Dark Star Safari

(Cross-post)

The book chronicles Theroux's grueling journey through Africa in the early Gregorian millenium (like 2002 or something, not sure I ever quite figured out what year). Traveling overland almost the whole way, he begins in Cairo, Egypt and concludes his trip in Capetown, South Africa. It is, no doubt, an awe-inspiring undertaking, Theroux even risking his life at one point as he and the rest of the disinclined passengers on a beat-up cattle truck are shot at by shifta as they travel from the Ethiopian border through the Kenyan outskirts via the Bandit Road.

Although sizeably shorter than the passages on some of the other many countries like Malawi and South Africa, I was obviously most interested in his time in Ethiopia. He splits his time there between Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa, Harar and Rastaland, finally exiting Ethiopia courtesy of endearing new friends, Tadelle from Tigre (who calls people he doesn't like "termites" in English) and a young man named Wolde who weeps at their parting. He probably spends less time in Addis, but does meet a few interesting characters and says upon landing there, "Ethiopia had just ended its border war with Eritrea. Because of the rumors of that war, Ethiopia's neighbors of low repute - Somalia and Sudan - and the paranoia of travelers, Addis had no foreign tourists. Empty hotels were wonderful for me to behold because I never made any forward plans. I just showed up and hoped." The manner in which he further describes the city is not entirely flattering.

Of Dire Dawa, it "looked like the sort of French colonial railway town I had seen in rural Vietnam, the sort of town on any railway line built a hundred years ago by Europeans." There he speaks Spanish to a woman hawking herbs, her explaining she learned it from the Cuban soldiers living in Dire Dawa around 1974 at the time of the Derg.

In Harar he babbles on about Arthur Rimbaud living out his eccentricities there, he visits the hyena man and also visits the house that Haile Selassie occupied as governor of Harar "before becoming Ras Tafari, Makonnen, Lion of Judah, Elect of God, in a word - emperor."
In Rastaland (Shashemene), he meets Gladstone Robinson and a young, quasi-militant Rastafarian named Patrick who says to him, "The millenium hasn't come yet... The Ethiopian calendar is behind seven years and eight months, so the millenium is coming in about six years. You will see. The earth destroyed by water. It will be fire next time. The Rift Valley will be spared - and it will be the safest place in the world when the fire comes. You can come and be a refugee here. Bring your family."

Generally speaking, he offers few if any compliments about Africa. (The interested should know that decades before the book was written Theroux lived in Africa for a long time; Malawi and Uganda. Originally posted in Nyasaland as he refers to it (former name of Malawi) by the Peace Corps, Theroux was deported for helping a friend deemed anti-Banda by the Banda regime. He landed in Uganda where he became a professor at a University, then seemingly abruptly left there a short time later under political duress.) Throughout the book, Theroux is decidedly negative, largely condescending and scathingly pessimistic about Africa. One thing he has a particular low tolerance, if not a healthy disdain, for are aid organizations. A reader ignorant, much like myself, to the macro realities and consequences of aid and it's many shapes and forms in Africa is much at a loss to ascertain whether Thoreaux even in part rightly or wrongly blames aid agencies for 'wrecking the continent' and effectively acting as "agents of subversion". Although he indicates at one point that he places the onus of change (read "development") on Africans themselves, as to describe the sinister acts of foreign aid workers driving about in their effervescent "landrovers" he even cites to Henry David Thoreau quoting,

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."

I found the giant over-looming irony of the book to be that Theroux was in love with Africa and ostensibly that's why he even went back in the first place. Certainly, the reader comes away thinking his reunion with the so-called "Dark Star" is anything but whimsical and romantic. Perhaps his charmed remembrance was soured by some of the reality he forgot? Who knows. If you take the book at it's word, Africa has been on a steady and quite steep downhill jaunt since the 1960s. But, make no mistake, however inflammatory or agitated his attitude progressively becomes as he rustles his way through the greenest continent, his writing is fall-over incredible. If you read it with a grain of salt (and I think you have to if you want to enjoy the book for more than it's amazing writing style, his opinion is only one of many afterall), you can relish the book's content rife with juicy history and details you possibly didn't know before about some of the unique countries in Africa he travels to. And he truly, truly takes you on the impressive journey with him, you see what he sees, you smell what he smells, you bask in his travel triumphs, and you even (or I did) laugh at some of his caustic humor. As far as his writing goes, he is a total master even if a snarky, self-important one.

