Real Reading Rainbow

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Libraries rule. According to recent studies libraries rate higher than religious institutions, according to public surveys, in their usefulness to society. From the lost library of Alexandria of yore to the local Carnegie, libraries have been the repositories of information almost from the beginning of civilization itself. Last week the American Library Association, according to an article forwarded to me by my wife, and the Banned Books Week planning committee, announced a theme for this year’s recognition of the books various groups (many of them religious) tell us we shouldn’t read. Banned Book Week, of course, falls in September. It might seem strange that planning has to go into this, but the banning of books has never ceased and the list grows year by year. I recently mentioned John Green, one of the authors who frequently appears on banned lists for children. In an age when encouragement to read should be running high, we hide behind platitudes to keep our eyes toward a predetermined prize. Among the reasons frequently given for banning a book: its religious outlook. I.e., the “wrong” one.

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I often wonder why we think sheltering children who are old enough to read from the collective knowledge of the human race does them any favors. Our culture so successfully removes us from nature that we don’t experience the “facts of life” that our ancestors no doubt noticed early and often. Violence, sex, drugs, and death, however, haven’t become any less common. They are only hidden until their knowledge hits with often catastrophic force, leading to neuroses about how unsafe our world really is. A function of story, if neurologists are to be believed, is to help us navigate the many trials we’ll encounter by seeing how others have done it before. I don’t doubt that there is age-appropriate material for children, but they understand a lot more than adults like to think they do. In my teaching days I was always amazed at how much undergraduates knew that I was only beginning to discover as a professor. Books seem a good way to introduce knowledge appropriately.

The internet, of course, gives access to unvetted knowledge to anyone with access to a computer or phone. Published books, it used to be, had the added value of passing through editorial hands on their way to public presentation. A funny thing happened on the way to the library. We’ve democratized the writing of books through self-publishing, but we’ve not yet ceased to ban them. Perhaps the real way to protect our children is to listen to them. We seem to think telling is better than hearing, although the flow of knowledge can go both ways. Instead of banning books for our young we might all benefit from opening of our own minds.

The Fault in Whose Stars?

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The_Fault_in_Our_StarsTheodicy. I’m no theologian, but the problem of suffering erects a wall ever higher between wanting to believe and actual experience. Many great thinkers have laid down their faith because of this insuperable hurdle. The movie version of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars opened last night, but I didn’t see it. It was difficult enough to make it through the book. I have to admit feeling a bit wimpy about finding a young adult novel emotionally challenging, but it just is. As I mentioned a few days ago, Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy has been topping charts lately, but so has John Green’s novel of childhood cancer. Theodicy is deeply inscribed in this sad tale of loss and love. From a purely biological perspective, the death of the young is explicable, but that seems to be the easy way out.

I’ve been toying with The Fault in Our Stars since January. Picking it up long enough to read a few pages, then growing frightened and putting it aside for a few weeks. The story begins in “the literal heart of Jesus” in a church for a cancer support group where Hazel meets Gus, and, as young people do, falls in love. Green is clear on one point from the beginning: no novel where the protagonists are victims of cancer can ever have a happy ending. We just have to watch and wait for the inevitable. The children return time and again to the “literal heart of Jesus” but no healing comes. They face loss and every page you turn brings more imponderable questions. Yes, this is fiction, but we live in a world where childhood cancer exists. And childhood starvation. And childhood victims of abuse and violence. And still we try to find a way to fit it into a broken-down theology and wonder why we don’t smile more often.

I don’t shy away from provocative fiction. I read scary stories with all sorts of monsters. Finding ourselves, however, in a world where neither rationalism nor theology really makes all the sense they should, sometimes the scariest stories are the truest to life. John Green’s fiction, it comes as no surprise, is frequently banned. Reading it as an adult one finds parts predictable and parts handled too gently, but with enough realism thrown in to want to see it through to the end. Banning books, however, is merely an attempt to shield children from that which they need to see. We do no favors, hiding the truth from those best equipped by nature to accept it. The real question is whether theodicy itself can survive. Perhaps, like the characters in the novel, it will come to its own quiet termination with no real answers to offer.

