Patrick Kurp talks about writing and discusses the diary of WWI veteran: “The ‘ideal reader’ is a phantom. The writer who says he writes exclusively to please himself is a solipsist, and one who writes exclusively to please others is a whore. Neither is worth reading. I won’t pander just to pack the house, nor will I resort to fashionable chatter.”
Romantically Heroic: Midnight in Europe
John Wilson talks about Alan Furst’s latest novel, thirteenth in the series, Midnight in Europe.
“A lot of spy fiction prides itself on a pervasive sense of world-weary disillusionment. Note that, while in one sense self-consciously “anti-romantic,” these books are often quite romantic in their own way. (Are you, Reader, among the few willing to look into the dark heart of things?) By contrast, Furst gives us idealized but not impossibly heroic versions of ordinary people making moral choices. Romantic? Sentimental? OK, sure—as long as you acknowledge that those labels apply equally to John lé Carre.”
Shakespearean Improv at Church
Tim Keller writes about his congregation sponsoring a full Shakespearean play improvised by the Improvised Shakespeare Company. For example:
The company takes a title or theme from the audience and then improvises a full Shakespearean play, complete with couplets, iambic pentameter, and the use of Shakespearean plot-lines. When asked for a title someone in the audience called out “Cat food for Breakfast.” The company proceeded to improvise a multi-act play based on that unifying theme, bringing it to a satisfying and hilarious conclusion. Most of the people in the audience I talked to afterwards said they couldn’t remember the last time they laughed so long and hard.
After the performance the director, Blaine Swen, shared how his Christian faith shaped his work as an actor and improv artist. He said “since Jesus has solved the big issues—he died on the cross for me—I am free to go on stage and have fun.” This is a powerful resource that all Christians have available for their work. We don’t go out on the stage or into the workplace trying to find ourselves, trying to justify our lives through our performance.
Help Launch “The Pastor’s Kid”
Barnabas Piper is asking for help launching his new book, The Pastor’s Kid, due out in four weeks. You might consider reading it too.
Remembering “The Shack”
Tim Challies has been writing about bestselling books from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, and today it’s one that sold 20 million. Twenty, um, shall we say, million. It’s William P. Young’s The Shack. You probably know as much as you want to know about that book, but you may not know that Forest Whitaker is adapting it for film.
I’m disappointed to learn Young has left the church, saying “[The institutional church] doesn’t work for those of us who are hurt and those of us who are damaged.” This is the fruit of evil sown early in his life. I hate it. I know different churches have different weaknesses, but I hope to learn that the majority of them are healing places for everyone wounded, broken, and confused. But perhaps that is a humanistic hope. I mean, how many wounded and broken people can you have in one congregation before they start wounding each other? Our hope is the Lord who heals, not his people per se.
Thai People Are Protesting by Reading Books
Angry at Thailand’s military dictatorship, protesters are taking to the streets in silence to be seen reading 1984 and other dystopian books.
Pimsiri [an activist] watched dejectedly as Thailand’s military moved in to seize power last week, for the 19th time in 80 years. Speaking on the phone the day after the second book protest, she says she feels what’s happening in her country now is frighteningly close to the fictional state of Oceania in Orwell’s novel, where independent thought is crushed and the Ruling Party is omnipresent.
“My friends told me when they read 1984 for the first time they could never imagine there would be a country like that, but it’s happening now in Thailand,” says Pimsiri. “People are really watching you, your computers are being monitored… and many people have been detained in undisclosed locations.”
Minnesota is the Place for Noir
“A sculpture hangs above the central atrium of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s headquarters in St. Paul. From a distance, the sculpture looks like a series of enormous Sherlock Holmes–style magnifying glasses. A closer inspection reveals disconcerting details: suspended within the hoops are dissected sections of a human body, each part made out of stained glass, each giving clues to a different forensic discipline (such as flies for entomology). The sculpture represents the body of a murder victim held up for inspection. It’s disturbing, matter-of-fact, and artistic.
“This is Minnesota noir.” A few books are recommended, including Standford’s Prey and Virgil Flowers series. (via Books, Inq.)
Pastor Tullian Apologizes. Thank You, Sir.