JOHN UPDIKE : MARCH 18, 1932 - JANUARY 27, 2009

The ancients said the purpose of poetry, of writing, was to entertain and to instruct; Aristotle put forward the still fascinating notion that a dramatic action, however terrible and piteous, carries off at the end, in catharsis, the morbid, personal, subjective impurities of our emotions. The enlargement of sympathy, through identification with the lives of fictional others, is frequently presented as an aim of narrative; D. H. Lawrence, with characteristic fervor, wrote, "And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places the flows of our sympathetic consciousness, and can lead our sympathy away in recoil from things that are dead." Kafka wrote that a book is an ax to break the frozen sea within us.

- John Updike - from Why Write?

the death of john updike today, happening today, is odd for me. i am not an admirer of mr. updike. never have been. (although i relish that image in his story "A&P" when the girl pulls the dollars bills out of the top of her bikini right in front of the pubescent check-out boy, and he says, "I uncrease the bill, tenderly as you may imagine, it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known." that is so rightfully pubescent.) however, i up and decided to read some snippets of updike's "Why Write?" today. just this morning. the first time i have read or thought of updike since early last fall. and now, just a few moments ago, my office mate tells me he died. and i had only been with him within the hours.

life is odd in the way it comes and goes, passing without permission in either direction, large and loud and owning the entire road, as if it were the only thing that mattered.

WHAT MADE THE HAMSTER THRILL TODAY IN A WINGED-BACK CHAIR WITH GOOD COFFEES AND HIS NON-CYBORGIAN SPOUSE NEARBY

so i'm in this science-fiction bookclub. i've never read the science-fiction before. it's all new to me, as if i'm listening to klingon war ballads set to ukuleles. in the sci-fi, my eyeballs feel as lost on the page as my feet on the intergalactic dancefloor. but i'm learning. and the rhythm is climbing up my thighs, just about to hit my swinging hips. watch out, all ye worlds.

my friend tim recently got the sci-fi ball rolling with a small klatch of us bryan, texas literarians. thus far we have read FRANKENSTEIN by mary shelley, THE TIME MACHINE and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by h. g. wells, and huxley's A BRAVE NEW WORLD. we're having a smashing good time working chronologically through six packs of pale ale and the major eras of science-fiction literature. at the moment, we are reading a smathering of short stories, compiled by our fearless leader tim, all penned and published during the golden age of science-fiction. 

today in a coffeeshop with my lovely bride, who is human and not made of robotics or cyborgian synthetic skin, we grabbed the only two winged-back chairs in the whole place and sat down to our readings. we have found that words and caffeine go so well together, a little tip i give to all of you. and while my wife enriched herself with gabriel garcia marquez, i plowed through the first of fearless leader tim's stories. and then i plowed through that damn thing a second time. and i freaking loved it both times. 

i am writing here to say that i have written my likings of the story over there, quite yonder in another webiverse where i sometimes fly my hamsterian planetary flags. please, i invite you to go there, to roam about and see this thing that made me thrill in that coffeeshop, in one of the only two winged back chairs remaining. life, really, it is too short not to thrill over words in winged back chairs, with good coffees and beautiful spouses nearby. so, yes, i invite you, even if you do not read the sci-fi, as i recently did not read the sci-fi, life is too short not to share in the bettering thrills of one another. 

thanks to clarks for reminding me to place my musings over here. i would have carried all this around in my pockets for weeks, my pant's legs getting heavy, thereby losing the ukulele war ballad groove that's almost to my hips by now. 

The (not-so) Great Gatsby?

Since this is open game on here I was going to write a mock book review on "Twilight" and suggest that everyone read it in light of the fact that it's a major block buster thriller movie right now, but as much as I really did enjoy it, I couldn't do it with a straight face. :)

So on a slightly deeper literary note:

I wonder if anyone was ever insulted by the word 'scally-wag'. "You scally-wag". Really?

