7 posts tagged “literature”

Many of my neighbors are aware that the Voxer shush now has written a novellette (novena? ;)) entitled honest conversation.  I have used lower case deliberately, as both the title page and the inside flap do so (shades of e.e. cummings).  I have been fortunate enough to receive a copy, and finished the book on Thanksgiving Day. 

Before I gave my impressions, I decided to pass the book onto a friend to read, for his impressions.  As some of you may be aware, I am not religious in the traditional sense of the word.  I have a belief in a Higher Power, the details of which I choose to keep to myself.  While my relationship with my Higher Power is of paramount importance to me, it does not manifest itself inside organized religion in any fashion.  Outside of the occasional wedding or funeral or ceremonial event important to a friend (or AA meetings), I never set foot in religious structures.  My friend, on the other hand, considers himself a Christian, and is a devoted churchgoer.  I would go so far as to term him a conservative Christian.  He is also the type of Christian who lives what he believes, so I thought his viewpoint would be useful to me.

Let's start with my take:

honest conversations is a passionate tale.  shush now tells the story of controversy inside of a mainstream church, which arises out of the decision of a gay male couple to join the church.  The story is told from the perspective of the associate pastor of the church, Zoe,  who is willing to put her career on the line in advocating that the church accept the gay couple.  This is not, as one might imagine, a universally admired position.  Her pastor, torn by his understanding of doctrine, and also by fears related to his own position, is skeptical that hers is the correct position.  Some of the congregants have chosen to take a position passionately in opposition to Zoe's position.  The church is in danger of being irrevocably split.  As if that weren't enough, Zoe is ambivalent about the need for a relationship in her own life, an ambivalence which is tested at the controversy unfolds. 

The book opens with a conversation between Zoe and the pastor, John.  Here is a snippet which will give you a flavor of how that goes:

John walked in and smiled at me.  I smiled back and motioned to the empty seat across the table from me.  He came and sat down, immediately opening his briefcase and smacking his Bible down on the table between us.  "You didn't bring yours," he asked.

"I know well enough to always bring a gun to a gunfight," I said.  "It's in my purse, like usual."

shush now does not take the easy path in telling this story.  While Zoe's position is the one she would have us support, she does not blithely dismiss the concerns of the other side.  In her telling, there are no perfect people.  The characters are drawn with shades of goodness and of weakness.  Even her "villain", long-time church member Tilly Halliwell, truly believes herself to be acting in the best interests of the church.  What is the church called to do?  To accept those who it believes are deliberately sinning as members, in order to minister to them, or to keep the church free of those who would deliberately sin? 

Now, the answer is clear to me.  I don't even think that homosexuality is a sin.  But this book is intended for an audience which struggles with that question, not for me.  It was here that my friend came in handy.  I asked him for his take.  He told me not only did the controversy ring true, but that his own congregation has suffered from it.  A lesbian couple came to the church, which raised all sorts of ruckus.  After two weeks, the couple stopped coming.  shush now looks at how church actions like this can damage devout Christians who find themselves to be gay.  Here is Kyle, the member of the gay couple raised as a Christian, describing his torment which had driven him from the church before:

"And then I couldn't take it anymore.  I couldn't stand hating myself.  I couldn't stand trying to win myself back into God's graces.  I couldn't stand being in a church every Sunday where I knew that all the other parishioners thought I was going to burn in Hell for a sin I wasn't aware of having committed.  They treated me like the plague, because if I was attracted to other boys that meant God had cursed me.  And you know what?"

"What?" Evan and I said in unison.

