brain bleed that once again puts her in a coma (she later, very slowly, recovers).
Both Taylor and Didion are Episcopalians, though Didion is forthright that this is merely a cultural tradition for her. She is Episcopalian in the same way that one might be Texan or speak Spanish: it is taken to be an accident of birth, though nonetheless a formative aspect of one's identity. But she confesses that her heart was never really in it when, at the end of the creed, she would profess belief in "the resurrection of the dead." And yet, the "magical" thinking of this year seems to be the hope that John will return: that things need to be primed for his re-appearance. But perhaps in describing this as "magical," Didion has already implanted all that's needed to dismiss such thinking as mad.
Ultimately this is a memoir of grieving; and by the end, she has begun the work of mourning. Indeed, one of the insights of the book is her experiential distinction between "grieving"--which is largely passive, comes in waves, and sneaks up on you--and "mourning"--which is active, requires hard work and intentionality. But despite being a memoir of grieving, one must be struck by how un-sentimental the book is: it almost has an air of aristocratic or royal restraint about it ("you mustn't let them see you weep"). And yet neither is it aloof or cold. It is forthright, honest, and heartbreaking.
What struck me most is the way in which The Year of Magical Thinking (unlike Leaving Church) is a memoir where characters other than the author really take center stage--in this case Didion's husband, John, and her daughter, Quintana. The memoir is an homage, without slipping into hagiography.
It is also a glimpse of what can only be described as an exotic, almost extinct beast: a 40-year marriage right smack in the middle of Hollywood and the New York literary set. Here was a couple who were both writers, who worked from home together pretty much everyday for 40 years, who not only survived this, but thrived because of it. It is this marriage and this friendship that makes The Year of Magical Thinking so lonely, veritably echoing with emptiness. What emerges from the book is an honest picture of a marriage that was, above all, a friendship in the most Aristotelian sense. The account of marriage here is one that puts to shame so much "Christian" literature (e.g., cp. the non-account of Taylor's marriage in her memoir, which seems so tangential to her identity). The Year of Magical Thinking is a story of marriage as the hardest thing in the world, but also the most rewarding and enlivening ("quickening" we would say in the older rhythms of King James English). As such, Didion gives unwitting, backhanded witness to sacramentality.
I just finished Barbara Brown Taylor's "Memoir of Faith," Leaving Church. Taylor was for 20 years an Episcopal priest--first in an urban Atlanta parish, then moving to a rural north Georgia parish that calls to mind scenes from Mitford. The narrative arc of the memoir, however, recounts her decision to leave parish ministry--eventually ending up as a religion professor at Piedmont College. As such, the book is somewhat mistitled: it's really a book about leaving ordained ministry. "Leaving Clergy" would be more fitting, but less catchy--and it does seem by the end of the book that Taylor's post-clergy rendition of Christianity does translate into leaving church. Having so diffused God's presence into "the world"--especially the world of "nature"--Taylor can't come up with very good reasons for staying. So instead we find her on the porch of her hilltop home on Sunday mornings, reading the paper and enjoying the geese flying overhead. (Many "emergent" folks will find much that they'll love in her critique of the institutional church; that in itself is a red flag for me.) Taylor is clearly no Anglo-Catholic, since she sees no sense of any special presence of the Spirit in the church's sacraments.
The book is breezy and honest and a compelling read. As someone who has at times been tempted by the reverse trajectory--to "leave college" for ministry--the book is a sobering look behind the curtain which I'll want to keep close by whenever those temptations rear their ugly head.
But I must confess I never quite found myself sympathetic to Taylor's narrative voice. I think this is for at least two reasons:
First, I found the book incredibly self-absorbed. Someone might be quick to point, "Well, it is a memoir; what did you expect?" But perhaps this says something about what memoirs have become in our culture, and why there is such a cult of the memoir today--and increasingly within the church (I think the same voice comes across in the memoirs of Anne Lamott and Lauren Winner). The memoir is a symptom of the general cult of narcissism that characterizes late-modern American culture. In these memoirs, the author gets all the best lines. Indeed, I felt like Taylor voice sounded like that of the stereotypical "only child" (is she? I won't be at all surprised). The world painted for us revolves around Taylor, as if everything existed for Taylor.
Is it possible for memoirs to not be narcissistic? Absolutely, though they are rare today. A non-narcissistic memoir will be characterized by a first-person voice that doesn't confuse the first-person perspective with the centre of the universe. It will be a memoir that lets others emerge in full-bloom as developed characters, and puts the best lines in their mouths. (The paucity of other characters in the book was, for me, the most striking piece. Not even her husband's picture gets filled in.) In short, it would be a memoir characterized by one of St. Augustine's central axioms: "What do we have that we did not receive?" (1 Cor. 4:7)
My second reservation stems from the first: I just can't bring myself to find liberalism as a very interesting or viable hope for the future. And at the end of the day, Taylor just wants to give us more liberal Christianity. By "liberal" I don't mean an epithet that the Southern Baptist Convention throws at anyone who rejects a literal six-day creation. By "liberalism" I mean an understanding of the self and the world that was bequeathed to us by Locke and Rousseau--a vision that places the individual at the centre of the world and sees the entire world existing to satisfy that autonomous, self-determined individual.
And it seems that is the spirituality that Taylor finds liberating. She cites with approval another friend who "left church." Talking about his decision to no longer participate in the church's worship, the friend testified: "I think I finally hear the gospel. The good news of God in Christ is, 'You have everything you need to be human.' There is nothing oustide of you that you still need" (p. 219).
