Miriam Toews, A Complicated Kindness.

Nomi Nickel lives with her Dad, Ray, in a Mennonite town somewhere in southern Manitoba. Nomi’s sister Tash left a space back, and after that, so did Nomi’s Mom, Trudie. A Complicated Kindness is the heartbreaking story of Nomi's "coming-of-age" without any of the trite sentimentality that normally accompanies such stories: she struggles to try to understand why her mother and her sister left, to figure out why her father keeps selling their furniture, to love her boyfriend, and she dreams of escaping—preferably to New York City.

The heartbreaking part is Nomi trying to make sense of the stifling nature of her small town, run by her uncle Hans—the leader of the church and hence of the local world as well. As she tells of the latest person to be excommunicated, and as she learns more about why her sister and mother left, the limiting fundamentalist strictures are harder and harder for Nomi to deal with.

Throughout it all—from the happiness that her boyfriend Travis occasionally offers, to the pathos of her Little Nell-like friend Lids, to the way she spins with her younger next door neighbour—Nomi is rendered by Toews’s deft hand as one of the most interesting and real teenagers I’ve ever encountered in a fictional world. Nomi’s first-person narration struck me as both wise beyond her years and yet eminently plausible as an interpretation of events by a sixteen-year-old. Toews’s commentary on the nature of a life circumscribed by fundamentalism is damning without ever being painful or overt: her light touch is just right. I got lost in this book: I might not want to live in East Village, but I enjoyed seeing it through Nomi’s eyes, even as I was saddened by it. I hope she meets Lou Reed one of these days.

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, 1958.

On the front of my copy of Doctor Zhivago, the catch-line is “One of the greatest love stories ever told.” This may well, in point of fact, be true. I don’t really care, though, and can’t say that I ever was all that interested in the passions that swept through the hearts of Yuri and Lara. Consider me a cold fish.

In the margins of page 412, I wrote that what “startles me so is that Lara seems plausible as a love interest only when Pasternak is describing Yuri writing about her. Here, as the two men who have loved her discuss her ‘special’-ness, while the writing is impressive, Lara’s worth doesn’t resonate.” What I like about Zhivago is what I like about Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, what I like about künstlerromans in general: an artistic need to consider the nature of the creative process, where art comes from, what it is to be an artist. I’m startled by the idea of the movie adaptation, and can’t imagine it being anything other than a love story, plain and simple, on the screen—and that seems to me to be an enormous loss from a book that is, to a large extent, a work of aesthetic philosophy.

The plot of the book, though, meanders so that I picked this book up and put it down far too often over the seemingly interminably many months in which I claimed to be reading it. Despite enjoying it, the book grated on me at times. Its pacing, its plotting, its tediousness were often frustrating. I remember reading someone describing reading Zhivago and starting to get cold from all the winter scenes; I never had that feeling of getting lost in it. The only time I came close was when I was camping, and reading beside a drop in the river: the roar of the water created one of the most pleasant juxtapositions of reading setting against the setting of what I was reading that I’ve ever encountered. It’s not a book that, while I read, I ever forgot that I was reading. I encountered moments of genius, and interesting ideas, and I’m glad that I did—but I don’t think I can echo the effusive praise on the dust jacket.

David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, 2004.

I'm a sucker for a well-told examination of a moment, a reflection recollected in tranquillity, a commonplace that offers or seems to offer some flickering moment of deeper understanding of the world. Sedaris' book is perfect for that, and I'm sure I'll be rushing off to get my hands on Me Talk Pretty One Day.

The stories in this collection are moments--some brief, some spanning a bit of time, all requiring some back story. Sedaris writes in such a way that the stories feel both spare in the economy of their words and rich in the opulence of the images that he depicts. His eye is exacting, unflinching, and honest in talking about himself and his family. There is a pathos to each story, each bit of misery and delight, and a delightful quirkiness to those things that grasp his attention.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is funny and well worth reading. I really enjoyed it.

Thornton Wilder, Our Town, 1938.

