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Letters of Charles Hamilton Sorley

Jun25

Charles Hamilton Sorley was a British soldier in the first part of World War I. He had been a student in Germany before the war and had some admiration for the German spirit and Kultur. He was killed in action at the battle of Loos on October 13, 1915. His father gathered and published Sorley’s collected letters after the war. I read excerpts from that collection in The Penguin Book of First World War Prose.

“Germany must be crushed for her wicked and selfish aspiration to be mistress of the world but the country that, when mistress of the world, failed to set her an example of unworldliness and renunciation should take to herself half the blame of the blood expended in the crushing.”

The country that failed is Britain, of course.

“I have had a conventional education: Oxford would have corked it. But this has freed the spirit, glory be. Give me The Odyssey, and I return the New Testament to store. Physically as well as spiritually, give me the road.”

“I shall march hotly to the firing line, by turns critic, actor, hero, coward, and soldier of fortune: perhaps even for a moment Christian, humble, with ‘Thy will be done’. Then shock, combustion, the emergence of one of these: death or life: and then return to the old rigamarole.”

The Germany Mr. Sorley writes about, confident in her moral and cultural superiority, sounds a lot like the United States in the twenty-first century. The German intent was to export the strength and courage and efficiency of the Germans (Prussians) to the rest of the benighted and deprived world. And if this mission must be done militarily, then so be it. Are we caught up in the same error? Or have we learned from the First and Second World War that cultures and mores, no matter how superior, can only be exported by persuasion and propaganda, never by force?

What Is the What by Dave Eggers

Apr17

The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. Fictionalized biography—or autobiography or memoir brings up the question of whether any memoir or autobiography is strictly nonfiction. Our memories, as other books I’ve read lately have pointed out, are notoriously unreliable. Any attempt at memoir is liable to be “filled in” with a little fiction. Author Dave Eggers and the subject of this book, Valentino Achak Deng, chose to call What Is the What a work of fiction, since Mr. Deng could not vouch for the exact accuracy of all of his memories of specific conversations and incidents, some of which happened when he was quite young. However, Mr. Deng says that the major events in the story are true and historically accurate.

That said, I learned quite a lot about the civil war in Sudan and the “Lost Boys” from reading this book. Valentino is a real person, and he asked Mr. Eggers to help him tell his story.

What Is the What is the soulful account of my life: from the time I was separated from my family in Marial Bai to the thirteen years I spent in Ethiopian and Kenyan refugee camps, to my encounter with vibrant Western cultures beginning in Atlanta, to the generosity and the challenges that I encountered elsewhere.

As you read this book, you will learn about me and my beloved people of Sudan. I was just a young boy when the twenty-two-year civil war began that pitted Sudan’s government against the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. As a helpless human, I survived by trekking across many punishing landscapes while being bombed by Sudanese air forces, while dodging land mines, while being preyed upon by wild beasts and human killers. I fed on unknown fruits, vegetables, leaves and sometimes went with nothing for days. At many points, the difficulty was unbearable. I thought the whole world had turned blind eyes on the fate that was befalling me and the people of southern Sudan. Many of my friends, and thousands of my fellow countrymen, did not make it. May God give them eternal peace.

“Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. … I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. … I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

The story of Valentino Achak Deng’s adventures and misadventures in Sudan, Kenya, and the U.S.A. is “soulful” and insistent and absorbing. Mr. Deng speaks in the book quite honestly about the temptation to embellish and exaggerate the already harrowing experiences he and the other “Lost Boys” went through for the sake of a Western audience, about the jealousies and immature behaviors that some of the Lost Boys exhibit, and the difficulties that they have in making a new life for themselves in the United States. The book is as much about survival and what it takes to endure such trauma as it is about Valentino Achak Deng’s specific experience. As such, it is valuable reading for anyone who is suffering, or who expects to suffer, injustice, categories that include all of us.

The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation.

The Devil in Pew Number Seven by Rebecca Nichols Alonzo

Feb10

I am in a quandary. I don’t want to discourage anyone form reading this memoir, a true story that carries a wonderful message about the necessity of forgiveness, even in the direst of circumstances.

