Shalom Auslander, Foreskin’s Lament, 2007.

Reading this blog, you’d be forgiven this week if you think I pick what book to read next based on my compulsive listening to NPR’s This American Life. I first heard Auslander on an episode about the ten commandments. He described a period of his life when the rabbinical instructors at his Hebrew school yelled at him if he dared write his name on anything—from an atlas to a lunch bag: “Name of the Creator!” It’s a story both moving and sad; his voice, which sounds vaguely reminiscent of Eeyore, makes it impossible not to feel deep empathy for the mistreatment Shalom endured—and yet he tells the stories in a way that is funny, and wry. He happened to be on an episode of Tapestry the other weekend, so I placed a hold on his new book. I raced through it.

Foreskin’s Lament is a memoir about his relationship with God. He writes that his relationship with God “has been an endless cycle not of the celebrated ‘faith followed by doubt,’ but of appeasement followed by revolt; placation followed by indifference; please, please, please, followed by fuck it, fuck You, fuck off” (71). It was hearing that idea on Tapestry that made me want to read the book. Let me quote Auslander again, and try to explain what it is that I mean:

I do not keep Sabbath or pray three times a day or wait six hours between eating meat and milk. The people who raised me will say that I am not religious. They are mistaken. What I am not is observant. But I am painfully, cripplingly, incurably, miserably religious, and I have watched lately, dumb-founded and distraught, as around the world, more and more people seem to be finding Gods, each one more hateful and bloodthirsty than the next, as I’m doing my best to lose him. I’m failing miserably.
I believe in God.
It’s been a real problem for me. (71-72)

There are two things here which intrigue me. The first is that Auslander is not of the Sam Harris / Richard Dawkins school, suggesting that what’s wrong with the world is religion. He’s not convinced that religion won’t lead to the sort of abuse that he experienced, that Harris and Dawkins claim is normative and rail against. Rather, Auslander is quite clear: what’s wrong is how faith has been lived out. Maybe there’s a better way to live it, though likely not. So how do you survive with it? Secondly, there’s an intriguing notion, better described elsewhere when his wife Orli offers a felicitous description of an infelicitous upbringing: Auslander was theologically abused, by parents, teachers, and his societal group as a whole. Without suggesting any sort of equivalence, this latter idea made me wonder about people who have been brought up within a faith tradition and have fled it. Do they do so only because they perceive no relevancy, no connection? Or is there something else, some trauma or injustice, something which has driven them away? And in this latter case, what is the appropriate response of the faith community? Saying “It wasn’t us” or “That’s not who we are now” isn’t any more satisfying than saying “We’re sorry you went through that” to the injured. What is the justice making response, if any?

Reading Auslander, I’m left with more questions than answers. I don’t have a response to his writing that feels in any way adequate. I am genuinely sorry that he has such a tortured relationship with God, and that he had such an upbringing that has left him in this state. He’s very clear in his writing that what he experienced is not Judaism; and yet he’s far from sure that any faith--even one that turns again and again to the Shema--can escape such perversions. I was amused and engaged as I read his book; I felt drawn in, and present to his stories.

Ultimately, I’m left with something he said in the Tapestry interview. Tragedy, he argued, is the human response to the events of our lives: abject dejection, a sense that no good is entirely possible, that we’re too trapped by fate. Humour, in contrast, is God’s perspective: the way of looking back over events and seeing that there’s more than pain and suffering. It’s an interesting way of thinking about the two modes, and as Auslander plays with this idea, he privileges comedy in a way I’ve not encountered before.

It’s a book well worth a read; I hope it will leave you with more questions than answers, just as it left me.

Jessica Cutler, The Washingtonienne, 2005.

At times, what I read depresses me. I read this because... because I was reading Wonkette two summers ago? And thus read the blog on which this was based? Really, I have no defence.

It's crap. Absolute, mindless crap that doesn't even rate me calling it pulp. The book is poorly written and plotted; it's a thinly re-worked version of Cutler's blog detailing her paramours/method for paying rent via... what is essentially prostitution. Lots of dirty sex, lots of drug use, more alcohol than I've read about. Well, no, not really. But it's poorly written. Stick with the blog: it's shorter. Save yourself the time. If you want to read about sex, find some decent erotica. If you want to read about drugs, go read some Brett Easton Ellis. But save yourself the hour it would take to read this dreck.

What truly baffles me is the prose that claims to be taking a step back and reflecting, and yet at the same time is so clearly self-involved and narcissistic that any decent editor should have made some effort to get Cutler to rewrite long segments. Oi with the poodles already. Find something decent to read, self.

