Suite Francaise: a Book Review

Knowing the personal history of Irene Nemirovsky, the author of Suite Francaise, makes this compelling novel even more poignant than it already is. Nemirovsky was a Russian-born Jew who emigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. She attended La Sorbonne and successfully became an acclaimed writer. Suite Francaise is actually two books in one and was supposed to be two books of five when she completed her plans, but she was never able to finish the work in its entirety. She was writing it during World War II and in 1942 she was arrested and sent to Pithiviers and on to Auschwitz where she died.

Nemirovsky’s oldest daughter, Denise, kept the notebook Suite Francaise was written in for fifty years before reading it, believing it to be a personal journal of her mother’s and assumed it would be too heartbreaking to read. Denise made arrangements to give all of her mother’s papers to a French archive, but decided to go ahead and read them before doing so. When she realized what the manuscript actually was, she chose to have it published instead and it became a French bestseller in 2004. The translated English version has also become a bestseller and contains many of Nemirovsky’s notes in the appendices which are completely worth reading as well.

Suite Francaise begins in 1940 in Paris as Nazi occupation is just underway. It goes back and forth between different characters in different locales across France, from a well-to-do mother looking frivolously for dessert, a couple consumed with thoughts of being fired and unable to find other careers, to a village where the people must house Nazi officers in their own homes. It’s a story with many angles on life in occupied France and even though technically unfinished, it is a moving and important piece.

What strikes me so deeply is that Nemirovsky was writing this while experiencing exactly what she was writing about. How much more credible can a work like this be? For readers who are as enthralled with the people affected by the Nazi Regime as I am, this is absolutely a book for the reading list.

[Via http://motifbrophy.wordpress.com]

The Red Tent: a Book Review

The Red Tent is a beautiful story by Anita Diamant about Dinah, the daughter of Jacob who is mentioned briefly in the book of Genesis. Diamant uses ingenious poetic license to create an account of Dinah’s life anyone can only guess at. Diamant’s rich knowledge of the Torah and study of this period of time make for an authentic-feeling piece.

The book begins with the day Jacob met Rachel, her father Laban, and her sisters. Life changed from that moment on for their family and Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah eventually became the wives of Jacob. Dinah was the daughter of Leah, although all four considered her their daughter, as she considered the four of them her mothers. Dinah learned much from the four mothers (much of which is learned in the Red Tent), most importantly the duties, privileges, and curses of women, and she learned midwifery from a young age, later becoming a midwife sought after by royalty. The turning point in Dinah’s life was a violent tragedy, as indicated in Genesis. The book goes on with Dinah’s story as she becomes another person in a foreign land, refusing to revive the memory of her devastation. She eventually travels back to her homeland and allows the wounds of her past to finally heal.

There are many figures of the Bible I find intriguing, and yet so many we have but just a few small details about, so a book like this is of much value to me when a talented writer can make a mysterious figure come alive in such a way that Diamant does. It’s no wonder that this book is a New York Times Bestseller. The Red Tent is opulent with spirit and a wonderful story all around about women mentoring women and how far that can go to sustain life and strength.

[Via http://motifbrophy.wordpress.com]

Book review: Rolling With The 6.57 Crew

Pompey Playing Up

Rolling With The 6.57 Crew – By Cass Pennant & Rob Silvester

First Published : 2004

ISBN 1 84454 072 3

Score out of 5 :

I’ve decided to start reviewing footy related books on the blog, just to add something different to the general themes of following the Albion and casual clothing. The reviews won’t necessarily be about the latest books, just ones I have read recently and that are loosely related to all things football.

I also have a guilty pleasure to admit to – hooligan memoirs. I’ve never been in trouble at a game in my life, or so much as growled at opposing fans, but while I don’t condone or glorify hooliganism, it is something inextricably linked to the very fabric of the game, like it or not. I’m also fascinated with the motives, the people involved, and the actual events from these often vicious times. But not all the football related books I read are about young men kicking the shit out each other, biogs and polemics about the state of the modern game float my boat too. Just don’t expect to see Nick Hornby being lionized on this site.

First up is a book co-written by the Tom Clancy of “Hoolie Lit” – Mr Cass Pennant. Cass was a famous member of the infamous ICF of West Ham, and he loves to tell a tale does Cass. The book, though full of spelling and grammatical errors, is a rollicking ride in the wake of the nutty skates of Portsmouth FC from the early skinhead days of 68-69, through the casual heyday of the early eighties, and the slow decline of large-scale bedlam at football in the nineties and noughties. I always read these kind of books with a large handful of salt, and this one especially, as the skates run everyone all over the place it seems. Co-author Rob Silvester was a hardcore member of the “6.57″, a crew named after the time of the train from Portsmouth to London, where these boys usually started each naughty awayday.

It’s a good read nonetheless, and describes well some of the undoubtedly tough characters produced by the very insular and school-of-hard-knocks city that is Portsmouth, very entertaining.

[Via http://thehovian.com]

The Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution

Ci Jiwei. The Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.

In a comparative philosophical view, Jiwei Ci traces the logical and historical movement of the Chinese revolution from Maoist utopianism to reform-era hedonism. In so doing, Ci argues against the common conception of the Maoist project as ascetic utopianism. Instead, he sees sublimated hedonism as an integral part of utopianism, and through ideological bankruptcy caused by the irreconcilable separation between reality and meaning creates nihilism, in turn leading to full-scale hedonism (1, 3, 5). Under this universalizing framework, Ci presents the materialist roots of Maoism- his “detour on the road to capitalism,” reframes the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution as struggles against “the routinization or depersonalization of charisma,” and even reinterprets the Democracy movement and recent anti-corruption agitation as inherently hedonistic (they are illegally enjoying the material benefits we want and deserve).

Much like Chen Jian’s revision of Mao’s role in the Cold War and Jung Chang’s provocative if problematic biography of Mao Zedong, Ci enjoys the authorial position of “insider” as he seeks the roots of China’s “spiritual crisis” that “existed in potentia in utopianism, came to a head in nihilism, and continues barely disguised in hedonism” (19, 22-23). Ci presents a fascinating logical discussion of the ti/yong duality in the late-Qing attempts to modernize technologically while maintaining cultural purity, and thus, centrality. Calling ti/yong the development of a peripheral mentality, or “thwarted ethnocentricity,” Ci finds continuities to the adoption of Marxism, which turned former shame at being the modern West’s periphery into a moralistic pride under Marxism (35, 39). And meshing with Chen Jian’s, as well as Chang and Halliday’s, presentation of Mao’s obsession with world dominance, Ci details how Mao Zedong Thought was presented as universally applicable to peasant revolutions worldwide (43).

In many ways, speed is at the heart of Ci Jiwei’s thesis on utopianism to hedonism. In typically-dialectical style, speed figures in Ci’s analysis in seemingly paradoxical ways. Mao’s repeated calls for ascetic denial of material enjoyment was superficial postponements of a future state of utopian fulfillment; yet, especially in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, it was presented as the fastest way to realize that future utopia. It thus follows that the exaggerated claims of quick success in order to justify further denial and sacrifice led to disillusionment, nihilism, and a hedonism that focuses exclusively on material enjoyment in the here and now.

Indeed, if one takes into account the diversity modern China studies that deal with speed, the argument can be made that speed itself was a defining feature of Maoist ideology and practice. Intellectuals and state-builders in John Fitzgerald’s Awakening China struggled with how to modernize as quickly as possible; Friedman, Pickowicz, and Selden’s two volumes on Wugong village repeatedly stress the forced “speed” of collectivization and de-collectivization, and the results on lived experience; Suzanne Pepper’s (1978) treatment of the Civil War illustrated the CCP’s successful flexibility in slowing down the radical reforms under the Land Equalization Policy in 1947 and 1948; and Chang and Halliday’s Mao would stop at nothing to push revolutionary change to a speed that suited his whims.

As can be seen, one of the most successful traits of Ci’s philosophically-informed study of the Chinese Revolution is its high level of abstraction that allows for dialogue with many studies that appear unrelated. Ci’s presentation of disillusionment leading to nihilism, then, can be viewed as the abstracted, theoretical counterpoint to the physical and spiritual exhaustion that Friedman, Pickowicz, and Selden found in their decades-long study of Wugong village. Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution is thus a must-read for any student of modern and contemporary Chinese history, for Ci Jiwei’s powerful analysis can present food for thought on any number of topics in the field. Maurice Meisner’s out-of-print theoretical volume, Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism, would make a good foil on the issue of materialist and utopian trends in the Chinese Revolution.

Brent Haas

© Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.

[Find it on Amazon]

[Via http://ucsdmodernchinesehistory.wordpress.com]

Review - The End of Christianity; William A. Dembski

Dr William Dembski, described as a gifted Christian thinker, is a mathematician and philosopher and a well known champion of Intelligent Design (ID).  He’s author of a dozen plus books and has been cited in both Time magazine and the New York Times.

This book is an intellectual tour-de-force of Christian apologetics. It attempts to counter the recent rash of neo-atheism books, headlined by the likes of Richard Dawkins. Dembski is ‘pleased that Christianity is once again a live issue’ and the cover blurb describes the book as ‘provocative’.  For me, in places, it was simply impenetrable!

It tackles the age-old question – termed theodicy (the problem of a perfect God in an imperfect world) – with which all of us struggle; ‘how can a good God and an evil world co-exist’? The book attempts to deal with the ever-perplexing problem of the existence of evil and to offer new insights into God’s purposes in allowing evil.

Dembski tries to reach an understanding of what the ‘end (result) of Christianity’ really means, hence the title. He tries to change our thinking so that we see God’s goodness in creation despite the distortion of sin and evil.  Augustine had said, ‘God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist’. The book argues that ‘God would be unjust if he didn’t subject the world to natural evil so that it reflects the evil in human hearts resulting from the fall’. It is therefore ‘painful to accept that God bears at least some responsibility for natural evil and that he brings it about in response to human sin’.

Here are the big questions; is human sin responsible for natural evil? Is the fall responsible for famine, floods and earthquakes? Does creation predate the fall and by how long? If so, how old is the earth and how do we understand and interpret the early chapters of Genesis? Does science now trump the traditional young-earth, creationist view of Genesis?

