I finished a book a couple of days ago that had been on my to-read list since college if not longer: Carl Bernstein's and Bob Woodward's All the Presidents Men. I knew a little about Watergate; now I know a bit more. Two conclusions I drew from the book: first, the Republican party, for at least half a century, has had many members who are primarily concerned with maintaining power by any means necessary. Watergate was the lowest point until January 6 and the GOP's unwillingness to convict, but those are just the things we know about. Second, while there were those who sought to stay in power at any cost, there were some Republicans who had at least a rusty moral compass and had some line somewhere that they considered beyond the pale. Today's GOP can watch the sitting president incite an insurrection and not only do nothing about it but also fall back in line when it's clear that their constituents require it.
After such a depressing book, I needed a laugh, so I turned to Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Few people can so humorously and clearly introduce characters as Charles Dickens:
But when the company arrived! That was the time. When Mr Pecksniff, rising from his seat at the table’s head, with a daughter on either hand, received his guests in the best parlour and motioned them to chairs, with eyes so overflowing and countenance so damp with gracious perspiration, that he may be said to have been in a kind of moist meekness! And the company; the jealous stony-hearted distrustful company, who were all shut up in themselves, and had no faith in anybody, and wouldn’t believe anything, and would no more allow themselves to be softened or lulled asleep by the Pecksniffs than if they had been so many hedgehogs or porcupines!
First, there was Mr Spottletoe, who was so bald and had such big whiskers, that he seemed to have stopped his hair, by the sudden application of some powerful remedy, in the very act of falling off his head, and to have fastened it irrevocably on his face. Then there was Mrs Spottletoe, who being much too slim for her years, and of a poetical constitution, was accustomed to inform her more intimate friends that the said whiskers were ‘the lodestar of her existence;’ and who could now, by reason of her strong affection for her uncle Chuzzlewit, and the shock it gave her to be suspected of testamentary designs upon him, do nothing but cry—except moan. Then there were Anthony Chuzzlewit, and his son Jonas; the face of the old man so sharpened by the wariness and cunning of his life, that it seemed to cut him a passage through the crowded room, as he edged away behind the remotest chairs; while the son had so well profited by the precept and example of the father, that he looked a year or two the elder of the twain, as they stood winking their red eyes, side by side, and whispering to each other softly. Then there was the widow of a deceased brother of Mr Martin Chuzzlewit, who being almost supernaturally disagreeable, and having a dreary face and a bony figure and a masculine voice, was, in right of these qualities, what is commonly called a strong-minded woman; and who, if she could, would have established her claim to the title, and have shown herself, mentally speaking, a perfect Samson, by shutting up her brother-in-law in a private madhouse, until he proved his complete sanity by loving her very much. Beside her sat her spinster daughters, three in number, and of gentlemanly deportment, who had so mortified themselves with tight stays, that their tempers were reduced to something less than their waists, and sharp lacing was expressed in their very noses. Then there was a young gentleman, grandnephew of Mr Martin Chuzzlewit, very dark and very hairy, and apparently born for no particular purpose but to save looking-glasses the trouble of reflecting more than just the first idea and sketchy notion of a face, which had never been carried out. Then there was a solitary female cousin who was remarkable for nothing but being very deaf, and living by herself, and always having the toothache. Then there was George Chuzzlewit, a gay bachelor cousin, who claimed to be young but had been younger, and was inclined to corpulency, and rather overfed himself; to that extent, indeed, that his eyes were strained in their sockets, as if with constant surprise; and he had such an obvious disposition to pimples, that the bright spots on his cravat, the rich pattern on his waistcoat, and even his glittering trinkets, seemed to have broken out upon him, and not to have come into existence comfortably. Last of all there were present Mr Chevy Slyme and his friend Tigg. And it is worthy of remark, that although each person present disliked the other, mainly because he or she did belong to the family, they one and all concurred in hating Mr Tigg because he didn’t.
What wonderful description: we know so much about their appearance and personality just through a few lines of description. How anyone can feel anything but affection for Dickens is beyond me. (Granted, he does get longwinded at times, but as I always explained to my students, even great artists can succumb to their basest temptations and stretch things for sake of a few more quid in the bank.)
Imagine you are teaching a college creative writing class open to any and all students. One day, a girl who’s not even in your class, not even a lit major, enters yoir office with about 150 typed pages and hands them off to you.
She’s sure she’s the next Kundera.
You begin reading the pages that evening and you see Kundera’s influence: strange flights into seeming magical realism that are not quite magical realism; thoughts about love, life, the nature of the universe, the nature of anything and everything; a narrative that moves freely about in time and tenses. It’s evident this girl has taken at least an introduction to philosophy class. It’s clear from all her talk about God that she’s at least sat in a cafe drinking overpriced coffee with somebody in the religion department. But that’s about it. What’s more, she can’t write well, and like many sophomores, she thinks it’s edgy to include references to "cunts" and "cocks." So proud is she of her image of the universe "ejaculating" (her word, not mine) her father‘s spirit into her upon his death that she uses it multiple times.
