There is a Balm in Gilead

When I read the reviews of Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, I remember thinking to myself, That sounds boring. The books is a letter written by a preacher anticipating his own death. He's writing about his life to his young son. I just thought that sounded sentimental and hokey. Fortunately for me, a friend recommended Gilead as something she thought I personally would really like. Oh, the power of the personal recommendation! I'm so glad she did, because this book is marvelous. Its writing style is plain and clean and beautiful, like an Iowa sunset. (The book is set in Gilead, Iowa.) And there's a lot of gentle humor and some interesting Civil War history. Robinson also wrote Housekeeping, a completely different novel that is also well-loved by many people. I read that book in college (the class was a literature class called "Work and Gender") but I barely remember it. I will have to go back and read it again.

The Spirituality of Writing

It took me a year to read The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, by Paul Elie. It is a sizable biography of four writers: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy. They were Catholic and writing at the same time (primarily the 1950s and '60s) and aware of each other's work.
This book is beautifully written, but it's also dense. I would pick it up, read a little, put it down and then pick it back up again. I really got going after I started reading Flannery O'Connor's short story collection, A Good Man is Hard to Find. (Read the excellent short story the books is named after here.)
Elie's compelling theme is that these writers were all on spiritual pilgrimage via their writing. The writers themselves are fascinating:

• Dorothy Day: pacifist, journalist, war protester, founder of The Catholic Worker movement.
• Thomas Merton: A Trappist monk and writer who explored Buddhism and other forms of Eastern spirituality.
• Flannery O'Connor: the master of the short story, a wary member of New York literary society who was exiled by debilitating illness to her Georgia farm.
• Walker Percy: a Louisiana gentleman with a strong interest in medicine and science.

Most of the reviews of this book say it is hard to categorize because it is rich and complicated, and I completely agree. All these writers were vibrant contrarians, and Elie admires and accentuates their differences. At the same time, he sees them all as master communicators and even concilitators. In an interesting interview, Elie says he respects them because they had vibrant, complex messages to convey through their writing.

One of the main traits I champion in the people in my book is their ability to write about matters of faith in terms the nonbeliever can appreciate. The ability of Merton or Dorothy Day to maintain a dialogue with the modern world--as Vatican II urged Catholics to do--is just profound. They stayed in touch with the average middle-class person who thinks religion is bosh.
Those who undertook the later protests against the Vietnam War don't seem interested in dialogue. They don't seem to have met those who supported the war with mutual respect. Dialogue wasn't really attempted. That was Merton's objection to them. He said nobody's mind was changed through those symbolic actions.

Read the whole interview here.

Anne Rice & Jesus Christ

I love Anne Rice's vampire and witch novels, and I love her newest novel about Jesus Christ.
Isn't that a funny sentence?

On Reading: Good news/bad news

I read two articles this week that really resonated with me about reading.

First the bad news. Why does the concept of the general reader seem to be in decline? This article hypothesizes that students are forced to specialize their education for a job, so much so that reading for general knowledge has disappeared. Check out the opening anecdote:

Over dinner a few weeks ago, the novelist Lawrence Naumoff told a troubling story. He asked students in his introduction to creative writing course at UNC-Chapel Hill if they had read Jack Kerouac. Nobody raised a hand. Then he asked if anyone had ever heard of Jack Kerouac. More blank expressions.
Naumoff began describing the legend of the literary wild man. One student offered that he had a teacher who was just as crazy. Naumoff asked the professor's name. The student said he didn't know. Naumoff then asked this oblivious scholar, "Do you know my name?"
After a long pause, the young man replied, "No."
"I guess I've always known that many students are just taking my course to get a requirement out of the way," Naumoff said. "But it was disheartening to see that some couldn't even go to the trouble of finding out the name of the person teaching the course."

Read the whole article here.

Now for the good news. A woman in New Mexico who loves to read has purchased the entire Penguin Classic collection. That's 1,082 books for roughly 8000 bucks.

Ms. Gursky's collection arrived in mid-September packed in 25 boxes, shrink-wrapped on a pallet and weighing nearly 700 pounds. Since then, Ms. Gursky has spent countless hours unpacking, shelving, categorizing, alphabetizing and rearranging the books. Oh, yes - and reading; she said she had completed more than 30 of the books in the last eight weeks. Even at that rather remarkable pace, it would take her about six years to make her way through the entire collection.

Read all about it here.

Yann Martel's next novel

Canada's Globe and Mail reports that "Life of Pi" author Yann Martel is working on a new novel about the Holocaust. He recently read excerpts from the unfinished novel in a cafe in Jerusalem.
Their story says Martel knows he it is a difficult subject:

"I'm sure people will say that it trivializes the Holocaust," he said, adding that the other danger in discussing the Holocaust "is universalizing it in way that removes its Jewishness."
But he believes the end is worth the risk.
"The Holocaust has to become part of the rough and tumble of everyday discourse -- as much as that might hurt the survivors," he said, adding quickly,"And I don't mean that as disrespect to them. But you have to realize that those discussing it are trying to find a way to understand it better so that it won't happen again."

Read the whole story here while it's still available on the open Web.

Meanwhile, I recently picked up a copy of "The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios," Martel's short story collection. I've read the first story of the collection. It was very different from "Life of Pi," but has the same compassionate voice.
There's a beautiful passage where he talks about discovering his desire to write and what motivated his storytelling:

My developing sense was that the foundation of a story is an emotional foundation. If a story does not work emotionally, it does not work at all. The emotion in question is not the point; be it love, envy or apathy, so long as it is conveyed in a convincing manner, then the story will come alive. But the story must also stimulate the mind if it does not want to fade from memory. Intellect rooted in emotion, emotion structured by intellect -- in other words a good idea that moves -- that was my lofty aim. When such an emotive idea came to me, when the spark of inspiration lit up my mind like a bonfire, the charge was like nothing I'd ever felt.

Read an excerpt here.

Scott Turow's new novel

Scott Turow has a new novel out, it's called "Ordinary Heroes." The Los Angeles Times had a positive review of it. It's about a reporter who uncovers a mystery about his late father's actions during World War II.
Here's an excerpt from the review talking about Turow's novels:

It's been easy to classify — as we have a great tendency to do —these novels as legal thrillers, part of the avalanche that arrived in the time of John Grisham because the tales were spun in and around the law.

It is clear now that's a mistake and always has been. What Turow wrestles with is of a deeper and more complex nature. The correct category for Turow is rather that of a major American novelist rising from the tradition of the Midwest,such as Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis and James T. Farrell.

Read the whole review here while it's still available on the open Web.

Reading Ulysses blog

My friend Jill took me up on my carping about never having read Ulysses, by James Joyce. The first meeting of our Ulysses book group is set for Saturday. I've started a new blog for the effort, here's the link.