Dembski resolutely defends the claim that all evil is ultimately traceable to human sin at the fall.  It is this that is the cause of all evil, not God; ‘The essence of evil is the rebellion of the creature’, an action of created free will. Along with other Christian thinkers, Dembski asserts that the main reason why people reject God is that they cannot believe that He is good.  He states that the key mark of faith is an ability to discern God’s goodness in the face of extreme evil.

Phew – I struggled big-time with this book. I found it difficult, fascinating, challenging and stretching. I’m far from qualified to comment on the arguments and around chapter 13, I just got hopelessly lost!

Why does God allow evil? I’m afraid I still don’t know. To me it remains a troubling and disturbing mystery.

The End of Christianity – Finding a Good God in an Evil World

William A. Dembski

2009     238pp

Paternoster / Authentic Media

ISBN 978-0-8054-2743-1

Note – This book was provided FOC by Clem Jackson, Editor of Christian Marketplace magazine for the purpose of writing this review. Further details can be found at www.christianmarketplace.org.uk. You can download a free copy of the digital version of the magazine from the website.

[Via http://eddieolliffe.wordpress.com]

I wanna be a futurist (or I heart Douglas Coupland)

I fancy myself an avid reader.   That is actually a bit of a fib.   I read voraciously, when I’m in a “reading phase”.   I don’t so much read as consume.   Three of four books a week is par for the course during one of my feasts of words.  Then, like with politics or current events or the Indianapolis Colts, I lose my appetite for reading.   Music takes over my focus.   Or culinary exploits.  Or television.  Or, most commonly, horror movies (okay…that’s a stretch…I’m always hungry for horror movies).

But about once a year, regardless of whether or not I am feasting or fasting, I make time and concentrate my efforts of the latest release from Douglas Coupland.  My love affair for Doug began with his first novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. It stood out in the book store like no other book.  Shorter, longer, with a strange photo negative cover.  I judge it.  By its cover.  And it was a wise decision.

Generation X had been published for at least five years before I picked it up the first time, but, once I owned it, it rarely left my side.   I had always felt that I was an older soul.   Born perhaps a bit later than I should have been (and if we are speaking generationally I am actually one year past the societal marker for being a “Gen X-er”).   But this book, amongst the cornucopia I had read at the time, spoke to me like no other.  I had fully embraced Salinger as a way of life but had the unfortunate disconnect of not really appreciating him when he was the rage.  This was an author I could discover and age with.   As years have passed, I have found that I have been maturing right along with him.

I harbor a special love for Shampoo Planet, I read it at a time in my late teen years when I was living very independently and sympathized with the main character Tyler.   I felt the family pangs in All Families are Psychotic as I myself was embarking on a new phase in my life.  Some of his best books I re-read when I am in a word feast (Microserfs, Miss Wyoming, and Hey Nostradamus!).    I even think fondly of some of his less cohesive novels, like Eleanor Rigby and Life After God, and find myself returning to the shelves to read certain passages from them. Each book has a sentiment to it, an ache, that speaks directly to me.

Coupland writes in worlds where post apocalyptic landscapes resemble shopping malls and has a skill for making it romantic.  He’s clever and constantly divining new ways of utilizing pop culture as a way to comment on people and society.  Some people don’t “get” Douglas Coupland.  Some days, I want to live in his brain (yes I know how creepy that sounds).

I recently finished reading Douglas Coupland’s latest novel Generation A. It has taken me while to formulate my thoughts on the piece.

Generation A is an interesting tale set in the not so distant future, where honey bees have gone extinct.   Hooked yet?  How often does one actually think about how a lack of honey bees might affect the world (well gardeners and entomologists maybe)?  In this world, people are self pollinating fruit and meth is an even bigger craze because heroin requires poppies.   The world economy is slowing down.   People’s emotions are running high.  Major pharmaceutical companies begin trying to cash in on the craze.    A new popular anti-depressant starts making the rounds, or as it is called in the book a chrono-suppressant.   The drug is Solon and what it is does is make its user stop thinking about the near and distant future; to think and live in the moment.   A large portion of the world has become addicted to this drug

So we start the novel with a global depression and a planet that is, perhaps, a smidge bi-polar.   No bees.  No genuine emotion.   No modern connections.

Then five strangers from five different locations on the globe are stung by a honey bee.  These five adults (Harj, Zack, Samantha, Julien and Diana) are immediately whisked away to secret government compounds to be studied.  They are left in plain white rooms full of furniture without a single brand name able to be found on any product.  They are fed strange gelatin food and asked countless, random questions about their lives before being gassed back to sleep each evening.   Just as suddenly as they were are whisked away, they are set free and the try their best to continue their “normal” lives.   However they are now lonely celebrities who secretly long to find each other for a sense of real connection.

This is a common theme in most of Coupland’s work.   Strangers with the same desires achingly reach out to one another in hopes of a genuine connection.   Sometimes this is hilariously comical and other times devastatingly tragic.  But always intriguing.  In Coupland’s books, family is merely a notion that few people actually understand until they can find their actual kin, blood related or not.

There is a strange sort of futurism at work in this book (as is the case in most of his books).   At first I found myself angered by the book.   The portrait of the world yet to come that he was painting was horribly bleak and ungodly obnoxious.

But then the five strangers and brought back together by their government captors and told to live in a house together and tell each other stories.   Original stories.   Stories inspire by their lives but works of fiction.  For literary buffs if this sounds like The Decameron, I feel the comparison is intentional.  Coupland is suggesting that the power of story and words is perhaps still the most powerful tool we have in the modern world today, but modern commotion and technology are dampening our communication outlets more and more with each generation.  It’s a rather intangible frustration to grapple and many readers may find it odd or downright annoying, but I find it timely, almost prescient, and oddly romantic.

All the common complaints of Coupland’s books still apply here (lack of true individual characters or style over human substance).  His characters are mere cyphers existing to express popular zeitgeist and culture commentary.  The voices are all similar.   Eerily similar.   Like a kind of hive mind.   And again, that is intentional.

I could have wished for a bit more character development or maybe a little less deus ex machina-find-the-secret-to-emotional-insecurity.  Coupland still hasn’t pinned down the minute details of the psychology of his characters, leaving the reader to fill in whatever details they can imagine (which as a reader I don’t mind but I know to many critics screams “lazy writer”).   But as I am finding  myself living in a world that is filled more and more with inconstant trappings, I have learned to live without definites and embrace any emotional string I can grasp.

By the time I got to the end of the novel, though, I was so emotionally invested in their stories, in their lives, that I wanted to meet these characters.  To find common threads.  To go out in the much and share my stories   To go out, and possibly, find my kin.

[Via http://chance47.wordpress.com]

Their mind is not crippled

They are not stupid; their mind is not crippled; (Mar. 16, 2010)

            The new French author Sylvie Garoche wrote in “When we befriend death” that her father was in a convalescence home and she was convinced that he was no longer aware of anything since he kept his silence and his eyes were kind of looking in a void.  “I brought my father a CD of an opera he loved and then I asked him a simple question just for conversation sake “Do you recall the tune?”  He replied “I constantly sing in my mind all the operas that I memorized and the concerts that I attended. I sing the old ballads related to wild trails that I used to walk summer times” This erudite old man, fond of literature, music, and trekking, was still reviewing the trails, the wild passages, the majestic views from mountain tops, the wild flowers on the way; he was assisting to his favorite concerts; he was walking in his mind his favorite wild trails by torrents and streams, dense forests; he was feeling the warmth of the sun and the ticklish wind.

            Most of old persons that look vegetables, who fail to react, who can no longer talk or communicate efficiently, are reliving their internal lives made of emotions, sound, and visual sceneries; they are recalling of what they weaved during a life time.

            Most of these old persons would be recalling far greater events, richer sounds, more vivid sceneries if they could enjoy beautiful facilities where care is centered on the person and where location is made as home.

            It is never too late to train your memory and get hooked to a hobby: you might need them in old age. 

They are not stupid; their mind is not crippled; (Mar. 16, 2010)

 

            The new French author Sylvie Garoche wrote in “When we befriend death” that her father was in a convalescence home and she was convinced that he was no longer aware of anything since he kept his silence and his eyes were kind of looking in a void.  “I brought my father a CD of an opera he loved and then I asked him a simple question just for conversation sake “Do you recall the tune?”  He replied “I constantly sing in my mind all the operas that I memorized and the concerts that I attended. I sing the old ballads related to wild trails that I used to walk summer times” This erudite old man, fond of literature, music, and trekking, was still reviewing the trails, the wild passages, the majestic views from mountain tops, the wild flowers on the way; he was assisting to his favorite concerts; he was walking in his mind his favorite wild trails by torrents and streams, dense forests; he was feeling the warmth of the sun and the ticklish wind.

            Most of old persons that look vegetables, who fail to react, who can no longer talk or communicate efficiently, are reliving their internal lives made of emotions, sound, and visual sceneries; they are recalling of what they weaved during a life time.

            Most of these old persons would be recalling far greater events, richer sounds, more vivid sceneries if they could enjoy beautiful facilities where care is centered on the person and where location is made as home.

            It is never too late to train your memory and get hooked to a hobby: you might need them in old age.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely

Yesterday all the past. Auden, “Spain”

Ariely is a behavioral economist at Duke. This book describes numerous studies that he has done on irrationality in human behavior, including relationships, buying and selling, honesty, and the placebo effect. The book summarizes the studies in a loose and easy way–there are no graphs in the book. Writing down the Ten Commandments (as many as they could remember) made test-takers less likely to cheat. Duke students in possession of basketball tickets thought that they were worth more than students without them were willing to pay (the “endowment effect,” which also appears when home sellers want more than what buyers will pay). Ariely and his wife valued their unusually remodeled home as a treasure and priced it accordingly, but prospective buyers just found it odd and wouldn’t make an offer till some of the changes were undone.

His approach makes the book readable for the nonspecialist, but as a result, his conclusions are not very compelling. It’s hard to tell how much is really scientific and how much is just validation of Ariely’s own opinions about human nature. In order to make the book readable for nonspecialists, he avoids getting into the gritty details of numbers that, one assumes, are contained within his studies. There is a list of sources at the back of the book with citations to the published articles, if you want to look them up.