This is that manuscript, and it’s every bit pedantic, empty, and pathetic as it sounds.
I was drawn to this book for one reason: I grew up in the same cult as Walker, Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God (WCG). Hence, as I read the book, I felt an eerie similarity with many of Walker’s experiences. His sense of otherness while at school was the same as my sense of otherness. His sense of impending doom while looking at peers in school was my sense of impending doom.
My embarrassment about these beliefs, however, was absent. He seems to have talked freely about the strange things he believed, even going so far as to try to convert his best friend Paul. I, on the other hand, never said a word about my beliefs. Looking back on this, I think it’s because I never really believed. I could imagine someone asking me, “ Do you really believe that?” after I’d explained this or that strange belief, and my only imagined response to their reaction to “Oh that’s weird” would be to agree. That was my fear. This deep abiding embarrassment about what my church believed was central to my religion’s worldview. It was strangely lacking in Walker’s.
There’s a more fundamental sense in which I cannot relate to this book: Walker is African-American, and I am white. This is notable because the WCG’s theology was inherently one of white supremacy. This is not to say that the church was comprised of racists, nor is it to suggest that there were openly racist sentiments expressed in weekly services, but its theology had definite racist shades that appeared in select passages in Armstrong’s writing. He would insist he was not racist, but it’s difficult to argue that when part of the theology was that in the kingdom of God, which we colloquially knew as the World Tomorrow (which was the same name as Armstrong’s weekly religious broadcast), everyone will be sent back to where they “belong.” Armstrong phased it thus in his 1966 book The Wonderful World Tomorrow: What It Will Be Like, which he copied directly into his final book, Mystery of the Ages:
In Noah’s day, the chief cause of the violence and chaos of world conditions was racial hatreds, interracial marriages, and racial violence caused by man’s efforts toward integration and amalgamation of races, contrary to God’s laws. God had set the boundary lines for the nations and the races at the beginning (Deuteronomy 32:8-9; Acts 17:26). But men had refused to remain in the lands to which God had assigned them. That was the cause of the corruption and violence that ended that world. For 100 years Noah had preached God’s ways to the people—but they didn’t heed.
At that time, even as today, that world faced a population explosion. It was when “men began to multiply on the face of the earth” (Genesis 6:1). Jesus said, of our time, right now, “But as the days of Noe [Noah] were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matthew 24:37)—or, as in Luke 17:26, “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.” That is, the days just before Christ returns. Today race wars, race hatreds, race riots and race problems are among the world’s greatest social troubles.
Noah merely preached to people in his human lifetime. But Noah, in the resurrection, immortal, in power and glory, will be given the power to enforce God’s ways in regard to race. It seems evident that the resurrected Noah will head a vast project of the relocation of the races and nations, within the boundaries God has set, for their own best good, happiness and richest blessings. This will be a tremendous operation. It will require great and vast organization, reinforced with power to move whole nations and races. This time, peoples and nations will move where God has planned for them, and no defiance will be tolerated.
Leaving aside the blindly stupid and racist assertion that “men had refused to remain in the lands to which God had assigned them” when considering the fact that the presence of African Americans in modern America is due almost entirely to the enslavement of Africans rather than people refusing “to remain in the lands to which God had assigned them,” the proposition that there will be “a fast project of the relocation of the races and nations” is essentially the assertion that God is a segregationist. The Kingdom of God runs on Jim Crow laws, it seems.
Note that I never once heard this from the pulpit. I never heard a single discussion about this, and I think that a fair number of people were unaware of this passage and the handful of others scattered in his writing. When I read that passage to a friend who’d also grown up in the church, she was dumbfounded and angry that she’d never noticed it. It was not a central element of the theology: the notion that we’d all become gods was more prominent.
In light of all that passage, though, it’s fascinating to me to think of the African-American constituency in WCG congregations. What was it about Armstrongism that attracted minorities even though it was clear from the theology that Armstrong’s god somehow viewed them as inferior? I was hoping Walker would write more about this than he did because he only deals with it directly a couple of times and obliquely a few more times. Still, it gave a compelling picture, and I cheered when his family finally left the cult.
Do I have to actually finish a book in order to review it? Doesn't the fact that I couldn't bring myself to slog through another page constitute a review in and of itself?
I wanted to like this book. I went into it with such high hopes. After all, Tokarczuk just won the Nobel, and this is her most-recommended book.
I found it to be a collection of random, vapid, and shallow "observations" -- thoughts that anyone who has traveled at all has had a million and one times -- strung together in a random mess of I-don't-know-what.
A more eloquent Goodreads review put it thusly:
Gosh. What a load of disjointed tripe.
