The Best Of What I've Read This Year

It seems everywhere I look, I'm finding year-end lists of the best books different people have read this year.  I'll admit, I might have forgotten that I read some of these this year if I did not keep a list of books read in the back of a notebook (a practice I began this year on a suggestion from Joseph Epstein, who though he did not quite make the list, wrote a thoroughly enjoyable book of essays, In a Cardboard Belt!).
Non-fiction -
Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn- I read a single volume abridged version of the intimidating three volume work.  Beyond the amazing circumstances in which it was written (recounted here), it really is a remarkable book.  It's is hard to boil down all that happens in the book into one paragraph, but I really couldn't give it a much higher recommendation.
Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher- I really haven't read any other books on economics, so I really can't compare this to anything.  The book is subtitled "economics as if people mattered" and gave me a lot to think about.  This may be an uninformed assertion (but isn't that what the internet is for after all?), but I would be willing to bet not many other books on economics cite papal bulls in their texts. 
Shelby Foote's Civil War: A Narrative- Only read the first volume so far, but it is a very readable history.  Foote was actually a novelist originally (and a lifelong friend of Walker Percy) and this shows in his writing.  It probably deserves a wider readership than it has received, being too long - at three hefty, 500+ page volumes - for the casual reader and lacking the endless footnotes preferred by professional historians.  This video of Foote from Ken Burns' Civil War documentary most likely will do more to recommend it to you than I can.
The Dyer's Hand by W.H. Auden- I really, really like this book.  I would really, really like to recommend it to you. But, I doubt you would be interested.  It's big, very "literary" for lack of a better term- lots of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Don Giovanni (by way of Kierkegaard), and unavailable at most book stores.  If you have the temperment for it and can find it at a library (I checked it out from LSU's), I would suggest you leave your computer now and go get it.
Signposts in a Strange Land by Walker Percy- a volume of essays.  You need to read The Moviegoer or this.  I'm a big fan of the rest of his work, but these two seem to be good introductions to me.
Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright- I'm not sure if this is a word, but I would describe this book as "epiphanous" for me.  Really opened my eyes to a lot of things, as I've mentioned before on this blog (unfortunately it also kind of ruined bluegrass for me, except maybe for this song, "My Bones Gonna Rise Again".  In other, but not totally unrelated news, I really like this poem by Hopkins

Novels-
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole- Wonderful, very funny novel set in New Orleans.  Apparently it's funny even if you aren't from around New Orleans, because it is pretty well known nationally.  Benny Grunch's "12 Yats of Christmas", probably is not.
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome- Another very funny novel, but one that was written in the nineteenth century.  If you have ever read and enjoyed one of Chesterton's novels, you will probably like this too.  It was one of two novels this year that I purposely slowed my reading of to enjoy longer (Hannah Coulter being the other). There are many wonderful lines I could choose from as way of recommendation but in the spirit of the author, I'll simply cut and paste this one, "I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller- just your typical science fiction novel following an order of Catholic monks over a few thousands of years after a nuclear holocaust.  I actually talked about this book way back in the infancy of this blog- August.  You can find that here.
The Power and the Glory by Grahame Greene- when I first read this, I thought it may have been the best novel I'd ever read.  I still really like it, but it hasn't stuck with me the way, say, Brothers Karamazov has.
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry. Just a beautiful novel and really a joy to read.  Very similar in outlook to the economic principles set out by Schumacher- agrarianism, small scale for local markets, appropriate technology, ect., but to call it simply a dramatization of those ideas would be a disservice to what a good novel it really is.
Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone- written by a lasped Catholic turned Communist, and then subsequently turned lasped Communist (because Communism is a sort of religion, with its own eschatology that puts hope in the proletariat) about a Communist in Mussolini's Italy who to must disquise himself as a priest after returning from exile.  He eventually rewrote large portions of the work after becoming disenchanted with communism.  According to The Life You Save Might Be Your Own (a book on Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and of course Flannery O'Connor, that while enjoyable and informative wasn't really excellent and didn't make the list), it was one of Dorothy Day's favorites, which was a good enough recommendation for me. 

Young, Restless, and Reformed- A failure of catechesis?

