Lent 03: The Book of the Shepherd

I recently received The Book of the Shepherd by "The Scribe" as part of my participation in the Ooze's Viral Bloggers, so I'm going to make my review of it my Lenten confession of the day.

Given that it's likely scribes who were responsible for editing disparate oral traditions into the various cogent scriptures the major religions of the world currently adhere to, it's appropriate that The Book of the Shepherd has only "the Scribe" listed as its author (though a quick perusal of the copyright information will give you the author's real name). Imagine that someone saw it as their scholarly duty to take all those pithy emails you receive about peace, or love, or spirituality, the ones that often come with a Power Point presentation set to music, and felt that there was  need to amalgamate these into a single, coherent narrative. Now imagine that after they're done, due to the way in which the Internet acts as a disseminator of modern folklore, this book is well received as a book of spiritual guidance. Imagine they've packaged it in a nice little hardback with a cover graphic that makes the slipcase look like vintage leather binding, already letting the reader know that this book contains ancient wisdom (which in this era, email forwards from five years ago are). Imagine this, and you've imagined The Book of the Shepherd.

I like fables. I like parables. I love allegory. None of these are easy to write, contrary to popular opinion. The majority of short didactic narratives are either excessively heavy-handed or cloyingly sentimental. The Book of the Shepherd is the second. It's the result of a trickle-down from the pop-spirituality of the 80s and 90s into the mass-email forwards of the early twentieth century, made into one little book that feels old world, but is so ultimately new world that it fails at having the sort of authority other texts like it do.

Parables and fables work well when they're short. As either of these, The Book of the Shepherd fails by going on too long, giving too much character information. It starts to approach being a modern work of fiction, but because it's trying to hard to be didactic and teach us something, it never achieves the believability or relatability of character modern fiction requires. And we can't call it allegory, because the characters aren't symbolic in the way allegories demand. So I'm not sure what it is. What I do know is that I can't recommend it, for the same reason I wouldn't recommend The Celestine Prophecy.

When I was a minister, I was supposed to tell people to avoid reading The Celestine Prophecy because it was New Age. But that wasn't the reason I'd tell you to avoid reading it. I'd tell you to avoid reading The Celestine Prophecy for the same reason I'd tell you to avoid reading Left Behind or Atlas Shrugged: they're poorly written works of didactic fiction. The Book of the Shepherd is another. Most of the time, when an author tries to hard to tell me how to live, he sacrifices his chance to tell me a decent story in the process. There are exceptions to this, but they are few and far between.

Writers risk us missing their point when they work towards the sort of moral complexity and ambiguity a good story demands. The more simplified the moral strata, the less I can buy in. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe remains one of the best allegorical pieces of fiction because you can miss the Christian message. It can be appreciated simply as a great piece of children's fiction. I don't have to "get" something out of it to enjoy it. Writing like The Book of the Shepherd is only worth reading if I think it holds the keys to my spiritual well-being. Since its mostly just a collection of bumper-sticker spirituality, I'd recommend anyone interested in this sort of spiritual path to Google Scott Peck or Thomas Moore, read the wikipedia articles on them, and save yourself the bucks. 

I would like to add as a postscript that anyone referring to this book as a fairy tale has no clue what a fairy tale is. I will also recommend a few of my favorite allegories, parables, and fables that have a strong spiritual aspect to them:

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin
"Barrington Bunny" from The Way of the Wolf: The Gospel in New Images by Martin Bell
The Singer by Calvin Miller


On the subject of spiritual reading, I'll close by posting one of my favorite writings The Book of the Shepherd wishes it was in the tradition of: Walter Wangerin's "The Ragman":

I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing in my life, my street sense, my sly tongue had ever prepared me for.
    Hush, child. hush now, and I will tell it to you.
Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our City. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear tenor voice: "Rags!" Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.
    "Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!"
"Now this is a wonder," I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?
    I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn't disappointed.
Soon the ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking.
    The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and Pampers.
   "Give me your rag," he said gently. "and I'll give you another."
He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.
    Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing: he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear.
    "This is a wonder," I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from mystery.
    "Rags! Rags! New Rags for old!"
    In a little while, when the sky showed gray behind the rooftops and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek.
   Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart.
    "Give me your rag," he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, "and I'll give you mine."
    The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what I saw: for with the bandage went the wound! Against his brow it ran a darker, more substantial blood -- his own!
    "Rags! Rags! I take old rags!" cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman.
    The sun hurt both the sky, now, and my eyes; the Ragman seemed more and more to hurry.
    "Are you going to work?" he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head. The Ragman pressed him: "Do you have a job?"
    "Are you crazy?" sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket -- flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.
    "So," said the Ragman. "Give me your jacket, and I'll give you mine."
    So much quiet authority in his voice!
    The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman -- and I trembled at what I saw: for the Ragman's arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put it on, he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs; but the Ragman had only one.
    "Go to work," he said.
    After that he found a drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, an old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it round himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.
    And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old, and sick, yet he went with terrible speed. On spider's legs he skittered through the alleys of the City, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits, and then he rushed beyond.
    I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him so.
    The little old Ragman -- he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And I waited to help him in what he did --but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket. And he died.
    Oh, how I cried to witness that death! I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope--because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.
    I did not know--how could I know? -- that I slept through Friday and Saturday and its night too.
    But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violence.
    Light--pure, hard, demanding light--slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And, besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow or age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.
    Well, then I lowered my head and, trembling for all that I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice: "Dress me."
    He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him.
    The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!

A People's History of Christianity

In addition to the misuse of apostrophes, I am annoyed by statements to the effect that "religion is responsible for more killings than anything else," or "religious people are nothing but sheep" or other vague, uninformed blanket statements. On the other hand, I find it equally frustrating to hear Protestants talk as though God was letting the Church coast into the depths of heresy for nearly 1600 years before Martin Luther and John Calvin came along and gave Catholicism an enema. Having been part of a "hipper-than-thou" congregation, I've also learned the folly of implying that one has "found the way to do church" like no one ever has before.

For all of these people, I recommend Diana Butler Bass's A People's History of Christianity.

Divided into five parts, the book highlights a number of grassroots moments in the history of the church, showing how Christians of each major period in Church history were trying to make sense of their faith. Each part is further subdivided into a repeating trinity: first, presenting the title "Christianity as..." followed by "A Way of Life," "Spiritual Architecture," "Living Words," "A Quest for Truth," and finally, "Navigation"; second, a meditation on how each period showed devotion to Christ based on their understanding of their faith, and third, how this affected Christian ethics of the time.

Butler-Bass begins by differentiating the history she is telling from other Christian histories by creating a difference between militant Christianity and generative Christianity:

"Whereas militant Christianity triumphs over all, generative Christianity transforms the world through humble service to all. It is not about victory; it is about following Christ in order to seed human community with grace." (11)

As anyone who frequents my blog will know, I dislike unfair polarizations such as spirituality vs. religion, which posits one as good, and the other bad, without being aware that from a sociological perspective, spirituality is religious - a better polemic would be organized religion vs. organic religion, or something like that. So I appreciate that Butler-Bass creates a fair polemic to base her argument upon.

Butler-Bass situates her history as the story behind emergent Christianity, which strikes me as a necessity, given that antagonists of emergent movements have rightly supposed the roots of emergent Christianity to be in medieval Christianity: while this is clearly a negative to the conservative detractors of emergent Christianity, Butler-Bass provides emergent adherents with a history, a story to contradict the perception that emergent churches are doing something solely hip and new. Movements without histories and traditions can find themselves adrift. Butler-Bass provides a basis for the tradition Leonard Sweet called the "anchor" of the church in Aqua Church: "What progressive Christianity needs to understand is that "emerging" Christianity has a story. Their faith is not new; the generative faith of Great Command Christianity is a reemerging tradition that has always been the beating heart of Christian history" (12).