I spent the last couple of weeks re-watching My So-Called Life, one of my more favourite tv shows from high school. A story-arc near the end of the series revolved around a production of Our Town, a play that's constantly being referenced, and which I've never seen nor read.

So I grabbed the copy from my shelf that I've been meaning to read for some years now, and read it the other night.

The play feels trite. It's wobbly, and a product of another era that doesn't hold up to the ravages of time. Gee whittakers, we realise that it's important to be fully present at all times. That all moments of life are potentially great (The famous moment, of course, being when Emily asks the Stage Manager "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?" and he responds, "No. The saints and poets, maybe--they do some."). Treacle, all of it, and hard-pressed to hold anyone's attention.

James Hynes, Kings of Infinite Space, 2004.

Er. Um.
Well, this book is wacky. Ostensibly the story of Paul Trilby (a Ph.D. in English), exiled from academia into the cubicle world of the Texas Department of General Services, the book... is an odd fantasy that blends Trilby's Hamlet-like indecisiveness with a liberal borrowing/updating from The Island of Dr. Moreau. I'm still unsure of what to make of this book. While most of its reviews treat it as a satire of office-life, I don't buy that theory--or at least don't believe that it's a successful satire.

I'd recommend skipping this one. I'm told that his previous effort, The Lecturer's Tale is quite good; perhaps it's more worth my reading time.

George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man.

Another fun bit of Shaw. He asks us to think about our sense of social propriety, what it means to behave well, and behave properly toward others.

Much of the humour of the play comes from dramatic irony (yes, I'd imagine that you all know what it is, but I'm trying to have more outgoing links these days, so you can play more and explore other sites. Also, you can see if you want to argue with this page). The characters are clueless, offering them their charm.

In chatting with a friend from church the other day about what we'd been reading this summer, it occurred to me that I like Shaw because he's like Wilde with a point: the same acerbic, witty humour is there--but it's used to a far sharper satirical purpose. This statement is meant to diminish Wilde, at all.

I'm quite enjoying Shaw. I'm going to have to read several more of his plays.

Kathy Reichs, Monday Mourning.

Enjoyable pulp, nothing special.

I dislike the way Reichs can't manage suspense. Quit talking about it, just let it come. Do not, do not, do not at the end of a chapter write the line "Whenever I think back on that moment, I wish to God I'd done what Tawny was asking. I wish to God I'd listened and understood."

I'll put up with this crap, but only 'cause my brain needed a quick break from thinking.

<sigh>

George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan, 1923.

"O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?"

My first Shaw, and I got quite the kick out of this fun play. I'm still a little staggered by the depth and breadth of the stage directions; were someone to suggest to me that GBS would be a screenwriter in this day and age, I'd like as not agree, in this sate of mind.

While GBS suggested that Saint Joan was a play that did not treat Joan of Arc hagiographically, and while he's right that her human foibles are only too visible, it's still a play that challenges those encountering it to consider the nature of truth and of revelation. Despite the cynicism that is the Archbishop ("A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. They may seem very wonderful to those who perform them. That does not matter: if they confirm or create faith they are true miracles... Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle"), despite the villainies of Cauchon and Warwick's chaplain, despite the self-interest of Warwick and the Inquisitor, the fervour of Courcelles, there is a sweetness to this play, not just in Joan but in the feeble Dauphin and in Brother Martin Ladvenu. The characters reveal something about the human condition, and the play holds attention with its clever wit.

Fun.

JOAN:  I hear voices telling me what to do.  They come from God.
ROBERT:  They come from your imagination.
JOAN:  Of course.  That is how the messages of God come to us.

Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, 2000.