This approach really doesn’t work very well. If the author is going to persuade us that his science is good, he needs to show us the science, even at the risk of turning off those who aren’t specialists. The effect of the book is a series of anecdotes about odd little experiments, from which broad conclusions are drawn.

[Via http://georgiarambler.wordpress.com]

Celsius 232.7 Repeating

For a book lauded as one of the great commentaries on society Fahrenheit 451 was not what I expected. Before this I had never read any Ray Bradbury nor seen the movie based on his novel, so I like to think I’ve come in pure and untainted.

What I’ve left with is nothing really. The book I struggled to read, and not because it was bad but because it didn’t hold me. The point it makes is valid though at the same time hypocritical because of its own dismissal of other forms of media.

Books like television, movies, and other mediums can be dumbed down to an equal degree as well as be used to supplement free thinking, family, and other connections that we make as a society. Ultimately his argument is flawed by his dismissal of these other mediums but he still manages to get his point across.

In the end Bradbury undermines his argument further with the scholars destruction of the books and their carrying on of the memes within. What’s to say that the writers of parlor screen stories weren’t attempting to put those very ideas across but because of the way society was they had to be more subtle than some books are.

Yes books are necessary, particular since I would like to write som and really enjoy reading them, but mere censorship of them isn’t where any of it stops. Movies, TV, video games, music, art, theater – all of it gets censored and yet we don’t scream nearly as much as we do with books. I think if anything it stems from the length of time which books have been a part of our culture in comparison to the others. Books have a couple hundred years on everything when it comes to a replicable format. Books also have the bonus of being used for other purposes – pushing other memes, providing documentation, education, etc.

I feel that Ray Bradbury gets his appoint across far better in the afterword provided in the 50th Anniversary Edition in his complete railing against any censorship that people attempted to put on his own works. Read it to understand. I also think that he may have a point in whether or not an author should ever go back an edit or add to a piece of work that he/she did when they were younger – different person, different time after all.

[Via http://nomadsson.wordpress.com]

Barack Obama's first year performance

Barack Obama’s first year performance 

            Bill Adair (Pulitzer Prize) published the Obama program that included 510 promises. Promises being executed are 240 promises, 86 promises were kept, 26 were compromised, and 62 were blocked by the oppositions.

            First, let me present a rundown of the major promises according to the previous categories.

            For promises being executed we have the following:

Creating 5 million “green jobs”

Restraining eavesdropping without authorization

Shutting down Guantanamo prison center

Stopping the usage of torture

Creating CO2 emission market

Creating a universal health plan that added 30 million more citizen benefiting of coverage

Setting up new financial regulations

Repealing the tax cut for the higher incomes

Reducing nuclear arms reserves in a verifiable manner

Re-enforcing antitrust laws that favor consumers

Reducing oil consumption of 35% by 2030

Securing borders by increasing personnel

            For promises kept we may mention

Sending two supplementary brigades to Afghanistan (30,000 soldiers)

Creating a fund to prevent further Real Estates foreclosures

Reforming prison terms to clear prison overpopulation

            For promises compromised we have

Creating a tax credit of $500 for employees

Requiring transparency in the process of budgetary credit by Deputies

            For promises blocked

Extending citizenship to immigrant with no work permit

            For promises betrayed

Obama failed in his promise to hardening regulations in the Administration on conflict of interests between public carriers and private jobs.  The worst transgressors are members in the International Monatary Fund (IMF), which is a public institution but functioning as if a private enterprise.

Note: Every now and then I edit and re-publish articles that passed unnoticed.  Since I first posted this article in January Obama had decided to use his authority as President to improve on Health Care Reforms without the need of Republican support.  Obama policies in the Middle East is still undecided and agravating the situation for his lack of personal involvement.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

Part One: “When we befriend death”

Part One: “When we befriend death”; (Mar. 15, 2010)

            Pierre is never afraid; he is also a fix it all at home and at his laboratory: he is a physicist in solid states.  Once, the very ancient water burner (or boiler) lacked a spare part that the manufacturer stopped producing; Pierre fabricating it and the boiler got a new life for over 10 years. Another time, his car gas pump broke down on the highway; Pierre attached an empty plastic water bottle by his window, removed a few (totally unnecessary tubes from the engine) and connected the gas directly to the engine or something to that effect. Pierre is taking to his grandfather.

            The grandfather needed a new pair of trousers and he started from scratch.  He manufactured a weaving machine, weaved the threads, then cut and sewed himself a pair of trousers.  The grandmother had this to say “the entire process is fine; the trousers are to be desired.”

            Pierre was for social justice and a staunch far left Trotskyite in school; he still is an activist for social justice with a twist: as he started secondary studies he believed that he had a powerful ally in Jesus.  Curious Pierre had met with a group of practicing Catholics called “Focolari”.  He applied the concept of loving his neighbor and in his case it was finding ways to loving his teachers.  It dawned on Pierre to attend seriously to classes as his notion of loving teachers; his grades improved greatly though he persisted on not studying at home.

            Pierre was never afraid in childhood and he was even less afraid in middle age: he believed that after death he will enjoy a listening ear in Jesus and aid better his family and friends.  When Pierre looks sick and his wife is terribly worried he would say “Don’t you worry; I’ll pray for you” meaning that his new location by Jesus will take care of everything.

            At the age of 53, Pierre had a stroke but was conscious all the time.  As he was carried to emergency he saw his second son standing bare footed and told him “Bruno, wear your slippers.”  This curious researcher was having a field day witnessing all the maneuvers and equipments being used to re-animate him: Pierre was asking plenty of questions for detailed comprehension of this new opportunity to learn.  When Pierre recovered his son Bruno cracked this joke “Can you imagine if you died there and then what people would have retained as your last words? Bruno, wear your slippers! You certainly can do better next time”

            Pierre is suffering from a terrible backache; as a scientist Pierre reviewed medical journals, analyzed the data of his medical file and understood that he has a generalized bone cancer; Pierre also knew that it is incurable though physicians never explicitly revealed his illness: the bones formed a Christmas tree shape. Pierre studied the authorized medicines, the secondary effects, and the statistics. Pierre asked his physician to cooperate with him as partner in the procedures and treatments. The debate was: “who is in charge to decide on the treatments? Is it the physician or the patient?”  The physician position is that death does not exist and it is his responsibility to heal the patient. Pierre begs to differ. (To be continued)

Note: Sylvie Garoche wrote a book on her husband’s fight for stopgap measures (taking charge of his destiny and dying peacefully)

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

a glass of wine and a good book

a glass of wine and a good book, originally uploaded by minervacat.

An incomplete and totally subjective list of books about music that I have enjoyed:

• Dixie Lullaby, Mark Kemp. I’m not sure this is actually, objectively, a good book — it’s a little sloppy and a little biased in the author’s own musical tastes, but it’s a book about the culture of white Southern music, focusing hard on the Allmans and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it fell into my lap at precisely the right time — the spring of 2008, when I was in the first flush of obsessive love with the Drive-By Truckers, and this is a book, in a round about way, about what went before the Truckers, so that the Truckers could be the Truckers. It opens with an interview with David Hood, bassist for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who integrated music in Alabama mostly unbeknownst to the people listening to the soul and R&B records made at FAME, and father of Trucker Patterson Hood, and it closes with several pages of interview with Patterson himself, in the wake of the release of Southern Rock Opera. It’s a little dated (obviously, as SRO had just come out — almost ten years ago, now) and a little cringey in places, but it’s also clearly a labor of love and a weirdly compelling window into the Southern Rock genre.
• Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerad. Recommend to me by H., when I was searching out books on the history of the punk and DIY movements. Covering an era of music and a list of bands I was almost completely unfamiliar with (Husker Du and the Replacements being the exceptions, thanks to my Minnesota-college-education), I couldn’t put this down. Compelling and heartbreaking and a little delightfully nasty, this made me interested in the music of a genre and time period I had previously dismissed and ignored outright. I loved this so much I bought myself a copy.
• Who Shot Rock And Roll, ed. Gail Buckland. Sid gave this to me for Christmas, and it’s stunning. A photographic history of rock and roll, a history of rock and roll photography — gorgeous. I mean, absolutely breathtaking in some places. And super depressing, because holy crap, I’ll never be that good or that much in the right place at the right time. But something to strive for, I suppose.
• I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, Stephanie Kuehnert. A novel! A young adult novel, even — the story of Emily Black, self-proclaimed rock goddess, using music to save herself from her family, her history, her small Wisconsin town, and herself, in the early 90s as Nirvana was breaking huge. I said to J. last year, I felt like this wasn’t a very good book but it was a great story, and I stand by that. It’s flawed, technically, as a novel, but I couldn’t put it down — I’ve re-read it several times since and I still feel that way. I love it for the story, and for the obvious love of music that went into it.

I’m reading one right now — The Year Before The Flood by Ned Sublette — that I’m very much enjoying, with some caveats. Part personal memoir and part memoir of New Orleans in the year before Katrina, part history of music in the States and part history of music of New Orleans, it’s compelling, impeccably researched, and it balances all the things it’s trying to be immaculately; it just happens to have some racial issues that are either the result of vague writing and poor editing, or thinly disguised unintentional racism. It’s not enough for me to dismiss the book outright, but someone else should read it and, particularly in the chapters on second lines and on the New Orleans rap and hip hop scene, tell me if I’m projecting unnecessary outrage.

Last year Paste offered a list of the 12 best music books of the decade, and the Boston Globe offered a list of music books that make great gifts.

Your favorite book about music?

[Via http://brandnewkindof.wordpress.com]

Push by Sapphire (spoilers)

Of course, much has been made of Sapphire’s 1996 novel about the life of Clareece Precious Jones, a survivor of incest and a mother of two in Harlem. The book is delivered in the voice of Precious. Despite the fact that it is the shortest novel we have reviewed so far, it is one of the most powerful.

