From an interview with Harold Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind and other (Thanks, Melissa) works of literary and cultural criticism:

IL: Do you have any relationship with God, be it intimate or not?

HB: A Christian has to believe that something is so, that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God, a Muslim is asked to submit to the law of Yahwah – and the submision is the actual translation of the Arabic “Islam” – a Jew is not asked to believe that something is so and neither is he asked to submit to anything. He is asked to trust in the covenants between Yahwah and his people. Since it does not seem to me that Yahwah, historically speaking, has trusted in the covenant or observed the terms of the covenant – otherwise how could there have been Auschwitz? How could there be schizophrenia? How could there be cancer? – I do not accept. Oh, dear child, it is very complicated, I am in a difficult situation – I do not trust in the covenants, and I believe that Yahwah is in exile, that he has deserted us. On the other hand, the Kabbalah seems to me the truth. . . .

. . . my interests are far from what would be called religious, or rather I do not distinguish them from what I find in Shakespeare. So I find your question about my relationship with God almost imposible to answer. It’s like with that question about the Hamlet book: I feel that my consciousness breaks and I cannot get past a certain point. So I can just wave at you some quotes. For instance, if you, my dear, would cling to me in desperation and plead: “Is there really no hope at all?” I could cheer you up: Oh, yes, lots of hope – plenty of hope for God, just none for us.

He certainly is in a ” a very difficult situation.” And I don’t think “waving some quotes” is going to help him or anyone else. Say a prayer for Mr. Bloom; he sounds like a good man (in spite of his misguided political views).

The Year of the Warrior starts out with what I think is an unfortunate cover. The cover art implies swords, sorcery, rape and pillage, medieval Christianity bathed in a sort of lurid green background. The book is about swords, sorcery, rape and pillage, and medieval Christianity–but not lurid or salacious at all.

The central character is Aillil, an Irish student who ends up in Norway as a thrall, and who becomes a sort of fake-priest in order to save his own skin. The story is about how Aillil becomes a real follower of the White Christ and a true priest of The Beloved, as he also calls Christ. The path from slavery and hypocrisy to freedom and truth isn’t easy for Aillil.. He’s beset by doubts and Satanic tricks and dangers within and without. The book would appeal to action fans, plenty of battles and blood and gore. If anything, some of the chapters are a little too full of action for my tastes to the exclusion of quiet character development. However, the book’s true strength lies in the characters, Aillil and his Viking master Erling, and in the themes of violent change versus patient conversion, conservatism versus liberalism, truth versus seeming, and justice versus mercy.

I have a bad habit of always drawing comparisons when I read. “This author reminds me of that one. This book makes me think of some movie. This character or story line is like the character or plot of another novel.” Actually, it’s not such a bad habit as long as you who are reading my reviews remember that I’m not saying that any book or author is exactly like another or that one author is imitating another, just that they are similar in some way.

So, Lars Walker’s book The Year of the Warrior reminds me of Stephen Lawhead’s books. They both write a combination of historical fiction and fantasy, heavy on both the magic and the history, with Christian themes. There now, I’ve got that comparison out of my system, and you can decide, if you like Lawhead’s books, to give The Year of the Warrior a try. And if you don’t like Lawhead or you’re not familiar with his writing, you should still read Mr. Walker‘s book because I say so. I’ve been reading Lars Walker’s blog posts at Brandywine Books for quite some time, and his writing there made me want to see what his fiction would be like. I have another book of his, Blood and Judgement, and I’m anxious to start on it. I think I’ll recommend The Year of the Warrior to Computer Guru Son–who likes Stephen Lawhead by the way.

“Torey Hayden is an educational psychologist and former special education teacher who, since 1979, has chronicled her struggles in the classroom in a succession of bestselling books.” From the book jacket.

I guess I’ve read all of Torey Hayden’s “bestselling books.’ I just finished Twilight Children about three intertwined lives that Ms. Hayden touched while working in a hospital’s mental ward. I don’t know why I’m so interested in reading about seriously disturbed and usually abused children; I don’t think it’s voyeuristic. There’s something in reading about the fringes of society, the edges of sanity, that makes me think about what normality really means and causes me to try to puzzle out God’s purpose in allowing such evil things to happen to children. Ms. Hayden’s attitude in the books is usually some variation of: “This happened. It shouldn’t have, but now we’ll have to deal with it.”