Yet I think A People's History of Christianity is a book for all branches of Christianity, at least those who can stand some real ecumenism, not simply gestures towards it. What occurred to me in my reading was how necessary the reminder of how diverse the church is, and that this diversity is not wrong; an apostate church requires reformation, not rejection. It requires revolution, but not removal. The curse of the Protestant movement is that it has encouraged believers to reject their current church experience, remove themselves from it, and then begin to reform. The blessing of this, if we can find a way to reconciliation (which I am increasingly more cynical of with each passing year) we can exist in the beauty of this diversity.

A People's History chronicles how, over the history of the church, there have been diverse grass roots movements: some break off from the institutional church and start anew, some stay inside and seek to reform from within. We are reminded that there have been numerous forms of Christianity over the past 2000 years, and those movements, those eras, cannot be dismissed or applauded as unilaterally bad or good. In her section on the Middle Ages, Butler-Bass concedes the fact that few contemporary Christians draw analogies with the church of the Middle Ages, stating that it is "fashionable in some circles to deride the medieval church as part of "Christendom," a political arrangement that joined church and state in a hierarchy of power that compromised vital faith." And yet, she notes, there is renewed interest in certain aspects of Medieval Christianity, and while she admits the errors of the day, she also shows the side of medieval Christianity few history texts focus on, and relates the medieval people's need for visual texts to teach them the narrative of their faith. They had stained glass, we have video screens. Admirably, she doesn't reduce this comparison naively, supposing that we're just like the early Christians. Butler-Bass is a serious historian. Her goal is not to encourage nostalgia on the part of her readers, but to show how what is new has a precedent. After all, isn't it encouraging to find that the church has done what we are doing before, and that it spoke to the church in a similar way to how we see it speaking to congregations today?

If you are a student of church history, either amateur or professional, there will likely be familiar content here, but in addition to these well-known moments, such as the Protestant Reformation, there are many surprises: a town in Spain where Judaism, Islam, and Christianity coexisted peacefully; Harry Emerson Fosdick's idea that "faith made evolution make sense" (270); and the historical precedent for how "dispensationalism is not the only version of the Christian apocalyptic" which she sees as "essentially a hopeless vision of a hostile universe" (128). It is a delightfully accessible book which never stoops to dumbing down. It is like sitting in on a great lecture on Church history. If I'm ever at the Cathedral College of the Washington National Cathedral when Diana Butler Bass is speaking, I'm sneaking into a lecture.

Inglourious Basterds

I'm done with rating movies. After a year-and-a-half teaching college literature, I can no longer assess a movie as five stars, or 10/10, or an A+ without giving people the impression I liked or recommend the movie. Likewise, I love some movies that are simply garbage from the perspective of whether or not they're quality. I can assess critical aspects of a film without enjoying it at all, or opine reflectively from a highly objective standpoint, so perhaps I'll just do all these things, and leave ratings for the professional movie critics. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, and so it serves as a great way to announce I'll no longer be rating films, as well as kick-start my posting at Gotthammer again.

I think Tarantino is very clever, but I have mixed feelings about his style. I like elements, but never the whole product. I love the dialogue, the rejection of standard narrative devices, his quirky casting, and the dense visual pop-culture intertextuality. And yet, despite these parts, the sum has never been a film I would add to my DVD collection. Inglourious Basterds might prove the exception. I say might, because I still haven't decided if I liked it or not, in that subjective way we say we like films when someone asks us what our top ten all time films are.

The fact that I felt compelled to blog about it is surely indicative of Tarantino's ability to, if nothing else, prompt a response. You can't see a Tarantino film and utter a lackluster "feh." You either love it or hate it, in whole or in part.

I loved the performances. I loved the scene in the basement. I loved Shoshanna's story in its entirety. I was impressed by this film on every technical level. And yet, I would be hesitant to say I loved the film. And yet, I don't want to say I disliked Basterds, because I'm nearly 99% sure the reasons I do are part of the subtext of the film. I was disturbed by the violence--I'm inclined to agree with critic Daniel Mendelsohn's assessment that "In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino indulges this taste for vengeful violence by—well, by turning Jews into Nazis." I would also agree with Tim Brayton, in that "whether Tarantino is a genius or a fool, he does nothing by accident," so I'm not convinced that this reversal is as meaningless as others might. I interpret the violence and reversal as Tony Macklin does: "Inglourious Basterds is a movie that revises history -- it's the Jews who do the marking, it's the Jews who are ruthless, and it's the German high command that is immolated." Nevertheless, with Hostel director Eli Roth on board I can't help but wonder, given Tarantino's filmography, if the gratuitous violence, motivated as it is by revenge, isn't simply gratuitous. I'm undecided. Like Macklin, I agree that one should "try to understand a film as it's meant to be understood. Once you get it, you can apply personal standards and also judge it on its own terms." I'm just not sure what the terms are.

I like the historical revision. After all, I'm writing my PhD on a narrow stripe of counterfactual narrative. I like Basterds from the perspective of alternate history. I like it as a spy movie, or an homage to spaghetti western revenge films. Sadly, I doubt very many viewers will grasp the film as its meant to be understood, or at the very least, as how I'm understanding it. Few are going to ponder how the ending might be a darkly ironic reversal of Auschwitz's gas chambers. Most are just going to talk about Eli Roth as Donny Donowitz, caving in the Nazi prisoner's head with a baseball bat in an over-the-top performance that left a bad taste in my mouth. Stephen Witty mirrors my thoughts on this aspect of the film:

It's these fine sequences that can make you truly regret Tarantino's snarky, in-joke impulses, not to mention his arrogant -- perhaps even dangerous -- lack of concern with the story's moral dimensions. Yes, it's only an action film, and these villains are "only" German soldiers, but the glee with which they're tortured dehumanizes Tarantino's heroes, and possibly us. It's no mistake that horror director Eli Roth is here, in a small role; his scenes play like outtakes from "Hostel."

In a year where movie audiences were forced to think very seriously about the complexity of Nazi allegiances in The Reader, I'm worried Basterds is a regression. I wish I could be certain Tarantino meant for us to see ourselves mirrored in the Nazi audience cheering at the graphic deaths onscreen, or for me to be horrified by Donowitz. I was pretty sure that was the point given the last view we have of him manically firing a submachine gun, but the final moments of the film left me wondering. And that's where I still am. Impressed as hell, but still wondering. I think ultimately, I'd agree with Josh Larsen, who said that "Quentin Tarantino has finally made a movie that means something, though I think that’s happened entirely by accident."

Review: Jesus, Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman

In the early years of my decade-spanning journey from pastor to academic, I was enrolled in a course at the University of Alberta titled simply, "Jesus." The three textbooks we had assigned to us were: John Dominic Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, which contains the unqualified statement "Jesus was not born of a virgin, not born of David's lineage, not born in Bethlehem, there was no stable, no shepherds, no star, no Magi, no massacre of the infants and no flight into Egypt" (28); Jesus in History, Howard Clark Kee's far more even and fair assessment of the historical Jesus, which I would recommend to any serious student of biblical historical criticism; and Bart D. Ehrman's Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium. This trinity of historical critical works, along with Jonathan Z. Smith's Drudgery Divine, nearly shattered my faith in the resurrection. I found myself on Easter Sunday, preaching a sermon on Mary's words, "They have taken my Lord away...and I don't know where they have put him" (John 20:13 NIV). At the end of that particular semester, I could really identify with her.

Nearly 10 years later, I'm wishing it had been Ehrman's latest book on the syllabus. Jesus, Interrupted, while qualifying for one of the most misleading titles of the year, is subtitled Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them), which is the book's truer, albeit less marketable moniker. I was ready to dismiss this book as another one of the bastard children of the Jesus Seminar's legacy, which was exacerbated into a rabid frenzy by Dan Brown's infamous DaVinci Code. One more book about all the stuff the Vatican's been hiding from us? Nevertheless, familiar with Ehrman, and interested in how he was currently rehashing and reusing old material, I began reading.