The book is written in the voice of Precious, a sixteen year old girl, who is illiterate despite having attended school. It is horrific to read of her living conditions, being raped by her father and brutalized by her mother. The failings of the educational system and that of social services loom as large as the Manhattan skyline in the life of this Harlem native.

Despite the rich history and culture of her home burrough, she harbors intense self-hatred and the misguided belief that only white people are real. When she meets a woman of her dark complexion and body type in the alternative school she attends because she is pregnant (she gets suspended from regular school because of the pregnancy, by the way), she refuses to believe that the woman is a teacher.  The school proves to be the catalyst for change in Precious’ life. She befriends several students, moves out of her abusive mother’s home, and learns to read and express herself through journaling and poetry composition.

However, the travails of Precious are far from over as she discovers that her father who has raped and impregnated her has infected her with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.  Her mother also keeps trying to bring Precious and her second child, Abdul, home with her and her social worker proves not to be an entirely helpful force in Precious’ life goals. The story does not have a fairy tale ending, but there is hope for Precious.

While Miss B and I felt the mother and grandmother of Precious were ridiculous and the father should have died in prison for their role in her situation, the story was compelling and inspiring and for that deserved our highest honor, two godiva truffles.

[Via http://chocolit.wordpress.com]

Book Review: Writing Fiction for Dummies

Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy

My Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Writing Fiction for Dummies is an excellent resource for new writers. It covers all the basics from starting out to looking for a publisher, which would provide a solid foundation to get started with for any serious writer.

As I’m not a newbie, I didn’t get as much from the book as a new writer would, but I knew that when I purchased the book. I bought it for two reasons, no make that three reasons:

1.One of the co-authors is Randy Ingermanson (the snowflake guy). As I use the Snowflake method all the time and I subscribe to his newsletter, I was sure the book would be useful in helping me improve my method…I was right!

2.I needed an inspiration boost and felt I’d get it from this book. This is related to the first point in a way; knowing the content would be heavily Snowflake influenced convinced me that I’d be inspired to get stuck into my own planning…and I was right again!! (I love being right.)

3.I was interested to read the section of writing proposals. This is something I’ve been researching for a few weeks now, but I haven’t been able to find anything useful. When I realised there was a section on proposal writing in the book, I was pleased. I didn’t know what to expect, but I learned more than I imagined and now have a “Proposal Template” saved in my writing file. I’m sure I’ll be returning to that section of the book often when I need help filling in the different sections of the proposal.

While new writers need to find a method that works for them, a more advanced writer needs to bring things back into prospective at times and I think that’s what I got from the book most of all – a reminder that determination and persistence is the only way to move forward.

Thanks to this book, I’m enthusiastic about my next project.

[Via http://karenleefield.wordpress.com]

Book Review: The Next 100 Years by George Friedman

Interestingly, George Friedman who is known for his ability to forecast the future of the international community presents a thesis that implies change and unpredictability are constants on the international stage.  This is, of course, not a novel idea and would be confirmed by any student of the social sciences, but it is a unique assertion for a strategist to make.  Friedman lays out a historical primer that shows even the casual observer of history should always expect the unexpected when looking to the future.  After establishing that change and unpredictability are to be expected, Friedman voices his hope that his children and grandchildren can find some element of utility in the predictions of his work.

 Friedman provides the framework for understanding the development and maintenance of the U.S. as a global superpower.  He explains the strategic importance of the U.S. through geographic location (the maritime crossroads of Europe and Asia), naval supremacy, and technological advantage (computer languages based on English).  Friedman then makes some sweeping assertions that he proceeds to explain.  First, the U.S. will continue to be a superpower over the next 100 years.  Second, the current conflicts that the U.S. and its coalition partners are engaged in are coming to an end and will be judged insignificant over the course of history.  Third, Mexico, Poland, Turkey, and Russia will all rise to positions of power and influence while China will not be militarily threatening and will suffer some internal political and economic set-backs.  Finally, the U.S. will face another conflict similar to the cold war with the resurgent Russia. 

If these scenarios sound interesting, Friedman’s work comes highly recommended.  Friedman bravely attempts to do the impossible—predict the future of mankind.  Whether his predictions play out is irrelevant, The Next 100 Years stands as a great read that challenges the reader to question “conventional” assumptions regarding the future of world politics.          

“Thank You!” to my thoughtful mother-in-law for giving this book.

[Via http://foxxgregory.wordpress.com]

Review of Hard Girls by Martina Cole

Martina Cole’s newest novel centres around horrific and numerous murders of prostitutes. The ‘hard girls’ are being mutilated and raped, the killer seeming to have an immense hatred for how the girls live their lives and what they stand for. No clues are left behind, the scenes of the murders being thoroughly cleaned and the smell of clinical cleanliness is left hanging in the air. It’s the job of Kate Burrows and Annie Carr to find the dirt and catch this killer.

…[to read the full review please click here]…

[Via http://mandythebookworm.wordpress.com]

'Lady Franklin's Revenge' by Ken McGoogan

2006, 435p & notes

The author of this book has written several biographies related to arctic exploration and one senses that he came to this biography almost grudgingly.  His other biographies focus on Arctic heroes- John Rae, Samuel Hearne and Elisha Kent Kane.  Amongst these male explorers, Lady Jane Franklin must have seemed an obsessed, vindictive, indulged woman, intent on pushing forward her husband’s reputation to the expense of others’.   Perhaps McGoogan still feels that way, but it seems that he found much more in Jane Franklin than he expected to.

Well educated and well-to-do, Jane Griffin did not marry John Franklin the Arctic explorer until she was thirty-seven years old.  He was a fleshy, dull man and she was driven and ambitious and she used her connections to procure a position for him on the Mediterranean, and later as Governor of Van Diemen’s Land.  She was an inveterate traveller, heading off for months and sometimes years at a time, accompanied by her iron bedstead which she insisted on having assembled for her on her travels.

The author is Canadian, with a readership no doubt attuned to Arctic themes.  But as an Australian, Lady Jane Franklin is far more familiar to us as the Governor’s wife; we see her in Richard Flanagan’s Wanting; we know of the Franklin River, and her diaries while travelling to Melbourne and Sydney have been well-mined. In fact, there seems to have been quite a Lady Jane Franklin revival recently.

McGoogan captures well the limitations of women’s financial position and influence in Victorian Britain.  He describes well the small-colony political machinations surrounding the dismissal of the VDL Colonial Secretary Montagu, and the lumbering, stiff style of Colonial Office politics and communications.  Lady Jane Franklin has money in her purse to bankroll numerous expeditions in search of her husband when he disappears into the Arctic white and she uses her connections with Dickens, the media, the American government and the Admiralty well.

There is much detail in this book- rather too much, I thought.  He does rise above the mass of detail to make informed and informative observations about gender, patronage, love, women’s position, memory and memorialization, but sometimes it is engulfed by too much information. Of course, Jane Franklin is a generous source: she diarized her life extensively; there is a wealth of communication; the Colonial Office and British bureaucracy built their edifice on paper and she used the public sphere to her advantage.  It is an embarrassment of riches- oh to have that as a problem! but I can see that sometimes you just have to say ‘enough’.

[Via http://residentjudge.wordpress.com]

Review and Giveaway: Give Me, Get Me, Buy Me by Donna Corwin

Parenting is a process, and when we know more, we can do a better job.  Give Me, Get Me, Buy Me: Preventing or Reversing Entitlement in Your Child’s Attitude by Donna Corwin is a book I wish I’d had 10 years ago (for the preventing part) but thankfully, according to Corwin, it’s not too late for the reversing part.

Often I’ve wondered why my kids expect “stuff” without having to earn it.  Why they think they deserve to get every new thing that comes out and why they think it’s so unfair when their demands aren’t met immediately.  In short, we’ve created little monsters and contributed to their feelings of entitlement by offering too much praise rather than encouragement and by overindulging them instead of delaying their gratification.  The blame lies squarely on my shoulders (and my husband’s) and this book has opened my eyes.

Give Me, Get Me, Buy Me is all about setting limits and discovering your parenting goals and priorities.  It’s about teaching responsibility, about giving real attention, about showing our kids the true meaning of love (and that it can’t be bought).  It’s about supporting your kids but not rushing to fix everything for them, about letting them find their own solutions and solve their own problems.  It’s about taking back control and not allowing your children to suck in all the advertising and media images they are bombarded with on a regular basis, about teaching them morals and manners and how to be charitable.  The book showed me the reasons why I’ve behaved a certain way (rebelling against my own parents’ parenting style) and how I can turn it around.  All in all, this was exactly the reality check I needed.

This book is full of really valuable information and useful advice.  If you are a parent with kids who feel like they are owed the world just because they live and breathe, please do everybody a favor and get this book!

I reviewed Give Me, Get Me, Buy Me as part of it’s TLC Book Tour.  I’ve got two copies to give away, courtesy of the publisher. Please leave a comment by midnight on March 15th for a chance to win!

[Via http://lisamm.wordpress.com]

Stay Hungry

Book #3 (January 16, 2010): The Road by Cormac McCarthy

In the introduction to McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories (see my last post), Michael Chabon muses about the elusive nature of genre, which has as much to do with publishing convention as with the actual content of those books that are published with a genre label on their spines. When Robert Heinlein speculated about the future of sex in Time Enough for Love and Stranger in a Strange Land, it was science fiction. When Margaret Atwood speculates about it, it’s mainstream literature. To some extent this reflects the nature of the writing. Heinlein was a hardcore, in-your-face storyteller. Atwood’s writing is subtler and heavier on interior monologue. So maybe Atwood belongs in the literature section of the bookstore and Heinlein would be out of place there. But The Handmaid’s Tale is, nonetheless, science fiction.

So is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Not only is it science fiction but it’s very good science fiction, thrillingly conceived and beautifully written (though the ending strikes me as a little too pat). Writing in a stream-of-consciousness style that’s deliberately light on any punctuation that might slow down the flow of words, McCarthy gradually sets up a situation that not only qualifies as science fiction but as horror. A father and son wander along an unnamed series of highways across a North American landscape apparently depopulated by nuclear winter. The food chain has been shut down by the eternal twilight and there’s nothing left to eat except the occasional forgotten cache of canned food. And, of course, human flesh. This is the line that both father and son refuse to cross, but plenty of other people have crossed it. The greatest threat in this post-nuclear world, other than starvation, is cannibalism and this tiny family is forced to skulk along the road, scattering into the bushes at the first sign of other humans, in order to avoid being gutted and served on a barbecue spit.