And she’s not all starry-eyed about the children themselves. Some of them, because of the abusive examples they’ve had and because of their own twisted sin natures, are very difficult to like and to teach. However, Ms. Hayden finds something to reach out to, something to love, in even the most unlovely child. There’s something God-like in Hayden’s dedication to teaching the rejects, the children everyone else has given up on. Aren’t we all unlovely children, damaged by the sins of our parents and our parents’ parents, and far from the grace of God? And He spends an entire lifetime working to convince us that He’s on our side, that if we will cooperate and listen and trust enough to obey, He will transform us from within and make us miraculously fit for heaven.

Torey Hayden’s books don’t draw any of those lessons from her work with disturbed and abused children. I don’t think Ms. Hayden is a Christian. Nevertheless, in His common grace, God has gifted her to display a small bit of who He is and how He loves us.
WARNING: These books and others by Torey Hayden deal explicitly with child abuse and its horrendous aftermath and with destructive lifestyle choices made by many of the adults in the books. Not for the faint of heart or mind.

Two critics from Time magazine have made a list of the “100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.” I counted, and of the 100, I’ve read fifteen. Another four or five I started and never finished. Two of the books are on The List, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

One of the fifteen I’ve read is Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret. I read it over thirty years ago, but I still feel qualified to say that the book probably hasn’t improved with time. In fact, I read the book when I was member of the group of adolescent and pre-teen girls that formed its primary audience, and I wasn’t impressed then. So now this book about a 12 year old girl who talks to God about when she’s going to reach puberty is one of the best English-language novels of the twentieth century?

Either someone was out to lunch when that one slipped in, or there’s something I don’t know about literature or Judy Blume or both. So read the list. Which books that you have read would you subtract from the list? What books would you put in the place of those removed? I’m working on my list of the 100 best fiction books of all time, and I can promise you that nothing by Judy Blume appears on the list. As for Time’s list, I would suggest, instead of Judy Blume, Dorothy Sayers–if her books were published after 1923–and if not, how about Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton or Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns or anything by P.D. James or Hawaii by James Michener or if you want YA fiction, Homecoming by Cynthia Voight? Any of those plus half a hundred others could beat Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret hands down.

More questions about Time’s list. Which of those you’ve read would you recommend and why? I think everyone should read Tolkien and Lewis, of course. And I remember important things from both Animal Farm and 1984 even though I read them many years ago. The Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and An American Tragedy are all good books, too, and deserving of your time if you’ve never read them. I like Gone with the Wind, although I’ve heard it denigrated. Oh, and I remember Thornton WIlder’s Bridge of San Luis Rey very fondly, and I think it brings up important questions for Christians to ponder. (You were wondering which ones I had read, weren’t you? That makes ten if anyone’s counting. The other five are: The Great Gatsby, The Son Also Rises, I., Claudius, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Big Sleep. I might have read The Grapes of Wrath or The Assistant; I can’t remember.)

Jollyblogger posts C.S. Lewis’s Introduction to Athanasius on the Incarnation.

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

This relates to my post last week on what characteristics make a book a classic. I said, and C.S. Lewis would agree with me, probably because I unconsciously stole the idea from him:

So insofar as we can recognize and appreciate Truth, we can evaluate literature and perhaps foresee what will stand the test of time. Insofar as we are blinded and have our own pet truths that do not line up with Real Truth, we will praise the poorly written potboiler and scorn the book that reveals our own inadequacies.

So what OLD books (100 years +) have you read lately? I must admit I haven’t really read anything that old lately. Engineer Husband and I are reading Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Genesis, a few paragraphs each night. Oh, and I’m reading Milton for my British Literature class. Does that count?

Go here to read Athanasius on the Incarnation in its entirety, including the introduction by Lewis, courtesty of Phil Johnson of Pyromaniac. The Pyromaniac himself is out setting fires somewhere and plans to be back in a week or two. But Athanasius is older anyway.