However, to be honest, the book could have been edited down to about half or three-fourths of its almost 300 pages and not have lost a thing. If you’re a good skimmer, you’ll really appreciate this story of a pastor and his family terrorized and very nearly destroyed by a man who acts like the devil incarnate. In 1969, Robert Nichols moved with his family to Sellerstown, North Carolina to serve as pastor of the Free Welcome Holiness Church. As the name of the church indicated, the Nichols family was welcomed by the community, except for one man, Mr. Horry James Watts, who lived across the street from the parsonage and occupied pew number seven in the Free Welcome Church every Sunday morning. The violence and harrassment began with threatening phone calls and escalated until . . . No spoilers here.

The amazing thing about the story is the ending. Could you forgive a man who threatened to make you family leave the community where you lived “crawling or walking, dead or alive?” The sction near the end of the book on forgiveness is worth the price of the book because the author speaks from hard-earned experience.

“If I allow myself to go down the pathway of rage and retaliation, several things happen, and none of them are good. Here are my top four:
My sins will not be forgiven by God if I refuse to forgive those who have sinned against me.
I miss an opportunity to show God’s love to an unforgiving world.
I’m the one who remains in jail when I withhold God’s grace by failing to forgive.
If I have trouble forgiving, it might be because I’m actually angry at God, not at the person who wronged me.”

So, I’m recommending this book with the caveat that you’re not to expect deathless prose, just a riveting and inspiring story of nitty-gritty forgiveness and even joy in very difficult circumstances.

Since I’m Planning to Read about Africa

Dec25

I found this article, How To Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina, at the website of a magazine called Granta. A few of Mr. Wainaina’s many rules for writing about Africa:

1. Always use the word “Africa” or “Darkness” or “Safari” in your title.
2. Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat.
3. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life–but empty inside.
4. Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the “real Africa”, and you want that on your dust jacket.
5. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people’s property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant.
6. Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances.

Read the article, especially if you’re planning a book about Africa. Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan author and journalist who follows his own rules exactly I’m sure. He wrote How To Write About Africa in 2003 (but it’s new to me). One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir by Binyavnaga Wainana was published in 2011.

Book Reviews at Breakpoint

Dec20

I have two book reviews up at BreakPoint, Chuck Colson’s Christian worldview ministry website:

False Gospel: A Review of Hilary Jordan’s When She Woke.

The Problem With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson.

You can read the reviews there, but the bottom line is that I found significant issues with both books.

Gina Dalfonzo also has a more positive review of Alice Ozma’s The Reading Promise, a book I read but never finished reviewing for this blog. My nascent thoughts on The Reading Promise:

The book isn’t so much about reading and books as it is a tribute to a single father who found a way to connect with his daughter and give her a childhood full of treasured memories. The Reading Promise, or the Streak, as Alice and her called it, is just the framework for those memories and a discipline that brings the dedication of Alice’s dad, Jim Brozina, into focus for Alice and for her readers as she recalls her childhood and adolescence.

“When Alice was in fourth grade, she and her father–a beloved elementary school librarian–made a promise to read aloud together for 100 consecutive nights.” When they reached that goal, they didn’t want to stop, and so they began what was affectionately called The Streak, a reading promise and regimen that lasted until Alice went away to college about eight years later.

The book has an introduction by Jim Brozina with advice about how to start your own reading streak:

“If you want to start your own reading streak, you should begin by taking your child to your local public library, where the two of you can look through the stacks for books that would fit your reading desires. When either of you find something, show it to the other. Let your child overrule your choices if he or she chooses, but be hesitant about rejecting those your child is excited about. . . When you have accumulated as many books as will serve your purposes for now, check them out and take them home. Your child will be hopping with excitement as he or she anticipates the many good nights of reading ahead.”

Each of the chapters of the book itself is an essay covering various aspects of the reading experience and of the father/daughter relationship. Miss Ozma, a self-confessed “nerdy kid”, writes about reading together after father and daughter have had an argument, helping her father go on his first post-divorce date, buying a prom dress with your dad, living really frugally on a librarian’s income, and dealing with the death of a Franklin the Fish —all illuminated and accompanied by literature.