Before we dive in, I have two confessions to make.  First, I'm not sure I'm right about this (not that I'm sure I'm right about my other posts).  But if one can't post unsubstantiated claims on their own blog, where can one go (besides wikipedia)?  Second, I'm am not at all "Reformed".  I'm even a little ambigous about the Reformation; I think it was necessary, but a necessary evil nonetheless.  No John Calvin bobbleheads for me, thank you very much.

One of the big looming changes, and potential problems, facing Baptists today along with various non-denom churches is the growth of the so called "Young, Restless, and Reformed".  This refers to the large group of 20- and 30-somethings who follow a Calvinist theology and are largely unsatisfied with the preaching at their churches (so they become fan-boys of one of many preachers with the first name John- Piper, McArthur, Edwards, ect.)  I don't want to talk about Calvinism here however (or really anywhere on the internet as I will probably be much less charitable than I would be in person), but instead want to try and trace where this growth may come from.

As I said earlier, this new Reformed movement is chiefly drawing its ranks from among Baptist and non-denominational evangelicals and I think this might be due to some factors within these churches generally.  Typically believers from these traditions reach adulthood with a hodge-podge of teachings from various preachers, youth ministers, Sunday school teachers, and untalented CCM artists, often without anything really holding it together or synthesizing it into a coherent whole.

Calvinism, for all its faults is logically consistent within itself.  It follows teachings to their logical conclusion, even if that means heresy (I'm looking at you, Limited Atonement).  When met with a system like this, often upon reaching college, many are attracted to it because it makes much more sense than the scattered, sometimes contradictory teachings they previously have experienced.  I think it is significant that traditions that have a program of catechesis (wikipedia article here for my fellow Baptists who may not be familiar with the term) don't seem to experience this as much (but I have no real data on that, just an impression, hence my disclaimer at the outset).  Say what you want about Catholics only memorizing the Church's teachings by rote bu not really believing or "feeling" them- actually don't, you will at the least be uncharitable and more often than not be wrong- but they could at least give you some reasonable explanation of what they believe without resorting to the old standby "Sunday School answers".

I probably need to do some more thinking about this and there definitely are other factors involved, such as the overwhelmingly Reformed domination of the blogosphere (a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg perhaps), but I thought I'd throw it out there.  And just in case I didn't offend any and all Reformed readers who may have happened upon this blog or alert the discerna-bloggers to my presence, let me add this-  I really like N.T. Wright.

Civil War and Civil Unions

The Civil War pretty decisively settle the question of state's rights leading to the much increased power of Federal government over the states self-determination.  Two places where this dynamic between state rights and federal authority are particularly contentious are the issues of gay marriage and abortion, with constitutional ammendments being proposed in both cases in order to settle the issues at a federal level.  My concern here is not to argue the specific merits of each case, as that has been done endlessly elsewhere, but to ask how much a strong states rights position makes sense here.  While I do agree that something approaching a consensus is much more easily reached at a state level, I wonder how much this makes sense given the advancements in transportation technology.   The interstate system has had a well known leveling effect on the country, making for a much more homogenized culture.  A civil war along state lines would be unimaginable these days because of the erosion of a regionalized mindset.  Furthermore there are well documented cases of people simply moving to another state to get around laws (gay couples flocking to Massachussets and Vermont for example).  So does a strong states' rights position still make sense?

British Government Now Determines who is Jewish

From First Things.


Alarming link of the week-  The British Supreme Court has ruled that preferential enrollment in Jewish schools for Jewish children is racist.  An Orthodox Jewish day school in England was sued for denying enrollment to the child of a woman who converted to Judaism in a "progressive synagogue" who did not fit their criteria for conversion.  The ruling effectively makes it impossible for Jewish law, which traces descent matrilinealy, unable to determine who is considered Jewish in a legal sense.  Jewish schools will now have create other criteria than religious law which has been in place for some 3,500 years to determine the legal status of Jews; essentially a "non-Jewish definition of who is Jewish."

Bad stuff in Britain.  The Catholic Church there has been pretty vocal in their support for the Jewish position; the Anglicans have been said to remain "smugly silent", which seems unfair, I doubt Rowan Williams sat around suppressing a smirk as he resolved not to speak out on the travails of Jewish day schools, but I really don't know.  The law may be changed in the future, but in the meantime it makes things very difficult for the Jewish community.  It would be nice to see common-sense prevail here, but that's probably a bit too much to ask.

