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Bastille Day

Jul14

Do French people wish each other a Joyeaux Bastille Day? I don’t know, but today is that day, the day that Parisian citizens stormed the Bastille, a prison and a fortress, captured the weapons stored there, and began the French Revolution. Ever since a few days before the Fourth of July, I have been reading several books that illuminate the French/American connection and the revolutions that made those two countries what they are today.

1. Great Improvisations: Franklin, France, and Birth of America by Stacy Schiff. I’m still not through with this one. Although it won a Pulkitzer Prize, I find the level of detail in this book a little more than I can take except in small doses. Still, it’s fascinating to see how human Benjamin Franklin and the other American revolutionaries were, how it was only by God’s grace that we were able to gain our independence from England. It was just as touch and go as Iraq is today. We could easily have been forced to make peace with the British on their terms–or been forced into an unfavorable alliance with France that made us practically French vassals. Although Schiff never mentions the hand of God in all the diplomacy that Franklin and John Adams carried on in France, I see it clearly. The founding of this country truly was a miracle, due to God’s mercy and the prayers of many Christians who lived in the colonies at the time. I do not believe in the demonstrably false idea that all our Founding Fathers were Christians (Franklin was certainly unorthodox, to say the least), but many were committed Christians and praying men.

2. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. Sabatini tells a good story set during the French Revolution; it reminds me of Star Wars, the “Luke, I am your father” motif. Why are young adventurers in swashbucklers always looking for their missing fathers?

3. The Glorious Cause: A Novel of the American Revolution by Jeff Shaara. I’m starting this one tonight. It’s fiction that covers the same time period as Great Improvisations.

Born July 12

Jul12

Johanna Spyri was born July 12, 1827 at Hirzel, Switzerland. She wrote the children’s classic, Heidi. Does anyone else remember reading Heidi Grows Up and Heidi’s Children, sequels to Heidi? I read both sequels as a child, and I remember that Heidi marries Peter the goatherd and that they have twins. I think there was some kind of mystery associated with Heidi’s ancestry, too, and something hidden under some tiles on the floor. I’d enjoy reading all three books again, just to see if they’re as good as I thought they were.

Other birthdays today:

Henry David Thoreau, b. 1817.

Bill Cosby, b. 1938. “In dealing with kids, no matter how little we understand their explanations, we must always remember that we’re the adults. What this means I have no idea. It certainly means nothing to the kids, who instinctively seem to know that adults are merely strange people who have dopey ideas like “Stop throwing peas at your sister.”

Pablo Neruda, b. 1904. Chilean poet whose real name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Il Postino, an Italian movie that won a couple of Oscars in 1996, features the story of a postman who learns to appreciate poetry while delivering the mail to Pablo Neruda’s country home. Unfortunately, both the real Pablo Neruda and the fictional postman in the movie ended up embracing Communism as a cure for all the world’s problems.

The State of Christian Fiction

Jul7

Phil who blogs at Brandywine Books and at Collected Miscellany sent me an email asking my opinion about Christian fiction in general and Levi’s Will by Dale Cramer in particular. Phil said I should post my reply, and since it’s the only coherent snippet of writing I’ve been able to do in the last couple of days, I will.

Yes, it’s (Levi’s Will) definitely Christian fiction. I don’t think a secular publisher would have published it, but I don’t know that much about the publishing world. I could be mistaken.

I do think Levi’s Will “breaks the mold” to some extent. First of all, it’s a male-centered book without being sci-fi or thriller. The female characters in the book are not well-developed and are not the focus of the book. It’s also Christ-centered without being preachy. It has different kinds of Christians with different understandings of their faith, including a rather legalistic father, a friend who doesn’t attend church but knows and lives the gospel nevertheless, and the main character who lives a life of lies and comes to see how destructive that kind of life can be.

I’ve read three good books so far this year that I would consider “Christian fiction” in the sense that they focus on characters who are struggling to live out some sort of orthodox Christian faith in a fallen world. One was Levi’s WIll; the other two were Peace Like a River by Leif Enger and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. The publication of the the latter two by secular mainstream publishers (and the Pulitzer Prize for Gilead) indicates to me that those publishers are open to Christian themes and characters in well-written books.

Oh, I forgot Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo. I don’t think a Christian publisher or imprint would have anything to do with that book, but it’s definitely exploring Christian ideals and how those ideals become compromised.