That might be a gospel, but it's not the Gospel of Jesus Christ--it's the gospel spewed by the evangelists of Enlightenment liberalism who waxed elegant about the self-sufficiency of the individual. A gospel of self-sufficiency is the antithesis of a gospel of grace, which points out our utter lack, and our utter dependence precisely on something outside ourselves. And not just God: the corporate worship of the church is itself a testimony to how much I need all of these odd, strange, generally unlikeable people that congregate together whether we "want" to or not.
As much as I would sometimes like to "leave church," I know that this would only be fueling the worst parts of me, allowing me to retreat to a comfy space that I control, no longer disciplined by the hard work of submitting to external discipline and no longer required to be called out of myself to encounter and love those who get on my nerves (and they me!).
Leaving church is easy; it's staying that requires courage--and that requires grace.
I've been thinking a little more about the closing questions I offered in my earlier reflections on Graham Greene's Quiet American--my hunch that somehow the Catholic sacramental imagination has produced better novelists than the Protestant social imaginary.
I should have qualified this, of course, to say that I was thinking primarily of 20th-century novelists--which is why Updike came to mind. It's probably the case that any American novelist in the 20th-century who isn't Catholic is a kind of "Protestant" novelist by default, just because of the ubiquitous protestantism of American culture (somewhat like Hegel said all Western philosophy after Augustine is "Christian" philosophy in some sense). This is obviously the case for Hawthorne and Melville, but might still be the case for 20th-century novelists, at least up to the 60s or so.
Perhaps this line of questioning is untenable, but it does seem instructive somehow. Pen-pal acquaintance Andre Muller (New Zealand) articulated the issue in correspondence: what would it mean for a novel to be "Protestant?"
Well, probably lots of guilt, with no penance! In which case Cormac McCarthy might be the quintessential Protestant novelist (!). More specifically, it seems to me that "Protestant" novels tend toward a kind of didacticism that reflects the cognitivist, "talking-head" way that Protestantism has tended to construe Christian faith. So rather than the obliqueness of Greene, you get something like Marilynne Robinson's Gilead--which is a fabulous book, but not on the order of Waugh or O'Connor (in my humble opinion).
[P.S. While it is unfortunately not available online, those with access to a relatively good library might be interested in my piece on Franz Wright in the most recent Harvard Divinity Bulletin. It's entitled "Absence as a Window." The same issue includes new poems from Wright.]
A couple weeks ago I faced a long drive by myself to Brock University in St. Catherine's, Ontario. To redeem the time as it were (6 hours each way), I checked out the audio version of Graham Greene's The Quiet American, read/performed by Joseph Porter. (Porter does a decent job, though his Alden Pyle sounds more like he's from Arkansas than Boston.)
This is Greene at his finest: an insightful critique of naive imperialisms in Indo-China forms the backdrop for the micro-drama between the "earnest" Protestantism of the American Pyle and the unwitting Catholicism of the "detached" Brit, Fowler, and their common love. Indeed, Love is at the center of everything, and the story is dripping with a sense of sacramental presence. The pentitential longing of the closing passage left me in tears on I-69.
The book also got me asking: Do we really have any great Protestant novelists? Can any Protestant novelist really hold a candle to the sacramental imaginations of Waugh, Greene, Percy, and O'Connor (or Tolkien)? What would we offer as a Protestant counterpart--Updike?! Is that the best we've got? Is this something of a confirmation of the "talking-head"-ness of Protestantism--its myopic concern with intellect as opposed to the Catholic affirmation of the sensual and imaginative?
I'm spending some time in Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue today, and was particularly struck by the incisiveness of his diagnosis of a society that recognizes only "external" goods. As he discerns, "in any society which recognized only external goods, competitiveness would be the dominant and even exclusive feature" (p. 196). And then this fabulous quote:
Notoriously, the cultivation of truthfulness, justice and courage will often, the world being contingently what it is, bar us from being rich or famous or powerful.
The qualifier "contingently" is brilliant, and pregnant with theological insight: he doesn't given in to saying that these are always and essentially mutually exclusive, but only in the contingent configurations of our (broken, fallen) world. (It calls to mind some of Augustine's ruminations on "the praise of men" in Book 10 of the Confessions.)
MacIntyre then ends with this prescient diagnosis: "We should therefore expect that, if in a particular society the pursuit of external goods were to become dominant, the concept of the virtues might suffer first attrition and then perhaps something near total effacement, although simulacra might abound" (196).
Gee, I wonder what that sort of society might look like?
I just had opportunity to read the manuscript for a book due out in May: Telling God's Story: Narrative Preaching for Christian Formation (InterVarsity Press). This is, hands-down, one of the best books I've read in months, and certainly the most exciting book I've ever read on preaching that actually thinks about the nature and task of the Church. (Imagine that: a book on homiletics that is actually tethered to ecclesiology and not just current trends in rhetoric or corporate sales strategies.) InterVarsity asked me to provide an endorsement for the book and I was glad to say the following:
The church should be worried about this book. It comes as an invitation to rethink the task of preaching, but three pages into it you’ll realize that Wright is not giving us another “how-to” book for adding to the plethora of “messages” delivered every Sunday. No, this little book is packed with minor prophet-like punch, arguing that preaching is the practice by which the North American church has fallen, but also gives us a glimpse of how preaching could help her stand. Providing a brilliant historical and theological diagnosis of the problem with so-called “biblically based, need-centered preaching” (whether liberal or conservative), Telling God’s Story winsomely sketches what authentic “biblical” preaching looks like: not conscripting the Bible to legitimate the cultural narratives of consumerist individualism or triumphant nationalism, but rather finding ourselves in the biblical story as an alternative to both. If the church is properly said to be a polis, then this book unpacks the “politics” of homiletics. It should be required reading in seminaries across the North America. And we could hope that pastors already immersed in ministry would be willing to risk reading this book. But be forewarned: it will radically change your understanding of your charge to “preach the Gospel.”