I noted earlier that Tullian Tchividjian had separated from The Gospel Coalition (TGC) over what I understood to be somewhat doctrinal, somewhat pastoral issues. That didn’t bother me much, despite my appreciation for Pastor Tullian and the many people at The Gospel Coalition. I usually like to think of everyone I like being on the same team, so a deliberate separation like this is a little disturbing. But what irritated me far more was the dialogue and comments about it I heard this week.
Chris Fabry ran a prerecorded show on Monday (Memorial Day) with Tullian, essentially throwing Tim Keller, Don Carson, and others (none of them by name) under the bus of the disagreement. They didn’t discuss the issues directly. They talked around it and suggested some of the people at TGC were becoming a denomination unto themselves. These unnamed critics were quick to complain about other people’s theological missteps and slow to see any missteps of their own.
Add to that someone on Patheos.com saying when your purpose is to contend for the gospel, then you have to make sure you have enemies to contend with. TGC is a fight club now, picking out the splinters in everyone else’s eyes.
I know good people disagree on important things, but the people named above are very godly men. How can these common complaints be true of these men, even Chris Fabry, our humble radio host and fiction author? I have a very hard time believing they would deliberately misrepresent the facts or “flat out lie,” as one accusation put it.
So I am relieved to read Tullian’s apology on his blog today:
I’m sorry for saying things in my own defense. One of the things that the gospel frees you to do is to never have to bear the burden of defending yourself. Defending the gospel is one thing. But when a defense of the gospel becomes a defense of yourself, you’ve slipped back under “a yoke of slavery.” I slipped last week. I’m an emotional guy. And in my highly charged emotional state, I said some things in haste, both publicly and privately, that I regret. I never want anything I say to be a distraction from the mind-blowing good news of the gospel and last week I did. I got in the way. When you feel the need to respond to criticism, it reveals how much you’ve built your identity on being right. I’m an idolater and that came out last week. Because Jesus won for you, you’re free to lose…and last week I fought to win. I’m sorry you had to see that. Lord have mercy…
There’s more to it, but this is a critical part. Thank you, sir. The Lord is faithful and merciful. May he continue to bless your ministry for the expansion of his kingdom throughout the world.
British Dropping American Classics
Great Britain’s Minister of Education Michael Gove wants more British literature on the recommended list for middle and high school students, so he has cut some classic American works. To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and The Crucible are the only dropped titles I’ve found so far.
The head of one British exam board said, “In the new syllabus 70-80% of the books are from the English canon.”
The Department of Education states it is not restricting any books or types of books. It is making their standards more rigorous. “It does ensure pupils will learn about a wide range of literature, including at least one Shakespeare play, a 19th-century novel written anywhere and post-1914 fiction or drama written in the British Isles.”
Oxford University professor John Carey said, “the idea of cutting out American books because they are not British is crazy.”
Elsewhere, kittens frolic in the grass.
Do you have a problem with this? I don’t, because I don’t think asking kids to read Dickens instead of Steinbeck will kill their spirits, and I wonder how many non-classics of the English language exist that will inspire just as many kids as the classics they replace.
I remember one of my English professors saying that new anthologies never added anything to their section on William Wordsworth
That’s where I go with the minister’s recommendations for British students. Is The Crucible so stinking awesome English-language students must, must, must read it? I doubt it. Let it have a rest and give another strong play its year in the sun. If that means more Shakespeare, Marlowe, or Harold Pinter, it’s probably time for it.
Malaria’s Body Count, Thanks to Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, led to the banning of DDT, a pesticide against malaria-carrying mosquitoes. This week, Google celebrated her 107th birthday with this doodle.
Bethany Mandel writes: “Using faulty science, Carson’s book argued that DDT could be deadly for birds and, thus, should be banned. Incredibly and tragically, her recommendations were taken at face value and soon the cheap and effective chemical was discontinued, not only in the United States but also abroad. Environmentalists were able to pressure USAID, foreign governments, and companies into using less effective means for their anti-malaria efforts. And so the world saw a rise in malaria deaths.
Gallingly, environmentalists even claimed that the effectiveness of DDT was leading to a world population explosion. Translation: preventable disease wasn’t killing enough poor children in developing countries.”
She goes on to tell of a horrible experience she had with a dying child in Cambodia, where one million people are infected with malaria each year.