Not a novel. Not a book. More like the author collected all kinds of things: personal notes, FB statuses, random thoughts, more random scramblings and mixed it all together into some sort of text.
Extremely dull, disjointed ramblings on all sorts of things.
It could be read but personally I don't find it very interesting or illuminating.
It really reminds me of modern visual art. Take a jar, urinate in it, toss in a crucifix, take a picture -- voila! Piss Christ. Paint a picture of the Madonna. Add some elephant dung. Voila! Art! Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary. I get it -- it's postmodernism and post-postmodernism.
I've read two Paul Auster books in the last couple of weeks: The Brooklyn Follies and The Book of Illusions.
It's been a while since I read Auster, and I'd forgotten what it's like to read his works. It's like playing cards with a known cheat. You know when you sit down with him that he's going to be slipping cards from the deck and sliding them up his sleeve. You know that he'll likely be talking about sliding or hiding or even cheating as he's concealing the cards, all but announcing that he's doing it, all but saying, "Hey, watch me slide this ace into secrecy that's no secret at all."
You know that as he continues playing that he's got them up there, and when you think he's going to pull one out, nothing happens. He makes it obvious when he's hidden them and then slides them into play without a whisper and you only notice it a couple of hands later. And all the time he's led you to believe you're winning. He's laughed off his frustrating losses, smiled at his occasional wins, but made it clear without making it clear that he knows he's losing. Except he's not. He's got that one last card sure to when that one last hand when all the money's on the table and there are twenty pages of the book left, he'll pull that card out of your sleeve and play it himself. You look at your sleeve, look at his, and realize that all those cards he put up his sleeve were somehow a distraction for putting one ultimate winner up your sleeve.
It's not that he creates surprise endings. The Sixth Sense is a surprise ending. No, he just gets you to look straight ahead for the entire book at some scene right in front of you and then makes you look over to your right to see what he's been building the whole time. Subtle, deft endings that come out of nowhere and yet are no surprise at all.
I’ve begun reading Peter Berger’s A Rumor of Angels, probably for the third or fourth time. I haven’t read it in at least twelve years or so, probably longer. When I first read Berger, it was an excerpt in a philosophy of religion anthology, a portion of his Rumor of Angels that absolutely enthralled me. This would have been in 1997 or 1998, when I was chest-deep in my first Polish adventure and just coming to the conclusion that I wanted to do graduate studies in philosophy of religion.
Berger intrigued me because he posited that there are hints in our every-day existence that there is something beyond the material of this world. The hints — or rumors — are not the traditional Christian apologist’s arguments but refreshingly new ideas, like the suggestion that humor hints at a world beyond. I can’t remember all the “rumors” (i.e., arguments), and I thought I’d reread it.
What’s most interesting about it is how much I’ve changed since the first time I read it. Looking back at books after years of growth always fells like an embarrassing meeting of an old acquaintance, someone you should have stayed in touch with — at least that’s how you feel — but through time and distance became a stranger. I look at my marginal notes and wonder. I see my annotations and marvel at my naivete.
Reading Tony Hendra's Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul (Amazon) today, I found his first experience with Gregorian chant to resonate with mine, and my experience much sacred music in general. He writes of the sense that this was a timeless music, a music that arose from the passion of the spirit, the soul, instead of the passion of the heart, like most music. I'm not convinced much of what passes for music today could be said to have arisen from the passion of the heart. I rather think its origins are more hedonistic. That being said, much of the music I listened to growing up impressed me with its passion. "Here are people creating from the heart," I thought.
Then I heard medieval polyphany for the first time. In college, a professor introduced us to Thomas Tallis, and I was immediately in love. Here was the intricacy of the soul itself laid bare. (It's a bit tragic now that this particular piece will be associated in the popular mind with Fifty Shades of Grey, but the upside, if there is one, is that more people have been exposed to this glorious music and perhaps will investigate Tallis and his contemporaries -- Byrd, Desprez, and others.)
Listening to this music, I had, and still have, the experience of ecstasy in the classical Greek sense of ecstasy -- ek meaning "outside" and stasis meaning "a stand" -- to stand outside oneself.
It was the first real hint I had of the spiritual, the first existential evidence I had of something more.
I was drawn to this book for one reason: I grew up in the same cult as Walker, Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God (WCG). Hence, as I read the book, I felt an eerie similarity with many of Walker’s experiences. His sense of otherness while at school was the same as my sense of otherness. His sense of impending doom while looking at peers in school was my sense of impending doom.
I’ve begun reading Peter Berger’s A Rumor of Angels, probably for the third or fourth time. I haven’t read it in at least twelve years or so, probably longer. When I first read Berger, it was an excerpt in a philosophy of religion anthology, a portion of his Rumor of Angels that absolutely enthralled me. This would have been in 1997 or 1998, when I was chest-deep in my first Polish adventure and just coming to the conclusion that I wanted to do graduate studies in philosophy of religion.