I'm not sure where this started--it might have been from reading Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner years ago, or perhaps Melville's Moby Dick, or maybe even watching Master and Commander--but for the last several years I've been fascinated with the seas off southern South America, and especially dipping below Cape Horn to the bottom of the world. Seas you can stroll beside in southern California are fine, but there must be a special kind of terrifying beauty about waters that can be so monstrous (I remember first sensing this watching the bay north of Vancouver).
So it was a special treat when a friend gave me a copy of Hal Roth's sailing memoir, Two Against Cape Horn (1978), which documents the voyage of Hal and Margaret Roth from southern California down the west coast to South America, through the coastal channels of Chile, and final around Cape Horn itself before heading home via the eastern seaboard. It is a remarkable tale, including vignettes of intriguing people, history of sailors who first ventured around the cape (including Darwin's voyage on the Beagle), creative frugality and learning to live off the gifts of land (wild celery) and sea (mussells everywhere)--and even the account of their own shipwreck which left them utterly dependend upon the hospitality of Chilean natives and the navy. That, perhaps, was one of the most intriguing aspects of the story. There is something about such lone voyages--like all of the lone adventures of the wealthy, whether climbing moutains or sailing around the world alone--which are the height of modern (and American) individualism, a John-Wayne-ish swagger of independence. Perhaps unwittingly, Roth's story shows this all to be a lie: nobody sails around the cape "alone."
As I've indicated at times over at Fors Clavigera, I have found myself of late sometimes struggling with my orientation--POLITICAL orientation, that is (though my wife is sometimes alarmed by my interest in Oscar Wilde!). While my soul recoils at the ideology of the Religious Right, I find myself equally disenchanted with the Religious Left, and so I myself drawn to earlier models--primarily the 19th-century Christian socialism of Ruskin, Maurice (and the less 'Christian' visions of William Morris), I have also had a growing interest in more classic "conservatism" (as opposed to the neo-conservatism that dominates today's political discourse). This is especially true since, as an advocate of "ancient" paths of catholicity, I'm clearly sympathetic with the anti-revolutionary streak that characterizes conservatism proper.
So a couple months ago, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone by reading Russell Kirk's biography of Edmund Burke: Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (1967; reprint ed., ISI Books, 1997). Burke is oft hailed as the father of conservatism, while Kirk is often looked to as a father of American conservatism. (The Russell Kirk Center is located not far from here, in Mecosta, MI.)
The book was a very engaging read, almost a bit of a page turner. It is written in a kind of "classical" style of brief biography (reminding me of Waugh's biography of Rossetti), perhaps teetering on the edge of hagiography, but never quite there. Kirk's treatment is primarily an account of the man through his ideas and political vocation, not pretending to offer any kind of comprehensive treatment. Rather, Kirk was trying to bring to life Burke's vision--and I was struck by how instructive it would be for today's neo-conservatives to return to Burke, who would have no truck with their passion for de-regulation, global expansion of laissez-faire market systems, and blatantly revolutionary program of "regime change."
Kirk's Burke is most passionately opposed to the "arbitrary" exercise of political power, which animated his attempts at conciliation with the American colonies while at the same time strenuously renouncing the French revolution and the ensuing reign of terror. This same concern led him to commit decades to reigning in the corruption of the East India Company and to battle for expanded Irish rights. This also translated into a very critical attitude to the Enlightenment (not unlike some postmodern critiques of the Enlighenment).
While I find Burke's penchant for Christendom to be bothersome, I can see where it's coming from (something like O'Donovan?). But what I find most perplexing about such "Christian" conservatism is how to square a core sensibility of conservatism with a core Christian doctrine. Conservatism, of course, is about "conserving;" it is anti-revolutionary, and operates with an abiding sense of the wisdom to be found in the past, in tradition, in the institutions that have been handed down across the ages. In fact, this translates into a kind of optimism about what's gone before. And it's this optimism about past institutions that I can't quite square with the doctrine of original sin. Burke at one point puts it this way, speaking in favor of "things long established": "The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species, it almost always acts right" (p. 93).
But how to square this confidence in the native wisdom of "the species" with the trenchant critique of human wisdom as folly that we find in the New Testament (Rom. 1; 1 Cor. 1:18-25)? I wonder if there is grounds for an ecclesial conservatism but not a political conservatism.
In any case, this is a book that I will read again, sooner rather than later.
A while back I made an off-handed and second-hand comment about the "nihilism" of Cormac McCarthy. A thoughtful reader (from Australia, as I recall) sent an email and encouraged me to suspend judgment about McCarthy until I had actually read him. Sage advice. So this past summer, while I was in Pasadena, I picked up a first edition of All the Pretty Horses, the first volume of McCarthy's acclaimed "Border Trilogy."
This post is my confession: forgive me, for I have sinned. I am, without reservation and with much devotion, a new convert to a different McCarthyism--which is, for my money, a long ways from nihilism. All the Pretty Horses is one of the most enthralling books I have read in a long time. (In fact, as soon as I put it down I immediately went to eBay and scored first editions of the next two volumes in the trilogy.) The friendship between John Grady and Rawlins is one of the most beautiful and poignant I've encountered (though, I must confess, I found that images of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal kept creeping into my head!). It is simply amazing how, in such sparse dialogue, McCarthy can make a friendship come to life so vividly. And far from nihilism, I did find in McCarthy what could be a kind of persistent hope--though, admittedly, it could also be a kind of resigned fatalism. But I'm suspending judgment until I work through the rest of the trilogy. And then hope to jump ahead to his newest novel, The Road. (Though that will take a while: I've tried to discipline myself to a bit of a reading order: a British novel, an American novel, then something "other" (e.g, French, Chinese), before moving back to British, American, etc. It's going to be hard to let those other McCarthy's sit on the shelf untouched.)