I did read a couple of other fiction books published by Christian publishers this year, and I do know exactly what the complaint is. The plots are thin and kind of boring, and the Christian characters are too good to be true–and too preachy to be very likeable. Or some of the novels are poor imitations of books and genres that were/are popular in the secular world.

The List

Jul6

The List of books I want to read has grown at an alarming rate. Here’s the list from the beginning of this year, with additions; the ones in bold print or with links are the ones I’ve actually read so far. I also graded them. I’m rather stingy with the A’s.

84 Charing Cross Road–Hanff
A Mango-Shaped Space–Mass
Acts of Faith–Caputo A-
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn–Twain
After the Ball–Beard
Airborn–Oppel B+
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Grace–Norris
Another Place at the Table–Harrison
Armey’s Axioms–Armey
Bad Ground by W. Dale Cramer B
Balkan Trilogy–Manning C-
Behind the Burqa–Yasgur
Beyond Stateliest Marble: The Passionate Femininity of Anne Bradstreet by Douglas Wilson C
Beyond the Summerland–Graham.
Black as Night–Doman
Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that’s Changing Your World–Hewitt B-
Book of Seven Truths–Miller
Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity–Gold
Canterbury Papers–Healey
Captains from Castile–Shellabarger
Case Histories–Atkinson C
Chamomile Mourning–Childs C-
Chasing Hepburn–Lee
Children of Men–PD James A-
Christianity for Modern Pagans–Kreeft
Cold Mountain–Frazier
Covenant Child–Blackstock
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night–Haddon
Cut and Run–Pearson C+
Disappearing Duke–Freeman-Keel
Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It by Phillip Longman
Enna Burning–Hale
Eragon–Paolini B+
Erling’s World–Walker
Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy–Mathewes-Green A
Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future by Ben J. Wattenberg
Flame Tree–Lewis B+
Game of Kings–Dunnett
Gilead–Robinson A
Girl Meets God–Winner
Glimpses of Truth–Cavanaugh
God I Love by Joni Eareckson Tada B+
The Goose Girl–Hale B+
The Great Gatsby–Fitzgerald
Great Improvisation–Schiff
Growing Pains: Diaries and Drawings from the Years 1908-1917–Gag
Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age–Schultz
Heartbreaker–Garwood
Home Fires Burning–Stokes
Home Invasion–Hagelin
Housekeeping–Robinson
The Idiot-Dostoevsky
Improbable–Fawer B+
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies–McCall Smith A-
Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children–Paterson B
Ireland–Delaney
John Halifax, Gentleman–Dinah Mulock Craik
Jonathan Edwards, A New Biography–Murray
Kalahari Typing School for Men–McCall Smith A
The Keeper’s Son–Hickam C
The Kite Runner–Hosseini A
Kitty, My Rib–Mall
Kristen Lavransdatter–Undset
Lamb in Love–Brown
Last Storyteller–Noble
Levi’s Will–Cramer B+
Lord Vanity–Shellabarger
Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum Peril and Romance–Jocelyn
Mad Mary Lamb–Hitchcock
Magnus–Brouwer
Mark of the Lion Trilogy–Rivers
Maul and the Pear Tree-P.D. James
Michaelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling–King
Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen–Leithart
Miss Marjoribanks–Margaret Oliphant
Monkeywrench–Tracy
Mystic Rose–Lawhead
Nectar in a Sieve–Markandaya A-
Never Let Me Go–Ishiguro
New Way to Be Human–Peacock
Nightbringer-Huggins
No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.-McCall Smith A
Oceans Apart by Karen Kingsbury C+
Once Upon a Marigold–Jean Ferris B
Ordeal by Innocence–Christie
Paris to the Moon–Gopnik
Peace Like a River–Enger A
Plain Truth–Picoult
Please Stop Laughing At Me–Blanco
Power of the Powerless–De Vinck
The Princess Academy–Hale
Prophetic Untimeliness–Guinness
Rating the First Ladies–Johnson
Riding the Bus with my Sister–Simon B+
Right Turns–Medved B
Sacred Way–Jones
Safely Home–Alcorn
Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter–Cahill
Scaramouche–Sabatini
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrandt A
Sea of Trolls–Farmer B
Secret Radio–Massi
Shackleton’s Stowaway–McKernan
Shadow of the Bear–Doman
Shadowmancer by G.P. Taylor B
Silent Speaker–Stout B+
Strangers on a Train–Highsmith
Switherby Pilgrims–Spence
Tathea–Perry.
Tears of the Giraffe–McCall Smith A-
Tenant of Wildfell Hall–Ann Bronte
Testimonies–O’Brian B
The Eight–Neville
The Singer–Calvin Miller
Thief Lord–Funke
This Vast Land–Ambrose
Thirteenth Juror–Lescroart
Time Lottery–Moser D
The Time Traveler’s Wife–Niffenegger C-
Twilight Children–Hayden
Wide as the Waters–Bobrick
Wild Strawberries–Thirkell
Word Freaks–Fatsis
Year of the Warrior–Walker
Year of Wonders–Brooks B+

Should I take any of these off my list? Dare I ask: should I add any books to my list?