Jesus, Interrupted was a more than pleasant surprise. I haven't read all of Ehrman's works, although I'm familiar with his reputation. In this book, he lays all his ideological cards out on the table in the first chapters, revealing his own journey to agnosticism, clarifying that historical criticism was not responsible for that agnosticism, and then stating that this book is not an expose of a clerical conspiracy, but rather an attempt to reveal at a lay level what many in the clergy already know, but for ambiguous reasons, are not preaching from the pulpit.

Ehrman's thesis, in a nutshell, as revealed in the subtitle, is that the Bible is full of contradictions, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Furthermore, as Ehrman discusses in his final chapter, admitting these contradictions does not, of necessity, lead to a loss of faith. This balanced discussion contains no surprises for anyone who's read anything about historical criticism, with Ehrman using what I consider the lynchpin of the argument, the discrepancy in the time of the crucifixion chronicled in the four gospels. He follows this example up by challenging the usual response to the contradictions, which is the assumption that since the facts don't agree, it clearly never happened, or that clearly it doesn't matter, since the point is that Jesus was crucified. The when is immaterial. Instead, Ehrman encourages his reader to ask not "Was Jesus crucified" but also "What does it mean that Jesus was crucified?" And for this, Ehrman continues "little details like the day and the time actually matter" (27).

Whether one agrees with everything Ehrman puts forth in Jesus, Interrupted, his fair treatment of the subject matter cannot be denied. He delineates the difference between devotional and historical approaches, without being derogatory or dismissive of the former. Throughout the book he displays a genuine concern for proper study of the Bible, and an undeniable love of the material he studies, all the while reminding the reader that he is not a professing believer. In chapter seven, "Who Invented Christianity," he allows history to remain a complex process, rather than assuming that it was just the Council of Nicea or the ascension of Constantine which was some sort of ancient tipping point for Christianity to suddenly spring into being.

Christianity as we have come to know it did not, in any event, spring into being overnight. It emerged over a long period of time, through a period of struggles, debates, and conflicts over competing views, doctrines, perspectives, canons, and rules. The ultimate emergence of the Christian religion represents a human invention--in terms of its historical and cultural significance, arguably the greatest invention in the history of Western civilization. (268)

One could disagree with Ehrman here, and still conceivably come away without the feeling that their faith has been slandered. Ehrman pays Christianity a very high compliment here, one mirrored in Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity? I am in unequivocal agreement with Ehrman on several points he makes in Jesus, Interrupted, and while I am guarded about some of his conclusions, my reading of this book felt more like an amicable conversation about the academic study of the bible over coffee or beer than it did an attack on the innerancy of the Word of God. I went away from reading it encouraged, and strengthened in my own faith position. As Ehrman rightly says, "a historical-criticism approach to the Bible does not necessarily lead to agnosticism or atheism. It can in fact lead to a more intelligent and thoughtful faith--certainly more intelligent and thoughtful than an approach to the Bible that overlooks all of the problems that historical critics have discovered over the years" (272).

In the years that followed my "Jesus" course, I had to fight my way through wondering whether accepting historical criticism meant I had to give up on my faith. After all, I was denying everything Josh McDowell had ever written about, and in the late 80s and early 90s, making the statement that McDowell was wrong was a sort of Evangelical heresy. I'm no longer an Evangelical Christian, but I am still firmly rooted in the religious identity of some sort of Christian. Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted gave me a bit more licence to remain Christian, while still admitting there are some serious textual issues when it comes to the bible. I had learn all this the hard way, and while I'm of Schopenhauer's opinion when it comes to experienced knowledge as superior to read knowledge, I must nevertheless recommend this book. I recommend it for anyone who has some serious questions about the contradictions in the bible, but continue to choose to believe in the truth of the resurrection. I'll end this review with Ehrman's words on the subject, since they're rather powerful. I'm strongly convinced they could have been the closing remarks of my Easter Sunday sermon so many years ago. Maybe they will be for some unpreached Easter Sunday sermon I have yet to give.

The resurrection of Jesus was not a historical event that could proved or disproved, since historians are not able, by the nature of their craft, to demonstrate the occurence of a miracle. It was a bold mythical statement about God and the world. This world is not all there is. There is life beyond this world. And the horrible actions of humans, such as crucifying and innocent man, are not the end of the story. Evil does not have the last word; God has the last word. And death is not final. God triumphs over all, including death itself. (276)

Review of Spirituality by Carl McColman

The full title of Carl McColman's Spirituality includes the subtitle A Postmodern and Interfaith Approach to Cultivating a Relationship With God. The inclusion of "postmodern" is misleading, save as a marker for the inherent uber-ecumenism espoused in the book. The popular view of postmoderns is apparently one where they will accept a more open approach to spirituality. Even the term "interfaith" is somewhat misleading, given how McColman is unabashedly Christian, albeit the sort of Christian conservative denominations would be happy to excise from the fold.

Spirituality is the just the sort of book I enjoyed reading when it was first published in 1997, when I was exploring religious expressions beyond the pale of my Baptist upbringing. McColman seems open enough to other possibilities to be accessible to a wider ideological audience, but still focused enough in his Christian identity so as to not wander overmuch at the religious smorgasbord many writers concerned with "spirituality" like to sample from.

Spirituality is a standard primer for the 21st century spiritual seeker who either has no faith background, has rejected the one they had, or is interested in augmenting the one they adhere to with other possible approaches. The chapter headings and content (Breathing, Wonder, Prayer, Community, to name a few) are standard for this open-approach to faith, mirrored in books such as Anam Cara by John O'Donohue or anything by Thomas Moore. It was the sort of book one found flooding the market in the late 90s as people engaged spirituality with a typical end-of-the-millennium hunger.

There isn't anything earth-shaking or radically new in this second printing of Spirituality. Nevertheless, I have to give kudos to McColman for his balanced treatment of the subject matter. Readers who remember my review of Spencer Burke's A Heretic's Guide to Eternity will recall that I took umbrage with the dichotomy between spirituality and religion. I worried I would be doing the same with McColman, but this was not the case. While McColman concedes that there are many who, for good reasons, distance themselves from religion with the term "spiritual," this is "a bit unfair to religion" (35). Since McColman's thesis is that spirituality is linked to culture, it follows that religious culture is a potential source for spirituality. I like this approach, which in academic circles, would be considered similar to Max Weber's approach to religion. It also includes religious spirituality without making the same sort of polemic Burke seems to in Heretic's Guide, which I have stated many times is an effectively semantic one.

This difference colors the whole of McColman's book. Many times I was worried he was denigrating into relativist fluff, he qualified his statement in a fashion demonstrating his serious and thoughtful approach. I also appreciated his emphasis on community as an essential facet of spirituality. Too many of the self-help approaches to spirituality approach the whole project of faith, to quote N.T. Wright, as a "do-it-yourself project." I recently read a news article about how DIY home improvements most often end up as "bring in the professional to fix my mess" instances. I think a spirituality without community often ends up the same, and I concur with McColman that "A world where spirituality is private is a world where belief in the Sacred is extraordinarily difficult" (33).

I'd recommend Spirituality for people who have recently been hurt by, or become disillusioned with, an institutional form of religion, particularly for Christians who are thinking of giving up entirely. That said, I must make the caveat that anyone who is uncomfortable with more extreme ecumenical positions will probably not connect with McColman. I've always said that "if your faith can't take a walk through a Japanese Tea Garden, it wasn't worth much to begin with," which is to say, if your faith can't endure an open-minded encounter with another faith position, it's not really worth having at all. McColman is comfortable in walking in other gardens, pagodas, mosques, and open fields filled with pagans. I am too, and if that's something you wish you were more of, then you'll probably enjoy and benefit from reading Spirituality.