[Despite a very busy summer, I also enjoyed a decent slate of summer reading, and will try to catch up a bit on my reading log here.]
Over the last two years my wife has become a devoted fan of Anne Lamott. Like most converts, she also tends to be a bit of a zealot, so I kept trying to more objectively guage just how good Anne Lamott was. While I still haven't gotten around to Traveling Mercies or Plan B, a few weeks ago while we were visiting friends in Atascadero, CA they gave me a copy of Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I'm sold.
Lamott regularly had me laughing out loud. And if it doesn't sound too hokey, the book really was downright "inspiring." While I could pretty legitimately described as an "author," I still dream of being a "writer," and Lamott's wisdom helped dream myself into that just a little bit more. (Just need to take things "bird by bird.") But on top of the "instructions" side of this book, Lamott offers a number of gems by just being a closer observer, somebody who knows how to pay attention to what's right in front of her.
Perhaps, above all, I find her voice to be without guile. She is an honest writer, and here she is (sometimes brutally) honest about both writing and life.
An interesting piece in the New York Times today takes a hard look at the rise of the 100-point system for rating wine--tracing its history from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate to its industry-wide adoption--but also calling into question it's effectiveness. Even those who employ the system grant that it gives an air of scientificity and objectivity to something that is much slipperier and elusive. Judging wine (like hermeneutics and interpretation) is an art, not a science--though even the best art should be informed by good theory and criteria, as well as apprenticeship and training.
Perhaps most disheartening is the market-driven nature of the 100-point system and the challenges of conflict of interest when ratings are doled out by glossy magazines laced with ads from the wineries and producers subject to their judgment (as well as retailers who post those little scoring tags below the bottle displays). And while some mags commit [or claim to commit] to "blind" tasting, there's still a problem similar to peer-review in the academy: vintners have figured out what these folks like, and produce wines that are primed to score well--which is a bit like the tail wagging the dog.
The upshot? A few years ago, I read Jim Flick's book on golf, which recommended that most people should resist the hype of massive, ballooned 1-woods, just leave their drivers at home, play from the tee with a trusty 3-wood. Perhaps something of the same is true for new wine afficianados: Amateurs might do better to ignore the pseudo-science of scores and the mass-market formulas the system has spawned and, instead, trust the friendly, knowledgeable folks at a local wine shop.
I had to hastily finish Michael Ruse's wonderful book The Creation-Evolution Struggle because it's due back to the public library. But it will repay a second loan. Ruse, a philosopher by training, has here written a bit of a page-turner history of the emergence of evolutionary theory and the ensuing debates and clash with religion--particularly creationism and intelligent design.
Ruse is eminently fair to both sides, without pulling any punches. It's particularly interesting to find a non-Christian scholar (Ruse variously describes himself as a "deist" and an "agnostic") who recognizes the long history of how legitimate evolutionary science is regularly morphed into a kind of secular religion. Ruse distinguishes these with the rubric of "evolution" or "evolutionary science" vs. "evolutionism"--the latter being the equivalent of a "secular religion." Ruse is at pains to argue that evolution did not necessarily entail evolutionism; but nevertheless, contingently and historically it did and has regularly yielded the latter.
Curiously, Ruse the philosopher here avoids properly philosohical questions (e.g., the epistemic conditions of "science," etc.), but he has addressed those questions elsewhere. This book provides an excellent history of the emergence of evolutionary theory and should be required reading for anyone interested in these questions.
It would seem that the news of the death of the book has been a bit premature. While both prophets of doom and heralds of "progress" have been penning requiems for the book since the 1970s (sometimes falsely referring to Derrida's discussion of the "end of the book" in Of Grammatology), people still don't crawl into bed with Adobe eReaders and such.
However, a fascinating article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discussed some new initiatives in academic publishing: "Book 2.0" explores some projects related to the "Institute for the Future of the Book." While I'll never give up the tangibility of treasured hold-in-your-hand volumes of paper, I can see some interesting possibilities here for unique collaborative scholarship. Be sure to follow the links to "experience" the future of the book.
Continuing an American tradition that goes back to Hemingway--and even earlier, as Franklin and Jefferson were regular haunts of the city--Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon is a memoir that narrates the five-year adventure of an American (and Canadian ex-pat) in Paris (1995-2000) with his wife, young son (and later a daughter that was the fruit of their time in the City of Light). This is one of those books that have been on my "to read" list since it was first released, but never made it onto the nightstand--due in no small part, I think, to just sheer jealousy. Gopnik was living the (my!) dream.
Making a commitment to reside in Paris, this isn't just another travelogue--though a persistent theme of the book is just how much he feels continues to feel like an outsider. The closest he ever feels to being an "insider" is when he becomes part of a protest group committed to keeping open a local restaurant in danger of being gobbled up by the homogenizing forces of globalizing cuisine. Connoisseurs of the world unite! But in the midst of their sit-in protest, Gopnik sees a problem with the revolution:
We were building up to an impressive pitch of indignation, but at that point the waiters began to serve the dinners that we had ordered while we were waiting to begin our protest, and this weakened the revolutionary spirit a little. There was, I sensed, a flaw in our strategy: If you take over a restaurant as an act of protest and then order dinner at the restaurant, what you have actually done is gone to the restaurant and had dinner, since a restaurant is, by definition, always occupied, by its diners. Having come to say that you just won't take it anymore, you have to add sheepishly that you will take it, au point and with bearnaise sauce.