There are some terrifying set pieces in this book, like the scene where father and son enter a seemingly abandoned basement only to discover that it’s a prison for hapless captives gradually being dismembered by an extended family of cannibals. (In a world without electric power for refrigeration, it’s apparently more efficient to eat still-living victims than to kill them and let most of the food go to waste.) As a plot complication, the father is dying of some disease that causes him to go into periodic spasms of coughing. (Lung cancer? Tuberculosis?) He knows the son will have to go on without him at some point and watches the skies for some sign that the perpetual cover of stratospheric clouds is starting to dissipate, giving his child some kind of future that won’t involve perpetual flight through collapsing forests.

McCarthy’s style is straightforward but occasionally graced by images that are achingly beautiful or beautifully sad. It’s a short book and if it interests you, you can probably read it in an evening or two. (It took me two.) Interest in the science fiction and horror genres is, obviously, not required here because you won’t find this book in those sections of the bookstore. You’ll find it in the literature section, not far from Margaret Atwood.

[Via http://52books52.wordpress.com]

Alex Garland: The Beach - Reviewed by Daisy Culmer

‘Something slippery was wrapped around my neck. Intenstines. Mine, I thought, my brain convulsing with fright.’

Alex Garland gives us a taste of horror in this fast-paced adventure that sees avid traveller Richard stumbling across a seemingly idyllic community on his ventures through Thailand.  An enthusiast of Vietnam War movies, Richard finds himself driven by the danger of the Thai guards, risking his life for the thrill. And with Richard comes his companion, the imaginary Mr Duck: found dead in the hotel room next to Richard’s in Bangkok having slit his wrists, leaving Richard with nothing but a map.

Quite a feat for a contemporary author, and with a first novel too, but Garland disguises himself as an established novelist with this remarkably intelligent page-turner, acclaimed a ‘cult classic’. Garland wastes not a word, each being packed with adventure. Through Richard’s eyes we are taken on a whirlwind, through madness and paradise bizarrely sat side by side. Garland exhibits something of himself in his writing; there is undoubtedly something behind the pen buzzing away and making for the adrenalin that races through the pages. It is apparent that Garland is itching to excite his reader and absorb them in this compelling adventure.

There is an ever present turbulence that stirs the reader’s senses, and Garland’s keen eye enables him to cover all the ‘musts’; he even manages to integrate a romance between Richard and Francoise, a running sub-plot that is bound to keep the reader transfixed.

Garland has in fact produced such an all-encompassing novel that his work cannot be faulted: an extraordinary accomplishment that is above all to be respected. Whether or not an adventure- come thriller is your thing, there is no doubt that Garland will have something crammed in there that tickles your taste buds. This is one that mustn’t be missed.

[Via http://onlyinwinchester.wordpress.com]

Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep - Reviewed by Daisy Culmer

The Big Sleep proves Chandler’s true worth with his effortless crafting of what is a perfectly indulgent feast for any crime buff looking for action. ‘I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it’. PI Philip Marlowe is the ideal crime thriller protagonist, epitomising your typical ‘tough-guy’ type to a tee. General Sternwood, aged, lonely and wheelchair-bound is blackmailed and hires Marlowe for the job. But with Sternwood comes his two interfering, devilish daughters, Carmen and Vivian, giving Marlowe more than he bargained for.                      

Written in the late 1930’s the novel is somewhat dated; in a modern interpretation of a crime thriller it is much assumed that raw and extreme violence will arise, and hence for a contemporary reader it has to be said that the book does fail to shock.  Some may assume this to mean a lacklustre and uninspiring read; as an audience immune to bloodshed and brutality at the hands of modern heroes of felony such as James Bond, we are hard to baffle.

Chandler himself, having written a subsequent series of Philip Marlowe mysteries was clearly a fanatic of this genre and wonderfully conveys this passion in his writing. It is probable that at the time of writing Chandler aimed to captivate and excite and for a specific audience this is very much the case. Although perhaps a little passé, his style of writing cannot be faulted.

This serves a treat for a fan of crime fiction but proves deficient in offering a divergent sub-plot for the crime fiction virgin. If you are the latter; steer clear, but for lovers of geniuses such as Conan Doyle and Walter Mosely, Chandler will be just your thing.

[Via http://onlyinwinchester.wordpress.com]

<i> Dawn of the Dreadfuls</i>, by Steve Hockensmith

Sometimes you have to tell one story to get to another, and that is certainly the case with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. This prequel to Quirk Classic’s initial pillaging of the public domain is the sort of zombie story which does the genre proud.  I found the original book somewhat short of its undead quota, but this latest installment more than makes up for that lack.

Set four years prior to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, readers find the Bennets doing largely what is expected of them.  Jane is already out in society, with Elizabeth soon to follow, but before the second page has ended, there are zombies to be had.  The novel tells the story of England’s undead scourge and how the Bennet sisters begin their training to become Hertfordshire’s last line of defense.  The pacing of the story is much more along the lines of what I expected from the first PPZ book, to say nothing of the vastly improved zombie count.  Hockensmith’s novel does a nice job of working both as a prequel and as a self-contained story.  Indeed, it’s so satisfying that it almost eliminates the need to read the book Dawn of the Dreadfuls is meant to lead into.

Once zombies start roaming the countryside, Mr. Bennet takes it upon himself to train his daughters in the deadly arts, and much of the book revolves around their education.  This serves the dual purpose of filling in back-story discussed in the first book and increasing the number of action-centered scenes.  Mr. Bennet’s “Order” sends Master Hawksworth, a young English gentleman, to become the family instructor.  The idea of a traveling tutor/school master smacks of a Regency novel, save that this instructor has his pupils cutting the wings from flies and learning the all too familiar “Fulcrum of Doom.”  I was a bit disappointed to see this teacher, rather than the Master Liu so often referenced in PPZ, but the time line does allow for the Bennets to travel to China and back between novels.  That aside, Hawksworth still has plenty to do, including playing the role of love interest.

Much like Pride and Prejudice, Jane and Elizabeth are the focal points of amorous activity in Hertfordshire.  For Jane, it is again the owner of Netherfield who takes an interest in a girl socially beneath him.  The Baron of Lumpley is not nearly so sympathetic a character as Bingley, however, and the Baron’s exit at novel’s end conveniently clears a path for the future lovers.  Elizabeth, on the other hand, is again dealing with two suitors: Master Hawksworth and the intellectual Dr. Keckilpenny.  Both are interesting and entertaining characters who add something unique to the story, but I found their pursuits of Lizzy somewhat forced.  Neither have the intrigue or passion of Darcy, and I think the resolution is meant to account for Elizabeth’s coldness in Pride and Prejudice, but it simply doesn’t come off that way.  Fortunately, there are enough other redeeming factors about the novel to make my complaint over romance a small one.

Dawn of the Dreadfuls is the mirror image of its predecessor, and that’s what makes it so much more entertaining.  Rather than be a manners novel with a side of zombies, this book is a zombie novel with a side of England.  Right from the very beginning, the unmentionables are more active and threatening, driving the plot instead of simply garnishing it.  As a result, the Bennet sisters are forced into action and the reader finally gets to see the fatal skill which was so hotly advertised in PPZ.  There are daggers flying into zombie skulls, undead heads falling to not one but two katanas, and hacked off limbs of every kind.  All of it, thanks to the deadly ministrations of the Bennet girls.

Let’s be honest.  This is not great literature.  It is, however, great literature which has been stolen by gypsies and raised up in their strange and wonderful ways.  The book stays true to the great tropes of zombie stories, including the desperate, just-hang-on-till morning last stand behind boarded-up windows.  It also, I think, succeeds in fulfilling Quirk’s stated goal of mashing-up a classic story with “new scenes of horrific creatures and gruesome action.”  The bottom line, though, is that it was just fun to read, and I hope this odd-ball publishing house takes this book as its model for future works.

So, do you find your appetite for blood, guts and a smattering of stiff moral values peaked?  Then head over to Quirk’s website, leave a comment about this review, and you’ll be entered to win a prize pack which includes an advanced copy of Dawn of the Dreadfuls, audio book versions of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, along with some other PPZ goodies.  Dawn of the Dreadfuls releases March 24th.

[Via http://runningbowline.com]

“He Qualifies You” by Chad Mansbridge

I picked up this little book on my last trip to Hong Kong and read it in an hour. It was an hour well-spent.

In this book Chad Mansbridge, of Bayside Church International, outlines the three main covenants of the Bible, namely, the covenants that God made with Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

Why do you need to know this stuff?

Because many people in the church today are mixing covenants. Just like the Galatians they mix the law covenant of Moses with the grace covenant of Jesus Christ. You know Christians are mixed up when you hear things like:

“Jesus died for you, what will you do for Him?”

“When you sin you come under His condemnation.”

“If you don’t tithe you’ll bring a curse on yourself/us/our church.”

“If you’re sick there’s probably unconfessed sin in your life. Or maybe your Grandfather sinned.”

“Although we’re not saved by observing the 10 commandments, you’d better do them anyway. Or else.”

Whenever you mix the new wine of the grace covenant with the old wineskin of the law covenant something good will be lost. And that’s why we need to grasp the different ways God has chosen to relate to people.

Under the Abrahamic Covenant God blessed the descendents of Abraham because of their pedigree. Under the Mosaic Covenant, God blessed the Israelites on the basis of their performance. Under the New Covenant God blesses us because of our position in Christ.

Under the New Covenant we are qualified by the Father through Jesus Christ (Col 1:12). It makes no difference whether we are Jewish or Japanese or Javanese (Gal 3:28). It makes no difference whether we perform all 600 commandments found in the Old Testament (Gal 2:16). What matters is that we are in Christ, clothed with His righteousness (Php 3:9).

These are exciting days. All over the world the church is waking up to the profound truth that He qualifies us. The lights are going on and Christians everywhere are being set free from dead religion. It’s not about me, it’s about Him. It’s not about what I am doing or not doing for Jesus, it’s about what He has already done on the cross.