Christmas in Washington State, 1927

Dec16

I put up my Christmas tree during the last week of November, just to get the feel and smell of November out of the house. Bob warned me that it would dry out and the needles would fall off before Christmas but I laughed. Not only did I think the drying out improbable but it seemed more likely that it would flourish and give birth to little Christmas trees in the moist atmosphere of the house.

I never tired of admiring and loving our little Christmas trees. When we cleared the back fields, Bob let me keep about ten of the prettiest trees for future Christmas trees. The loveliest of all we sent home to the family but the one I chose for our first Christmas was a dear, fat little lady with her full green skirts hiding her feet and all of her branches tipped with cones.

The Egg and I by Betty Macdonald is a memoir of the years in the late 1920’s that Ms. Macdonald and her first husband, Bob Heskett, spent running a small chicken farm near Chimacum, Washington. The Egg and I was Macdonald’s first book, published in 1945, and she went on to write several more volumes of memoir and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books for children.

I can see from the book why the divorce ensued. Ms. Macdonald begins her story with a quotation from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew: “Such duty as the subject owes the prince, even such a woman oweth to her husband.” Macdonald says she went into marriage with this sort of dutiful attitude, along with adherence to her mother’s advice “that it is a wife’s bounden duty to see that her husband is happy in his work.”

“Too many potentially great men are eating their hearts out in dull jobs because of selfish wives,” quoth Mom, and Betty listened and found herself supporting Bob in his dream of owning a chicken farm. With no electricity. No indoor plumbing. No radio. No telephone. Bats hanging in the cellar and flying into the house. Dropping boards and chicken lice. Days that began at 4 AM and ended at midnight or thereafter. Homicidal chickens. Bears and cougars. Ma and Pa Kettle as neighbors. Babies with “fits”.

And Indians. Ms. Macdonald has been criticized for her attitude toward Native Americans in this book (and perhaps others/), and her blatant prejudice against her Indian neighbors is rather jarring and unpleasant. After describing a horrific Indian social event on the beach that she and her husband attended, a beach party that included domestic violence, drunkenness, child abuse and near-rape, Macdonald says simply, “I didn’t like Indians, and the more I saw of them the more I thought what an excellent thing it was to take that beautiful country away from them.” Had Macdonald been content to say that she didn’t like the Indians she met or that she was appalled by the events at the party, her attitude would have been more understandable. However, to indict an entire group of people for the actions of a few is, well it’s what we nowadays call racism.

Aside from this major flaw, The Egg and I is funny. And Betty Macdonald had a way with words. Some examples, chosen almost at random:

“Farmers’ wives who had the strength, endurance and energy of locomotives and the appetites of dinosaurs were, according to them, so delicate that if you accidentally brushed against them they would turn brown like gardenias.”

“The parlor was clean and neat. . . I was amazed considering the fifteen children and the appearance of the rest of the house. But when I watched Maw come out of the bathroom, firmly shut the door, go over and pull down the fringed shades clear to the bottom, test the bolt on the door that led to the front hallway and finally shut and lock the door after us as we went into the kitchen, I knew. The parlor was never used. It was the clean white handkerchief in the breastpocket of the house.”

“Not me!” I screamed as he told me to put the chokers on the fir trees and to shout directions for the pulling as he drove the team when we cleared out the orchard. “Yes, you! I’m sure you’re not competent but you’re the best help I can get at present,” and Bob laughed callously.

Bob’s attitude in that last quote from the book, repeated frequently throughout, is probably the reason that Betty left him in 1931 and returned to Seattle, civilization, and eventually a new husband, Mr. Macdonald, who presumably appreciated her desire to support him in his work and returned the favor.

Ma and Pa Kettle, a composite picture of Betty’s neighbors on the Olympic Pennisula, went on to fame in several movies and a TV series in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. One of those neighbors, the Bishop family, sued Betty Macdonald and her publisher for subjecting them to ridicule and humiliation as the prototypes for Maw and Paw in her book. The court decided in favor of Macdonald and publisher Lippincott, probably because the Bishops had been appearing on stage as “the Kettles” to profit from their new-found notoriety.

Unplanned by Abby Johnson

Nov3

Unplanned: The dramatic true story of a former Planned Parenthood leader’s eye-opening journey across the life line by Abby Johnson with Cindy Lambert.