Today I just finished the book The Great Gatsby after completing it 10 years ago as a mandatory High School reading assignment. I read it in two days which may have been a little too quick because I still don't get it. Please don't slap me my literary genius friends! It's called The Great American Masterpiece. Why? Don't get me wrong, I like it and all, it was enjoyable and great with a lower-case "g", but as far as Great goes, na-uh. I wish I was smart. I'm not trying to be self-deprecating or anything, just when it comes to literature comprehension I suck. That is probably why I never got into poetry, too speculative. I would always guess 'sex' when my teacher asked what the poem was about and usually that was the right answer. I could just get online and look up the cliff-notes version on this and appear more intelligent and then snobbily say "ohhh now The Great Gatsby is a classic piece of American literature that well captures the pre-depression area of the roaring twenties and the post Great War attitudes of the people escaping from the Victorian-era moral confines." I totally just made that up. That is how I got good grades in High School. I bs'd.

But back to The Great Gatsby, what is it about it that draws people in? Gatsby isn't a really likable character, he's a liar and a self-absorbed jerk. Daisy isn't likable either for even more reasons. Please don't say something like, "it's their flaws that make them so beautiful" because that's crap. They are so careless of what their actions do to harm everyone around them. I enjoyed reading about the culture that they were living in, the fabulously wealthy people who were probably similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald's own friends and contemporaries. The writing was great, he is amazing, and my argument isn't against him or the book itself, it's against this book being called the Great American Masterpiece. I mean really. Tell me why you think it's so great, pretty pretty please.

Aw, man.

I know it; I totally stink. Rottenness.

I'm only on chapter 13 of this, so far, amazing book, and one day, be it forty months from now, I will write about it, and anyone is welcome to write about it now, and By George!, you can write about any ole book you please.

Come on! Don't wait on me. Write about what you're reading. We want to know. Rules are out the window, people, can't you tell?

Apartheid

I did not know until yesterday that apartheid means "separateness" in Afrikaans.

butterfly in the sky

Oh how I need to and want to read Cry, The Beloved Country. 

Let me know what you think about this reading schedule.

Intro - Ch. 6 by Sept 29 

Ch. 12 by Oct. 6

Ch. 19 by Oct. 13

Ch. 28 by Oct. 20

Ch. 36 by Oct 27

Cry, The Beloved Country

Is this the book we're reading next? Just wanted to make sure....

Dillard the Dullard or Wholly the Worm

I want to get this stuff going again.

I read Dillard. I read her in 3 days, devoting one day to each section. I will get into more detail later as we get rolling, but i have some initial statements that may spark your opposition.
I enjoyed her writing. She can write, i'll give her that. I did not like all of it. I felt as though the first section was fantastic. I did not, however, enjoy section 2 for a couple of reasons.

First, it is difficult to critisize poetry as it does not carry with it the same literary logic of non-poetic literature. I am not skilled at critiquing either, but i felt as though some of her sentences, possibly even sections were nonsensical. I thought after reading that section that she wrote some stuff that did not add at all to her subtle points or to her overt ones.

Secondly, i didn't enjoy the sections of blatant critical questioning and asserting she did regarding God. This is just me. Some people eat that stuff up because it makes them feel better knowing that others have questions too and also that they can formulate them so systematically. I do not. It makes me have a sour feeling in my belly. It makes me think of when one boy in gradeschool flips someone off and then another boy gives him a high five. I know it's wrong as a little kid, and even though i do think of giving the finger sometimes, it doesn't mean i take pride in the fact that someone else is doing it.

She redeems herself though in the last section which i also thought was fantastic. To date, one of my favorite sections in the book was her description of the moth catching fire and the way she brings it back at the end. OH, SO GOOD.

What say the masses?
Will i be alone in my critical ditch again?

PS. the title was just to catch attention. i quite liked this stuff.

OPEN LETTER TO A STRANGER

dear olivia,

i am still reading SILENCE. got slowed down by the onslaught of the semester. but this book is double-capital GGood. seriously. i may need to ask you for a small list of literary recommendations. go ahead and toss in some film choices, too. i'd be interested to know what films you dig up in all your reading.

i may be further delayed in my finishing of SILENCE because i'm scheduled to lead a bookclub discussion of FRANKENSTEIN next week with some dudes here in the republic. i think we're going to sip some ales and talk some monster and watch a FRANKEN-groovy film of some sort. i'll keep the online bookclub posted how that turns out. should be a bolting blast of a good time.

yes, i am completely aware that i have not answered your question about me and the wife's churchiness. not that i think you're out there losing sleep over it - but you ask, and i told you that i would tell you. just trying to keep us both true to our word. truth is: it's complicated. or maybe it's too simple to get into words. honestly, i've starting writing you that response about four times, only to go "what the eff am i saying?" we'll get to it.

also, i accidentally made my oatmeal too lumpy this morning. you see, i made it in this little transparent tupperware container as opposed to the normal white ceramic bowls from crate and barrel somebody gave us for a wedding gift. i think the transluscence of the tupperware disrupted the depth-perception of my visual field, causing me to pour in less boiling water than usual. not that i want my oatmeal soupy, you see, but i sure do not like the sensation of eating volleyball beach sand. life is one big school room, and i'm getting learned in the finer things every damn day.

alright. enough already. peace out.