Obama and Peace

First, read his Nobel acceptance speech here.

Now I'm tempted to tear into this, go on and on about how there can be no basis for peace when you don't acknowledge the fundamental value of human life, including those of the unborn, how he obfuscates and covers over the use of violence to make it seem to be in the service of peace, but I won't.  Instead, I'm going to let T.S. Eliot and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn do my talking for me.

Obama, drawing on Kennedy, talks about a "gradual evolution of human institutions" to eliminate evil.

To which T.S. Eliot, the former American, sends in this preemptive strike some seventy-five years in advance  (because after all, preemptive strikes are the American way- don't turn the other cheek, slap the other person before you have to),

"They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and winthin
By dreaming up systems so perfect that no one will need to be good"

                                                                                                 -T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock
 And as this guy at Touchstone magazine points out (by way of Christianitytoday), this would place the responsibilty in the hands of someone higher up rather than individuals.  One can imagine Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who experienced this kind of thing first hand, adding,

"This is surely the main problem of the twentieth century: is it permissible to merely carry out orders and commit one's conscience to someone else's keeping? Can a man do without ideas of his own about good and evil, and merely derive them from the printed instructions and verbal orders of his superiors?  Oaths! Those solemn pledges pronounced with a tremor in the voice and intended to defend the people against evildoers: see how easily they can be misdirected to the services of evildoers and against the people!"-A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
-This passage comes at the end of a chapter entitled "The Kids with Tommy Guns" about the young, indoctrinated guards of the Gulag.  The guards were never allowed to speak with any of the prisoners, only given leave to shoot any of them.  He relates the story of one guard who believed a prisoner was about to run out of the column he was marching.  The guard squeezed off a burst that killed five men.  When other guards' testimony had shown the column to be marching quietly along, he was given the punishment- fifteen days detention (in a heated guardhouse) for killing five men.

And finally another quote from Solzhenitsyn, this about the use of violence in general,

"Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle."

A few various things and a poem from Hopkins

Update: As one commenter pointed out, I neglected to provide a link to Jacobs blog at The New Atlantis, Text Patterns.  Good stuff there too.
Just a few quick things here:
1.  I've been a tiny bit upset by the spectacular fall in quality at The American Scene lately, to the point where I've removed it from the links.  Things started to go downhill for me when Alan Jacobs left (who was the reason I started reading in the first place).  I would say more about this and speculate about why this has happened, but the truth is I very rarely go there and do not care to figure out what has happened.  There still are some good back-logged posts by Jacobs on topics such as Lewis, the meaning of the symbols (and whether or not, for instance, some Southerner's self-determination of the meaning of the Confederate flag as a non-racist symbol really makes it so), or T.S. Eliot's decision not to publish Animal Farm when given an early crack at the manuscript; or you could click on a more recent post, like one from today that claims to link to a "fascinating post on molasses".  It's really your call.

2. A little over a month ago I put up a post about St. Anslem's ontological argument for the existence of God.  A few things have been troubling me about it.  First, I said something about Christ not being able to be thought about in terms of perfection "as touches His manhood" which of course would seem to be in conflict with the Athanasian Creed (not written by Athanasius by the way): "perfect man, perfect God."  The point I was trying to make, though I may not have made it clearly enough, was that because the pre-Resurrection body was subject to death and not aesthetically perfect, as Isaiah summed up "we esteemed Him not", we can't perhaps talk of him as materially perfect.  But this is not to say He was not morally perfect or sinless.  The confusion comes because in trying to speak of Christ in His human nature without regard to His divine nature, we divide what cannot be divided but exists as a hypostasis, to use the fancy theological term.  Secondly I kinda dogged Anselm for putting forward his argument, but I was perhaps wrong to do so.  I have since read that he described his project as "faith seeking understanding", which is to say that he did not hope to convince people that God became man in Christ, but as a Christian sought to understand and support his faith.  This is, I think, the real use for such apologetic work and in fact, it seems this is where it gets its most use; many more Christians have bought The Case for Christ than so-called "seekers".  I'm very sceptical of this kind of work to bring people to faith, which I think is of a different kind than what one may be argued into through an apologetic, but I do think it has its place for encouragement of the Christian and allowing them to see how firm the foundation is that they have built upon.  So my apologies to St. Anselm and any of his descendants who may have been offended.