Book Review: The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan 8/10

Darrell Sweet's crappy cover of the Great Hunt

Anyone familiar with Gotthammer knows that the past 5 years have been busy ones for me, and that the site always suffers when the coursework is dense. Regular guests here also know that I have determined to re-read (which means listen to the audio books) all eleven installments of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series in preparation for the release of the final book in September of 2009. I lost out on October entirely, as my I-pod was co-opted by audio books for my classes. When I finished Anil's Ghost two weeks ago, I realized I'd run out of school related audiobooks for the time being, and that I could finally listen to something I wanted to for my commutes (not that my selection of texts this semester has been onerous. With any luck, I'll blog about them over Christmas break). Like comfort food, I returned to the Wheel of Time series, picking up in mid-read (listen) of the second book, The Great Hunt.

A warning to the neophytes: these reviews are full of spoilers, and are really intended as ruminations for other fans of Wheel of Time.

Cover to Part one of the Youth Edition of the Great Hunt.

Whereas Eye of the World has one of my favorite openings and what I deem an uneven final quarter, The Great Hunt starts out clunky and uneven (which is where it loses points), but finds its stride somewhere around the middle of the novel, after Rand has reclaimed the Horn of Valere and Egwene and Nynaeve are firmly ensconced in the White Tower. At this point, the narrative takes off, maintaining suspense and tension both within the chapters as well as the overall story arc, a method Jordan will perfect over the next few books. It is the basis for why I suggest that Wheel of Time would make a great television series, as the chapters are often of an episodic nature, containing conflict and resolution as well as unresolved tension in encapsulated installments. Furthermore, the Jordan formula mirrors television seasons in the way the climactic scenes both bring closure to the current novel, while leaving enough open-ended aspects to keep readers eagerly anticipating more.

Jordan has stated in an interview with Audible.com that one of his goals with the series was to explore how realistic self-interest would figure into the heroic epic fantasy. Jordan develops this theme throughout The Great Hunt, laying groundwork for the three male protagonists dislike for the larger-than-life roles they will be playing in their own story by the middle of the series. It finds its apogee in this book in the scene where Rand begs Thom Merrilyn to accompany him further on his adventures. Thom's refusal is based on his acceptance of a rather domestic possible future, an entirely self-serving basis for his rejection of the heroic quest. With consummate balance however, Jordan writes Ingtar's death in the reverse of Thom's decision; his earlier self-interested motivations are what drive him to a classic fantasy trope, the flawed hero's redemption through self-sacrifice. His final moments are evocative of the Spartan 300's defensive gambit combined with the tragic hamartia of Boromir: "One man holding fifty at a narrow passage. Not a bad way to die. Songs have been made about less" (653).

What is most fascinating about a return to the beginnings of the series after having made one's way through the completed works to date, is the vast scope of Jordan's vision. It is difficult to know without access to Jordan's notes how much he knew of the narrative arc, but it is safe to say that contrary to his critics, he has never wasted time on inconsequential characters. Nearly every time a character steps into a scene and Jordan gives a lengthy, detailed description, I'm recognizing them. Many characters who will play pivotal roles in the later novels are introduced, and developed in The Great Hunt. We meet nobles from the great houses of Cairhienen who will be Rand's allies and antagonists in future volumes, see relationships which begin in animosity which will someday turn to amour, and understand Min's viewings better than she can. I am more aware in the re-reading of how monstrous the Seanchan seem to be, made all the more poignant by the knowledge of how very human some of them will be rendered in the later novels. One can also see the youthful, hopeful Rand slipping away, and the cold, calculating man he will have become by the end of book five beginning to emerge. In fact, if the first book is characterized by the phrase "in the stories," then The Great Hunt is characterized by the phrase, "we aren't the same anymore," a thought that passes through the minds of the three men from the Two Rivers on several occasions.

My theory that Egwene and Nynaeve are also ta'veren is also strengthened in this novel. Even as Rand is Forrest Gumping his way into Daes Damar, the Machievallian Game of Houses, Egwene finds herself the roommate of Elayne, heir to the throne of Andor, while Nynaeve's testing results in her doing things no other Aes Sedai has done before. The idea of ta'veren is an explanation for the contrivance of this small group from the same geographical area all having exceptional abilities, and its absence in explaining the women seems conspicuous. One wonders if it is not Jordan who overlooked the ta'veren nature of the women, but just the characters in the novel, given that the worldview regarding ta'veren seems to be that only men can be such.

I also continue to be amazed by how satisfying the idea of ta'veren, and by extension, the weaving of the Wheel as secondary world philosophy explaining why the Emond's Fielders are not only exceptional, but attract exceptional people to them, ultimately proves to be. It addresses the vast scope of the series as a weaver would a fabric - the integration of the weave into the pattern is not arbitrary, but transparently contrived, and is a justified contrivance. The ontological stability of the secondary world Jordan has created rests upon this weaving. Again, detractors would state that he never completes the weaves, but without having read the finished work (now having passed to another weaver's hands to find conclusion) none of us can state this with impunity. Most fantasy novels create such deus ex machina to explain the extraordinary amount of coincidence these narrative necessitate, but few do it in as self-reflexive and in regards to narrative, satisfying fashion. Beyond the contrived ontology, a conversation between Thom and Rand underscores the goal of Jordan's project concerning the instability of truth over distances, be they geographical or temporal. When Rand asks Thom about the Karaethon Cycle, Thom's response reads like literary theory: "The Old Tongue has music in it...Translations don't have the same sound, unless they're in High Chant, and sometimes that changes meanings even more than most translations" (386). One could write an essay on literary theory regarding Jordan's ontological loom. It's something I bat about in my head as I listen to the books this time around (Phil, maybe this should be your M.A. thesis?).

Casting call merited some new possibilities, keeping in mind I am positing a hypothetical television series, not movie: While I know this will likely be controversial, I think Eva Longoria Parker would make a decent Moirane, based on her height and ability to play a woman with stubbornly adversarial inclinations who is, nonetheless, physically attractive. I think Parker also has a certain ageless quality to her features requisite for the Aes Sedai characters.
And I've decided on a Thom Merrilyn. I would cast Richard Roxburgh, who proved as the Duke in Moulin Rouge! and Dracula in Van Helsing he possesses the diverse vocal dynamic for delivering those bardic moments; can dance; and under duress, could likely sing. As for juggling, when you've got the option for a cutaway edit, you can be made to look like you're doing just about anything. I think he's old enough to age with makeup believably, but young enough that the physical demands of the part wouldn't require a double aside from stunt work. His facial features would work as Thom, given a set of long mustaches.

One final word on the television idea: The season finale would of course involve the battle between Rand and the false Ba'alzamon as well as the women's escape, but I would frame the entire episode with intercut scenes of people telling the rumors of what happened at the battle. For example, I would show Child Byar reporting that Perrin was responsible for the double-cross, and then cut to a scene involving Perrin, or show a person in a pub talking about how Rand had appeared in the sky, and then cut to Rand fighting "Ba'alzamon".

NOTE: I did a calculation of how many listening hours it will actually take me to get through all 12 books, including prequel, before the release of The Memory of Light in September. The total time required to listen to the series is approximately 345 hours. I have all the confidence in the world that when the final installment is added, it will easily require one hour of reading out loud daily to complete the entire series. As a result, given my current course-load (I'm going into another semester of 3 full time courses, while teaching not 3, but now 4 classes), I won't reach my goal. However, rest assured that given how much I'm enjoying taking the journey back through the books leading up to the finale, I'll keep posting these reflections regularly in the year to come.

All images except covers by Seamus Gallagher, the best WoT artist ever.

Book Review: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan 10/10

In anticipation of the September 2009 release of A Memory of Light, the final book in Robert Jordan's fantasy epic series, The Wheel of Time, I'm revisiting the entire series month-by-month.