-hamster

Book #3?

Let's get some comments going with books you're wanting to read. We already have a few listed on the side, too. 

What do you think should be our voting options for book #3? 

There are a few books I think would be amazing to read back to back: 

• Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
• Remembering Babylon by David Malouf 
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

and

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
• A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

I REALLY want to throw in Walking on Water: Reflections on Art and Faith, because so many cool folks I know have said it's their favorite book.

Any thoughts on this about order? Want to suggest different books? Am I the only one that hasn't read The Road?

Start some chatter up here if you have any thoughts.

the day is real

Sweet Sassy Molassey, I hope we're still reading buddies after all the ruckus. Seems like it's over now. Is it? Are you ready to forever hold your peace on The Shack?

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Guys, I know Fall schedules are getting all scribbly and filled. This is such a fussy time of year, but keep clicking here and get ready to vote on the side for the book to follow Holy the Firm? Do you have Holy the Firm? My copy is only 76 pages long.

Listen to this. Read it aloud. "The day is real; the sky clicks securely in place over the mountains, locks round the islands, snaps slap on the bay. Air fits flush on farm roofs; it rises inside the doors of barns and rubs at yellow barn windows. Air clicks up my hand cloven into fingers and wells in my ears' holes, whole and entire. I call it simplicity, the way matter is smooth and alone" (pp. 12-13).

Poetry! I can't wait to read Dillard with you. What do you say we read it by September 8th and just write as we want? I'm sure we'll breeze through it like chocolate, wishing it wasn't over when it was.

so what did you think??

i have found myself pausing several times before answering this question. everyone seems to be talking about The Shack. do i mention all the good things i appreciated about it?? or do i focus on the things that bugged me? the good: portraying God as someone who cares. He sees our pain, wants to enter into it with us, wants to personally heal us. Bottom line: He loves us.
the bad: don't build your whole view of God based on The Shack. some quotes from the book are inconsistent with scripture (i'm not going to list them here--i think everyone else has done a good job dissecting it). i paused after hearing Macks view of seminary as part of the religious system. i've had the privilege of taking a few seminary classes and it's only increased my love for God, His word and others.
sorry to only post once...i read the book several weeks ago and planned to read along again but couldn't bring myself to reread the first few chapters. i have two little girls--after reading Missy abduction i cried my eyes out.
obviously i am not a writer--i have enjoyed reading all of your posts. there are obviously some gifted literary peoples in the group. i haven't ventured beyond parenting and Piper books the past few years so i'm excited to stretch my brain in a new way.

Tin Roof ---- Rusted!

I was starting to feel like my little baby blog had fallen into a mud bath, but low and behold, the "good stuff" entries came and washed all the yuck out. Keep your good stuff coming, peoples.

Because most of us seem to have finished The Shack already, let's go ahead and start dishing our final reviews of the book - spoilers and all. We can give ourselves a couple of weeks to do that and order Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm. And also in that time, Nicole suggests that we each post a self-introduction. I'll keep a link to each intro on the side so newcomers can be acquainted with whomever they're reading. 

Also, let's make a decision right now to hush up about feeling inadequate in comparison to other bloggers here. You do not have to be an English major to understand English. Write what gets you about the book. If you mispell (sp?) a word, you're normal. We like regular peoples just as much as irregular peoples. You also do not have to believe in Jesus to be here. I'm just saying. We like peoples here, especially plain ole peoples who mess up in the way peoples do. 

My "Good Stuff Entry"

why The Shack is cheese to a good wine.
(by which I am a hypocrite because I like a $3 bottle of champagne and cheddar cheese so this analogy doesn't apply to me, but in the worldly sense of people who have good taste I plunge forward with my now awkward analogy.)