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Jun28

The Kite Runner is set initially in Afghanistan, and it’s a tale of father and son and of betrayal and forgiveness. Amir, the protagonist and narrator, is the son of a wealthy Afghan businessman, while his best friend, Hassan, is a Hazara and a servant. I learned from reading the book that the Hazaras are an ethnic group within Afghanistan and that they are looked down upon because they are Shi’ite Muslims rather than Sunni and because of their ethnicity and poverty. Because Amir and his father do not understand one another and because family secrets poison the atmosphere in their home, Amir escapes into a world of books. He also spends a lot of time playing with his servant/friend Hassan, and it is Hassan who defends Amir when the two encounter bullies or other difficulties. Amir, writing this story from the vantage point of adulthood, is ashamed of the way he used and depended upon Hassan, and he is especially ashamed of one incident that happened when Amir was twelve years old and that, he says, changed his life forever.

“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.” So Amir begins his story. The rest of the novel is a sort of quest for atonement and forgiveness. Even though others forgive Amir for his weakness and cowardice as a twelve year old boy, Amir canot forgive himself until he is called upon to do something dangerous to atone for his sin. Even when he gets himself almost killed in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Amir cannot remove all the consequences of his misdeeds. He can only live with what he has done and try to see glimpses of hope.

This novel is Dr. Khaled Hosseini’s first, and it was number seven at Amazon when I checked tonight. Pretty good for a first time novelist. His description of growing up in Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion and before the Taliban features boys running the streets freely, hurling pebbles at passing goats, and kite-fighting. Kite-fighting was a popular sport in prewar Afghanistan, and Amir and Hassan work together to become the best kite flyers in the city. Hassan has a further talent: he is the best kite runner, hence the title of the novel. A kite runner retrieves the fallen kite of an opponent, and his reward is to hang the kite, or perhaps many kites, on a wall as a trophy, a reminder of his triumph. Hassan runs the kites–and gives them to Amir, and then he is called upon to give much more than just kites. Later, Amir must repay Hassan’s courage and selflessness with matching courage.

Another significant role reversal takes place in the novel, too. In Afghanistan, Amir’s father, Baba, is a strong man, respected, even beloved. Amir feels he can never live up to his father’s reputation nor his expectations. When the two men immigrate to the United States, Amir slowly becomes the strong one. He says of his father that he liked the idea of living in America, but actually living there gave him an ulcer. Amir seems not to realize that his strong, self-sufficient father is now dependent on him. Such changes do happen so slowly that we are surprised by them. Hosseini does a good job of showing this transition from boy to man as it occurs—in fits and starts, almost imperceptibly.

Excellent novel, highly recommended. This one and Acts of Faith are both on my A list for this year. I’ve been blessed to read several good recently published fiction books lately. Are the selections from the publishers improving? This book would make a great movie, but it may be too politically incorrect for Hollywood. The Muslims in the book are a mixed lot, some good, some bad, and the Taliban-types are totally evil.

Acts of Faith, Part 2

Jun28

I wrote something about my initial impressions of this book a few days ago, and lo, and behold, the WORLD magazine that came in the mail today has an interview with Philip Caputo, the author. To continue my thoughts on the book, as I promised, here’s another quote:

The successful capitalist is successful because he has no love in his heart, Fitzhugh, thought, returning to his hut from a volleyball game. He has only the love of success. He devotes himself to work work work instead of to a woman loved with all his soul. He attempts to fill the hollow in his heart with the accumulation of wealth and what it buys, whether things or power or both; but wealth, things, and power fill it only for the moment, as water does the belly of a hungry man. The heart is empty once again, and its cravings drive him to acquire more; yet he is never gratified.