All images in this series will be from the character renderings of Seamas Gallagher, whose art is the definitive WoT artwork for me.

Coming back to The Eye of the World right after finishing the 11th book in the series was like getting together with an old friend you have very fond memories of. It's been over fifteen years since I bought the trade-paperback first edition of Eye of the World and devoured it, enjoying the familiar fantasy plot conventions as an introductory book to what I then took to be yet another Tolkien clone, albeit a good one. This time I experienced the book as a literary scholar, a man approaching middle age, listening to it on audiobook, with the attention of a close read, since audiobooks preclude the option to skim or skip passages.

I'm also aware of Jordan's intentions with the series, not only of where characters will eventually end up, but also from a thematic perspective, thanks to an interview with Jordan at the end of the audiobook for Knife of Dreams. Knowing those intentions made re-reading the first book a richer experience than it might have been, despite the love I have for it.

In the interview, Jordan stated that one of his intentions was to play with the idea of what would really happen if a rural farm boy was told he was the savior of the world. How would real people, with real concerns, fears, emotions and desires do when faced with the invitation to the heroic quest? In speaking about this standard epic fantasy trope, Jordan invokes Tolkien. So the oft-complained about similarities to Tolkien are very intentional. Unlike Terry Brooks, who simply seemed to be writing "Lord of the Rings for Dummies" with his bestselling Sword of Shannara, a book which slavishly and shamelessly followed the general plot line of the Rings trilogy, Jordan employs the familiar conventional plot moments to communicate this major theme of his series: what would really happen if Gandalf came to town and told you to go on a quest to save the world?

So yes, the Two Rivers are like the Shire, the flight to Taren Ferry is very much like the race to the Brandywine River, Baerlon is a lot like Bree, The Ways and Shadar Logoth are much like Moria, Thom Merrilin's sacrificial battle with the Myrdraal echoes the Bridge of Khazad-dum, and Master Gill and the Queen's Blessing seem to have been crafted from similar muses as Barliman Butterbur and the Prancing Pony. However, all those elements are mixed into a story that is vastly different from The Lord of the Rings, as is evidenced clearly in subsequent books.

Yet even in The Eye of the World there is already a difference between Tolkien and Jordan. Tolkien wanted to write a mythology for England. Jordan wanted to write a piece of historical fiction about such mythologies. In a way, The Eye of the World is to Tolkien what Eaters of the Dead is to Beowulf. Jordan's characters experience those iconic high-fantasy moments, but they do in a fashion which always retains Jordan's rich layers of verisimilitude. This is the reason for the painstakingly detailed descriptions. It's the reason the later books can contain nearly 1000 pages wherein nothing earthshaking occurs. Because in order to present that strong sense of secondary reality, Jordan focuses on his characters, not the events they are caught up in.

Jordan's novels are a little like watching a Michael Mann film; a lot of screen-time is devoted to the building of characters, so that when the action set pieces happen, they are all the more riveting. Consider the pace of Mann's Heat: the majority of the film has the speed of drying paint. When the bank heist finally occurs, the speed with which the action is presented causes our hearts to race. Jordan's characters move through the fantasy world of Wheel of Time with similar pacing. Jordan can rest in banality for a good long while, so that when they Myrdraal, or Trolloc, or whatever shows up to threaten our heroes, we care whether or not they live or die.


The Eye of the World has a much faster pace than the later books will, but it is still primarily focused on developing characters rather than displaying grand epic battles or magical set pieces. It is largely concerned with Rand, Mat, and Perrin; Egwene and Nynaeve will not come into their own for several books yet. This was a brilliant move for the first book, given that there was no guarantee any sequels would be released. The book focuses on Rand above the other two (although it plants seeds for the multitude of plot-threads Jordan will weave in later books), and is able to reach a point of closure and conclusion so that, if Eye of the World had been the only Wheel of Time book ever published, it would have been fairly satisfying in terms of closure.

This was one of Jordan's true gifts as a writer: to bring a strong sense of closure to the end of his books while simultaneously hanging the reader over a cliff. There will always be unresolved elements at the end of each novel, but each book ties up in a relatively neat package.

From a nostalgic standpoint, it was nice to tread familiar ground once again, and find it loaded with new surprises, the result of seeing where the multitude of plot and character threads end up playing out.

I love the opening chapters of the book for the way in which Jordan plays up the parallels between the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring and Eye of the World, all the while presenting these somewhat tired conventions in fresh ways. I think my love for it stems from having been roughly Rand, Mat and Perrin's age the first time I read Eye of the World. The three boys are like college age hobbits, minus the diminutive statures. I could resonate with hobbits better before I stood six foot and was interested in girls. But as a young man just out of high school, it was a joy to read the same plot line of leaving the Shire, with young men who were my age, who had the same sorts of concerns I did.

Reading through reviews on Amazon, you'll likely find many who complain of Jordan's use of the Tolkienesque formula followed by so many other major fantasies before Wheel of Time. I don't think Jordan is using it as a template however. In an interview with Audible.com, Jordan revealed that he wanted to explore what the "Hobbits fleeing Black Riders" template would look like if it were dealing with real people. So while Eye of the World follows many of the conventions employed by Terry Brooks, and more recently, Christopher Paolini, it is my opinion that Jordan was using these familiar fantasy tropes to clearly set forth his thesis. What would happen, Jordan is asking, if the wise wizard (in this case Aes Sedai) showed up to reveal the savior of the world, and he refused to cooperate? Further, Jordan's use of Tolkien's plotline from Fellowship of the Ring further underscores one of the series' other major themes, which is how information gets passed along in a pre-industrial world, and how that information gets changed as it passes through many hands. "In the stories" is an oft-repeated phrase throughout Eye of the World, and since the Wheel of Time has woven many other ages (including our own), it is conceivable that Jordan was giving a nod to Tolkien wanted to draw upon myths and legends, perhaps implying that it was this story which gave birth to the myths and legends Fellowship of the Ring drew upon as inspiration.

Jordan's concept of Time's weave as it regards ta'veren is a stroke of genius as well, as it effectively explains the need for sometimes nearly deus ex machina coincidences. If the thread's of Time's weave have spun the three heroes out into the weave, then it only follows the weave wants to make sure they are preserved. I had asked in an earlier post why only men are ta'veren and was glad when Moraine says that Egwene and Nynaeve are "perhaps" ta'veren. Although we never gain any confirmation of this in the first book, the subsequent novels definitely see these two strong females along with Elayne creating a secondary trinity of female ta'veren.

Still, the first book belongs to the boys: to Rand's youthful optimism, gone all together too quickly in the next book; Perrin's nearly pessimistic resignation, for which only Faile's love will be the balm; and Mat's mischief, which never really goes away in the series. In that way, Mat is somewhat like Sam, always reminding us of the place we began, so that we remember why we are enduring this long road down the pattern to book 12.

NOTE: In reading book one in such a deliberate fashion, I have settled upon some of my actors for my hypothetical television series. Please remember, that even though this is hypothetical, I want my choices to mirror some sense of reality, so most of the actors I choose will be television actors, not film ones. In the role of Rand, I would choose someone like Jared Padalecki, although he is already too old to play the role. In the role of Mat, I'd want someone like Matt Czuchry, who would encapsulate the mischief very well I think. And for Lan, I'd want Richard Burgi, who I'm positive could pull off the stone-faced warder, and who really needs a break to play a nice guy with a heart of stone. That's all for this time around, although I'm sure by the end of book 2 I'll know who's playing the ladies. And I'm very open to suggestions for a young actor to play Perrin. He's a tough one. Thom Merrilyn is also proving an incredible difficulty, since the actor must be able to sing.

See ya next month with book 2!