Good wine is something to relish, to enjoy and savor. The Shack isn't that. It's the complementary cheese to the wine. You pop it in your mouth, then chew and swallow, then back to savoring the good stuff. Now, I love cheese. Not the moldy expensive stuff, but good old Wisconsin cheddar. The wine would be fine without the cheese, but oh, isn't comfort food grand?

There are plenty of good books out there, great stuff, the classics. What would my world be today without Tom Sawyer? (Perhaps slightly less racist...) Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, and Ernest Hemingway, are all wonderful authors whose classic works stand out and feel like honey tea to a raspy throat to our respective creative souls. Those books are fine wine. Heck, to make this analogy more spiritual, I'll throw the bible in the mix. The bible is something to pour over multiple times to see what gem you suddenly find entwined with the stuff you know. I'm re-reading Songs of Solomon and I'm falling in love with God all over.

Now, as you people have (no doubt) read in several of my comments, I love the Shack. I will border on boring repetition here, but I want this blog to be the whole version, and not just bit and pieces based on the assumption that you remember all my comments thus far. Someone gave me the book before all the hype so I had an insurmountable advantage over you because I wasn't trying to make it live up to something it's NOT. AND I read it all in a day so I wasn't reading it with a critical eye. Now that I am going back through, I will say that I hold it with a little less esteem, but nonetheless love it. The Shack is just a simply written book of someone attempting to do the impossible and I applaud his effort and putting his soul out there for the buzzards to pick clean. I barely want to publish here, let alone try to compile my heart's thoughts to be read by all!! I think he overreached some and tried to hard to explain stuff that really he could have left alone but on the whole he got a point across that is sending his book to #1 and getting movie deal out of it.

He attempts to bridge the gap of an all-loving God and the sickness of this fallen world and the sins that "shouldn't" happen. Does anyone one of you NOT have family members or dear friends who use this as an excuse for the non-existence of God? The hurt, the suffering we all have experienced in combination with an all-powerful, all-loving God is hard to equate. It's hard to understand. It's plain hard to believe. As my own testimony that I have shared on here, I would say the churched answer of "Well, of course I believe in an all-powerful God" while, deep, deep in the depths of my heart a voice cried out "NO! I don't!" and I would ignore it because it was wrong. Pesky ole Satan trying to make me doubt or something, but what I didn't realize was that was not just Satan, it was what I truly believed. I just denied it like a crime done against someone who won't admit it happened to her because then the ugliness would pour out and everyone would see how dirty that she was. My life wasn't full of anger or bitterness, but perhaps if I hadn't read The Shack and had to deal with my personal demons, my own Great Sadness (sappy reference, I know!) would have developed into that.

I don't want to go into too much personal detail being that I don't know everyone on here and this is again, repetitive, but when the doctors told me that my child had a syndrome that needs to be diagnosed, when they said he'd probably have to have heart surgery and that he was severely developmentally behind, and when they told me that an operation is the only way for my child to not loose his vision in one eye, my deep rooted feelings came up like like a raging volcano and my trust in God was shattered. How could an all-loving God allow this? I could go into the rest of the world but you already know the filth that is there, all around, wanting to devour all that is holy and innocent. I'm not going to go over all that happened within my life that made me finally realize and work through my issues because that is my personal story and it is ongoing.

The Shack was like a salve on my soul, quieting me and making me deal with the hypocrisy within my life. It wasn't the slap in the face books that I quite literally throw across the room in a fit of rebellion, it was the whisper of God within the pages telling me that he IS Love. I'm not going to pour over it and delight in reading it again and again, but it was a tasty morsel that complemented my own search for who He is.

THE HAMSTER'S SHACK ATTACK

no spoilers here. just wanted to drop some personal notes on this phenomenom that has brought us all here together. this blurring wonder we have come to know as: THE SHACK.

here's what i liked about william p. young's first opus:

- THE SHACK was short. once i finally got to reading it, i cranked through it in, like, two days. this makes me happy. the more books i crank through in two days the more books i get to boast for reading in a month's time, which makes me sound wicked smart at a dinner party.

- THE SHACK was encouraging. many of you may know (most of you may not), that i am a fan of violence in media. i like seeing people die on the television set - particularly in bizarre, creative ways (ie. christian bale dropping the chainsaw on the prostitute in the stairwell - baker's got my back on this). with that in mind, i found the story of THE SHACK encouraging. it made me feel good and calm and rested. reading THE SHACK tasted like sipping chamomile tea with my eyeballs.