Abby Johnson was the director of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas (home of Texas A&M and the Texas Aggies). She was committed to her work with Planned Parenthood because she truly believed that the services they provided helped women in crisis and had the long-term effect of making abortion less common by decreasing the incidence of unwanted pregnancies. She was idealistic, hard-working, and somewhat naive.

Then, in September 2009, Abby was called into an exam room at the Planned Prenthood clinic to help with an ultrasound-guided abortion. What she saw in the ultrasound picture changed her mind about abortion, about the pro-life movement, and ultimately about her own relationship with a loving God who loves Abby Johnson and the women who have abortions and the children who die in abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood every day.

One of the main things I got out of this book was not a change in my opinions about abortion; I know what I believe about the value of every human life. But I was so impressed by the loving persistence of the pro-life volunteers who loved and prayed for Abby Johnson for years before she finally saw the truth. I am so impatient. I have friends and family members who need to see God, who need to trust Jesus Christ, who need, and I have been praying for them and doing my best to love them as Christ loves me. But I am tired sometimes and discouraged. Will my loved ones ever see their needs and turn to a loving Saviour? How long, O Lord?

It took eight years for Abby Johnson to see the ugliness and greed behind her work at Planned Parenthood. Eight years. I have people I’ve been praying for only half that long, and it already feels like a lifetime. So, I learned from reading this book, something I already know: I can’t give up. Persistence, faith, love, and hope are gifts from the Holy Spirit indeed.

I am also moved to pray for Abby Johnson, whenever I think about her. It can’t be easy to have your life turned upside down, even when it’s God who does the turning.

My story is not neat and tidy, and it doesn’t come wrapped in easy answers. Oh, how we love to vilify our opponents—from both sides. How easy to assume that those on “our” side are right and wise and good; how those on “their” side are treacherous and foolish and deceptive. I have found right and good and wisdom on both sides. I have found foolishness and treachery and deception on both sides as well. I have experienced how good intentions can be warped into poor choices no matter what the side.

Don’t slam this book shut because of what I’ve just said. Read it for that very reason. Read it to understand the surprising hopes and motivations on the “other” side.~ Abby Johnson

Bring Me a Unicorn by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Oct23

Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928.

Before (and after) she was married to famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, daughter of the American ambassador to Mexico, kept a journal and wrote a plethora of letters. This book is the first of five volumes of collected letters and journal entries of Anne Morrow soon-to-be Lindbergh. The others are called: Hour of Gold Hour of Lead, Locked Rooms Open Doors, The Flower and the Nettle, and War Within and Without.

The Deputy Headmistress at The Common Room wrote about and recommended Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s journals here. I second her recommendation.

The journals and letters cover the romance of Anne and “Lindy” as a young Anne meets the famous aviator at a reception given by her ambassador father. Anne Morrow married Charles Lindbergh in a private ceremony at her family home in May, 1929. He then taught her to fly an airplane. She received a pilot’s license, and the two flew together in 1933 to China and Japan. In 1932, the Lindberghs’ infant son Charles was kidnapped and murdered. It was the sensational crime story of the decade. They had five other children subsequently: Jon, Land, Anne, Scott, and Reeve.

From Bring Me a Unicorn on her first meeting with Charles Lindbergh:

I saw standing against the great stone pillar — on more red plush — a tall, slim boy in evening dress — so much slimmer, so much taller, so much more poised than I expected. A very refined face, not at all like those grinning ‘Lindy’ pictures — a firm mouth, clear, straight blue eyes, fair hair, and nice color. Then I went down the line very confused and overwhelmed by it all. He did not smile — just bowed and shook hands.

I highly recommend the journals of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, all five volumes.

Apparent Danger to The Shooting Salvationist

Jul25

Odd. This book, Apparent Danger, about Fort Worth Baptist preacher J. Frank Norris, has apparently been re-published under a different title, The Shooting Salvationist, with more publicity. I read the book last year, and I thought it was quite good, good enough that I included it in my Top Eight Nonfiction Reads of 2010.

Everything old (2010) is new again. Does this sort of thing happen often, a book being re-published (maybe re-edited?) under a different title?