Book Reflection: Save Me From Myself by Brian "Head" Welch

I heard about Brian "Head" Welch's conversion back in 2005 when I was visiting my parents in Medicine Hat. There was an article in the Medicine Hat news titled something to the effect of Guitarist for Metal Band finds Jesus or something equally accessible to the largely senior citizen population of my home town. My mom asked if I knew "this band," and I recall being a mix of emotions. I was shocked because I couldn't have guessed the "Metal Band" would end up being Korn, a group I was marginally into: I loved their music, and hated Jonathan Davis' lyrics, with the exception of Falling Away from Me and Make me Bad. What I had most appreciated about their music was the haunting, spooky guitar lines and the big fat sound of layered low-tuned 7 string guitars, both Korn guitar trademarks. I couldn't tell you if that was due to Head's influence (although his solo release single "Flush" would lead one to conclude thusly), but my reaction at the time was the result of years of listening to Christian rock when I was a teenager and praying bands like Metallica would get saved. I was excited Head might work on a solo project which would have elements of the Korn sound without Jonathan Davis' lyrics. I would have been excited about his conversion if I'd known all the reasons, but the article didn't go that far. Head's autobiography, Save Me From Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived to Tell My Story, goes that far, and beyond.

I'm not a big fan of autobiographies. I like to read about people's experiences, such as Bruce Feiler's Walking the Bible, or Touching the Void by Joe Simpson, or in the vein of life-changing spiritual experiences, Bruce Marciano's In the Footsteps of Jesus. I'm interested in the moment of crisis, not necessarily the life that leads to it, at least not told in excruciating detail. I like Christian autobiographies even less because they often seem to fall into the same trap the popular evangelistic testimonies did in the 80's: "I used to do drugs/drink too much/have wild sex and then I found Jesus and it was all good." Or the equally popular "I could have been a millionaire/a rock star/a famous actor but I gave it up for Jesus so I could be here speaking to you." So why would I be interested in Welch's book? One, because as I've already stated, I liked Korn's sound and was genuinely interested in finding out what had happened to Welch. Second, because Brian Welch wasn't saying he could have been somebody. From a success perspective, he was somebody, which is why his conversion was so shocking. I wanted to know why a person would leave the fame and money behind. And third, I was badly in need of a good testimony. It's been too long since I've warmed my hands at the flame of a new Christian's fervor and zeal. I was looking for a little inspiration I guess.

It takes a long time to get to the inspiration in Save Me From Myself, but I found myself engaged in Welch's journey for the simple fact that he's roughly my age, and had similar goals. I wanted to be a rock star as well, though obviously not nearly as bad. Nevertheless, I had no trouble picturing his youthful years, the hairstyles and guitar bodies, the sound of the music and the reasons Korn was different in their sound. The first portion of the book is mainly concerned with Welch's addiction to drugs and alchohol and the cyclical nature of his attempts to come clean. It serves well as a memoir of his days of rock and roll debauchery, but gets redundant at times with a near grocery-list accounting of the types of drugs Welch was using. It also deals largely with the fractured relationship he had with his daughter's mother, and the difficulties they faced. And it deals with these events in all their awful glory, not edited for television. This book is not for those who like their Christian autobiographies stripped of sex, substance abuse, and the seven words you can't say on television. I can speed-read, and did so for this portion of the book, simply due to the spiralling repetition of the events, the 'Groundhog Day' nature of Welch's lifestyle. I wanted to get to the moment of crisis, when the change occurred.

I'm glad to say that while the press has framed Welch's conversion as sudden, and media for the book purports his religious experience as leaving him clean from substance abuse without any repurcussions, Welch's journey is much like everyone else's: one step at a time. I have never personally known anyone whose conversion experience was a complete 180 moral turn, even if it seems that way initially. I'm also glad that Welch had no such expectations, or he'd likely have given up early on. He speaks of regressions into drug use, old patterns of behaving, and how Christ is making him into something new. There is no sense of complete arrival. We can tell he's in process, a work in progress, not finished yet. But this is clearly a man whose life has been changed.

I was uncomfortable that it was a seemingly Charismatic group who brought Welch to Christ, since I myself am uncomfortable with Charismatic churches. Not Charismatics mind you. I have some good friends who are Charismatic or Pentecostal. I just don't like it when they get together in large groups. However, I'm thankful for the mental stretch this required of me. If Head had gotten saved by a bunch of Baptists, I wouldn't have a growing edge off the book. I need to be reminded that God works through all his children, not just the ones I'm theologically comfortable with. All that said, I like Welch's take on denominationalism, in that he's "not into it." I'm not really sure we can ever truly not be into denominationalism; our Christianity bears the imprint of the groups we worship with, but I'm a fan of what Lewis called Mere Christianity and what Dinesh D'Souza calls traditional Christianty, and it seems that Brian Welch is too.

I wouldn't say I finished the book and felt inspired. Not in the way I'd hoped. But I did feel challenged in a few areas, primarily to get back to reading my Bible more often. That's what I mean about warming my hands at the flame of new zeal. New Christians often devour the Bible. I nibble and pick at it these days, and it's nice to have a reminder that spiritual health is directly related to our mental diet. On that note, the statement which most impacted me concerned Welch's choice of music in the wake of his conversion. He effectively said that he wasn't precluding the option to listen to mainstream music, but that he wanted to fill his head with things which pointed him toward Christ.

I can relate to that statement. I've had many conversations with people about why I don't listen to Tool an awful lot, despite my love for their sound. I just can't bring myself to listen to Maynard's lyrics repeatedly. As the man himself said, when he sang "fuck your God" in "Judith" (a Perfect Circle song, but indicative of most of Maynard's lyrical propensity), he wasn't referring to some made-up God. So for me, listening to Tool is the faith analogue of hanging around with someone who constantly and vehemently bad-mouths my wife, to the extent of making overt statements that I should never have married her. That's why I love Chevelle, especially when they sound most like a Tool knock-off. I get the sound without the invective.

I realize that some of my past posts might lead someone to assume I don't like "Christian music" but that's not necessarily true. I don't like subculture music. I love music that encourages and uplifts, which teaches and instructs, which acts as prophecy and prayer. When I was in my teens I was a huge fan of pre-John-Schlitt Petra, Rez Band, Undercover, Daniel Amos, The Choir and Michael W. Smith, just to name a few. I still try my best to stay informed as to the latest and hottest acts in the Christian or "Christian by association" scene. My current faves are P.O.D., Skillet, Flyleaf, Mute Math, and Project 86. Sometimes I force myself to take a break from the likes of Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails, just to make sure I'm getting intake of music that lifts my soul up to Christ. Its not that I find the other music drags me down into hell mind you, just that the intention of the lyrics in bands which are unabashedly Christian is less ambiguous, and in my experience, lends me a better footing in my faith when I need it.

But I like quality as much as I like content. I want the music to have integrity on its own. Good lyrics with bad music doesn't strike me as a serious sacrifice of praise. So I'm glad that someone with Head's musical chops will soon be adding his stamp to the category of sacred music. Admittedly, from what I've heard so far, his lyrics will leave something to be desired in terms of maturity and growth, but I'm cool to listen to a baby Christian find his way in the world, given that he'll be playing music with a 30-something ability. In a way, it seems to me like this will be the sequel to Make Me Bad, which admitted the Christian view of the human condition without the Christian view of a Cosmos with a Savior who could give you a hand up. Having read Save Me From Myself, I'm clear that Head has a firm grasp of that Savior-filled Cosmos, and it's a good place to be living, loving and playing music that will eat through concrete. After all, why should the devil have all the good music?