- in THE SHACK, i liked how the trinity laughed so much. and i liked that their joy kinda peeved mack. i think the religious world went and got all bothered about many things concerning this book - and right there near the top of their pissy list it says "God don't laugh that much!" well, i think God does laugh that much. i think life more abundant means that we will all ride skateboards and fingerpaint and climb giant red oaks and wrestle 'gators and drink all the hoppy ale we want without getting drunk because Heaven will be all the fun we could not have on earth. that might be juvenile, but, dang, what else will we be doing? floating? playing harps? sitting on clouds looking dumbfounded? i think God has a tremendous Father's heart, and when God gets all the kids home one day, i think He's going to have a backyard party that don't stop. why else does seth haines want to roll on the floor and wrestle and tickle and laugh with his three sons? because God the Father wants to roll on the floor and wrestle and tickle and laugh with seth. it's simple. so william p. young hit that nail smack on the head.

- on that note, i also really liked it when Jesus told mack that He was not a christian. i also liked it when Jesus said that He did not come so that people could be like Jesus. instead, Jesus came to reveal the Father. CHA-CHING! jackpot! great stuff. when i read that, a little ball of agreement exploded in my gut. beautiful moment. totally great.

- i like how every chapter in THE SHACK had a quote at the front. when i write a book one day, the one about my pheonix tattoo and the day i shot out of the yellow sea like a cannonball from a submarine, i'm gonna put a bunch of boss quotes at the beginning of every chapter. there'll be stuff by ani difranco, mike ness of social distortion, isaac brock of modest mouse, my wife, my dad, my friend aubrey who lived next to me in china, thom yorke of radiohead, chad pollock, neil young, bruce springsteen, and a schlew of other folks that showed me God, not in a shack, but in a little communist owned apartment complex. i'm stoked to see it happen.

- i like how the Holy Spirit looked like lucy liu in my head the entire time i read THE SHACK. mainly because i think lucy lui is phenomenally gorgeous, but i'm totally not attracted to her in that way. ya know?

- i like how God kept rebuking this idea that something bad happened for a reason. instead, God was all like, yea, the bad thing happened - and I could have stopped it, but I didn't - and now that it's done I can make something awesomely beautiful out of it. this is good, in my opinion, because i've seen myself and other people waste a lot of years and faith searching for "the reason" or "the purpose" of why something happened. it's ten times easier, and quicker, to relinquish our need to know and to start praising God in the midst of all the shit. God promised to inhabit praises - God never promised to answer our questions. God promised to comfort those who mourn - God never promised to tell us why we mourned. that's a hard truth, but it's truth nonetheless. relinguishing our furious desire to know why is a pivotal step to trusting God as the Hopeful Redeemer of all things hopeless.

- i love that this book is blowing everybody's mind. that's great. i love that people are wrestling and trembling with their views of God in light of this very simple, good, hopeful story. that is so like God to stick His finger down in the middle of something totally benign and then swirl it up like a water park ride. eugene peterson might actually be right about THE SHACK: this book might shake some foundation in modern christianity that needs to be shaken, and then drop it to the floor in a devastating crash. i hope so. you just never know where God's gonna infuse His heart into His kids. i love the Lord for that.

- there were a couple times, only a couple, when billy young tried to give black mama Papa a hint of ebonics in her speech. that was just plum cute. it was only a couple lines, and it almost seemed like he was nervous to take it too far, but i laughed straight outloud when i saw it. i said, you go, whiteboy! and he did. and i'm glad.

alright, alright, that's all i got for now. i'm done with THE SHACK. now i'm reading olivia's recommendation, SILENCE. olivia knows what she's talking about. this SILENCE is wicked good. i'm only five chapters in, but i'm already giving it five samurai swords out of five. will keep you all posted.

ps. i writ this over on my other site today. you probably shouldn't read it.

A Reading Room Disclaimer

So I'm thinking we need to post a disclaimer somewhere on the main page of our blog. As we pick books and critique them we are bound to get visitors, like our friend Terry(which in my opinion are a good thing) who may not know us and think we are to harsh. We live in a critical society and although most of us understand and know each other, I would hate for anyone to be discouraged or offended by what we say about the books, authors, writing style or whatever. Maybe just a note on the side like where we welcome people to join us. I don't know. Just a thought.

