This week I read two novels and quit two others after 30 pages.

First up, was John Banville’s The Sea. This was the 2005 winner of the Mann Booker Prize for Fiction. Banville has an uncanny mastery of the english language. His prose is flawless and flows with a mellifluent beauty. If you like stories where the quality of writing overshadows the story then
this is your cup of tea. There isn’t much story. Max Morden returns to the seaside village where his family summered as a child. There he confronts the past while ruminating over the transcience of life. Beautifully written and there were times where I had to reach for my dictionary, which is a rarity. The story is purely a secondary character here.

Next, I tried Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. It too won the Mann Booker prize back in 2003. Vernon Little becomes the scapegoat of his small Texas town when his closest friend wages a Columbine-style shooting at their school. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for a black comedy, but it didn’t click. I scuttled it.

I then got ahold of Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart, and this title lived up to the hype. Achebe’s work, and I’m dying to read the sequels, are an insightful commentary on Imperialism and Missions that resonate even today. Evangelism and acculturation are not synonymous, and there are grave dangers whenever we conflate the two. Paul in Acts 17 did not insult the Athenians, he talked to them with love, understanding and based upon their own belief system. He did not insult them (despite the horrible KJV translation in Acts 17:22). I kept thinking of the T-shirt that reads “Jesus loves you, but I’m His favorite.” If you haven’t read this work, by all means pick it up. This has the Official Scott Freeman Seal of Approval (patent pending).

I then took a stab at Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Verge of Time. It looks promising but I am too anxious to get into the books I bought at my local library sale this past weekend. I may return to it.

At the aforementioned library sale, I stocked up on classics. Here is what my inbox will look like over the next few weeks:

Cat’s Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. I’m 50 pages into Cradle and hooked. Read Slaughterhouse Five (OSFSOA), today.)
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I know I have to read this. Just can’t get juiced about it.)
Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton
The History of Torture by Daniel P. Mannix
Disappointment With God by Philip Yancey (I’ve read this. I just keep loaning it out and never getting it back.)
In the Beginning and Davita’s Harp by Chaim Potok (Matt, I thought of you)
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, The Final Years: 1944-1969
1984 by George Orwell (I want to read this one, again. It’s been 22 years)
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Fall by Albert Camus
Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross

Most of these titles are relatively short, so I hope to rip through them. As always I’m interested in your thoughts on these titles and the ones above that I read this week. Thoughts?

Here’s what I’ve read this week:

Ulysses by James Joyce: I made it to page 29. What a colossal waste of time. I haven’t heard anybody tell me that it had much to offer other than book critics who are too scared to say the emperor has no clothes.

Brave New World by Alduous Huxley: This book was one that lived up to the billing. I regret that I have not read it prior to now as it is a sizzling satire of our penchant for happiness at all costs. It was obvious throughout the book that Huxley was taken aback by the implications of Americanization in general and the racial hatred of Henry Ford in particular.
As a result, this book transcends satire and becomes a chilling, and somewhat prescient, indictment of our need to “amuse ourselves to death.” A life without consequences and the use of pharmaceuticals to dump our senses and negate our pain is not a reality kept contained within the pages of fiction. The pursuit of happiness at all costs up to and including the desertion of truth is a temptation that continually plagues us as a collective.
Postman, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, gives a great compare and contrast between Huxley’s work and Orwell’s competing dystopian take, 1984:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

Who has read this? What do you think about the book?
Or what have you read this week that grabbed your attention?

One other thing: our library’s annual book sale starts tomorrow. Any recommendations for titles I should look for?

Really, I do. Wouldn’t it be great if people were able to truly find the love of Christ in their lives?

I believe that if all people would learn to truly live like Christ, then the world would change: wars would cease, poverty would end, and hunger would abate.

I believe that if I could just learn to truly live like Christ, then people would clamor to know more about why I love so much, give so freely and appear so joyful.

I would make a greater difference than I do. People would see a life not marked by borders, not encumbered with accumulation, and committed to being an image of Him.

