Life Together

TIME: December 2008
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AUTHOR: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

NOTES:

This isn't really the sort of book that one critiques. A chapter in it was suggested by Prof. Davidson. I have been asking him to explain to me how he lives in Christian community. More specifically, I am trying to live in the Church which I often find frustrating.

Bonhoeffer is a pretty intense read. He was a Christian pastor/theologian etc. in Germany during Hitlers Reign. He chose to go back to Germany and was imprisoned in a Nazi camp. He died in the camp just before the allied forces liberated it. He was executed.

In this book Bonhoeffer offers his thoughts on what Christian community is all about. The stinging part for me was that he saw community as a grace. This means that one should approach the Church with an attitude of thankfulness despite its obvious shortcomings. He doesn't mince words about this idea as he explains that people like me do damage to the Church and basically offend God by our constant complaining, refusal to 'enter in' and so on. He does lighten the blow when he explores what hardens folks like me.

It seems that I am unable to 'enter in' because I am not fully living in forgiveness. It's not that God will not forgive me; Instead, the problem is that I have not humbled myself by confessing to another brother in the Church. Because I haven't faced my sins in any real mortifying way I am more able to judge others for their faults. The act of telling someone else the things you do in your head or in secret that are sinful is an act of killing your pride. The fact is that God will call us to account for our sins in the end so having them out now is a much more desirable option. By recognizing that one is sinful and unworthy the Church is put in focus for that person. In fact, all humans are sinners offered grace by God. As such I am not to pass judgement on my fellow believers. I can still encourage them and even rebuke them (if the rebuke is meant to help them in the end). However, I am totally unworthy and unable to look with disdain at other humans. Note that this is Bonhoeffers advice not my present state.

Bonhoeffer also suggests a lifestyle focused on prayer and structured Bible reading, fellowship, communion, and worship. All of this is good stuff but without the first step its not really that useful. So, I am in the process of figuring out what all this means for me. I am shopping for a confessor and I am trying to be more humble through submission to the Word and to God.

BIG WIN AT PUB TRIVIA

Big Win At Bobby's Trivia Night This Week!

Every week my friends and I head to the local irish pub, which is called Bobby's Place. We go for a time honoured tradition: Pub Trivia. Each week they also have a side contest in which those who buy imported beers are entered in a draw to win one of six sets of awesome beer glasses. I have long desired this set and this week the owner extended the draw to 12 sets. We won the last set! BEST TRIVIA NIGHT EVER!

Cash: The Autobiography

AUTHOR: Johnny Cash
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TIME: December 2008

NOTES:

After finishing "The Broom of the System" I was in need of a lighter read and I saw this book on one of my shelves. I think that I bought it at a yard sale in the summer. I also recalled that it got a recommendation in High Fidelity which is a great Hornby book turned film. In the film Cash by Cash is placed in a top ten list of favorite books by the lead character.

Johnny Cash is a surprisingly good writer (although I am sure he had help from Patrick Carr). The books style is great. It has the feel of a campfire story or a fishing lodge tale. The writing is casual and heartfelt. I was especially impressed with the humility and wisdom that Cash displayed when he was talking about his darker days. I was expecting to get gruesome details about trashed hotel rooms, vomit filled nights of lechery and the like. Instead Cash chose to highlight a few of his worst days in order to de-glamorize his rock star lifestyle. He told one story about him accidentally burning down a good portion of a wildlife refuge and trying to pretend that he hadn't noticed by faux fishing at a nearby pond. This story was humiliating and though I did laugh out loud it certainly didn't make me want to copy Cash.

From a music history perspective the book was really interesting. As you know Cash is intertwined with the greats including Elvis, Waylon Jennings and the Carter family. What you may not know is that his first major tour was as an opener for Elvis. It was really interesting to hear all the many many stories of the olden days when you could wait on a record companies front steps with a guitar and get a record deal; or when a friend could cover your show if you were to strung out to play. Cash makes the 'good old days' of music seem incredible. He communicates a camaraderie between artists that is romantic and inspiring. This book is peppered with anticdotes about guitars of note, sound men, producers, epic shows, the road and songwriting. Any audiophile would be foolish to leave this piece of history unread.