Read Chad’s book or, if you’re not a reader, watch him preach the same message here. I guarantee you’ll come away thanking God for the awesome good news revealed to us through Jesus.

[Via http://escapetoreality.org]

Book Review: Marvellous Hairy, by Mark A. Rayner

The copy on the back of Marvellous Hairy bills it as a novel about a man who is turning into a monkey. However, it goes far beyond that. The story revolves around a giant, evil corporation nicknamed Gargantuan Enterprises and the people who want to bring it down, then before you know it, there are ghosts, kidnapping, lizards, sex, and drugs thrown in for good measure.

Let me make a confession: I don’t find monkeys inherently funny. Their similarity to humans is amusing, sure, but it’s been overdone. Given the premise of Marvellous Hairy, I was a bit worried that its humour would rely on “anything is funny if you mention the word monkey alongside it” school of thought. Luckily, its absurdity is only partially monkey-based, and it delivers some genuine funny. Many scenes had me smirking as hard as I have at any Douglas Adams novel (yeah, just smirking; it takes a lot for me to physically LOL at text).

A lot of the books I’ve reviewed recently, they’ve been trashily entertaining (see: Charlaine Harris), or had great ideas despite mediocre writing (see: Cory Doctorow). But Rayner is actually a damn good writer. Every paragraph is packed with clever wordplay and subtle allusions. E.g., “He had long greasy black hair that clung to his head like an octopus humping his skull” (ok ok, maybe not always subtle).

Not all is warm and fuzzy. The novel could have used some edits; the language can be wordy, the plot takes a while to get going, and a certain subplot doesn’t feel like it fully connects with the rest of the story. Also, the quasi-omnipotent first-person narrative is jarring, especially when it needs to be explained, though it does add to the surreal bizarreness of the whole thing.

That is where Marvellous Hairy shines: it is such a bizarre barrel of words that you can’t help but have fun reading it. Mark (full disclosure: I can go all first-name-basis because we’ve met IRL) recently tweeted that his next novel may be even sillier, and if that’s the case, I can’t wait to get my paws on whatever he comes up with.

[Via http://mikebattista.com]

Snippet reviews

Once upon a time, when I was a teenager, I kept a list of books and movies I’d seen through the year and would tally it up at New Year. I long ago lost sight of that habit but have tried to revive it through the social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn.

Sharing the short blips I’ve written there has a twofold purpose: As a librarian, I feel like part of my job is sharing the wealth when it comes to books. As a scattered 21st-century citizen, I am constantly trying to find a way to better keep my various lists and wondered if blogging them might help.

No matter what you do to track down good reads, I hope you find my lists useful and will recommend some of your recent favorites.

Happy reading,
R.D.

Tudor Women: Queens & Commoners
I read the 1979 edition, and I found it easy to follow and informative. The author logically goes through the Tudor women starting with Henry VIII’s grandmother, who helped bring his father out of exile while helping to unite the Lancasters and the Yorks. I have never fully followed the lineage of this era, so this book was helpful in that area. Now I know where Mary Queen of Scots fits, too. The conclusion to the book is a bit weak, but overall informative and helpful. 11-12-2009

Eat This, Not That!
Pictorial guide to the worst restaurant food and what to swap out when you’re there. Glory be, I can eat at Baja Fresh again! 3-2-2009

The Prestige
One of those books you can’t put down, even if it is a bit confusing! If you saw the movie first, try to forget it, as that muddies the reading experience. 11-23-2008

Jane Eyre
Just reread for about the dozenth (is that a word?) time. I have put all the Jane Eyre movies in the queue, so I can compare and contrast. I remember in high school how several people couldn’t believe that Jane wouldn’t become a kept woman, but I have always seen this aspect of the novel as intrinsic to her character. 11-08-2008

[Via http://blogtexas.wordpress.com]

Book Review: Preaching and Craddock Stories

Preaching, by Fred B. Craddock, Abingdon Press, 1985.

Craddock Stories, by Fred B. Craddock, edited by Mike Graves and Richard F. Ward, Chalice Press, 2001.

I decided I had not spent nearly enough time with preaching icon Fred Craddock. When I went to seminary in the late 1990’s, Craddock’s inductive, narrative preaching still reigned supreme, but he was no longer the lone voice for this conversational style. We read bits and pieces of his work scattered among others, but I had never read his classic textbook, Preaching. There are two reasons for taking it up now: 1) After a decade of preaching myself, I felt the need for a refresher course and new perspective on this weekly endeavor; and 2) I recently purchased the volume Craddock Stories, which is just what it sounds like—a collection of the preaching stories that make Fred Craddock such a legend.

In spite of being one of those people who only dives into one book at a time, I decided to read these two simultaneously. I would read some portion of the textbook, then spend time reading story after story drawing out the practices he described. When I didn’t have the energy to plow through the textbook, I just enjoyed the stories as they were. I highly recommend this strategy to anyone. If I had it to do over again, I would add a collection of Craddock’s full sermons to the mix. Each one enriched and completed the other, for an immersion in Craddockisms for awhile.

To be honest, I don’t think I could have ever read either volume in its entirety if I wasn’t already a practicing preacher. It is a perfect example of “just in time training” for me. As a seminarian, I craved a preaching textbook. I did not have the foggiest idea how  to write a sermon. I had heard quite a few, but I didn’t know how the preacher ever came up with something to say and how to say it. I wanted someone to give me step-by-step instructions. No one ever did.

There is something about preaching that requires you to dive right in, and pray for patience on the part of the congregations that must endure. Any preacher’s first attempts at sermonizing are halting, stilted and unformed. God bless those congregations that give preachers pulpit space for formation! Craddock offers a wonderful synopsis of a step-by-step process, but I would not have understood it if I was not already a working preacher. Sermon-writing process is something that cannot be taught. It may be encouraged and mentored, but it develops in its own way for each preacher.

What I loved most about Preaching was the attention to the experience of the congregation. At every turn, Craddock reminds the preacher that she is not building an idea, or a manuscript, or a concept–the preacher is an artist, creating an encounter and an experience with the biblical text. In reading Craddock Stories, I experienced that encounter and the emotions that accompany it. In reading Preaching, I contemplated how to create that encounter for others.

I read the entire volume of Craddock Stories, several hundred, and did not once think, “I can use that in my sermon on…” It would have been like lying, or plagiarism, even with proper citations. My voice is my own–immersing myself in Craddock’s voice only strengthened my desire to cultivate my unique style. I was also intrigued to notice that Craddock’s amazing tales were not as amazing as I always thought they were. I thought he was blessed to pull a wealth of stories from some exotic childhood and wild ministry experiences. When I read through the compendium, however, I realized that his stories were not so special after all. I have a lifetime full of stories just as good as his are. What makes his so powerful is that they are so authentic, and so intimately and thoughtfully connected to the Gospel he is preaching. I have all the experiences and stories I need from my own life to do just that. In reading Preaching, I believe he would be delighted for someone to realize his stories are not great because they are great stories–but because they are ordinary stories, which enables them to connect the Gospel to ordinary people like us.

Fred Craddock is still a preaching icon, and will remain so. I don’t know if I would recommend reading Preaching to any seminarians, but it is a treasure trove for a working preacher or a just-starting-out preacher, especially when accompanied by Craddock Stories and Craddock sermons.

[Via http://forthesomedaybook.wordpress.com]

Book Review: Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation

William C. Placher, ed., Callings:  Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005).

We’ve all asked it of ourselves, others, and (often) of God:  “What should I do with my life?  What do I want to be when I grow up?  How should I do God’s will and earn a living for myself (and, possibly, a family)?”  Sometimes others ask these questions of us.  Sometimes we don’t finish asking such questions in adolescence.  Sometimes we ask them again at other points in our lives–or we are still asking them at mid-life or even in retirement. (In the latter two cases, the question often becomes, “What should I do with the rest of my life?”) 

If we are Christians, the questions take a particular shape.  We don’t just ask what we’d enjoy doing, what brings us joy, what skills do we have or can obtain that are marketable and would be useful to society–although we may ask all those things too.  But as Christians, we know that we are disciples, followers of Jesus, and that “our religion”  isn’t just something to fit into our spare time. So, we want to be able to line up our lives and life work with God’s will, God’s purposes of grace, with the work of the Kingdom. (This may also be true for persons of other faiths, but, if so, I shall let them speak for themselves.)   So we ask about our calling or vocation  from God.  We seek to discern such a call and, while some find such to be blindingly obvious–a sense of purpose so overwhelming as to be like a very Voice from the Heavens or a blinding Vision to pursue–others find discernment of vocation more difficult.  In either case, we may seek advice from others, including the voice(s) of our faith tradition whether through the person of a pastor or spiritual director or mentor, of by searching the written records of  the thoughts of those who have gone before us.

William C. Placher has edited a collection of such written wisdom from the early church to contemporary Christian thinkers in Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation.  After an introduction to the theme and a prologue reviewing some of the biblical passages most consulted about vocation/calling, Placher organizes the excerpts from Christian witnesses chronologically, in four sections. The divisions correspond to major shifts in context which led to large, basic, changes in the way the Church largely understood the very concept of vocation. 

Section I. Callings to a Christian Life: Vocations in the Early Church, 100-500 begins in the Second Century, when Christianity was still very much a minority religion, often illegal within the Roman Empire, and sometimes subject to persecution.  In such a context, the call was to become a Christian–a break from the world and life one knew.  This concept, that one’s vocation was to BE A CHRISTIAN (however one earned one’s daily bread) survived the legalization of Christianity under Constantine and continued on even to the point where Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the empire–for a time.  In this section, we hear about calling and vocation from Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, the anonymous author of The Martyrdom of Perpetua, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Palladius, the anonymously written Sayings of the Desert Fathers, and Augustine of Hippo whose Confessions invented the autobiography and the spiritual memoir.