Map and Territory

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MapsHeavenMapsHellAt first glance the Puritan divines of early New England should seem to be as far from horror films, on the cultural divide, as phenomena can be. After all, academics long ago declared “genre fiction,” and particularly Gothic and horror fiction, to be lowbrow at best, and generally of no cultural worth. The amazing success of scary movies only underscores this point. Edward J. Ingebretsen (S.J.), however, begs to differ. His wonderfully insightful book, Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell: Religious Terror as Memory from the Puritans to Stephen King, is a surprising study of how religion and terror share much that is essentially human. On this blog I have, from time to time, claimed that religion and horror are close cousins. In fact, they may be siblings. Since studies of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards are often produced by Reformed, or at least Protestant, theologians, it may be that a Catholic thinker will catch aspects often overlooked. The Puritans, with their Calvinistic underpinning, had a worldview that holds much in common with standard horror fare. Ingebretsen suggests that to map Heaven, you must also map Hell.

The map conceit works well as the reader navigates through unconventional ways of thinking. The fears of the Puritans included the fear of God, and those who read or watch horror have noticed that nothing scares like the divine. It may not be on the surface, however. Even those not accustomed to deep digging can, upon a few moments’ reflection, see that the Gothic writers of the American canon have drawn repeated from this well. Many literary experts (well, some) celebrate H. P. Lovecraft’s atheistic rationalism, but enjoy his tales of the old gods nevertheless. His modern heir, Stephen King, is quite open about the potential fear of religion. He even blurbed the back cover of the book.

As society grows continually more secular, the religious impulse will not disappear. Sublimation, the process of changing states, may hide what is happening from the casual eye. A close look shows, however, that the same fears Mather and Edwards unleashed on witch-addled, spider-fearing New Englanders, have come back to us in pulp and celluloid. Religion has its earliest roots in a kind of holy fear, it seems. The innovative human mind, however, with its drive to rationalize, devised mythologies that make fears seem plausible. Those mythologies are relatively easy to believe. Everybody likes a good story. Stories, with all their twists and turns, can leave you lost in the woods. It’s good to have a map. I would suggest Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell. You may still be scared, but you may feel more sophisticated for it.

Two Roads Divergent

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DivergentOne of the most hopeful signs for culture is the quality of young adult fiction on the market. Since I’m now in the book industry, Publisher’s Weekly is required reading. I always take a look over the fiction lists as well as the non, and over the past several months a couple of “teen fiction” books have been near the top for regular bestseller lists as well as for demographic-specific ones. (That is, adults seem to be reading them too.) One of those books is Divergent by Veronica Roth. While movie tie-ins certainly don’t hurt, as many of us opine, it is difficult to do justice to a complex story on screen. Divergent is one of those books that stays with you after you’ve closed the cover, and that suggests to me that something deeply meaningful is going on. What about dystopias is so compelling?

I’m not indulging in any spoilers to say that Divergent is a dystopia. Set at an indeterminate time in the future, civilization still exists—at least in Chicago—as society has fallen into five factions: Dauntless, Erudite, Candor, Amity, and Abnegation. Each group has its own beliefs as to why civilization collapsed, based on philosophical dispositions. Abnegation, the self-deniers, are the leaders of government. And clearly, the idea of Abnegation is a form of quasi-monastic Christianity. In fact, among the factions, Abnegation is the only one that seems to mention God. The other groups, stressing bravery, intellect, honesty, and peacefulness, don’t really have much need for the divine. To deny oneself, however, requires a powerful motivation. Even the protagonist’s name, Beatrice, is taken from its favored status among early Christians. I know little of Veronica Roth, but I have to wonder whether Dante is in the background here.

In the acknowledgements to the novel, Roth first gives thanks to God. As a high school convert to Bible-based Christianity, I suppose that’s only natural for a writer who is, at the moment, only twenty-five. Writers for young adults often have their religion close to the skin. Stephanie Meyer’s Mormonism translates into moral vampires. Orson Scott Card provides Ender Wiggin with values from the same faith tradition. People are, despite the logical implications, inherently religious. That doesn’t prevent Divergent from being a page-turner. Full of action and personal development, the first book of Roth’s trilogy bristles with self-sacrifice and belief in something better to come. Even if it’s a world we have to make ourselves. And like most human enterprises, it comes out as a well-meaning dystopia that underscores the value of reading for us all.