As a Christian I was very impacted by the spiritual undertones of the book. Recently I have been getting harder and harder on myself and others about sin. It was interesting to gain Cash's perspective which is influenced much more by grace than my own. One glaring truth of Cash's life is that he made a lot of mistakes. He failed at marriage, endangered a species, struggled with drug and alcohol addiction to the point of near death and so on and so forth. I think that this had a huge impact on his ability to forgive much. I am reading Bonhoeffer right now and he says that our grace and mercy is dependant on the forgiveness offered by Christ. So, as Cash was forgiven much he was also able to forgive much. Maybe this idea isn't revolutionary to everyone but I have not been able to appreciate it until recently and this book was a big part of that.

The Broom of the System

TIME: December 2008
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AUTHOR: David Foster Wallace

NOTES:

I picked this book up because of David Foster Wallace's recent suicide. I have read a number of Wallace's essays, most notably: Consider the Lobster which is available as a podcast and should be listened to by everyone. I was curious to see what his more fictional work revealed about him. This will sound silly but after reading the book I can sorta see why Wallace might have done what he did. (P.S. I am aware of his medication changes just prior to his death and I understand better than most that mental illness is a real thing that can't be easily beaten, especially when your medication isn't doing its part.) The book did have a thread of sadness, a feeling of insecurity, even searching.

Let me explain the book a little bit. The basic plot surrounds a beautiful but neurotic woman named Lenore Beadsman. Miss Beadsman went to a really small but good college and studied philosophy. She is now working as a switchboard operator at a small publishing company called 'Frequent and Vigorous'. She is also romantically involved with her boss, Rick Vigorous. Rick and Lenore see the same shrink on an almost daily basis. These separate meetings with Dr. J reveal that Lenore is very troubled in a number of ways. They also show that Rick suffers from a painfully small penis. The penis becomes a metaphor for interaction between the self and others. Dr. J and Rick have long dialogues about Ricks inability to penetrate Lenore's membrane.

Lenore comes from a rich and dysfunctional family. Her Father owns and operates a baby food empire that competes with Gerber. There is also a grandmother in the family (Lenore Sr.). Lenore Sr. is housed in a retirement complex that is owned by the Stonecipher company (Lenore's Dad's baby food company). It is interesting to note that Lenore Sr. was a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein and much of the story is spent exploring some of his theories of identity and meaning. Anyway, Lenore Sr. mysteriously disappears from the old folks complex with over a dozen staff and fellow clients. It is hinted that she is somewhere working with Gerber. The idea is that she is revealing a family secret in order to hurt Mr Stonecipher (dysfunctional family right). The story is framed around the missing Grandma and Lenore's search for understanding regarding her disappearance.

The main plot is easy to grasp. The book is written with a series of side stories. We are privy to manuscripts from CEO meetings and psychiatry appointments. There is also a connected narrative concerning a bird that was gifted to Lenore by Rick. The bird is named Vlad the Impaler. Vlad begins speaking english very well after being slipped some of the 'family secret' (the same secret that Lenore Sr. is potentially leaking). The secret is an ingredient that, when added to baby food, causes babies to speak far earlier than is natural. The bird is taught Bible versus by Lenore's roommate who wants the bird to stop repeating details of her sex life. Vlad is then recruited by a televangelist who uses Vlad to make Lenore's landlord a lot of money.
The story is also set in 1990 which is a couple years in the future from the time it was written. As such Wallace is able to take some creative licence. This licence results in Gilligan's Island themed bars in which a Gilligan look-a-like bar tender is paid to hurt himself every hour. There is also the Greater Ohio Dessert (GOD); which is a man made dessert, with jet black sand, designed to offer wilderness and danger to the largely sub-urbanised world. Also, the story is often drawn back to Wallace's own college where we are introduced to Lenore's devilish, drug addicted brother with a wooden leg. This brother is affectionately known as the Antichrist. Another important character is Wang Dang Lang who becomes the antithesis to Rick Vigorous. Lang has a very large penis and becomes Lenore's solution to non-fulfillment.

All in all the book is hilarious, witty, brilliant, confusing, and impossible to put down even in the wee hours of night. One warning I do offer is that the book is very sexual. If that sort of thing is an issue for you your probably not going to enjoy this read... That said, I would encourage any serious reader, especially a college age reader to try this title. It is like an onion with several important layers of meaning. I feel as though I will need to read it several times to really 'get' some of it. I also feel as though I could read it every week forever and I still wouldn't mine all the depths it offers. After finishing I feel more than ever the tragedy that losing Wallace while he still had so much to offer was. May the Lord have mercy on this troubled but gifted soul.