Someone Get Me Out of This Shack!

About 3 weeks ago, my dear friend Nicole sent me a book by Alan Paton entitled Cry The Beloved Country (“Cry”).  Then, two weeks ago, my new friend Hamster sent me Papa—A Personal Memoir, by Greg Hemingway (“Papa”).  Cry is a novel about racial injustice, set in an Apartheid bound South Africa.  Papa is a non-fiction account of Ernest Hemmingway’s life through his son’s eyes.  I love South Africa and Hemingway.  I also like good writing.  I walk by both books daily and they respectfully ask me to open them to a new journey.  But alas, I am stuck in the Shack with Mack and a syrup bottle version of God that makes my stomach turn. 

In more guarded conversations—ones that do not find themselves published on the internet for all the world to see—you will hear many say that the dialogue in the Shack is somewhat less than stellar but not quite atrocious.  It is an idea book, the Shack apologist will say.   I waited for these ideas, hoping that they would overshadow the atrocities of trite dialogue.  I had been promised that they would.  And not just from you guys.  From preachers, and worship leaders, and bloggers, and perhaps even a relative or two.

I am disappointed.

“But while Mack could not stop the tears from filling his eyes, he was not ready to let go—not yet, not with this Woman.  …’Not Ready?’ she responded.  ‘That’s okay, we’ll do things on your terms and time.  Well come on in.  Can I take your coat.’”  Page 83.

“Mack stepped back again, feeling a bit overwhelmed.  ‘Are there more of you?’ he asked a little hoarsely.  The three looked at one another and laughed.  Mack couldn’t help but smile. ‘No, Mackenzie,’ chuckled the black woman. ‘We is all that you get, and believe me, we’re more than enough.’”  Page 85

“Pap was working on something with her back to him, flour flying as she swayed to the music of whatever she was listening to.  The song obviously came to an end, marked by a couple of last shoulder and hip shakes.  … ‘West Coast Juice.  Group called Diatribe and an album that isn’t even out yet called Heart Trips.  Actually,’ she winked at Mack, ‘these kids haven’t even been born yet.’”  Page 90.

“Mackenzie, I am neither male nor female….  If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it’s because I love you.  For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning.”  Page 93.

When talking about Jesus asking why God forsook him:   “’Will you at least consider this: When all you can see is your pain, perhaps you lose sight of me?’”  Page 96.

About Jesus healing the blind: “’He did so as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him.  Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.’”  Page 100.

“’We have limited ourselves out of respect for you.  We are not bringing to mind, as it were, our knowledge of your children.  As we are listening to you, it is as if this is the first time we have known about [your friends], and we take great delight in seeing them through your eyes.’”  Page 106.

It is true, the Shack is an idea book.  And I don’t like the ideas.

The church has eaten this book up.  We’ve put it on the best seller list.  Why?  We want an identifiable God.  So we quickly adopt a version in which we dress her in an apron and jeans, allow her imperfect grammar, plug her into an iPod, limit her deity within human confines, and allow her to cast aspersions about Jesus’ eyesight on the Cross.  We like her to refrain from pushing.  She would never swallow us in a whale, or strike us off our asses on the road to Damascus.  She waits for us.  She does things on our “terms and time.” 

Who is she?  She is your all-understanding aunt.  You know, the one who used to listen to MTV when you were 6 and knows how to make that kick-A blackberry cobbler.  Because we can all identify with blackberry cobbler.  And who didn’t shake to the Dire Straights?

But at the heart of it all, the God I know through scripture is not understandable.  His qualities are infinitely juxtaposed: he is violent and tender; he is permissive and forceful; he is creative and destructive; he is understanding but unbending; he sets forth his plan and then relents.  Further, he sent us a representation of himself that was not understood, even by those who followed him the most closely.  And when the Spirit came and infiltrated every believer, they still didn’t quite get God—at least, not all the way.

I know that the above quotes contain many debatable theological issues, but that is not the point of this post.  Perhaps we can discuss these more fully in the comments.  Instead, I ask why we are so quick to adopt a rewritten God?  Why do we desire to neuter the immutable complexities of God, which I admit can seem vexing? I think these complexities are beautiful.  They keep me coming back for more.

