The Genius Factory, by David Plotz

I've put my review of the book on BFL's Pro-Life Pastors' Corner blog. Our February club meeting was well attended, with lively discussion of this compelling topic. I hope other members will post their thoughts.

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

"Frailty, thy name is woman!" Hamlet Act 1, scene 2

Wilkie Collins doesn't hold women in much higher regard, despite his ability to paint a strong, able, intelligent Marian. Yet even she succumbed to severe illness, brought on by a cold and fever. Okay, they didn't have antibiotics, and they had to wear corsets, but please! Poor Laura was brought down by the mere sight of her friend's illness. Too much of the story hinges on this frailty.

But don't let my impatience on this minor point hinder you from a gripping tale. It is a "sensation" novel. It does have well drawn characters (Fosco). Every chapter leaves you hanging. It would have been fascinating to receive every installment in serial form.

Our discussion Thursday, January 21, plumbed this subject and others. Group members, add comments and posts here! Be sure to read Page Turner's review on her blog, Lines from the Page.

What Would Jane Do?

Today's readers tend to appreciate Austen despite her didacticism rather than because of it. She can be positively priggish, and that is an embarrassment. The contemporary reader who loves Jane Austen sort of blips over the moralizing sections and tells himself that they don't really count. It is possible to ignore this aspect of her work, just as it is possible to discuss a religious painting with hardly any reference to the artist's religious intent. But this seems absurd: Ignoring a writer's central concern is a strange way to attempt to appreciate and understand her.

The question arises, then, of how to reconcile Austen's moralism with modern sensibility. To address this problem, it would be useful if we could find someone with this modern sensibility who actually reads Austen for her moral instruction (in addition to the literary pleasure she provides). How convenient that we have someone who fits that description available to us: me.

By James Collins, from A Truth Universally Acknowledged (Random House), excerpted in the Wall Street Journal

Interview with Wendell Berry

Diane Rehm interviews one of our favorite authors, Wendell Berry. He talks about farming and a recently published book of poetry.

Interview with John Irving

Here's an interesting interview with the novelist John Irving. He talks about how he writes.

January Club selection: The Woman in White

Experience what it was like to read a serialized novel, to be left in suspense for a week until the next installment. One hundred and fifty years after its first publication, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins is being published once more in its original, weekly parts. Three parts have now been published. You can even see images of the original periodical pages.
 
The story first appeared as a serial in Charles Dickens's periodical All The Year Round beginning with the issue dated Saturday 26 November 1859 and ending with the issue dated Saturday 25 August 1860. The story was published simultaneously in New York in Harper's Weekly.

The first part of the reprint was available on Monday 23 November 2009 and the last will be on Sunday 22 August 2010, in the morning UK time. (The day changes because of the Leap Year in 1860.) The parts are e-texted with all faults exactly as printed.
 
A separate pdf is also published each week which captures the feel of the original in a more readable form. It can be read on-screen or printed out. Or you can subscribe free to receive it week by week in your in-box by emailing Paul Lewis. Access it all through The Woman in White web page.

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls never got to live in the glass castle her father conjured up as the ideal family abode, but that did not cause her to cast stones. Her memoir is an unflinchingly honest yet warm appraisal of her growing-up years. I think we all came away from the book marveling at how she and her older siblings not only survived but thrived in their environment. A key question on all our minds was how did she not grow bitter?

Our discussion was wide-ranging. A main topic of conversation concerned parenthood. If the Walls children could grow up to be responsible adults having had virtually no supervision, then do modern parents over-protect? The reverse-side-of-the-coin question is, Is it right for parents to cause their children to suffer in the pursuit of their (the parents') dreams? There are no easy answers, but we have a case-history in the lives of Rex and Rose Mary Walls (as told from the point of view of one of the children). They are fortunate to be able to say their children fared no worse for neglect, or indeed their 'contributing to the delinquency of minors' in their household. How many 'helicopter parents' have seen their children become irresponsible adults? Considering Maureen's difficulties, three out of four isn't bad.