On Stories

TIME: November 2008
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AUTHOR: Richard Kearney
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NOTES:
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This was a De-Ja-Vu book for me on a couple of fronts. Firstly, many of the Humanities professors at my college read this book years ago and it has influenced what they teach greatly (whether they know it or not). Also, many of my friends have read or partially read the book. Lastly, the idea of narrative or story being an important avenue of truth has always been popular in Christianity to some extent; (beginning with Jesus and his parables) but has become even more popular in recent history with the coming of the 'emergent Church' and a more arty crowd. Like De-Ja-Vu everything seemed familiar in this read but it was much clearer this time around.

Kearney works to outline the importance of narrative in this book by defining five main categories of 'use'. I hesitate to use functional language because I think part of what Kearney is doing is kicking against the enlightenment shrines built around 'absolute truth', function as king, and empirical fact. At any rate, The book covers five main elements of narrative that make it vital to our existence.

One:Plot (MYTHOS)
This element was the hardest to understand for me. Essentially, I think it is dealing with the basic form of human life and the fact that making conscious story of it is very helpful in achieving life abundantly. Kearney points to the fact that all human life is essentially a plot line. We all have a beginning, middle and end. All of our stories are peppered with climax, conflict, emotion, characters and so on. We are all stories waiting to be read and interpreted. By consciously seeing ourselves as such we are able to examine our plot lines, placing ourselves in the greater story and interpreting our lives in light of the history and projection that story offers. I feel sure that my brief explanation has done injustice to Kearney's complex thought but as an amateur reader I am trying to communicate what I gathered rather than what would have been gleaned by my superiors.

As a side, I could not help but think of the implications of this understanding of life for the thoughts of a Christian. It is Evangelical speak to say that we are all written into God's story and that we are all playing our roles as assigned by God... However, I could not help but reflect on the deeper meaning offered by this book. It is true that we all have a plot; so why should the universe not have the same? Also, I can't help but think that as conscious players examining and being enriched by our autobiographical roles we are helping to write the greater script in some small way?

TWO: Re-Creation (MIMESIS)
This element is the one that is always present in fiction. Kearney is careful not to use the word "imitation" because he wants to avoid 'servile connotation'. That is to say he does not want to limit or oppress MIMESIS with the idea that it must be empirical fact. The Re-creation of a story or event into a written, filmed, or told form is an effort to capture its essence in a way. Kearney speaks much of the use of parody of caricature. MIMESIS reveals important truth to us by the telling. It is self reflective like MYTHOS but this is a bit different because it can be any story , not just our own. This is why MIMESIS is sometimes present in the telling of History as well. The historical aspect is touchy though as there is some debate over whether History should be 'just the facts', which is impossible of course but non-the-less valued by some. There is a sizable section in the middle of the book dealing with different Holocaust representations which is helpful in more fully understanding this element.

THREE: RELEASE (CATHARSIS)
In Catharsis we are able to 'live a day in another mans shoes'. Kearney explains that this element involves both sufficient distance from events and persons as well as a type of sympathetic closeness. Most Christians will have experienced something like this in the arena of 'testimony' or perhaps in certain types of meditation involving the imaginative placing of oneself in a character of bystander in biblical stories. This element allows us to empathize with the other. I believe that it can also serve as a therapeutic aide to those actually involved. In story, we are able to live in a situation otherwise foreign to us, we can experience the pain, fear, distress, joy etc. of a character and empathize with them. This is not true with all accounts. Take for example the difference between an autopsy report for a murder victim and a biography about the victim who owned the body before it was dismembered. The one would hold much more empathetic weight than the other... perhaps this is why CSI is so popular?

FOUR:WISDOM (PHRONESIS)
Number four is a bit confusing to me as was number one. To the best of my knowledge Kearney is pointing to a unique function in fiction (although it spills into non-fiction in a complex overlap). This function is its ability to respect individuality in story while still interacting with universality. So, 'wisdom' is imparted through story in a way that is universally applicable to the human condition. A type of truth (wisdom) which is not empirical fact can be communicated through imaginative narrative that in fact, cannot be told through an autopsy report, a list of the dead, or even a purely objective view of an event.

I think this is probably why Jesus used the parable so much.

FIVE: ETHICS (ETHOS)
In this bit Kearney briefly talks about narrative as conversation. He says that in all story there is a teller, a story, a listener, and a real or imaginary world. In the interplay of these elements ETHOS is worked out. By allowing us to traverse in common worlds with one an other we are able to experience the other. This interplay creates and maintains a viable arena for the telling of truth, and empathizing even with our enemy. We find common ground in the story.


The untold life is not worth living
-R. Kearney

• My post about Homer seems relevant here