The book is witty and warm, while also having the rather pedestrian virtue of being informative. Gopnik's chapters on French cuisine and couture are some of the best in the book for the way they respectfully and charitably peel back the layers of Paris for foreign eyes. His chronicles of the adventures of navigating French bureaucracy seethe with frustration, while the annals of a daily life lived in tiny, banal rituals provide a sense of the depth of the world. In these descriptions, the mundane habits of a walk in the park are seen as portals to hidden worlds--as if worlds upon worlds were tucked away in corners of the Luxembourg Gardens (found especially in the chapters that constitute his annual "Christmas Journals"--Journal 3, "Lessons from Things," being the best of the bunch).
Gopnik's pen is agile and tender, issuing in a flourish of similies ("Alice had found frisee and watercress and was looking at them raptly--not with the greed of a hungry man seeing dinner but with the admiration of William Bennett looking at a long marriage," p. 244) as well as on-the-money "capturings" of experience. My favorite in the latter category is when he describes storytime with his son, in the late evening:
Paris is a northern city, on a latitude with Newfoundland, as New York is a Mediterranean one, on a latitude with Naples, and so the light here in the hours between seven and nine at night is like the light in the hours between five and seven in New York. The sun is still out, but the sounds have become less purposeful--you hear smaller noises, high heels on the pavement--and though it is a pleasant time to lie in bed, it is not an easy time for a small boy to go to sleep (pp. 196-197).
The conjunction of light and sound, and the playful suggestion that the bend of the sun somehow dulls the air through which sound travels, crystallizes in the "high heels on the pavement" observation, which transports one to just that kind of evening and sound. Great stuff.
As is usual--one finds this alot with students who study abroad--the cross-cultural experience makes possible a reflection on one's own culture that wouldn't be possible otherwise. As Gopnik observes, "There are certain insights that can come to an American only when is abroad, because only there does the endless ribbon of American television become segmented enough so that you can pay attention to its parts," for instance. Gopnik is at his best in this mode of Paris-based reflection on American culture in his chapter "Barney in Paris" (yes, that Barney!) and some reflections on football (soccer) by a lover of baseball and hockey.
Gopnik's prose had so welcomed me into his world that I, too, felt the sting of his family's departure for Paris, just as I felt a sting of disappointment in the book's coming to an end.
The New York Times has an interesting piece on the best American fiction of the last 25 years. (For the implicit criteria, see the list of judges.) Toni Morrison's Beloved was the winner, and Don DeLillo's Underworld was runner-up (I don't think you'll see that one on Oprah's book club.) I'm not a huge fan of American fiction, but I do love Updike, and glad to see the Rabbit novels get honorary mention. And I just keep bumping into the nihilism of Cormac McCarthy everywhere, including a recent Harper's piece. Need to add his trilogy to my summer reading list.
Those, like me, who enjoyed Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead will undoubtedly be moved by Georges Bernanos’ classic, The Diary of a Country Priest (first published in 1937), which I finished on the plane to Geneva. Indeed, one wonders if Robinson didn’t find a certain inspiration and model in Bernanos’ novel: Robinson gives us a glimpse into the epistolary legacy left by a dying old Reformed preacher in the rural American Midwest; Bernanos steals for us the diary of an ailing young Catholic priest tending a tiny parish in the French countryside.
His is an honest faith: grappling with doubt, and yet so strongly tethered to Christ; struggling with prayer, and yet a life bathed in prayer; looking for friendship, and finding it in the most unexpected places; loathing, but loving, his parishioners; frustrated by the institutional church, but not abandoning it. Above all, Bernanos illuminates the sacramentality of the world in the priest’s final words: “Grace is everywhere.”
I just enjoyed the cathartic pleasures of some laugh-out-loud, tears-rolling-down humor in P.G. Wodehouse’s tales of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves--in a wonderful collection of Wodehouse’s witty short stories, The Most of P.G. Wodehouse (Scribner, 2000), which I picked up in Chicago a few weeks ago. A delightful change of pace from more sober reading of late.
Thinking back, I was put onto Wodehouse by two quite different trajectories that both intersect in Evelyn Waugh. The first was via Christopher Hitchens who, in Love, Poverty, and War, comments on both Waugh and Wodehouse. The second avenue was through the leads provided by George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic, which also put me onto Waugh. Then, a couple months ago, on a gorgeous Saturday in early March, I sauntered over to a local used book shop (All the King’s Books) and found a wonderful collection on Waugh (Evelyn Waugh and His World, edited by David Pryce-Jones), which made several mentions of Wodehouse, including reference to Waugh’s defense of Woodhouse in the Times (16 July 1961). So when I ran into this Wodehouse collection in Chicago (and for a bargain!), it seemed as if Evelyn had led me to the spot. Tonight’s read was the pay-off.
I'm enjoying a service that Knopf is providing as part of Poetry Month. Their "Poem-a-Day" list brings new poetry to your inbox each day--including both new voices and old favorites. Included are also podcasts of poem readings. For instance, today was a double treat: Joan Didion reading Gerard Manley Hopkins!
Amidst the administrative drudgery that constitutes most of my inbox, these little missives are like little in-breakings of grace from another world. Consider treating yourself to the same: subscription is free.
I just finished reading John Paul II's Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way (Warner Books, 2004)--a letter, of sorts, to fellow bishops. A quick and easy read, interesting both for matters of biography (the book roughly tracks the period after Wojtyla's ordination, focusing on his appointment as an auxilary bishop then bishop in Poland) and for reflections on the nature of the church, priesthood, and episcopate. It is also an invitation into the friendships that were so crucial to JP II's ministry (the array of Polish names gets pretty overwhelming). Especially interesting is the former Pope's discussion of his involvement with Vatican II, and then his task as bishop to "implement" the Council. Citing the importance of de Lubac for his thought, one finds in John Paul II's vision the kind of ancient-future sensibility which is able to think both ressourcement and aggiornamento. As he puts it near the end of the book (p. 213):
Our faith, our responsibility and our courage are all necessary if Christ's gift is to manifest itself to the world in all its splendor. Not just the kind of faith that safeguards and keeps intact the treasure of God's mysteries, but a faith that has the courage to open and reveal this treasure in constantly new ways to those to whom Christ sends His disciples. And not just the kind of responsibility that limits itself to defending what has been handed down, but the kind that has the courage to use its talents and multiply them.