Book Review: The Terror - 9/10

Dan Simmon's "The Terror" is to the Franklin Expedition what "Pan's Labyrinth" is to Franco's Spain. That is to say, the book is as much a mix of history, horror and fantasy as Del Toro's film is, and achieves this pastiche with an equal level of success. The premise is simple; Simmons imagines the doomed expedition, trapped not only by the elements of the Arctic, but by something more elemental, a physical monstrosity which is killing the men off. I have likened it to John Carpenter's The Thing, but with Kurt Russell in the role of Captain Francis Crozier of the H.M.S. Terror, a role Russell would be sufficiently aged enough to play at present. I'm not implying the "thing on the ice" is an alien. I'm not going to say anymore about the nature of the beast, and have betrayed no spoilers in revealing its presence in the book. The book's jacket liner will tell you as much, and the first chapter makes several references to its presence and malevolent nature. I will warn you that you'll need to read the whole book to find out exactly what "it" is, and that many might find the journey too long and arduous, although I'm of the opinion that this was Dan Simmon's intention.

In truth, the monster is an interesting sideline to the story, but Simmons is thoroughly concerned with his cast of historical characters, especially Crozier, and the reason for turning the pages is the growth and development of the men of the Expedition, not the unraveling of the mystery surrounding the monster's identity, though that certainly makes for an enticing motivator. As with "Pan's Labyrinth," the most monstrous actions are done on the part of the humans, and the historical facts of cannibalism on the expedition, when they finally rear their ugly head, outstrip the fantastical "terror" by far.

Simmons has a deft hand when it comes to explicating historical information within the action of a page-turning scene. He is far more fond of showing us than telling us, and passages that would have been dry exposition in the hands of a lesser word-smith are rendered page-turners, as is especially the case with a surgery late in the book. Ultimately though, Simmons is about the men within this historical setting. The book is historical insofar as it appears thoroughly researched and meticulously crafted to produce verisimilitude. It is horror insofar as it produces fear, employing all the means Stephen King laid out in "Danse Macabre" for evoking horror, even the last resort, the "gross-out." It is fantasy insofar as it deals with the supernatural, or at the very least the possibility thereof. And additionally, it is philosophical, pondering the question of whether or not Hobbes was right in his "Leviathan" when he claimed that life is poor, nasty, brutish, and short. The interplay between the historical and the fantastic hold that question in tension until the very last page of the book, and possibly beyond, leaving the reader to ponder how they themselves are stuck in the ice, trapped in a cold, violent world which seeks to devour them.

Movie Review: Iron Man 10/10

Last year I reviewed Superman Returns without using my handy Criteria for Comic Book Movies, and ended up giving it an 8. I have regretted that review several times since then. Nothing major, but I had a clouded judgment, given that it was a Superman movie, and I am a huge Superman fan. If I'd used my Criteria for Comic Book Movies, I think Superman Returns is a 6, maybe 7 at the most.

By contrast, I am fully convinced that Iron Man is a 10. It is a perfect comic book movie. But just to make sure I'm not biased, I'll stick to the Criteria this time.

1. Source Material. Iron Man sticks to its source material as though it were scripture. The origin story in the film is same as the original comic book. The characters are pulled right from the pages of Iron Man, and the villain, Obadiah Stane and his Iron Monger suit, were the wrap up to a long-running animosity between the two. The film achieves a tight summation of the first 20 years of the Iron Man mythos without sacrificing the heart of the tale.

2. Visual Storytelling. The montage giving the audience Tony Stark's back-story was brilliant, and epitomizes what comic book film-making should be about. The story jumps time several times without losing linear continuity, effectively saying more with less. The Iron Man suit's powers are demonstrated, rather than revealed through exposition.

3. Costume. While it is definitely sleeker and sexier than the original Iron Man armor, the armor of the film is undeniably the same as the comic book's. Any improvements made are in the details, rather than the obvious choice some might have made years ago, which would have been to lose the red and gold colors in favor of something less bold and...well, comic book.

4. The fourth rule is that Superheroes don't shag everything that comes their way. I should have added the caveat, unless they're Tony Stark. However, while Tony starts out as a womanizing playboy, his serial sexual escapades are framed in a negative way. Early Tony is not presented as a moral exemplar. His experience in the Middle East is transformational beyond his becoming Iron Man. He seeks to become a better person in his private life as well. I like this, because it means that when I take my kids to films like this some day, I don't have to explain why Superman humping Lois in the fortress of solitude wasn't considered morally reprehensible (I'd like to say that I don't think this is prudery. And perhaps I need to limit my criteria to Superhero Comic Book Movies, since films like Sin City are adaptations of comic books with lots of sex in them. )

5. The fifth rule used to be "Keep Joel Shumacher away from your film." I might add Sam Raimi to that list now, given the general public's response to the third Spider-man film. I think the core idea behind this rule is that good special effects, flashy special effects and glitzy sets do not a comic book movie make. The mise-en-scene of the film should not be garish or painted entirely in oversaturated primary colors. The setting can look completely realistic, which ostensibly allows for the actions of the super-hero to be even more fantastic. Iron Man does not take place in some fictional world, but in our world, with something to say about the issues taking place in our world. While it might not actually change anything about the real world's problems, I have to say that the moment where Iron Man descends with a vengeance upon terrorists preparing to wipe out a small village has a certain cathartic joy to it you just can't get from watching Hotel Rwanda. It's part of the fantasy of the comic book, that these heroes are real in some possible world somewhere, making things right in a way our world never seems to achieve.

6. Give the fanboys and girls things only they will appreciate. Iron Man showcases one of the best Stan Lee cameos ever, when Tony Stark mistakes him for Hugh Hefner. Or perhaps he's supposed to be Hugh Hefner. As a fanboy, I know that Stan Lee was Hugh Hefner in Fantastic Four many years ago when She-Hulk was taking Ben Grimm's place for a while. A magazine of ill-repute got pictures of She-Hulk while she was sunbathing on the roof of the Baxter Building and when She-Hulk shows up at their office demanding the pictures, the sleazy mogul behind the magazine was modeled on none other than Marvel Comic's mogul himself, Stan Lee.

7. Make sure you've got good villains. Jeff Bridges was positively menacing, and when Iron Man and Iron Monger go at it, the slug-fest is worthy of the best splash pages of any comic book. There's nothing like using a motor cycle as a weapon after you've clotheslined its rider.

Beyond my formalist, anal-retentive comic book criteria, Iron Man is what summer blockbusters are meant to be, with Robert Downey Jr. reminding us all throughout the film why he was once nominated for an Academy Award.

The preview for Dark Knight was amazing. But all I could think when I left the theater is that Batman has some big shoes to fill this year. They look a lot like red and gold ski boots and if you're wearing repulsor gloves...and yeah. You can fly.

DVD Review: The Mist - 5/10

I'm not really sure I should be calling this a review, as it's really more of a rant. However, a "rant" for The Mist will not attract search engines, and I would like to warn as many people as I can that no matter how happy you are when you start watching it, by the time you're done, you'll wish you'd rented something really cheery, like Pink Floyd: the Wall or 8mm.

Before I move on, I have to say that I love the movie. I read the novella when I was in my teens, then again in my twenties. I have a great appreciation for the Lovecraftian monstrosities, which are realized in the film to superb effect. I like being scared. I like monster movies. And I loved The Mist. I just hated the ending.

Hated it. Loathed it. There isn't a word in English for the contempt I feel for it.

It's different from the book. But that isn't what bothers me. I can deal with adaptation. I forgave the changes made to I Am Legend because they worked for the film in a way a literal adaptation of Matheson's novel might not have. It bothers me, because it's utterly hopeless. In fact, the last chapter on the DVD before the credits is aptly named "Hopelessness." (I'd footnote this point if I could, but the blog won't let me, so I'll settle for a bracket. The hopeless ending isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've seen films where it worked. The reason it doesn't work with The Mist is that there's no way in hell the main character played by Thomas Jane would have made the choice he did. He retains hope throughout the film, even when others lose it. So for him to lose hope right before his hope would be rewarded was like a kick in the nuts. It was cheap, and unoriginal. I said it about Silent Hill, and it still holds true. There's nothing original about bleak endings anymore, especially in horror films. Wanna be really original and subversive? Find a way for a happy ending to work in a horror movie. Another recent Stephen King adaptation, 1408 did. And, interestingly, so did John Carpenter when he made The Fog). I wish I'd known how crappy I'd feel after watching it. Which is why I'm warning you all.