It could be said that the sink-or-swim method of parenting yields positive results. How much of that is due to the individual determination of Lori, Brian, and Jeannette Walls is impossible to say. Was it a kind of reverse-psychology that led them to work diligently, budget and save frugally, and crave cleanliness? Rex and Rose Mary filled their home with books and were avid readers themselves. Was that what gave the children a vision of a better life?

The biggest mystery of the book, to me, was how the three oldest were able to safely and sanely sort through the mixture of myth and fact their parents had given them. Psychologist couches are filled with people paralyzed by the lies they'd internalized growing up. Rose Mary, especially, had an answer for everything. Stinking, starving, shivering? It's a grand adventure! Other children have Christmas presents and three square meals a day? Who wants to live such a conventional life?!?

I could forgive them almost anything, but not Rose Mary's reluctance to get glasses for Lori. How can a parent justify leaving her child in near-blindness with the claim that every artist has a different vision? Vive la difference? Not hardly. I'd have a lot more patience with their dream-chasing if they had actually for one minute tried to provide for their children. There's a big difference between not being able to provide for ones' children and not even trying -- and covering it up with high-minded philosophy. It left me thinking that the only people who can afford to be Progressives are ones with money.

Apparently, Rose Mary was reacting against her own starchy upbringing, and Rex was escaping his traumatic one. If ever there's an example of why blaming your parents is a crock, this book is it. The lesson is, you make your own future (by God's grace).

Yes, there were positives, obviously. There was attention paid to the children, even if it was a little oddly expressed. They were loved. Their minds were nurtured, if not their bodies. There was a tremendous feeling of togetherness and inter-dependency among them. They made their own fun and fought their battles together. The children inherited a genius for creativity and resourcefulness (Jeannette's homemade braces, leaving Welch and making it in the big city). At numerous points throughout the story, disaster loomed but never materialized, thanks to the quick thinking and bravery of one or the other. It's a profoundly positive tale, one I wished had been longer.

Notable quotes:

• Page 69 - "We were always supposed to pretend our life was one long and incredibly fun adventure."
• Page 103 - "Mom and Dad liked to make a big point about never surrendering to fear or to prejudice or to the narrow-minded conformist sticks-in-the-mud who tried to tell everyone what was proper."
• Page 129 - On one occasion of Jeannette's embarrassment: "'Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy,' Mom told me. 'You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.'"

There is truth in this view of life, but at whose expense? If I could point to one instance where it was the parents who suffered for their philosophy instead of the children, I'd have a lot more sympathy.

One club member pointed out that Rose Mary could very well have been depressed or bipolar. That fits with much of what occurs. We can be thankful, then, that Someone watched out for her little ones.

Interview with The Glass Castle author

Once you've finished reading The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, (our November club selection) I recommend you read this interview. It asks questions that I wished I could ask her, such as would she have grown up to be a different person if she'd had three square meals a day and running water.

I'm looking forward to our discussion, and to reading her new book, Half Broke Horses, which is about her mother's mother.

Our visit to The Shack

Many of us never planned to read The Shack, by William P. Young, because when a book is hyped as this has been, when non-fiction-readers praise it as "the best novel" they've ever read, we're skeptical. But now I think we were glad club members chose it and gave us the opportunity to join what seems to be the rest of the world. I confess I was pleasantly surprised to have enjoyed the story, despite it's being poorly (overly) written.

That's quite a feat: being a poor writer and yet telling a good tale. Mixed metaphors and hackneyed dialog are a lot to overcome. Please, get this man an editor! Others have suggested he should rewrite in order to beef up the theology; I say, rewrite and get rid of half the adjectives.

Here's an example of what I mean, from his discovery of the note from Papa: "It was confusing and painful trying to sort out the swirling cacophony of disturbing emotions and dark images clouding his mind -- a million thoughts traveling a million miles an hour." A cacophony is a swirl of confused sounds, not emotions or images. I was confused, too.