While I continue to be nonplussed by JP II's tendency toward nationalisms and his friendliness to liberalism and capitalism (I can now see that this emerges from his experience with the atrocities of both the Nazis and Communists), this vision of an ancient-future Catholic faith that is unafraid to articulate a vision of the world to the world resonates deeply.
A while back I promised to post my top 5 books of 2005. We're now a long ways from end-of-year recollections, but I'll try to make good on the promise. I don't mean this to be an "objective" list of the best books from last year (as Napolean replied to Kit: "Like anyone could even know that!"). Rather, they're five books that stick out in my memory of a year of reading.
1. Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today. Hands down, my favorite book of 2005, and one of the best books I've read in a long time. Marsh does an excellent job rescuing the civil rights movement from liberalism and demonstrating its thick connections to the particularities of the worshipping community. Because of its ecclesiocentric roots, Marsh evaluates the "secularization" of the civil rights movement not as its completion, but rather as precisely that which stunted its effects. This book is also a model of "public" theological writing--that is, theology undertaken as public intellectual discourse without sacrificing the rigor of theological confession and precision. I can't speak highly enough about Marsh's accomplishment.
2. Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis. This was an end-of-year treat for me. Jacobs navigates a course between hagiography (all too common in Lewis literature) and cynicism (think A.N. Wilson). It is a solid intellectual biography that helpfully explores interesting tensions in Lewis (particularly the intra-psychic tensions between the worlds of philosophy and literature, logic and fantasy), as well as several curious snippets about Lewis' interest in sado-masochism [that doesn't show up in the hagiographies]. The end of the book felt a little rushed (the movie release date approaching?), but throughout I particularly enjoyed Jacobs' account of "Faery" as central to Lewis' thought. An enjoyable read.
4. Creston Davis, John Milbank, and Slavoj Zizek, editors, Theology and the Political. This is the only "academic" book I'll include, but I think it is a landmark volume on the boundaries of philosophy, theology, ontology, and politics. It will take a year to digest it all.
5. George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God. I continue to feel an allergy to Weigel's (Constantinian) politics and (basically neo-con) economic leanings, and yet I find myself often in deep agreement with his diagnoses of what's wrong with the West (in which he echoes much of Benedict XVI's own diagnoses). This book offers a compelling contrast between the poverty of European liberalism and the richness of Catholic social thought.
But it's another little biography that is the occasion for my post: Edmund White's Marcel Proust in The Penguin Lives Series. Or perhaps I should say it is the series itself which has intrigued me--akin to Harper Collins Eminent Lives Series, from which I read Christopher Hitchens on Thomas Jefferson this past summer. These biography series often have a brilliant alchemy, creating a way to bring together potent contemporary voices to produce dense--or rather, economical--portraits of historical figures in ways that are both illuminating and literary. One might hope this represents a renewed place for biography that might finally displace the incessant string of memoirs from twentysomethings! And if they represent a certain rennaissance of biography, one wonders how short the cycle must be, since Evelyn Waugh--in his own 1928 biography of D.G. Rossetti that very much fits this genre--opened by noting:
Biography, as books about the dead are capriciously catalogued, is still very much in the mode.
It has usurped the place held in recent years by the novel, and before that by poetry, as the regular metier of all those young men and women who, in every age, concern themselves with providing the light reading of their more cultured friends. Naturally enough, a new manner has resulted, and, to a great extent, a new method; and polite literature is the less polite for it.
He goes on to, shall we say, confess?--
We have discovered a jollier way of honoring our dead. The corpse has become the marionnette. With bells on its fingers and wires on its toes it is jigged about to a "period dance" of our own piping; and who is not amused? Unfortunately, there is singularly little fun to be got out of Rossetti. (Waugh, Rossetti: His Life and Works, 1928, pp. 11-12)
I take it that Waugh worries that the entertainments of these "Lives" can create anachronistic creations for our own delight--a kind of horizontal Feuerbachian worry that we'll create our subjects in our own image. Fair enough; and in fact, White's little life of Proust probably does just that with its incessant fixation on Proust's homosexuality. And yet, there is an invitation to other worlds embedded in here from which it is always a bit disappointing to have to return.
Before our longish drive back to Canada for Christmas vacation, I set off to our public library in search of a book on CD with hopes of shortening the trip, as it were. I hit upon a gem: Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited narrated by Jeremy Irons. This turned out to be a spectacular combination. Irons--who, for me, will almost simply be identified with Father Gabriel in The Mission--brings Waugh's very Catholic novel to life in wonderful ways. With a voice much at home on the stage, Irons incarnates Waugh's already remarkably complex and charming characters, creating voices for each (even the 11-year-old girl, Cordelia), and hitting just the right note for Charles Ryder's narrative voice.