Real Life

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WiredForStoryThe brain, it seems to me, holds all of the cards. After all, what we call “reality” is actually a perception of what’s “really” there mediated by our brains. Philosophers and scientists have long warned us that direct participation with the universe is a figment of the, um, brain. This kind of thinking may have led me to trouble in certain jobs I’ve held, but there is no escaping it, unless we posit that there is another thinking center in the body. If there is, it must be invisible. As a dabbler in the literary arts, I couldn’t therefore pass up Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story. The premise spawns one of those “aha” moments so large that you wonder why nobody had tripped upon it before: brain science can reveal what makes a good story. For example, were I smarter, I would’ve begun with that wonderfully witty story told by Uncle Frank that kept us engrossed as kids, and left us roaring with leonine laughter. Only I don’t have an Uncle Frank, and the stories I grew up with were of the written species.

Cron, however, reminds us of a very important point: if it weren’t for feeling, thought would not be possible. This isn’t telling tales out of school. Even the most Spock-like rationalists know it’s true: emotions are essential to the thought process. Even the most proficient of thinkers can be stopped by the vague, “I don’t feel like—” (fill in the blank). To think well, we must feel that we can. When we greet someone we don’t lead with “how are you thinking?” but with “how are you feeling?” (often apocopated to “how are you?”). We interpret our world through a combination of reason and emotion. Both are necessary for survival. Think about it: does the world really make sense?

In writing, emotion plays an essential role. We lay aside the story that makes us feel nothing. Reductionistic materialists often espouse that getting down to the smallest piece of the smallest particle will eventually explain it all. The more spiritually inclined will ask them how it makes them feel. Emotion is the under-appreciated of these twins. While great ideas may come through in a novel (I can’t help but mention Moby Dick again), it is the feeling of the protagonist—the spiritual (call it what you will) struggle—that draws us in and keeps us reading. It may be secular or religious, but the realm of emotion reminds us that to be human is to feel. And if by chance you’re still reading this, I have a feeling that you might agree.

Underwater Zombies

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Z-BoatOne of the (many) benefits of blogging about zombies from time to time, is being sent books to read on the subject. Just as I cracked open The Zombie Bible volume What Our Eyes Have Witnessed, Permuted Press sent me an ebook of Suzanne Robb’s Z-Boat for comment. Z-Boat is an action novel with a strong female protagonist, that sets two naturally phobia-ridden subjects together: submarines and zombies. Since zombies, whether they acquire their undead status by vodou or by infection, are inherently a religious creation, they find their way onto this blog often. Unlike Stant Litore’s zombie universe, Robb’s is solidly secular, no mention of deities or demons anywhere. Set in a post-apocalyptic future (aren’t they all post-apocalyptic these days? We have difficulty envisioning anything much better), the crew of the submarine Betty Loo has to fight off a host of zombies intent on eating, and yes, converting, the living.

Zombies, whether conjured by spells and concoctions or by a contagious organism, while unthinking, always appreciate converts. The age-old human fear of being overwhelmed by swarms pertains just as well to the undead. We tend to avoid cemeteries at night, but death has a way of seeking us out in any case. I knew when my wife received a rather unsubtle flier in the mail advertising a local mausoleum that I too was likely on the list. Isn’t being a zombie all about the desire to survive, no matter what the cost? Still, it’s nice to know your custom is valued, right down to the end.

As I’ve mentioned before, zombie stories are difficult to take seriously in any rational world. Why a corpse with no stomach and no tongue would want to eat baffles the quasi-scientific mind I’ve installed. The Zombie Bible suggests that it’s hunger, and a metaphor is always appreciated in a room full of zombies. In Z-Boat the drive is more along the lines of the plot. You wouldn’t have a story without the undead. A potboiler, this is a page-turner, or, if you’re reading an ebook, a page-swiper. And although the function of a submarine is inherently like an ark—the preservation of breathing animals when overwhelmed by water—when the zombie organism eats its way into the crew, the only safety is found in escaping that ark. Robb’s tale is rollicking and rough, but her female Noah gives us all ground for hope.

