In which I come to the aid of the Roman Catholic Church



Photo credit: Bowling United Industries



I went to a funeral today, for the mother of an old friend. It was a sad occasion, but not the worst kind of funeral, because it was the kind where the departed was old and full of days, and the event not unexpected. They’d asked me to read the Scripture in the service, something I was happy to do. I enjoy reading in public, and a favor is none the worse for being a pleasure.

As some of us sat in the Catholic sanctuary, waiting for the priest to show up to give us our stage directions, I looked at the little card rack on the back of the pew in front of me. You’ve probably seen such things – small wooden racks just large enough to hold Communion cards (at least that’s what they use them for in my church). It had a little round hole at either end, for those stubby pencils they use, the ones that are too short to be worth anybody walking off with. There were no pencils in the holes.

I peeked down into the card reservoir, which was also empty of cards. But I could discern, in the low light, a pencil lying down at the bottom.

“Hello,” I said to myself. “There’s a pencil, in a space too small for anyone to fish it out with their fingers. If I could get it out, I could put it into one of the holes, and do a favor for the next communicant.”

So I took my pen out of my pocket and fished down in the reservoir with it. After a while I tipped the pencil up and out.

And behold, there was another pencil in there below it.

I did my work once again, and got the second pencil out. And I saw that there was a third.

When all was done, I’d fished fully six little half-pencils out of that reservoir, not only providing pencils for future worshipers, but freeing up enough space in the reservoir for them to put cards in again next Sunday. Which I’m not sure they had room for, before my search and rescue operation.

If anyone wants to nominate me for a papal medal, I am not too stern a Protestant to accept it.

The war over the Game

The controversy over Andrew Klavan’s praise for Game of Thrones rumbles on, and I follow it with the fascination of a reality show fan, except for wishing both sides well.
A few days back I linked to Klavan’s column at PJ Media, “Eyes Wide Shut: Christians Against Art.” In the course of an argument – with which I generally agree – that Christians need to produce art that seriously addresses the real world, rather than some PG world we’d like to believe in, he mentions his own fondness for the HBO series, “Game of Thrones,” seeing it, apparently, as the sort of thing we ought to be trying to produce ourselves (though I’m sure he wouldn’t insist on including all the skin). In my own response, I expressed my own deep disillusionment with “Game” author George R. R. Martin’s books, a disillusionment which has prevented me from watching a single episode.
On Monday Dave Swindle, another PJ Media writer, responded to Klavan’s article in a similar vein:

You’ve known me since not long after I started editing full time. I was 25 and was only a defense hawk and fiscal conservative but still “socially liberal.” Since then, for a variety of reasons (particularly my return to belief in God), I’ve come further in my ideological shift. I’m genuinely embarrassed by some of the socially conservative positions I find myself now arguing. Never in a million years did I foresee myself as the type that would ever side with those cautioning against pornography’s downsides and the “shocking” content in art. You’ve talked in the past about how you disagree with our mutual friend Ben Shapiro about his Orthodox Judaism-inspired approach to culture and sex. I used to also — and I still disagree with Ben from time to time on issues and tactics (particularly on gay marriage. This is a theological difference deriving from an interpretation of scripture. He and I will just have to keep arguing about it). But on the fundamental issue, the social conservatism he explicates from his traditional reading of the Torah is correct: sex is sacred. It’s impossible to have “casual sex” with someone — every sexual act is transformative. I came to this understanding differently than him, though, through first-hand experience and painful mistakes.

Continue reading The war over the Game

Reading Underaged Literature

Apparently, schools are not challenging or helping students read at their grade level or better. NPR reports: “Anita Silvey, author of 500 Great Books for Teens, teaches graduate students in a children’s literature program, and at the beginning of the class, she asked her students — who grew up in the age of Harry Potter — about the books they like.

‘Every single person in the class said, “I don’t like realism, I don’t like historical fiction. What I like is fantasy, science fiction, horror and fairy tales.” ‘

… But in 1989, high school students were being assigned works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Emily Bronte and Edith Wharton.”

That’s what my kids will be reading. I plan to help my 9th grader through the Epic of Gilgamesh next fall, for starters.

In related news, young adult novels are finding a lot of adult readers, because they find it interesting and sophisticated. One author says, “Teenagers are more willing to let you genre bend. For them, it’s all about telling an honest story. You’re writing for really smart, really savvy readers.”

And who doesn’t love an honest story?

Eleventh Century Vox

Vox Day of Vox Popoli reviews Hailstone Mountain, mostly positively. (I get the impression he’s a tough critic):

Creativity: 4 of 5. Based on it is on a history with which most readers are much less familiar than they tend to think, Hailstone Mountain is considerably more creative than the average fantasy novel. I liked how Walker mimicked the way in which saga plots tend to advance and turn abruptly, without much in the way of warning. It’s a fascinating blend of old and new, and will be a pleasure for anyone tired of the formulaic plots and predictable characters that presently infest so much of modern fantasy. Jonathan Moeller has remarked how epublishing has broadened the scope of fantasy fiction, and Hailstone Mountain is an excellent example of this phenomenon.

Grave Passage, by William Doonan

When you follow free and discount e-book blogs, you learn to have low expectations. Generally the free or low-priced books you get are worth the price (I leave it to others to make such judgments on my own e-books). But now and then you discover a gem. Grave Passage by William Doonan is, all things considered, a breath of fresh air, a well-written, often funny story with a genuinely original and engaging hero/narrator.