What could happen I really committed to live like Jesus?

But it’s too hard.  All that peace-y, love your neighbor, turn your cheek stuff is more than what I signed on for.
So, I have a great evangelistic plan. I will reduce Kingdom living to a list of moral regulations and then force people to live their lives according to those regulations.  Rather than being a model of Christ as an example of how people should live their lives, I’ll just force them to live like me.
And anything that is viewed as a threat to the compulsory living of those regulations I will fight to stop by all means necessary: through protests, legislation and guilt.

I can make disciples through coercion and legislation rather than investing wasting too much time in compassion and love.

I can monitor all forms of entertainment to make sure that they live up to my standards of decency, no matter how subjective that might be, rather than dialoguing with people about the allure of entertainment or providing viable alternatives.

I can seek to block vaccines that could save a young girl’s life from sexually transmitted diseases because the underlying behavior goes against my standards rather than adopt the idea that a life saved today is a potential soul won tomorrow.

I can focus on “standing up for my rights as a Christian” rather than worrying about the rights of the poor, disadvantaged and forgotten.

I can seek to preserve the traditions and history of this “Christian nation” rather than seeking to introduce people to the grace and redemption that comes by being a part of the Kingdom.

I can show how loving I am by pointing my finger at the far fringes of Christianity, those who would spew their hatred without any compunction, rather than seeking to root out any remnants of hatred that lingers in my own heart.

Yes, that’s it.  I will do everything in my power to coax, wheedle, intimidate, and force people into living the life I deem appropriate. God needs me to stand up for the right way of living.  And by so doing, people will line up to become Christians.

Right?  Who’s with me?

• At what point do we, in the church, get truly serious about weighing all scripture through the person of Jesus Christ? Isn’t He the resting place for all of our conclusions and approaches to living and loving?
• Will we ever break away from our proclivity to proof-text our rationales for war, propagating poverty and elevating our spheres of concern over above the needs of those who fall outside of those spheres? God commanding war in the OT is not a good enough reason for me to blindly embrace armed conflict today.
• What moral obligation do I have to reduce poverty and be a voice for the least of these?  How far-reaching is that?  How much does that affect what I buy, where I shop, etc?
• Could it be that we have completely blown Romans 13 out of proportion and twisted it completely into an unrecognizable form from its original intent?
• What does a true ethic of life consist of?  How can I be pro-life and accept the needless death of any individual?
• When did faith get confused with certainty on every moral question?
  
• If the greatest commandments are all that, shouldn’t we be focusing a whole lot more on what it means to love God and love people?
• Can we lay aside our personal disgust on sins that particularly rankle us to have an open discussion about the true make-up of sinful behavior?
  
• Have we so marginalized women in the church that they have no outlet for their gifts and talents? If so, when do we emerge from our patriarichal stone-age?
• Is there a cure for the frustrations I feel? I’m not getting much sleep right now.

Maybe you can see why I’ve steered more toward humor and such lately.  I have to get out of my head.

Any thoughts?

“That’s the most persuasive list of passive-aggressive assertions that i’ve ever read.”
gentry13

On the author of “I Had a Blog Post Today”

“I don’t know the author–but sounds like he has a little bit of a martyr complex.” rags

“Well I know that author and he happens to be my husband. Passive-aggressive? No. Honest and insightful? Yes. Willing to challenge the establishment and look for new and better ways of loving people and being like Jesus in a lost world? Absolutely.”  Tracy  (Who is in no way biased because she sleeps with the author.)
Such a response.  And I didn’t even blog yesterday.

Turns out the passive-aggressive comment was intended as a compliment.  Which is a good thing, cause I can be passive-aggressive with the best of them.

But, I’m a little non-plussed about the martyr comment.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m not afraid of death, it’s the dying that scares the mess out of me.

Any other reviews?

(HT: Aaron Monts, who linked to yesterday’s non-blog)