Atheist Deities

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HPL in Pop CultureAn atheist who created gods. That’s the basic skinny on H. P. Lovecraft. Perhaps all gods are thus created. I can’t know; I wasn’t there at the beginning. Among writers who failed to make much of an impression in their lifetimes, Lovecraft staged a remarkable comeback in his afterlife. Don G. Smith’s H. P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture attests to the fact that some academics are beginning to pay attention to one of Providence’s most famous children as his works continue to spin off new forms. With an almost Puritan devotion to rationalism, Lovecraft saw no need nor room for deities in the world. His most ardent fans claim the gods he created are mere aliens, voyagers from beyond.

I wonder why one has to be a theist to create gods. Part of the problem is definitional; what is a god? According to the three fifty-cent words in the explanatory section of my young-person’s Bible, the traits are being omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. Problem is, in the Bible God doesn’t really seem to fit any of these particularly well. The closest match seems to be omnipotent, but omnipotence leads to logical conundrums in reasoning, creating rocks so large you can’t lift them, and all that. Gods are, by just about any ancient standard, defined in relational terms—they are more powerful than us. That’s true of Lovecraft’s gods as well. They are so powerful that merely viewing them could drive you insane, eh, Ezekiel? (Perhaps Ezekiel is a good choice to compare, since his God comes down from the sky as well. Some would claim in a spaceship.)

Lovecraft survived because he understood what scares a person. Power, without feeling, is frightening. I’ve seen it in the eyes of both Christian and Pagan and it always sends me away shuddering. Smith’s book is more concerned with the survival of H. P.’s ideas in the media. It is a pleasant stroll, or an unpleasant stroll, depending on your perspective, through the descendants of Lovecraft’s monsters and gods. There’s no shame in calling them deities. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that some kinds of entities are inherently frightening.

East of Nowhere

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EastOfEdenThere was a time when you could assume a lot about your readers. Although it was only a little more than a half century ago, John Steinbeck could assume a biblically literate readership. East of Eden is so thoroughly pervaded with, one might say interlarded with, the Bible that the key scene could have three men sitting up half the night discussing 16 verses of Genesis, and not one of them being a priest or preacher. The earnestness of their conversation is haunting in its intensity. You know the boys will be named Cain and Abel and that only one of them will come out of this alive. Okay, so they decide on Caleb and Aron, but you get the picture. Of course their father is Adam. Even the title of the book is drawn from the last words of the 16th verse.

Ironically, this biblically literate author is one of the most frequently banned from high schools. Some censors can’t get beyond thinking that being good is the same thing as being a realist. In East of Eden, characters are flawed, and they tramp out the course laid in the Bible with an unwitting solemnity. The entire book hinges on the ability to change one’s fate, and yet, the characters dutifully enact their parts. Those who watch over the morals of youth are bothered by an occasional word with four letters, which, I must say, Steinbeck uses with moderation. They mistake the packaging for the message.

But why should we care? Hasn’t the world moved on inexorably these past sixty years? It is the wisdom of Lee, the Chinese servant, who answers this. “Any writing that has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important.” This does not refer to the Bible alone—although at this juncture in the story it does—but it is a message that many who simply dismiss the Bible as just silly myths would do well to remember. Lee is a literate character who turns to Marcus Aurelius for comfort as well as other classics. Sometimes the Bible is regarded as so holy that we forget it too is a classic. Classics become what they are through the impact they have on innumerable people. East of Eden is considered a classic although the author walked this earth just half a century ago. And those who reject Steinbeck for their children would do well to read the Bible they would put back into schools in his place, if only to consider the irony.