Monasticism in Christianity had already begun in the early centuries after Constantine, whereby one might pursue a calling to a “religious life” apart from everyday “secular” life in the world–a “religious calling” that might be pursued alone as a hermit or in a community of other “vowed religious,” i.e., of monks or nuns.  In the second period/division vocation is almost entirely understood as a call to such a separate religious life.  Thus, section II. is titled, Called to Religious Life:  Vocations in the Middle Ages, 500-1500.  Those “in the world,” whether as married laypeople or as “secular clergy” not part of a monastery or convent, were generally not thought to have any calling or vocation all.  In this section, Placher lets us hear the voices of John Cassian, Sulpicius Severas, St. Benedict, Bernard of Clairveaux, John de Joinville (one of the most detailed chroniclers of the Crusades), St. Bonaventure, the great female mystical theologian Metchild of Magdeburg, St. Thomas Aquinas, Christine de Pisan, the anonymous author of The Mission of Joan of Arc, and Thomas á Kempis.  I would have liked to hear more Eastern voices in this section and some selections from reformers cast out as heretics (whether or not we today would still consider them heretical), such as Peter Waldo or Jan Hus.  Still, I am grateful Placher included several female witnesses in this section, often left out in our mental pictures of “Medieval Christianity.”  And the selections by de Joinville (his account of St. Louis’ supposed calling to lead a military crusade) and on Joan of Arc do show exceptions to the Medieval norm that vocation was automatically a monastic vocation.

The third section takes us from the Reformation to the edge of the 19th C.  The Reformation introduced or reintroduced (or, at the least, gave new emphasis to) the concept of all honest work as a calling from God.  Thus, section III. Every Work a Calling:  Vocations After the Reformation: 1500–1800.  As expected, we hear from Luther (5 selections!), Stadler, Calvin, St.  Ignatius of Loyala, St. Teresa of Avila, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, William Perkins, George Herbert (2 selections), Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, George Fox, Gerrard Winstanley (a welcome surprise!), William Law, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley (3 selections).  The Luther’s outsized representation is easily explained:  No other representative of classic Christianity wrote as much about the nature of vocation as Martin Luther.

The final section, IV.  Christian Callings in a Post-Christian World, 1800-Present has no uniting concept, and the writings are the most varied yet.  We hear from Søren Kierkegaard, John Cardinal Henry Newman, Feodor Dostoyevsky, Horace Bushnell, Pope Leo XIII, Max Weber, Walter Rauschenbusch, Howard Thurman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simone Weil, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Karl Barth.  At least since 1800 (if not before) Christianity has become a truly global religion. Therefore, despite Placher’s undeniable achievement in this volume, it was genuinely disappointing to see no selections at all from Asia, Africa, or Latin America.  Are we to gather that there is no Christian wisdom on vocation and calling from these quarters?  This is quite the oversight–the more glaring because Placher has gone beyond the “usual suspects” in much of the book.

Nevertheless, this book is a treasure, both because of the witnesses contained and because of Placher’s own introductory comments.  This is theological reflection rooted in and connected to the practices of the church, in this case the practice of discerning one’s calling or vocation.  Unfortunately, it is unlikely that any suggestions for revision will be undertaken in a second edition since the editor, who taught at Wabash College in Indiana, unexpectedly passed away in late 2008.  That, in itself, is a tragic loss for the contemporary life of the church and we are blessed that this project was finished and published as a final gift of Placher’s own vocation as a theological educator.

[Via http://pilgrimpathways.wordpress.com]

Cutting For Stone - Abraham Verghese

‘The Key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don’t. If you keep saying your slippers aren’t yours, then you’ll die searching, you’ll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.’

Ghosh -  page 286

It might seem a bit over the top but I feel quite emotional after finishing this book. I feel like taking a breath, stepping back and digesting what I have read. This was a slower read for me. A book that spans continents and decades and coming to the end of it, I feel like I’ve come to the end of a journey of my own.

After an unsure start, I now know that a slow read can still be a great read.

The story takes place mostly in Ethiopia and the sights and smells and backdrop of civil unrest make for a fascinating setting and really brought the story alive.

In 1954, twin boys are born in a small hospital in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. The shock offspring of an Indian nun and English surgeon, Marion and Shiva are identical, very different and very close throughout their childhood. Growing up in Missing, the hospital of their birth, theirs is a life surrounded by doctors, medicine, unconventional yet special family amidst a combination of Ethiopian and Indian culture.

Abraham Verghese is a doctor, as are many of the characters in his novel. This is a story about the heart and soul of medicine, about a life of dedication to healing, and what it means and takes to do that properly. For a lot of people the surgical scenes may be a bit detailed. I thought so initially but they are such an essential part of the story – an illustration of precision and passion, and they balance out over the 500 + pages.

This is the first book I have read about Ethiopia. I didn’t know that much about it beforehand. I didn’t know about the Italian and Indian influences or that it was one of the oldest countries in the world. I knew it was a financially poor country but had never really considered the devastating effect of this lack of resources on the people living there. As well as being a great read, I appreciated the opportunity to learn a little more.

Visit Eva at A Striped Armchair for a lovely list of books about Ethiopia

Read for the Chunkster, Global and Support your local library challenges.

2009, 534 pages

[Via http://giraffeelizabeth.wordpress.com]

Inspirational Books - How to Get a Job You'll Love

How to Get a Job You’ll  Love by John Lees 

An inspirational read!

 

I was sent a copy of this book by my friend Jan at a time in my life when I was looking for a career change. This wasn’t the usual type of  ‘Self-Help’ book – it was an excellent read that really made me think about my current situation through the questions that the author John Lees asks.  His questions are really thought provoking and really get you to think about things that inspire and interest you and he really offers great advice and tips. 

It does require you to do a lot of soul searching but it is such a good morale booster. I know I felt totally positive about myself and my abilities by the time I had finished it. 

Thanks John after reading your book, I have found myself on a different path and feel positive about my future. 

Link to John’s website: 

http://www.johnleescareers.com/index.asp 

John can also be followed on twitter. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Get-Youll-Love-2009/dp/0077121805

[Via http://havingalovelytimewriting.wordpress.com]

"The Moviegoer" - Book Review

Walker Percy is not a writer you’re probably familiar with.  The book The Moviegoer is his most celebrated work and it won the National Book Award in 1962.  Yet, even as an English major in college I had never heard of this author.  Not until my last semester in graduate school when I took a course from a professor who wrote Percy’s biography did I develop an interest in reading this book.  And finally, I have gotten to it.

The Moviegoer transports the reader to 1940’s New Orleans just prior to Mardi Gras.  Jack “Binx” Bolling is a bond salesmen who had a terrible experience in the Korean War and has a difficult time having normal conversations and building relationships.  He is a man searching something in his life even though he has no idea what he is searching for, and he escapes his world by going to the movies.  One of his biggest conflicts his dealing with his Aunt Emily, who is wealthy and played a large role in his upbringing, and her desire for him to attend medical school.  He also shows love for his mother, who is poor and lives on the gulf coast with a new husband and Binx’s six half siblings.

This book is not something to read lightly.  Percy is a southern writer cut from the same mold as a Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner.  His sentences read like something you would expect from a 19th century British author.  His sentences are proper and lack any hint of American southern drawl, which I find disappointing.

At the beginning, I thought I was about to immerse myself in an existential masterpiece the likes of The Cather in the Rye.  Instead, what I discovered was a drawn out, uneventful look into the life of a 3o-year-old man struggling to deal with his complex family, his career, and nightmarish recollections of his near death experience in the Korean War.

I felt this novel lacked muster and anything really captivating.  I didn’t feel connected with New Orleans or Mardia Gras because I couldn’t hear the characters accents or visualize the colorful, musical event that I know it to be.  Percy easily captures the emptiness inside Binx, and his disconnection from society.

By the end, I felt this book fell flat and didn’t provide what I would call “a purpose” for it all.  I pitied Binx and his cousin Kate, who we learn is very unstable.  Percy gives us little excitement, with the only minutely exciting part coming when Kate and Binx go to Chicago.  What you would expect to be a sort of freeing time in both Kate and Binx’s young lives ends with having to answer difficult questions about decision-making and responsibility from Aunt Emily.  Percy enters us into this mundane world of an adult man with no idea what he is to do with his life.  It is an empty story, with no hope, or sadness or joy.  It merely exists.

But in a way I guess that’s the brilliance of the book.  For, as most us know, life is never like the movies.

[Via http://drcappello.wordpress.com]

“Black skin, white mask”

“Black skin, white mask”

            “Decolonization process affects the individual and fundamentally modifies him; it transforms crushed and unessential spectators to privilege actors.  Decolonization introduces a proper rhythm to the newly created man, to the new languages, and a newer humanity.  Man is liberated through the process and demands revisiting a set of questions in the integrality of the new situation: The damned spectators in the last rows want to edge to the first rows and then become full actors on the scene.

            The damned of the earth want to smash the tribal and clannish conditions that colonial powers maintained to divide and subjugate. This kind of violence is a de-intoxicating phase to getting rid of the inferiority complex.  This initial violence tends to unify the damned of the earth toward national unity regardless of tribal and sectarian roots. Thus, this violence has no pity to reactionary forces that struggle to maintain colonial statue-quo.

            The damned needs the post colonial violence to re-gaining self-esteem; he wants to believe that success was the work of all the damned, even if not a single shot was fired in many decolonization conditions.  The damned is elevated to the rank of leader and refuses to confirm any single person as the “liberator” simply because he wants to understand everything and then to decide on every issue.

            The conscience of the damned, illuminated by violence, then does rebel against any sort of pacification program. The decolonized damned of the earth intend to demand from the colonial powers to rehabilitate man, his dignity, and his human rights. (1961)”

            Frantz Fanon (1925-61) was born in French Martinique Island and died of cancer at the Bethesda hospital in Washington DC. He was buried, according to his will, in Algeria where he practiced as psychiatrist for four years (1954-57).  Algeria acquired its independence the following year to Fanon’s death.

            Fanon was engaged in the French Liberation Army in 1943 and received the war medal in 1945. He then studied psychiatry in Lyon; he adopted the vision of his mentor Francois Tosquelles (1912-94) that says that hospital should be the center of unifying the sick, nurses, and physicians for the sole objective of rehabilitating and re-inserting the sick to normal society.