Sounds very Biblical, doesn’t it? Fitzhugh is the flawed hero of the book, and he does see the emptiness of unprincipled blind belief in a Cause and hypocrisy in the name of humanitarianism. However, his salvation is, of course, found in the love of a good woman and in the creation of a family. In the WORLD interview, Caputo says that “the theme in Acts of Faith is how faith, whether it is religious or a belief in some secular ideology or cause, can curdle into fanaticism.” This being the chosen theme, all the believers in the book do “curdle”, turn into the antithesis of believers in goodness and righteousness. And there but for the grace of God go I. What the book doesn’t show is any real hope for redemption and forgiveness.

But what we become, Fitzhugh thinks, is what we have been all along. To outward appearances, each of us is a half truth. The self we present to the world conceals a clandestine self that awaits its time to come out. Africa had not changed Quinette. It had merely provided the right circumstances and the right climate for her pretty chrysalis to pop open and reveal the creature within. To see the whole truth of oneself is also a redemption of sorts. . . . Again, he knew only what he wanted to believe, and he wanted to believe redemption was possible.

Acts of Faith reveals human sinfulness in a particularly intriguing and relevant story. However, seeing one’s own depravity is only the beginning of salvation, and by itself that kind of self-revelation can lead to despair instead of redemption.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgement, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

Acts of Faith by Phillip Caputo

Jun22

I just finished this book, written by the same author who wrote a memoir of the Vietnam War that I read twenty years ago for a college class, A Rumor of War. I remember two things about that book: the descriptions of war were vivid, violent, and sometimes nauseating, and the author quit believing in a resurrection because the bodies he saw blown to bits in the course of battle were incapable of being resurrected. (This loss of faith seemed to me then to be unjustified since any God worth believing in would be capable of manipulating matter and energy and life in any way He chose.) In the novel Acts of Faith, set mostly in Kenya and southern Sudan, Caputo continues to explore the contradiction between faith in a good, powerful, and loving God and the reality of evil. Near the beginning of the book, a skeptical reporter tells a naive young evangelical Christian:

“Belief is a virus, and once it gets into you, its first order of business is to preserve itself, and the way it preserves itself is to keep you from having any doubts, and the way it keeps you from doubting is to blind you to the way things really are. Evidence contrary to the belief can be staring you straight in the face, and you won’t see it. No, not stupid. True believers just don’t see things the way they are, because if they did, they wouldn’t be true believers any more.”

The easy way to answer this objection to Christian faith is to say that not all beliefs are equal and that believing in truth is different from believing in a lie. However, what’s harder to do is to admit that there is some truth in the reporter’s words as they apply to Christian believers. I was in a Bible study last Wednesday night, and we were discussing why bad things happen to Christian people (not good people, there are no good people). I could only conclude that I often do not understand why God allows bad things to happen. However, I still believe He is in control because I settled that question a long time ago. One of my favorite Bible verses is Job’s statement of faith: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” (Job 13:15a) Another is Peter’s statement in response to Jesus: “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:67-68)

I know enough to believe that I have no choice but to believe. Where else can I go? What other belief even begins to make sense? Even when I don’t understand God’s ways, even when evil seems to be triumphant, I have already made the choice to follow Christ, the choice to trust Him. I don’t ignore evidence that contradicts my belief in a powerful and loving God; I simply know that such evidence is not the whole story. Jesus’s life and death and resurrection are evidence that God does care, that He does understand our suffering, and that He is powerful enough to defeat death and evil in the end.

I’ll have more to say about this book in another post. Caputo has written an excellent story with complex characters, some of whom are evangelical Christians. And he gets the portrayals of Christians and Christian theology right most of the time–with some notable exceptions. This novel of relief workers, Sudanese rebels, gun-running pilots, and Arab Muslim raiders is filled with questions that deserve thoughtful answers or at least careful exploration. I would recommend the book to anyone who is interested in thinking about the complex interaction of good and evil within the human heart, with one caveat: the novel is explicit in its descriptions of both violence and sex. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

10 Most Helpful Fiction Books of the Last Two Centuries

Jun18

My response to the Human Events article listing the 10 Most Dangerous Books of the Last Two Centuries is this list. I wrote a few days ago that there was no fiction on the Human Events list. This list is not definitive; it’s just my opinion. You’re welcome to comment and replace my picks with yours, but remember these are not the BEST books of the last two centuries, although most of them are very well-written, and they’re not the most influential books, but only those fiction books that have had the most influence for GOOD.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (b. June 14, 1811). When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he was supposed to have said, “So you’re the little woman who started this great war!” I guess someone could say that Mrs. Stowe caused a lot of harm with her story of Southern slavery, but she also gave people a picture of the horrors of slavery and made them care.