Paul recommended this book to me when we last chatted, and I'm quite glad indeed that he did so. Armstrong's history of the rise of fundamentalism across Judaism, Christianity and Islam is fascinating, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Armstrong's essential argument is that fundamentalism arises in response to modernity, and to the new challenges it presents to religion as it attempts to grow in the face of new knowledge and standards of reasoning. The problem with the experiments that are fundamentalism is they lose "sight of some of the most sacred values of the confessional faiths" from which they have evolved. Armstrong's theory is that this confusion occurs because of a disconnect of mythos and logos: "Fundamentalists have turned the mythos of their religion into logos, either by insisting that their dogmas are scientifically true, or by transforming their complex mythology into a streamlined ideology. They have thus conflated two complementary sources and styles of knowledge which the people in the premodern world had usually decided it was wise to keep separate" (366). That is, reason and mystery both have a place in faith, and reducing one into the other diminishes an experience of God. Or, as I'd put my own concern about fundamentalism, that it makes faith--something that's supposed to be complex and challenging--too simple, too reductionist. Armstrong's careful historical tracing of evidence of her thesis, from about 1470 to the present day, is well written and argued, and makes for a good read.

Now, rather than gush completely, I will take an issue with her book. She has a tendency to oversimplify that occasionally detracts from her argument, though it makes sense given the scope of her book. This book is one that should be read with either a decent knowledge of the development of one or more major religions and its sects and denomination, or followed by such a study. Otherwise, Paul was exactly right: this book is fascinating and informative, and rewards a careful reading.

Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, 2003.

It’s taken me too long to sit down and write this review. In part, that’s because I went away for a bit, on a canoe trip, and was busy beforehand organizing details & then busy afterward getting used to work again. Mostly, though, it’s because I’m ambivalent about this book: only the deadline of the book being due back at the library today has forced me to sit down for a few minutes.

I was introduced to Borg’s book back in February; the Archdeacon Bob Grigg spoke about it for his talk during our parish’s Lenten book study. At the time, I thought that, while the book sounded interesting enough, it didn’t rate rushing out to add it to my collection—principally because of how it seemed to be summarizing a number of ideas that I know fairly well. So I reserved it from the library, and just a few weeks ago, changed my hold status to active, and picked it up.

It summarizes a persuasive liberal reading of the Bible and of faith fairly well. The book doesn’t really build substantively on anything, or offer any new insights, though. My impression is that Borg has written a book that serves as an introduction, or as a starting point, for discussions/Christian Education sessions in parishes.

Borg’s essential argument is that Christianity today exists in two paradigms, with adherents falling into one or the other. There is the traditional paradigm—which he identifies with a literal reading of the bible, the school of the Left Behind novels, to which he refers so derisively and far too often—and the emerging paradigm that is more liberal and willing to accept metaphor as a basic tool for reading the Bible. He then elucidates what it means to be a Christian of the emerging paradigm.

My first major issue is with the idea that the traditional paradigm is in any way traditional, and not an approach to Christianity that started to gain its force within the last two hundred years; similarly, the emerging paradigm is hardly new—look at the authors of Essays and Reviews, the higher criticism, or, I don’t know, say, St. Augustine’s four-fold levels of exegesis (literal, tropological, allegorical, and anagogical)?

Borg doesn’t even contrast the two views especially well: the book is a defence of the emerging paradigm, and snide asides and attacks on the traditional method without ever acknowledging limitations in the emerging paradigm concern me: while I’m pretty much right there agreeing with him, I reject the idea that other approaches to faith have nothing to offer the growth of my own faith.

What he does, in the end, is to offer an explication for his own personal faith, and supports and defends most of his own positions relatively well—certainly well enough for an introductory text, if these ideas are new to a discussion/class-group.

My other major issue is with the writing; it feels sloppy throughout. There are a number of issues that better copy-reading and editing should have addressed, but most of my issues are with the never-ending stream of colloquialisms and just plain wacky constructions. While I understand the desire to write a readable and readily-accessible text that sounds much like conversation, such a text can be achieved without these distressing features.

So. Having written far more for this entry than I meant to, my summary? Read three books by Northrop Frye, and you’ll be in far, far better shape (and know far, far more than Borg will teach you): The Great Code, Words with Power, and The Double Vision. If you’re looking for a book to teach from, they’d still be better, but this is decent for a church setting.