3.  The main thing I wanted  to though was point you to this poem by Hopkins.  Besides having the awesome middle name "Manley", he is a good poet, and at times a very profound religious thinker.  He gets carried away sometimes in his poetry and uses so many musical devices at the expense of coherence that I wonder if he even knew what he was talking about sometimes.  This is not one of those however, and seems a good thing to read and think about during Advent.

 Nondum

Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’ -Isaiah xlv. 15

 

God, though to Thee our psalm we raise
No answering voice comes from the skies;
To Thee the trembling sinner prays
But no forgiving voice replies;
Our prayer seems lost in desert ways,
Our hymn in the vast silence dies.

We see the glories of the earth
But not the hand that wrought them all:
Night to a myriad worlds gives birth,
Yet like a lighted empty hall
Where stands no host at door or hearth
Vacant creation’s lamps appall.

We guess; we clothe Thee, unseen King,
With attributes we deem are meet;
Each in in his own imagining
Sets up a shadow in Thy seat;
Yet know not how our gifts to bring,
Where seek Thee with unsandalled feet.

And still th’unbroken silence broods
While ages and while aeons run,
As erst upon chaotic floods
The Spirit hovered ere the sun
Had called the seasons’ changeful moods
And life’s first germs from death had won.

And still th’abysses infinite
Surround the peak from which we gaze.
Deep calls to deep, and blackest night
Giddies the soul with blinding daze
That dares to cast its searching sight
On being’s dread and vacant maze.

And Thou art silent, whilst Thy world
Contends about its many creeds
And hosts confront with flags unfurled
And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds
And truth is heard, with tears impearled,
A moaning voice among the reeds.

My hand upon my lips I lay;
The breast’s desponding sob I quell;
I move along life’s tomb-decked way
And listen to the passing bell
Summoning men from speechless day
To death’s more silent, darker spell.

Oh! till Thou givest that sense beyond,
To shew Thee that Thou art, and near,
Let patience with her chastening wand
And lead me child-like by the hand
If still in darkness not in fear.

Speak! whisper to my watching heart
One word-as when a mother speaks
Soft, when she sees her infant start,
Till dimpled joy steals o’er its cheeks.
Then, to behold Thee as Thou art,
I’ll wait till morn eternal breaks.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

Vodka Pills and Venn Diagrams

Just found this post on one of the occasionally wonderful First Things blogs.  Apparently a Russian scientist developed a way to turn alcohol into a powder that could be stored in pills.  While this sounds like an absolutely terrible idea, it did have the happy consequence of producing this great opening sentence to a post with the equally great title "How to Get Drunk Like George Jetson", "If you drew a Venn diagram of 'Things you wash down with orange juice' and 'Things the world doesn't need', this would be in the center: vodka in a pill form."

The post in which I rip-off C.S. Lewis while doing my best Rob Bell impersonation

I'm fixing to smush a couple of posts into one here.  Two things are going to happen here, first I want to talk about humility and competition in a roundabout way like Mr. Bell might (for one of my previous impersonations of him look here), then I will discuss what I think he is doing by going about things in the way he does.  Don't look at it as having an extra long post to read (or not), look at it as getting a little lagniappe, like getting snow two years in a row South Louisiana (maybe). Oh and before I continue you might as well just read Mere Christianity as what I will write here, because that's where I stole most of it from.

I don't have an alarm clock in my room.

I.
Like.
It.
This.
Way. 
(perhaps that's going a bit overboard on the po-mo formatting, sorry) 
Anyway I have found that this is the best way, for me at least, to set things up.  See, I'm a really light sleeper.  Any noise is liable to wake me up and because of this I have often found myself waking up in the middle of the night.  Previously, I had a clock nearby, so everytime I woke, I looked to see what time it was.  No matter what time it happened to be, I found myself dissatisfied with having woken up at that particular time.  After I while I realized why this is the case.

There is no "right time" to wake up in the middle of the night.