"Every time I read the Bible the only people I see God cursing are the hypocrites."  Kyle choked back tears again, "and I wasn't a hypocrite.  I was a scared little kid that only wanted to please everyone else and never even thought of what he wanted, until I wanted Milo.  And if I had to choose between a God that cursed me and a boy that looked like a god, well, what do you think a sixteen year old boy would choose?"

shush now raises some important issues in this book.  Should homosexuality be considered in a different class from other sins?  If church members gossip, drink to excess, if a heterosexual couple not yet married wishes to join, are these people somehow different or better than homosexuals called to church?  My Christian friend found that point to be the most compelling.  shush now also asks whether we are called to love first or to judge first.  I know my answer to that question.  Love first, last, and always.  The cornerstone of her argument comes from 1st John 4:

We love because he first loved us.  If anyone says "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  And he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother. 

This book is shot through with love in all its forms, inherently inconvenient and messy.  Husbands and wives, parishioners and church, parents and children, lovers, even those who aren't looking for it. are touched.  And above all, God's love and presence.  One of my favorite passages in the book is related to the latter:

It is a proven fact that major events in life are never spaced at reasonable intervals.  Life tends to go on in long meandering phases of banality after banality, followed by seasons of shear[sic] insanity where so much happens you feel it could fill up years of your life.  Sometimes it's good somethings piled on one another, more often it's bad.  This is God's way of reminding you that he is God and you are mortal and you depend on him to not become a drooling idiot.

There are also moments where bad is layered on bad layered on bad with an icing of Good, which is God being merciful and reminding you that even though he's in charge and you desperately need him, he wants you to be happy.

I won't reveal too much more about what shush now has written.  The ending is not an ending per se.  All the loose ends are not neatly tied up.  More of the story is yet to be told.  Such is life.  The greater question is whether there is an audience for this message.  I say yes.  Some churches do not need to be told to accept gay members.  Other churches will remain adamant against it.  But there is a large number of churches who struggle between love and fear, faith and doubt, doctrine and message.  Devoted Christians who are unsure.  This book takes a position on that struggle, and it is well worth reading.  Drop shush now a line, if you belong to one of those churches.  Spend a little time and money to explore this struggle with her.  You will not regret it.

That my ass is dragging today.  Why?

Because of her brilliant comment the other day that she was watching the BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice.  So, what did I do last night?  Watch it from stem to stern.  After my son went to sleep.  That put me in bed at 1:15 in the morning.  I get up during the week at 5:15.  Thanks, Cori.

Oh, by the way, it was totally worth it.

Taking this parameter of the top 100 books from Hapa Love.  She suggests using the Modern Library list.  So, here goes:

1) Bold: I have read.
2) Italics: Those I intend to read.
3) Underline: Books I love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated. 
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track dow these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS  A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D. H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
23. U.S.A.(trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E. M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T.  Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell

32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton  Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E. M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D. H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D. H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLE by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J. D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS by V. S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E. M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V. S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E. L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J. P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

Total read: 59

Total read and loved: 23

Total intending to read:  17

Total no interest in reading:  8

Total either don't know, or ambivalent about reading:  16. 

Here are a few more I've done today:

Hamlet's soliliquy

Trojan Women by Euripides

Marcus Aurelius Meditations

Julius Caesar Gallic Wars

Thanks a lot, Cori.  I have wasted at least the last hour on Wordle.  Just so you can share my obsession, here is the word cloud for Wuthering Heights.  Yep, the whole book.

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte.

Enjoy.

What fictional character do you relate to most and why?

Mole from Wind In The Willows.  Homebody, occasionally shy, honest, loyal, and able to see the best in others.  Not to mention rotund.

After a glitch which prevented me from posting for a few days, Vox is back to normal.  In the interim, my friend HapaLove was kind enough to act as a proxy for me, and ask Jenessa to host this week's 5 word challenge.  She has kindly accepted.

Her trancelike rendering of a drunk strummed a few memory chords for me.  Amanda started us off with a wonderful rendering of how marriage can sometimes be an odd but wonderful journey.  Formance showed us how than journey can sometimes get off to a bumpy start.  Latte hit us with a quick riff showing the inner workings of a person in a state of unease.  And Ross finished off with a virtuoso performance of poetic discipline.

Good writing, and let's badger a few friends and neighbors to join in on the next week's challenge.