Good writing is invisible. It doesn't cause you to stop and wonder, "What did he just say?" Neither is it overdone. I wrote "Please, stop!" on my little sticky note next to this portion:

"Shortly after the summer that Missy vanished, The Great Sadness had draped itself around Mack's shoulders like some invisible but almost tangibly heavy quilt. The weight of its presence dulled his eyes and stooped his shoulders. [Interjection: How does weight dull your eyes?] Even his efforts to shake it off were exhausting, as if his arms were sown into its bleak folds of despair and he had somehow become part of it. He ate, worked, loved, dreamed and played in this garment of heaviness, weighted down as if he were wearing a leaden bathrobe [What happened to the quilt?] -- trudging daily through the murky despondency that sucked the color out of everything." Whew! Enough already!!

What's good about the story is Young's cleverness at moving the story along. For instance, I worried how he was going to handle the meeting with Papa at the shack. How would God be revealed? Would there be a long debate in Mack's mind whether this really was God or just a crazy person in the woods? What would God do to prove His presence? I thought the way Young devised the denouement was brilliant.

I also worried, nearing the end, how Mack would re-enter daily life and convince his wife his experience was "real." Like him, I wondered how he would even begin to tell her but, again, the author worked it out deftly. Because of the way he crafted the ending, there could only be one explanation for how he had become a fundamentally changed person.

There were other things we liked: his portrayals of God's love (He's with us past, present, and future), his assertions of God's goodness, his emphasis on and insights into relationships (expectancy and response vs. expectations and responsibility). These qualities combine to make this book of great help to the sorrowing, as several have attested. They also serve as an exhortation to those of us who have been in the Faith a while and have sufficient understanding to know a book like this is not to be taken as Gospel Truth. We agreed, however, that The Shack is not recommended reading for unbelievers.

Why? There are several incongruities that make it troubling. I will leave the heavy criticism to others who have been more thorough (and here). I will merely mention a few that occured to me.

1. The author maintains that love is exclusive of authority (hierarchy), but this is simplistic. As you read the Bible, I don't think you can get away from the reality or needfulness of hierarchy -- even pre-Fall. Jude says that dangerous men reject authority; Moses was certainly an authority figure who loved the people he led. So, love and authority are not mutually exclusive, and it's dangerous to speak of God (and the Godhead) as not having authority or instituting hierarchy.

2. Similarly, the author maintains that love means never being disappointed in the object of one's love. This is just silly. (It sounds like the other side of the "Love-means-you-never-have-to-say-you're-sorry" coin.) One club member noted how, as a parent, she can be disappointed in her children without losing her love for them. Another noted how the Bible says our actions can grieve the Holy Spirit. So this is a needless distinction.

3. The book is dangerously disparaging of God's word ("reduced to paper") and His Church. This would appeal to readers who feel alienated from both, and probably accounts for much of the book's popularity, but it doesn't do enough (or anything) to bring them to a proper perspective. How can the psalmist say, "I love your law, O Lord" if God's word is not wonderful?

4. Many other important concepts are only vaguely defined: sin ("is its own punishment"), eternal damnation, and salvation. Readers without the basics can be left to conclude there is no hell and that other ways to God are possible, even if Jesus is "the best way."

For instance, the story of the Indian princess is contrived as a redemption story that Papa approves. But do stories such as this really lead people to Christ, and ultimately to God? Jesus' sacrifice is fundamentally different than the princess' in significant ways. Foremost is Jesus' divinity; his was the perfect sacrifice (he being sinless), while she (although a virgin) died in her own sin. God, satisfied with with Jesus' sacrifice, raised him from the dead. Because of the resurrection, Jesus' sacrifice cared for our deepest problem (death resulting from sin), while the Indians were only temporarily healed and would eventually die.