Bishop John Shelby Spong, Living in Sin: A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality, 1988.

I can't remember if I looked at this book before, or not. Reading it, it seems to me to be far from controversial, far from overly challening. In fact, seventeen or so years after it was published, it almost reflects the status quo--or will, as soon as we start blessing same-sex marriages in the Anglican church. In short, while it reflects on an argument, and was at the time of its publication quite challenging, the book is more saddening than anything else--saddening that, as a church, we've made so little progress in almost twenty years.

Spong zips along through a history of marriage in the church, carefully goes through the biblical arguments about sexuality (and goes through the two major approaches to sexuality), and then makes three proposals: institute "betrothal", or a recognition of a meaningful relationship between two people that occurs prior to marriage but that can include a sexual component; allow the blessing of same-sex unions; and recognise that post-married people still are sexual beings, and that we shouldn't limit their options, either.

Throughout the book, he stays within one view that he's always maintained: sex can exist in both good and bad forms in human life, and that it's the church's job to celebrate what is good and work against that which is destructive and dangerous. It's not a riveting book; nowadays, just reading the Statement of Koinonia covers the basic outlines of his argument. It does, however, provide a decent introduction to a subject that still seems to have far too much of the church's attention.

Mark Morton, The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex, 2003.

Morton is a prof at the University of Winnipeg, and is the language columnist for CBC's Definitely Not the Opera. Herb recommended this book to me back at the end of May, and I stuck in a hold request then. Apparently, it's a popular book.

It's an odd book, really. I love etymology--from the Greek ετυμον (one who discourses) + λογος (words) = thinking about words--so I placed the hold back then, disagreeing with Herb's assessment of a sexual theme. The book is wonderful at exposing the play of words, the way they emerge, adapt, are played with, and are loved. It's fun because Morton obviously loves paying attention to where words come from, and because this is an area of the language where there are a lot of words, even if many of them are of quite recent coinage.

Where the book is lacking is that it's hard to sit down and to read it; it's a book with which the reader is best off dipping into, and enjoying piecemeal. Morton does advocate reading it a chapter at a time, and one might even prefer to read smaller chunks. I found myself smiling and being amused both at the stories behind some words and by Morton's own linguistic exuberance and love of language; for these reasons alone, it's a worthwhile read. I'm not sure, though, that it's one for which I'd pay: for me, it's excellent use of the HPL hold system.

Chris Gudgeon, The Naked Truth: the Untold Story of Sex in Canada, 2003.

It helps to have a good idea of what you're getting into when you open a book. Moreover, it helps to understand just what your expectations are.

Gudegon's book is aimed at a wide audience, and received quite good promotion, for a Canadian book--sex does sell, after all--and so I shouldn't have expected, as I did, a deep, academic survey of the history of the perception of sex in Canada. Yet, for a popular book hoping to attract a large audience, Gudgeon's book does quite well.

His book works through topics like public nudity, strippers, the status of women (especially in relation to sexual mores), swingers, porn, homosexuality, censorship, and legislation aimed at all of these and other aspects of sexual behaviours and identities. What bothers me most about the way he does look at these topics is how poorly organised the book is--it skips from topic to topic, and I didn't get a good sense of where his argument is going--and frequently I didn't feel sure that I understood how it had been developing.

His argument, though far from startlingly original, is quite intriguing. He believes that Canadian society has always suffered from what Gudgeon terms "neurotica": that we as a society have always struggled with a unique inability to cope with representations and discussions of sex. We are, he argues ambivalent toward sex despite "the frozen north... [being] flaming hot." Our laws are confusing about most issues relating to sex: particularly so about the legal status of stripping and prostitution. We hem and we haw and we react oddly, and eventually become a bit more open, but deep-seated confusion remains.

All of what Gudgeon has to say is interesting. He writes clearly and engagingly. What is perhaps most disconcerting is his understandable attempt to be funny in dealing with his subject matter: sidebars like "St. Augustine's Top Five Pick-up Lines" and "Releasing Your Inner Cougar" seem like something one should expect in a trite magazine, and serve only to lighten the treatment. They're not needed.

All in all, it's a neat book, even though I think it has some serious flaws. Its examination of censorship, and the not-great/not-awful nature of R. v. Butler case [about pornographic/obscene materials] is quite well done indeed.

I did enjoy reading the book, but it's not one that I think I'd give anyone as a present. It's more of a fun and interesting divertissement.