Look, I don’t need God to be white, or male, or Baptist, I just need him to be God.  Not my aunt Sharon (who I must say makes incredible toffee).  And I fear that all I’m getting here is a culturally acceptable version of him.  A palatable version of the trinity.   A made-for-T.V. theology in which Oprah is sure to be the central character. We’ll watch it and laugh at that cute blue bird nuzzling in the crook of her neck.

Rubbish.

 

An Interview with Mr. Young

I found THIS interview hosted by OPB radio. It's long, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Some points that have already been discussed on this blog were brought up. Sometimes I agreed with what I heard, sometimes I didn't. (My kind of interview.) Listen to it while you sweep your floors or something and let me know what you think.

An Equally Awesome and Awkward Experience

I’m in a Real Live Face To Face book club here in Portland with my dear friend Jessica. We refer to it as the Super Serious Not Stupid book club because we’ve both had bad experiences with book groups before and we both like alliteration. During one of our chats a few months ago, we also started talking about The Shack; I was currently reading it, and Jess had read it last fall. She had a great experience to share, so when I found out it was this blog’s first book, I bugged her to write about it. She really is quite lovely with her words.

Also – no spoilers, so read on.
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I had just joined a book club through my church, and was fairly disappointed when I saw the cover of the first book we were supposed to read: The Shack. In all honesty, had this not been the first book that we read as a group, I would have most likely returned that puppy to Powell's, forgotten about the book club, and found something else to do with my time. But out of that old Southern Baptist guilt, I decided to give it a try. After searching EVERYWHERE for this thing (amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, etc.) I finally found it at the Multnomah School of the Bible bookstore. Sigh. So, I took it with me on my bus commute to work, hiding the cover all the way, ashamed that I was ashamed.

The first few chapters were nothing to write home about. In fact, I felt a sense of pity for the author - he evidently hadn't written much, and the dialogue was terrible. And predictable. And trite. But our looming date for the first book club meeting was coming up, so I ended up blazing through it in a frenzied two-day-span before our group met for the first time.

When I arrived at our first meeting, there was a man in a red polo shirt, sitting uncomfortably in the corner. Because I'm generally uncomfortable in social situations anyway, I could empathize. I didn't feel too comfortable myself. After a dinner full of agonizing small talk and some weird reader version of one-upmanship ("Oh, you absolutely HAVE to read so and so", "You haven't read so and so? His writing will change your LIFE", etc. etc.), we all sat around in a circle, and found out that Polo Shirt Man was the author. He lives in Portland, and his son goes to our church - thus, the connection. Sigh. I felt like I could no longer blast the literary deficiencies in the book and would have to be quite surfacey and positive. Heck, the guy at least gave writing a shot, which is more than I can say for myself.

He was quiet, but had a way of speaking such that you wanted to listen. He apparently had written this book as a gift for his children. His own childhood had been quite painful - he was raised by missionary parents in Papua New Guinea, and they were both so consumed with their respective ministries that he was neglected and basically raised by the tribal people to which his parents were ministering. Along with this came initiations into tribal rites which were terribly painful for him, emotionally (and he didn't go into what these entailed, and to be honest, I don't want to think about that), and the scars stayed with him for quite a while - and ended up playing a role in how he raised his own children. I received the impression that The Shack was a way to show his children how the love of the trinity far surpasses anything a father on earth can do. He gave them this book for Christmas, I believe, and that was that.

But then - after some strange connection (he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone), the piece ended up in the hands of a publisher and things took off from there. I'm pretty hazy on what happened next - but the important thing to me was that he never intended for the book to be made public or to be published. He wrote it for his kids.

This really changed the way I saw the book. Though I hear that it's now somewhat gone the Prayer of Jabez route (Prayer of Jabez tea set, anyone?), that was never the intent. It was just something that a dad put together for his family. A lot of people have experienced pain and need to know the different ways that God loves them. And to be honest, we all need to be a little more open in regards to our view of the trinity as well, so it's a win-win situation.

When I left that night, I felt the way you do when you've been with someone who has laid all of his or her emotions and inadequacies out there. You sort of feel honored to have been trusted with access to their pain. And there's something attractive about that, especially when the individual didn't necessarily set out to turn their emotional/spiritual hurts into a money-making gig. It made me reread the book with a measure of grace. Though I'm not sure how this is the case, it makes me happy that it debuted at number one on the New York Times trade paperback fiction best-seller list. I guess it makes me happy for the quiet awkward man in the corner.