Many other distinctions could be made, but one other thing occured to me about the princess story: no one (except Will) saw fit to transcribe it, whereas God saw it as necessary to have His story written. He wanted us to know for certain that Jesus is the focal point of history (as The Shack properly avers) and grants eternal life to those with faith in him. The Indians were not required to have faith; her story was handed down as legend, not as Truth. And that's the level on which The Shack exists. It's a good story, but just a legend.

Dissecting The Little Prince

"The day you stop loving me you can leave with my heart in your hands, and it will be blessed."
"And if you ever love another man, you'll have proven yourself faithless - but I don't want you to leave."

Such are the "vows" spoken between Consuelo (first speaker) and Antoine (second speaker) de Sainte-Exupery shortly before their marriage. They were recorded in The Tale of the Rose, a memoir of their complicated relationship, written by Consuelo a few years after her husband's plane disappeared over southern France.

If, as a college professor taught, you can't know a book until you know its author, and you can't know an author without reading more than one of his books (and books about the author), then you can't understand The Little Prince without including the memoir in your reading. I read The Tale alongside the well-beloved fable, and it did illumine the story.

Antoine, author of The Little Prince, acknowledged his wife as being the rose among roses, the one rose in all the universe who "tamed" him and that he yet abandoned time and again. For Antoine, the rose's planet was too small. He found the rose too demanding, too precious for long close contact. He would roam into the garden of 5,000 roses, be amused by them, and then return. This was a pattern of their marriage.

It could be that, like the little prince, he came to believe, "I should have never run away. I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how to love her." Was Exupery exasperated by his wife? Did he mistrust her? Allow "certain inconsequential remarks" to bother him too much? Was he annoyed by her vanity? Had he failed to appreciate her perfume, and how she lit up his life? We only have his testament and her memoir.

He left unacknowledged how often he would uproot the rose, plant her in another garden, and then leave her alone. Consuelo would adapt, settle in, accustom herself to waiting for him and to being lonely. She would find work and make friends. And then he would reappear, light up her world, and say, "It's time to move!" After the move, he would soon announce, "I must be off!" Thus he would separate her from her "support system" and abandon her again.

Today, we'd call this a controlling personality. He is like the fox, who told the prince how he wanted to be tamed. Antoine wanted Consuelo all to himself, in short increments and only on his terms. This constant upheaval and uncertainty about their relationship caused her tremendous strain; her physical and mental health suffered throughout their life "together." It wasn't until what became the last year or so of his life that they actually lived happily for a space of time while he wrote The Little Prince. Then he was off again near the end of WWII, to save France, and his plane was lost.

It's difficult to read about an untamed man like Exupery. How are we to understand or sympathize with him? But Consuelo keeps you rooted. Her reactions to her circumstances are very normal. She, like you, marvels at his audacity, and yet she is not embittered by him. In the last pages of the book she confirms her love for him and relates some humerous stories that help us see his appeal. He was a charming man, delighting anyone in his presence, and leaving a vacuum in his absence. Childlike to the end of his days, his fable was true for him, if not completely true of himself. A person can write beautifully and not live that way.

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Notable quotes from The Little Prince:

"The proof of the little prince's existence is that he was delightful, that he laughed, and that he wanted a sheep. When someone wants a sheep, that proves he exists."

"'It's a question of discipline,' the little prince told me later on. 'When you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet.'"

"'One must command from each what each can perform,' the king went on. 'Authority is based first of all upon reason.'"

"But the vain man did not hear him. Vain men never hear anything but praise."

"The little prince had very different ideas about serious things from those of the grown-ups. 'I own a flower myself,' he continued, 'which I water every day. I own three volcanoes, which I rake out every week. I even rake out the extinct one. You never know. So it's of some use to my volcanoes, and it's useful to my flower, that I own them. But you're not useful to the stars.'"

"'The only things you learn are the things you tame,' said the fox."

"'Anything essential is invisible to the eyes,' the little prince repeated, in order to remember. 'It's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important. . . . You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. You're responsible for your rose.'"

"The stars are beautiful because of a flower you don't see."