            Frantz was incensed to witnessing Creole people (mixed blood) in French colonies trying to behave as class apart of blacks and be accepted as white to the heavy price of deep amputation in their heritage and culture. Thus, Fanon published in 1952 his “Black skin, white mask” which is a study of the alienation of black people whose identity is defined by the others (white prejudiced culture).

            “Race is a prison for black man; he is radically alienated into becoming an object.  Black man should refuse to shoulder the burden of past slavery and thrives to catch up as man among men. Nigger is not; White too is not!

            Mother, look at this nigger; I am scared: he wants to eat me live.  Every white child is scared when he sees me.  When a black man shivers of cold then the kid thinks that the black man is shivering of rage. I tended to get amused first but quickly this game turned impossible to suffer. It dawned on me that every apartheid attitude is fundamentally not based solely on color but on every culture that is different of the mainstream culture. (1952)” 

Note: Fifty years after acquiring independence, most African States have reverted to tribalism and religious antagonism.  The colonial and imperial powers have been at it indirectly: the enemy is not that obvious because black foremen and black intellectual are doing the maligning and the work hired by multinationals that are mostly directly backed by their respective powerful governments.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

Sexual organ not so shamefully protruding

Sexual organ not so shamefully protruding

Back then, not that long ago at all, on mount Mitchu Pitchu,

A stocky small and rather whiter man, embarrassed with a dirty long beard,

Clad in stinky clownish garment;

(Water was anathema to this sugary  breed);

Mounted on a lovely horse, not known in the New World,

Said: “This is how I think”.

His black clad monk rejoined: “And that’s what his God said”

For over four centuries, the same kind of rather whiter man,

Backed up by the same missionary,

Landed around earth’s shores and ventured inland.

He said what he thought and what his God said.

A sort of a universal whiter civilization exploded and expanded.

This new culture didn’t even try to explain:

It claimed that conscious is unique;

That natural human moral is similar under all weather and clime;

That value system is one and superseding all archaic systems.

The rather whiter man said:

“Democracy, under all its minor variants (not so minor at all),

Is the ideal political structure to be governed in modern societies”

He resumed unabashedly: “Capitalism is the main economic mechanism to spread wealth;

That world market should be entirely opened to my products and services.”

Once atop the Galaxy (why go beyond our Milky Way?)

Weird specie with obviously a developed Neo Cortex,

Strong with more versatile and complex sensory organs,

Varied and sophisticated reaction limbs attached to a disfigured body,

Thumbs rotating all the way, a little finger (not that little at all)

Designed to catch saucers and balls of any shape;

A sexual organ not so shamefully protruding;

And not mating as we do:

Female lays eggs or ovaries;

Male sprays his sperms over ovaries;

Unlike us,

Us exercising for naught over walls and trees;

Nobody, male or female, feels to possess a mate

And dominate for servitude.

Once atop the Galaxy,

This newer breed said what he thinks and what his God say;

Mankind re-shaped his vision of the world:

His set of values coincided with the new Master’s vision.

A newly freed slave who vanquished his mental slavery

Was more attuned to this degrading, oh, so many times “deja vu” process;

He stood up to the new master and growled:

Fuck you!

Christ was crucified again.

The Church of Rome re-instituted its religion

Galactic scale: Confederate of the Universe.

This time around, a newly free-spirited freed slave

Thundered, a voice louder than Superman,

Reverberating for eternity:

Fuck you!

Before a new cycle of slavery system takes roots.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

In the Mail

Last week I mentioned that Wipf & Stock sent an email announcing the third printing of Paul N. Anderson’s The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: Its Unity and Disunity in the Light of John 6 (with a new introduction, outlines, and epilogue).  Well my review copy just arrived and I’m very much looking forward to diving into it.  There’s 11½ pages worth of very positive blurbs in the front!  I figure it’s gotta be at least decent if all of these guys liked it.

B”H

[Via http://rdtwot.wordpress.com]

Cyberpunk, postmodernism and Orientalism 1: outline

In my previous post I mentioned stumbling across an analysis of cyberpunk and orientalism, which interests me for a lot of reasons, and I’ve subsequently decided that since I’m living in the shadow of the zaibatsu without a job, maybe it’s time I embarked on a shady criminal information-hacking project, so I’m going to try and read through the thesis I found and draw together some kind of themes or conclusions from the tangled mess that is postmodern critique.

… So to start with I thought I’d do a survey of what is already available on the internet about cyberpunk and postmodernism. According to this (awesomely brief) description,

markers of postmodernism recurring in cyberpunk include: the commodification of culture, the invasive development of information technology, a decentering and fragmentation of the “individual”; and a blurring of the boundaries between “high” and “popular” culture.

which maybe helps to pin down why cyberpunk is considered to have such strong links to postmodernism, and also to nihilism – which, incidentally, I didn’t realise had a whole branch of academic theory devoted to it, primarily stemming from the work of Baudrillard. I don’t want to pursue the discussion of nihilism too far though because I find it seems to get incomprehensible very rapidly. Interestingly though, the intersection of cyberpunk, nihilism – which posits an absence of external morality – and postmodernism, with its reputed objection to “truth”[1], draws in a lot of young christians. For example, this blog describes some common misconceptions about postmodernism held by its christian critics, and maybe helps to show what postmodernism is not. Obviously, those whose religion is based on a single text are going to have some big issues with postmodernism, which is all about criticising the relationship between “the text”[2] and “truth”.

Modern feminism has also found an interest in cyberpunk, as a fictional representation of the liberating effect of technology for modern women. This is briefly discussed here, with again some reference to the Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway.  This could be interesting if it led me back to Haraway, whose work I struggled with many years ago with the help of a friend. I hope it doesn’t, though, because I’m largely not up to dealing with her language… But I don’t think I’ll be pursuing any further feminist involvement in cyberpunk in and of itself (though I may stumble across some in time), because I only have limited time and my main concern is the Orientalist part[4].

The thesis I have started reading states its perspective on the importance of cyberpunk for postmodernism in the introduction:

Cyberpunk’s postmodern scene, the flow of people, goods, information and power across international boundaries, is theorized in Fredric Jameson’s work on postmodernism as the cultural logic of late or third stage multinational capitalism, fully explicated in Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism(1991). Importantly, Jameson finds cyberpunk to be a significant manifestation of this, the “supreme literary expression if not of postmodernism, then of late capitalism itself”(419). … Moreover, this postmodern scene, a global array of disjunctive flows, specifically encompasses Japan: the multinationals, for example, are depicted as Japanese zaibatsu.

I’m inclined to agree with most of this position, though I’m going to skip over the supreme importance bit to see what our resident theorist has to say about Gibson’s view of Japan from the perspective of Orientalism, which he goes on to say will try to

“get beyond the reified polarities of East versus West” and in a “concrete way attempt to understand the heterogeneous and often odd developments” (Culture and Imperialism 41). By exploring a number of particular theoretical positions and terminologies, my intention is to work toward highlighting the dynamic of reflexivity inherent in postmodern orientalism.

(The quotes here are quotes of Said). This paragraph is easier understood in the context of the abstract, in which our resident theorist explains that his view of “postmodern orientalism” describes

uneven, paradoxical, interconnected and mutually implicated cultural transactions at the threshold of East-West relations. The thesis explores this by first examining cyberpunk’s unremarked relationship with countercultural formations (rock music), practices (drugs) and manifestations of Oriental otherness in popular culture.

This distinguishes the modern cyberpunk narrative of the orient from that of previous centuries, described by Said, in which the imaginative process is entirely one way – western writers and academics taking parts of the orient that appealed to them to form their own pastiche of cultural and aesthetic ideals of the orient which suit their own stereotypes; and then using these to bolster a definition of the West in opposition to an imagined Orient. In the cyberpunk world, characterised by postmodern orientalism, the Orient is actively engaging with, challenging or subverting the images which western writers and academics form of the East, and importing its own distorted images of the West, in a form of postmodern cultural exchange.

This cultural exchange is very interesting to me, and has been a topic of rumination for me on my other blog ever since I came to Japan. It’s clear that the West “dreams” the orient[5], not seeing much of what is really happening here; but at the same time the Orient has its own fantasies of the west, which have become increasingly influential in the west as the power of Japanese and Chinese media enables them to project their own images of the West back to it[6]. Both parts of the world also have their dreams of their own identity, and often these definitions are constructed at least partially in contrast to their dual opposite; but recently, with increased cultural exchange, it’s possible to see these identities becoming more diverse (at least in the Orient) as the “Other” hemisphere becomes less alien and the distinction between “Eastern” and “Western” blurs. I am interested to see if this phenomenon is sufficiently identifiable as to be described by a theory of postmodern orientalism, and that’s why I’m reading this thesis…

So, that’s the outline of what we’re aiming for. Strap yourselves in kids. We’ve taken the Blue pill…

—

[1] I think this is a misreading of postmodernist theory, which mainly seems to argue that the way we interpret truth is coloured by our cultural and linguistic assumptions. There’s an excellent example of this in the paper “The Egg and the Sperm: How science has constructed a romance based on sterotypical male-female roles”, Emily Martin, Signs(1991): 16(3), 485-501.

[2] “the text” is like a classic postmodern bullshit bingo cliche, but I actually think it’s a really useful word for catching the broad sense of what post-modernists[3] talk about when they do their critical analyses

[3] I’m really quite certain that I routinely confuse post-modernists and deconstructuralists, (deconstructionists?), but I don’t care because it’s their fault not mine. Nobody confuses a statistician and a mathematician, do they?

[4] Though actually I doubt one would have to google very far to find that Orientalism as a concept would have been significantly boosted by better consideration of gender relations…

[5] mostly, in the case of Japan, through a series of wet dreams or nightmares, but still…

[6] Consider, for example, the West as presented to the West by Miyazaki in Kiki’s Delivery Service, or in Full Metal Alchemist[7]

[7] I just want to point out here that if I was going to be a proper academic wanker like Said I would present these names in untranslated Japanese, on the assumption that you, dear reader, can just read everything, or that if you can’t you’re a worthless loser who doesn’t deserve to know what I’m talking about. Aren’t I nice?

[Via http://faustusnotes.wordpress.com]