If I woke up at say 2am, I would think to myself, "Crap.  I've been asleep for like an hour and half.  That's like a nap.  Now I'll never get back to sleep."  Or if I woke up later at 5 or so, I would think to myself, "Crap.  There's like an hour til daylight.  Now I'll never get back to sleep."  If I split the difference and woke up 3:30, I would think to myself, "Crap. It's 3:30.  I need to pee.  Now I'll never get back to sleep."  No matter where I was at, I wasn't satisfied.

And that's kind of like our lives isn't it.

We can't be smart enough, or popular enough, or handsome or pretty enough, or whatever enough.  We aren't satisfied with what ever our place is because we put it in competition with others.  We don't want to be good-looking, we want to be the best looking man in the room.  We are quite content with our own humor, but when someone else is funnier at the party, we think them to be chasing after attention too much. 

Humility and self-deprecation are not the same thing however.  Too many pretty girls go about trying to convince themselves and others that they are really quite plain; too many talented or intelligent men go about dismissing the abilities that could serve others.  This often leads to a sort of falseness in revealing and acknowledging our abilities.  It has come to be expected that the musician, when asked to perform in some private setting should act bashful, dismiss his skills, and perhaps even decline to play a few times before he begins; knowing all the while that what he would most like to do at that moment is perform, perhaps not even for selfish reasons, but because he knows the others will enjoy it as much as he.  Humility is not a process of denying the blessings one has been given, or if privately acknowledging them, doing one's best not to let others no that this is the case.  Instead, the humble man acknowledges his own quality, thanks God, and then does not think much more about it.  Pride can't exist in a vacuum.  It feeds on competition with others.  When I find someone else superior to myself in whatever it is I take pride in, this pride is capable of producing hatred of the other.  And hate of course is tantamount to murder, because it wishes the other did not exist.

Humility is not like this, it is often a sort of happy indifference.  The kind that helps you sleep at night.

Shifting gears a bit, I would like to talk about what I think Rob Bell does when he does things like this (albeit much better than I just did, not that I'm jealous).  Now some folks think I don't like Rob Bell because I've voiced some pretty strong disagreements I have with some things he said in the past.  This post, with it's tongue-in-cheek absurd illustration probably only reinforced that perception.  But in fact, I like what he does.  He seems like a cool enough guy too, if a bit metro.  I can't see him coming along on one of the famous "man night" bbq and action movie nights of the undergrad days, but I think we'd probably get along alright.  Furthermore, I like what he does and I'm going to tell you why.  In a new paragraph.

Rob Bell reverses the typical ADD non sequiturs that typify alot of amateur writing.  If for instance, he start talking about church and his vision of Christianity and then all of sudden said, "By the way, church reminds me of jumping on a trampoline" (to use an example from Velvet Elvis) his editor would hopefully cut it, and may start to reconsider giving him a book deal.  Instead he opens by talking about trampolines, or music, or something like that and relates this to some aspect of Christianity. 

Going about it in this way gives his metaphors the effect of revelation.  When he finally comes around to it, one says, "Ah, trampolines. They're bouncy.  Alot like Christianity with a pretty generous, non-exclusionary orthodoxy."  This has, at its far end, the effect of redeeming the secular world for the religious life for, if nothing else, a source of inspiration in understanding religious life.  Ideally, this split would not exist, and as Luther said, "Milkmaids [would] milk to the glory of God."  But there is a split. Rob Bell with all his far-fetched, creative, and sometimes tenuously connected metaphors helps re-introduce the religious life into a secularized day-to-day.

And so I'd like to tip my hat to him.

Metaphorically.

Princeton Professor Craves "Funky Love"

By way of First Things this article on Cornell West's ghost-written memoir.  The highlight for me is the following paragraph, taken from the book,

The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high -- and they apply equally to both of us. I seek full-blast mutual intensity, fully fledged mutual acceptance, full-blown mutual flourishing, and fully felt peace and joy with each other. This requires a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find. And it shares a depth of trust and openness for a genuine soul-sharing with a mutual respect for a calling to each other and to others. Does such a woman exist for me? Only God knows and I eagerly await this divine unfolding. Like Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship in Emily Bronte’s remarkable novel Wuthering Heights or Franz Schubert’s tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat (D.960) I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!”

This may the most breathtakingly horrendous thing I have read in recent memory.