Roman Undead

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ZombieBibleLike most monster movie fans, I enjoy a zombie film now and then. I’ve even heard some very sophisticated people commenting positively on Shaun of the Dead. One of the standard features of the zombie is its forthright impossibility—reanimated dead are the stuff of humanity’s earliest nightmares, but in our rational minds we know that bodies missing vital organs, limbs, and blood, don’t just get up and try to eat the living. That doesn’t prevent me from watching zombie movies, and even considering participating in a zombie walk. Nevertheless, I’d not read any zombie books. That suddenly changed when I sat down with Stant Litore’s What Our Eyes Have Witnessed: The Zombie Bible. Literally the day I started reading it, a publisher sent me a copy of Suzanne Robb’s Z-Boat. I was surrounded by zombies.

I had decided to read What Our Eyes Have Witnessed because I was curious what a Zombie Bible might be. I quickly learned that it was an apologetic exercise where zombies are used as a vehicle for evangelization. It was difficult, however, to take the idea seriously. When a zombie breaks through the door of a Roman villa at the start of the book, I found the thought strangely funny. Many zombie movies go in that direction, acknowledging that they could never really happen, so they decide to give viewers a laugh or two along the way. Litore’s parsimony, however, became clear right away. This is a retelling of the martyrdom of Polycarp, but with zombies. It is a curious mix of Roman history, Christianity under persecution, torture porn, and the assurance of salvation. The premise is that Cain’s slaying of Abel resulted in zombies and their soulless souls must be put to rest. If they bite you, you become a zombie—you know the story. Meanwhile, the Roman authorities believe the Christians are to blame and decide to kill off the historical Polycarp.

The story dwells on the emotions of the Christians, in a kind of maudlin evangelicalism, as they try to avoid both flesh-eating zombies and Roman authorities. Zombies, it is said, are driven by their constant hunger and only Christianity has the true bread. This is a creative account of how the early Christian movement dealt with persecution. The zombies, however, feel somewhat superfluous in that situation, for the terror of imperial persecution was real enough. The zombies, however, aren’t after brains, and they don’t speak. They want to eat and the only thing they can digest, even if they have no stomachs, is other people. As an allegory it almost works, but zombies are a kind of fifth column in what was a very real struggle for early religious tolerance. Ironically, the undead and resurrection are never juxtaposed, although they are the most obvious way to connect the dots.

Steampunk Messiah

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HomunculusSteampunk emerged as a genre of science fiction just as I was finishing seminary. It went largely unnoticed as I continued my “serious” academic work, with my first introduction being Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. Since then, I’ve picked up the occasional Victorian tale and enjoyed an escape into an alternative history. Most recently that escape took the form of one of the originals of the genre, James P. Blaylock’s Homunculus. Considered to be one of the first exemplars of the emergent literary type, it has rollicking, free-wheeling tone—full of strange characters who are attempting to find various hidden treasures. One of those characters is a latter-day prophet by the name of Shiloh, who believes himself the new messiah. Since, as an emerging genre, no rules had been established, steampunk was free to cast whatever characters it found intriguing. A religious fanatic who often drives the action through his own need for self assurance is a tried and true actor in any literature that considers what motivates the masses. Firmly in the cast of “bad guys” in the story, Shiloh patronizes the mad doctor who’s experimenting with reanimating the dead. And Blaylock manages to squeeze a bit of profundity into the role as well.

Nevertheless, the character with the best quote is the ambiguous Bill Kraken, on the side of right, generally, but deeply flawed. In a conversation about immortality, he says “I’m a man of science and the spirit both, and I don’t trust to neither one entirely.” In this he sums up the dilemma of the honest individual who takes science seriously, but who knows that science can’t completely encapsulate the human experience. He trusts science, but Kraken has seen the living dead. There’s an alchemy at work here, and that box he carries on his lap houses the very homunculus that gives the book its title. An alien, actually, the homunculus is sought after by Shiloh, who supposes him to be his father. It is the homunculus who animates the dead and flummoxes the scientists.

Fiction often leads us where fact simply cannot. I strongly suspect that Blaylock had no moralizing message here, other than perhaps to beware of fanatics, and yet a message remains to ponder. That which we seek the most is that which most wishes to escape us. In the end neither scientist nor religious aficionado ends up with the homunculus under control. This is an alternate reality, after all, and the limits of human experience remain untested. Perhaps such bright thinkers as Galileo, Newton, and Einstein had it right. Perhaps the universe in which we find ourselves is not either-or, but both-and. It was our religion that brought us to science, and it is sometimes our fiction that points to the facts.