It made me want to walk into the Blockbuster I rented it from and say, "This DVD doesn't work for me."

Of course they'd reply, "Well, we'll rent you another copy."

"I'm pretty sure that one won't work for me either," I'd say.

"How do you know? Did it skip?"

"Actually, if it had skipped, at say, 1:46:43, that would have been awesome."

"Well, we can rent you another copy."

"Does it have a different ending?"

Now I know, someone is out there saying, "You can't give a movie a bad rating just because you didn't like the ending!" And that's where you'd be wrong.

Watching a movie where the ending is utterly hopeless is a lot like going for a fantastically sumptuous meal, where the appetizer does what it should; it's not too large a portion, and it whets your appetite for the main course. The main course comes, and it's just as good as you hoped it would be. Your mouth waters with every bite. You sit, looking at the love of your life across the table, and comment on how incredible the food is, and how glad you are to share it with each other. Finally, the waiter comes to ask if you'd like to see the dessert menu, and you decide to share a decadent creation. As you wait for the waiter to return, you stare into each other's eyes and sip wine of a excellent vintage. The waiter returns, your anticipation mounts, and then he places an empty bowl on the table.

And takes a shit in it.

It's bad enough you're closing off the night with a bowl with a fresh steaming turd in it, but now you're wondering about the soup...did the waiter piss in it? What other abominations did you ingest over the evening?

A bad ending makes the whole film shitty. It's the last taste we leave with in our mouths, or brains, or whatever. After The Mist, I needed to cleanse my palette in the worst way possible. I'm not alone in my estimation that the ending ruined the experience. Ty Burr of the Boston Globe said the following: (Spoilers Ahead!!)

"Then, as if to underscore that he's above such silly things as sci-fi and horror, Darabont throws his curveball of an ending. (OK, last chance. Exit's that way. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.) Having escaped with three others, David and little Billy drive through the mist until their car runs out of gas. Around them are the shrieks of horrible things ready to pounce and rend. The five humans have a gun with four bullets; David does what he must and exits the car alone to await his fate. Two minutes later the army shows up. Bum-mer.

I don't think you have to be a parent to hate a movie that ends with the kid getting shot in the head by his dad. As a favor. And just think: All they had to do was turn on the car radio.

Someone must think such a finale is dark and daringly tragic and uncomfortable and cool. Someone is wrong. "The Mist" doesn't provoke further thought; it provokes active annoyance at being punished in the service of a pulp morality tale with pretensions. Even Hitchcock knew that: When he blew up the little boy in the bus in 1936's "Sabotage," he ended up having to issue a public apology. And Darabont, need I say it, is no Hitchcock."

Chuck Wilson of the Village Voice had this to say: "All this would be disappointing, but not infuriating, if the film's ending weren't so unforgivably bad ... which is so distasteful and untrue to all that's come before it as to be a slap in the face to characters and audience alike. The last word in King's story was "hope," and while Darabont certainly has the right to head in the opposite direction—in our own monster-filled world, happy endings are harder than ever to buy—he does so in a manner that's both pretentious and cruel. The Mist made me want to scream, but for all the wrong reasons."

Writer/Director Frank Darabont, has been responsible for adapting two of King's works into film with the greatest success accorded any filmmaker who has undertaken the task. We all loved The Shawshank Redemption Frank. You know why? You didn't change the ending. We all loved The Green Mile Frank, and you know why? You didn't CHANGE the ENDING. It's a little ironic, because you mention in the commentary at the end of the film that the composer was humble enough to "get out of the way" and allow you to use a Dead Can Dance song. He didn't think he was better than Lisa Gerrard. He knew a master musician when he heard one. Maybe you should have done the same. Stephen King isn't the bestselling writer in America because he makes stupid choices. He ended The Mist the way he did for a reason. You should have done the same.

Movie Review: Cloverfield - 8/10

I really liked this film. Not in the way I like Lord of the Rings, where I'll watch it once a year until I got to my grave, or how I like Gangs of New York because I admire the quality, or even how I like other monster movies like last year's The Host or classic Toho Godzilla movies. I like it because it succeeds in doing something no film has done since the original black and white Godzilla was released. It conveys the horror a monster of massive size would produce.

Godzilla worked as a piece of horror in Japan, not because Japanese audiences were expecting a colossal lizard to stride up out of the Pacific Ocean, but because the mayhem the monster produced was strikingly familiar. The path of destruction left by Godzilla in that first, starkly monochromatic film (in a franchise that became ridiculous to the point of self-parody) bears a strong resemblance to footage from Hiroshima after the Bomb fell.

Cloverfield achieves a similar sense of horror both out of a similar memory of destruction; New York has always been a favorite American city for filmmakers to lay waste to. The American version of Godzilla took place there, which begs the question, why does one film succeed where the other failed? Cloverfield evokes its sense of memory, not simply from locating its monster in New York, but also through the mise-en-scene of YouTube. The lack of manipulative music and slick special effects lends the film a sense of verisimilitude. If Cloverfield had been filmed with multiple cameras, greenscreen effects and a bombastic soundtrack, it would have been reduced to the same campy dreck as the American Godzilla. Despite whatever nauseating effects such a decision has on audiences, it was the right one to deliver this sort of story.

As I've openly stated before, I like movies about giant monsters. Hell, I even want to see D-Wars. But Cloverfield is something special in a genre known mainly for its special effects and creature design. The film is ultimately like a good disaster movie, in that it focuses on a small group of people trying to survive the earthquake, the sinking ship, the burning building, or in this case, the giant monster. In truth, you never get a decent look at the monster. What you get are a lot of scenes listening to the characters talk, while the sounds of battle and destruction boom ominously in the background. And while it won't keep me up tonight for fear a giant monster is going to lay waste to my city, or any one on the planet for that matter, it makes for some very tense viewing nonetheless. And to boot, it's a hell of a metaphor for the chaos life hands us and the ways in which we are wont to react to it.

Book Review: Fitzpatrick's War by Theodore Judson: 10/10

A superb Neo-Victorian speculative work of alternate history, which tackles issues of war and peace, nationalism, manifest destiny, and the veneration of History. The book is appropriately slow paced, being the memoir of Sir Robert Mayfair Bruce, who writes of the ascension to power of the 'new world's greatest hero' Lord Fitzpatrick. Bruce's story (and particularly that of his family) answers the question many people have in the face of great historical change, asking "what can one person do to change anything?" Combining steampunk elements, fictional intertextuality, and poignant moments of human emotion and grace, Theodore Judson has created a book that, while easy to put down, compellingly beckons the reader to pick it back up. Highly recommended.

DVD Review: Stardust - 9/10

A delightfully well-made, well-cast, and well-paced fairy tale film. Comparing it to "Princess Bride" seems remiss, since I'd argue that "Princess Bride" is more romantic comedy with fairy tale elements, while "Stardust" is pure fairy tale; Gaiman obviously knows his stuff, right down to the 3 brothers who are setting out on a quest to discover who is worthy to become King (a common fairy tale trope). It fulfills all five criteria I've set out in my thesis on fairy tale film; the element of wonder is present from the outset, though that sense grows as the film progresses; it deals with sexuality and gender, from the very overt (Tristan's conception and Lamia's attempts at retaining her false beauty) to the more subtle (ideas of what it means to be human); good is pitted against evil with little ambiguity; the meritorious individual wins out in the end, and there are a number of transformations, both physical (Lamia's chariot becoming an inn) and internal (Tristan, although his transformation is made clear in external ways as well). A superb piece of work, and beyond all that, a damn good bit of fun, as demonstrated by the good time veterans Pfeiffer and De Niro seem to be having while onscreen.