David Copperfield by Charles DIckens. Dickens magnified the problems of child labor and debtor’s prison and encouraged reformers to outlaw both of these institutions.

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. What Harriet Beecher Stowe did to expose slavery, Solzhenitsyn did to expose Stalin’s gulags.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Lewis talks about temptation, sin, and the Christian life in the form of letters from a junior devil to his superior.

Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell. Orwell taught us to see the dangers of totalitarianism in the form of futuristic fiction.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. Neither Hercule Poirot nor Jane Marple approves of murder, and although they may understand the murderer’s reasons for his actions, they nevertheless eschew moral ambiguity. Because so many people have read Dame Agatha’s stories, she’s been quite helpful in maintaining some sort of moral standard in Western culture.

Lord of the Flies by WIlliam Golding. This one, too, has been widely read, and it’s helpful in showing the depravity of unrestrained, unregenerated human nature.

Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Didn’t this book, more than any other, illustrate the evils of apartheid and the possibilities of redemptive love to change both whites and blacks in South Africa and elsewhere?

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. I think this book gave many people, Christian and nonChristian, permission to imagine and dream and try to create a back-to-nature kind of community.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Published in 1960, this book may have been part of what made the Civil Rights Movement successful. How could anyone continue to condone the kind of injustice that is illustrated by Scout’s story of prejudice in a small Southern town?

Any other nominations?

From a Woman’s Point of View

Jun13

Dorothy L. Sayers, (b. June 13, 1893) “I always have a quotation for everything – it saves original thinking.”
Dorothy Sayers quotations.
Jill Paton Walsh and Dorothy Sayers
Top Ten Mystery Writers
Biographical Sketch of Dorothy L. Sayers with a list of her published writings.

I like Dorothy Sayers. She was something of a character. She was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford with a degree in Medieval and Modern languages. She had an illegitimate son, Anthony, when she was thirty years old, and although she felt she could not raise him herself, she entrusted him to the care of a cousin and supported him financially and by writing him letters. She later married a war hero, Arthur Fleming, who was in poor health, and she took care of him until his death. She taught herself old Italian and translated Dante’s Divine Comedy She also translated Song of Roland from the French..

“The only Christian work is good work, well done”

“I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction “from the woman’s point of view.” To such demands, one can only say, “Go away and don’t be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle.”

Dorothy Sayers was first of all a Christian, secondly a writer and a scholar, and her identity as a woman came in a distant third–or later.

Two Books

Jun12

I stayed up late last night reading Cut and Run by Ridley Pearson, the same author who collaborated with Dave Barry to write Peter and the Starcatchers, a prequel to Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. I don’t recommend Cut and Run; it’s an absorbing thriller about a heroine in the witness protection program running from a Mafia family hit man. However, it’s predictably bloody, and the descriptions of violent perversion are unnecessary and unpalatable. Why do modern-day writers feel that they must describe everything in such nasty, graphic detail?

The other book I finished yesterday erred, if it did err, in the other direction. Testimonies was Patrick O’Brian’s first novel, published in 1952. O’Brian is the author of the series of Aubrey-Maturin seafaring novels. Testimonies takes places on land, in Wales, and although the plot turns on a particular instance of sexual perversion committted by a man against his wife, the description is suitably vague. The wife testifies in such a way as to confuse the most careful reader, and the novel’s ending and the purpose and setting of the testimonies that make up the bulk of the novel are all rather confusing, too. The story begins:

“Mr. Pugh, I came to ask you some questions about your life in Cwm Bugail and about Mrs. Vaughan of Gelli, Bronwen Vaughan. But now I think it would be better if you were to let me have a written account.”

It’s not ever clear to me who is doing the questioning nor what the purpose of the written testimony is. Later on Bronwen tells her part of the story:

“Bronwen folded her hands and prepared to answer the questions. Her heart was beating high, quick strokes, but her hands lay calm and folded.”

Again I never did figure out who was doing the asking nor why whoever it was felt a need to ask for testimony. Nevertheless, when it comes to telling how the characters felt about one another and how their relationships changed and fell into tragedy, the author describes these aspects of the story in exquisite detail. The story tells of each nuance of emotion, decision, and indecision using subtle and beautiful language. Unfortunately, subtlety was the novel’s strength and its weakness. The ending eluded my understanding, and I don’t think an explanation from another reader would be very satisfying. Maybe I’ll be satisfied to wonder what really happened. If you can live with ambiguity, you may enjoy this rather mysterious tragedy.