But then another wonderful little turn of providence. Our pilgrimage back to family in Canada always takes us to Stratford, Ontario--effectively our hometown (though we're from small villages just south), namesake for Stratford-upon-Avon, and home to the acclaimed Stratford Festival Theatre. All in all, an absolutely charming place that everyone should try to visit at least once. One of the treats of visiting Stratford is returning to some old haunts in local bookshops, particularly two used bookshops from which I've built some important parts of my library. My favorite is The Book Stage, just behind the Avon Theatre and run by a German bibliophile, Manfred Meurer (who does not lack resemblance to Albert Einstein). Manfred and I developed something of a working relationship as I was engaged in graduate studies in phenomenology--first in Toronto, then in Philadelphia. As Manfred learned of my work and interests, and watched my book-buying habits, he started to set aside texts for me in a secret little closet, to be unveiled whenever I returned to Stratford. When I would come back into town from Philadelphia, I would visit Manfred, who would then trot out assorted Husserl and Heidegger books, some even in German. I think he was almost as excited as I was.
Alas, Manfred closes up shop for the winters, so I headed to my other haunt: "Yesterday's Things," a used book shop on Ontario Street just a few doors down from our first apartment after returning from Iowa. (It was a charming space: a second floor flat in a turn-of-the-century home; it will always be remembered as the home to which we brought our firstborn, Grayson.) The philosophy and theology selection at Yesterday's Things does not compare to Manfred's (think multiple copies of A Course in Miracles), but the literature selection is outstanding--and incredibly inexpensive (especially when the American dollar is a little stronger). I first headed to the Wilde section, but found nothing I don't already own. There was a decent edition of Orwell's later journalism and letters, but in paperback. No Chesterton. A volume of C.S. Lewis's letters looked intriguing. But then I noticed, on top of the shelves and out of order, a mint, hardcover edition of Waugh's Brideshead Revisited--a Little, Brown edition from 1979 for just $10 (CDN!). I snapped it up.
I continued to listen to Irons' rendition on the way back to the States, and now back home (and with very little time in the car), I've turned to reading the hard copy. I'm not sure if it is unfortunate or fortunate, but Ryder's narrative voice-in-my-head while I read is Irons', and Irons' wonderful interpretation of the characters continues to echo for me (his rendering of Anthony is spot on). And as new characters come on the scene, I half find myself tempted to hear how Irons plays them out, and perhaps I'll give in to the temptation and check. In any case, Irons' performance of the book has enriched my reading--as if I can hear the book in my hands.
I've always been a sucker for year-end retrospectives and so the next couple of weeks are always a highlight for me as all kinds of venues generate their "top 10" lists. (See, for instance, the NYT's 10 Best Books of 2005, o John Wilson's Top 10 Books of 2005 from Books & Culture.) I'm going to be more humble and suggest a "Top 5 of 2005" in the next few days. Stay tuned.
My wife and I just finished Nicole Krauss's remarkable novel, The History of Love. My wife first devoured it, and when she quite quickly and decisively described it as perhaps her favorite book ever (and she doesn't just say this everyday), I splurged, bought the book, and also proceeded to inhale it from the first lines ("When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT.")
Krauss's writing is dynamic, with a wide range. There's no monotone rut of observation. Instead, she manages to inhabit several very diverse characters (how does a 34-year-old write so well in the voice of an old man?). The novel has embedded within it several different genres, and layers upon layers (books within books and translations of books, with journals and letter and poems interspersed). And while it is certainly a meditation on love (both familial and romantic, love lost and love hoped-for), it is also a profound exploration of language and all of our attempts to find "words for everything." The book's impact hovers somewhere between ecstacy and mourning, rapture and heartbreak. And it's a book that keeps haunting you for a while. A must read.
And what better way to enjoy reading the New Left Review than with a nice glass of wine? My wife and I have become devoted fans of Riesling, and so I scarfed up the latest issue of the Wine Spectator in which Riesling gets cover story billing. They highlights top Rieslings from Germany, Alsace (in France), Australia, and a few from the States (from Washington and the Finger Lakes region of NY). Our tastebuds are probably a little skewed by our geography, but we thought our favorite Riesling from Chateau Grand Traverse in Michigan deserved a mention!
Nathan Bierma, a relatively new (though returning) face here at Calvin College, was recently appointed the editor of Calvin's web-based zine/mag/journal Minds in the Making. Nathan is one of those people who seems to be doing a hundred different things, and he does them all well! (Nathan is also an author, writes a column for the Chicago Tribune, and now plays a key role at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.) His tranformation of the Minds journal if fabulous. In addition to instituting some regular "columns," he regularly collects a wide sampling of some of the intellectually stimulating stuff that happens on our campus almost everyday. And he's done so in a multi-media format, including not only articles and essays, but also audio files of lectures and interviews, as well as visual slides, and more.
Minds in the Making is a wonderful glimpse into the diverse conversations that take place here at Calvin, and we have Nathan to thank for opening the window into that.
I have earlier confessed on this blog to my weakness for Vanity Fair. Several months ago (July 28 to be exact), I moved from passive voyeur status and sent the following "Letter to the Editor" to Vanity Fair:
Did the VF editorial team miss the chance to read James Wolcott's article ("To Live and Die in Iraq," August 2005)? In the same article that Wolcott rightly scolds "Mr. Media" for showing only American players in Iraq, and only sanitized images at that, the only photos that accompany the article feature, you guessed it, only American soldiers and none that would disturb Mr. Media's picture of the war. Not a single Iraqi "extra" makes an appearance. Left on the cutting room floor, I guess?
Wolcott's article also catalogues the litany of celebrity "events" that consume American media. And then immediately after his article, I have to endure Dominick Dunne's sophmoric romp through recent Hollywood "disasters." This is amplified by the editorial choice to highlight the line about Lana Clarkson's breasts, with the frat-boy touch of highlighting the word "breasts" in red.
If only VF's editorial policies followed more closely James Wolcott's prescriptions.
James K.A. Smith Grand Rapids, Michigan
To my surprise, I just received this response in reply:
Thank you very much for your letter to the editor. We have received several letters regarding this matter, and I will be sure to address this point with the appropriate editors here. I appreciate your input and hope that you continue expressing your opinions to Vanity Fair.