Henry Grave is 84 years old, a retired archaeologist and one-time World War II prisoner of war. Somehow (it’s never quite explained) he got himself into a post-retirement career as an investigator for a cruise line. In that capacity he’s helicoptered onto the deck of the Contessa Voyager one night, to look into the death of one of the cruise lecturers, an FBI agent who recently announced he’d solved a famous murder and had promised to name the killer on this voyage.

Henry’s method of investigation is to settle into the routine of the cruise, enjoy the buffets, drink to excess, schmooze with the passengers, and generally project the image of a harmless, semi-senile old man. It’s hard to tell sometimes whether he’s actually faking all this – some of his lapses of memory seem genuine, and his frequent unplanned naps suggest he might want to talk to his doctor about a C-Pap machine. But the wheels are always turning behind his bumbling, buffoonish façade, and he has some surprises in store for the murderers – as well as for the readers.

I thoroughly enjoyed Grave Passage. Christian readers will not be comfortable with Henry’s heavy drinking or his sexual recreations (he flirts with any woman he likes, but reserves his actual Viagra tablets for a woman of appropriate age), but these elements are no more prominent here than in many other mysteries. Author Doonan writes good prose, creates believable, intriguing characters, and describes the cruising life authentically (as I can testify). Highly recommended.

The Cultured Iain M. Banks

Author Iain M. Banks died Sunday at 59. Neil Gaiman talks about his personal experience with the man, how funny and honest he was. Alan Jacobs talks about the ideas in his novels, leading with the fact that his “Culture” civilization is his secular imagining of heaven. Jacobs asks what Banks is trying to say in the conflict of his novels. Is it that we should expect a little suffering of the innocient for the good of civilization? And if so, just how much suffering would we allow to perfect our own culture?

Requiem for a weekend

A miserable weekend. The weather wasn’t bad, at least on Saturday (so far as I noticed; I had other things on my mind that afternoon), but I came down with something malevolent and spent most of my time in bed. Or in the bathroom.

I ate a sumptuous lunch at a Chinese buffet, so I might have fallen victim to an

Employee Who Neglected to Wash His Hands. But I also think I had a fever, so it might have been some new kind of stomach bug. In any case, it occupied almost my entire attention from Saturday afternoon to the present. I took today off work. I have hopes — though it’s far from certain — of going back to work tomorrow.

I got a lot of reading done, of course, and certainly one — probably two — of the books will be reviewed in this space.

But not today. Today I don’t have the sand.

And now, a paid commercial announcement

I have been asked to mention a web site called Grammarly on this blog. It advertises itself as “an automated proofreader and your personal grammar coach. Correct up to 10 times more mistakes than popular word processors.”

I have not personally used Grammarly, but from looking at the site and doing some web searching, it seems to me this sort of thing might be useful to a fair number of people. I’d compare it to “coarse” sandpaper, in contrast to fine sandpaper. If you’re one of those people (and in my experience in recent reading, I think there are many) who just can’t figure out these grammar rules, Grammarly might be worth the price to you.

Full disclosure: I was offered a substantial remuneration for posting about Grammarly.

Does my doing this trouble you? Give me your feedback.

Christian Writing, Calling

Bret Lott has a new book on writing and calling being published by Crossway this month. Lott is a strong, literary author, whose novels Jewel, A Song I Knew by Heart, and many others are good examples of excellent Christian writing, like we have been discussing this week. Not that all Christian writing should aspire to his style, of course, but I tend to think that isn’t obvious yet.

Sticky questions on Christian art

Andrew Klavan posted a thoughtful article today called “Eyes Wide Shut: Christians Against Art” which ought to spark some discussion. Klavan is rare among Christian fiction writers in that he learned his craft first, and then embraced the Faith. That places him in what must be at times an awkward position – he knows what makes for a good story, and sometimes that’s something that his fellow believers don’t like.

An artist’s job — even if he’s a Christian artist — is not to sell Jesus, it’s to depict life truly. A Christian’s faith is that Christ lives in real life, not only in pastel greeting cards with Easter bunnies on them. Thus any honest and good work of art should be capable of strengthening a believer in his belief — even if it strengthens him by challenging him, by making him doubt and then address those doubts.
Art only goes wrong when it lies. Pornography is so deadening (and so addictive to some!) because it depicts human intercourse without humanity — something that never occurs in real life, not ever. Most bad art does something similar — and some good art includes dishonest moments that need to be confronted and rebuked.
But good art can be about absolutely anything and still lift us heavenward….

I can’t, frankly, share his approval of the Game of Thrones series, but I do so with fear and trembling, fully aware that Klavan understands stories at a much deeper level than I do. Still, after reading the first four GOT books, I grew wholly disillusioned with George R. R. Martin’s (to me) cynical and nihilistic approach. If I were to watch the Game of Thrones series (I haven’t), my only motivation would have to be seeing the female nudity, because I can’t work up any other.
Klavan might be comforted somewhat – though the example is an old one – to read the Science Fiction Fantasy Writers of America’s current Bulletin, which includes what may be the last “Resnick & Malzberg Dialogue.” (See my Wednesday post.) Barry Malzberg reminisces, in view of recent attempts to muzzle the two of them: Continue reading Sticky questions on Christian art