It's a bit weird to suggest that I'm reading my own book, but anyone who's an author knows that, in fact, this is strangely true, without being as utterly vain as it sounds. This week I received the first copies of Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, hot off the press from Baker Academic. After a book has been put to bed (about 6 months prior to its appearance), it's always fun for an author to receive it back in this new form. It sometimes feels like someone else's book, and in the case of an edited collection like this, much of it is!
This blog is supposed to keep some notes on what I'm reading; I'm stretching that a little by noting something I'm listening to, which then got me to reading the lyrics. One of my son's friends turned me on to The Decemberists. They're song "16 Military Wives" is quite a remarkable little piece of cultural critique which masks itself as a "ditty" with a kind of upbeat tune which should create serious cognitive dissonance for anyone who listens to the words. I'll paste the lyrics here, but you really must listen to the song. (For some commentary on the "meaning," visit http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=3530822107858533163 .)
Artists > Decemberists, The > Sixteen Military Wives Submitted by themunkel on March 1, 2005
sixteen military wives thirty-two softly-focused, brightly-colored eyes staring at the natural tan of thirty-two gently clenching, wrinkled little hands
seventeen company men out of which only twelve will make it back again. sergeant sends a letter to five military wives, his tears drip down from ten little eyes.
cheer them on to their rivals cause america can and america can't say no and america does if america says it's so it's so and the anchorperson on tv goes la-di-da-di-da.
fifteen celebrity minds leading their fifteen sordid, wretched checkered lives will they find their solution in time? using fifteen pristine moderate liberal minds eighteen academy chairs, out of which only seven really even care doling out a garland to five celebrity minds they're humbly taken by surprise
cheer them on to their rivals cause america can and america can't say no and america does if america says it's so it's so and the anchorperson on tv goes la-di-da-di-da-didi-didi-da la-di-da-di-da-didi-didi-da
fourteen cannibal kings wondering blithely what the dinner bell will bring fifteen celebrity minds served in a leafy bed of sixteen military wives
cheer them on to their rivals cause america can and america can't say no and america does if america says it's so it's so and the anchorperson on tv goes la-di-da-di-da-didi-didi-da. la-di-da-di-da-didi-didi-da.
[Sorry for the blog silence of late. What little time and energy I've had left for blogging has gone into some discussions at the Generous Orthodoxy "Think Tank."] I am a passionate devotee of book reviews: I commit to writing quite a few of them, and I make a point of trying to consume them regularly--both the sorts of reviews one finds in the Atlantic and Harper's, as well as the more scholarly review in academic journals. [For the latter, the "table of contents alert services" that many academic journals provide are a godsend. See the Modern Theology site for an example, and click on "Sign-up for e-tocs."]
I think book reviews are a crucial arena for discourse, for both "public" intellectuals and the ivory halls of academe. Sometimes they are pointers, bringing to our attention works that we might not otherwise have encounters; at other times, they provide an arena for debate and provide an opportunity to "listen in" as leading thinkers hash out their commonalities and differences. And there's nothing an author likes more than a good book review (where "good" doesn't just mean praise and adulation, but rather someone who really takes your arguments seriously, thinks along with you, and then takes you places you didn't go in the book).
One rich and free resource that I highly recommend is Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. A relatively new online review, the editors manage to get some of the best people in philosophy to provide very extensive reviews of works across a range of subdisciplines and even across the disciplines. Sign-up to receive new reviews by email and you'll receive several treasures weekly and browse through the Archives to find much more.
Today I received a review of a fascinating book I hadn't come across: Amy Mullins' Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare. This is one of the briefer NDPR reviews, but has got me to put this book on my wish list.
I must confess to a dirty little secret: I am a regular and avid reader of Vanity Fair. It's not something I like to trumpet. Even my kids bug me about my "girlie magazine," and I must admit that when I'm on the bus, I try to hide the front cover. It's not just the glossy pages of fashion ads that are disconcerting; it is the general bourgeois, "high-society" glitz that VF perpetuates (Graydon Carter and Dominick Dunne can be such whores to celebrity sometimes). It's a bit like my passion for Oscar Wilde: part of me knows the quasi-socialist in me should hate this stuff, but the other part of me would like nothing better than to have been a part of late 19th-century "society." (Someone once asked Wilde why he wasn't a socialist, to which he replied: "I prefer to keep my evenings free.")
But I was attracted to VF for the articles (gee, where have you heard that line before?). In particular, it's one of the places where I can regularly read Christopher Hitchens, including some of his best pieces later collected in Love, Poverty, and War. James Wolcott also regularly contributes some good stuff, including an excellent piece on the skewed coverage of Iraq. And there usually some decent interviews to boot, including a memorable one with Vigo Mortensen (quoting Kant!).
But the August issue included a cover story on poor Martha Stewart's house arrest that included this disturbing little tidbit: Martha chose to spend her confine at a new farm in Bedford. For this project, she was committed to a very simple, but scrupulously uniform color scheme: all the buildings would be a washed gray (now "Bedford Gray" in the Martha Stewart line), and all the accents would be black. Included in the black accents are all of the animals on the farm--including the dog! In fact, her horses, if left in the sun through the day, tend to take on a reddish sheen that upsets this color palette. So Stewart has directed the handlers to keep the horses inside all day in order to preserve the appropriate black accents for the environmental decor. Quite a microcosm of economic power manipulating nature for ridiculous ends.
Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College and Editor of Comment magazine. / / This is my space for "thinking out loud," an arena for practice at writing quickly and off-the-cuff. Comments are off, not because I don't value the opinions of others, but simply because I don't have time to do justice in reply.
Posts