Royal Reading

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Post-Christian America still reads its Bible. One of the perks, such as it is, of working with Bibles is getting such vital news early. The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) has just released a study that was underway when I visited the school a couple years back. “The Bible in American Life,” available online, presents the results of a scientific survey of Bible reading in the US. Suffice it to say, we’re not done with Holy Writ just yet. In our world of high tech gadgets where the waves and particles that make the internet possible penetrate our bodies constantly, it is sometimes easy to forget that the Bible in many ways made this all possible. Both the good and the evil that drove western civilization to colonize its world had at least some dusty memory of “manifest destiny” embedded in sacred writ about it. And those who take the Bible seriously have continued to read, mark, and inwardly digest it.

The Bible in American Life, already picked up on by major media, indicates that about half of the population of the United States reads the Bible outside of worship. Perhaps not surprising given the still faltering civil rights dream, African-Americans are the biggest Bible reading demographic in the country. In fact, the study states, race is the single largest indicator of probable Bible reading. Those who are low on the economic scale also tend to read Scripture more. Those for whom “success” isn’t what it seems to be at first. Those whom “success” has passed by. Even Hispanic readers outnumber the white majority. People who have been distracted by material success, predictably, have little time for ancient wisdom. Still, half the country does turn to the Bible on occasion. Among the more interesting demographics is the fact that nones—those who are unaffiliated with any religion—also turn to the Bible for learning about life.

434px-King_James_I_of_England_and_VI_of_Scotland_by_John_De_Critz_the_ElderThe media seems to have picked up one of the major points as well—few Bible readers turn to Holy Writ for political advice. To hear the news weavers tell it, politicians and rabble-rousers trawl the Bible for its scant words about homosexuality and abortion—issues ignored by Moses and his ilk, for the most part. In fact, most people rate such issues very low on their scale of why they turn to the Bible. It is read more for consolation than for political intrigue. Having just about finished my formatting of my book on the Psalms, it warms my heart to read that the Psalter tops the list of favorite books of the Bible, narrowly inching out the Gospel of John. The study doesn’t, and can’t, come right out and say it, but the Bible is read by people to help them feel better. They still prefer the King James by a considerable margin. And in this world of self first, they can still read, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Even though Bible readers are, in the majority, women. Good old King James still shows the way, as the ruling white man always has.

The Cthulhu You Knew

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DissectingCthulhuThe word “fan,” an apocopated form of “fanatic,” is a word borrowed from the realm of religion. Most often associated with sports, it can refer to any overly enthusiastic devotee. While I enjoy reading H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction, I think I would stop short of calling myself a fan, but were I to take that step I would have some serious competition. The circle of those truly enamored of Lovecraft have yet to break into the hallowed, or perhaps haunted, halls of the western canon. Fans there are, but not the sort who find regular play in literature classes. Still, as I read S. T. Joshi’s edited collection, Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos, I came to realize just how committed Lovecraft’s fans are.

My fascination with Lovecraft arises from his felicity with gods. Some argue that his gods are aliens, but even Erich von Däniken hasn’t stopped the true believers. Dissecting Cthulhu is a collection of articles from a variety of Lovecraft analysts debating the fine, and sometimes gross, points of the postulated “Cthulhu Mythos.” Cthulhu hardly requires any introduction these days. He has basked in his underwater fame since the internet has made a star of him. The eponymous deity of the alleged cycle, the divinity, or alien, was never really put front and center by his creator. Deities are all the more powerful for being unseen. Here is where Lovecraft the atheist becomes Lovecraft the theologian. By creating gods we tacitly admit their subtle power over our psyches. We may call them aliens or monsters, but compared to us, they’re gods.

After reading Dissecting Cthulhu, however, I’m not sure that I could say much more about him than before. This is often a problem shared by theologians—what more can you say about an entity that won’t sit still long enough to be interviewed? Gods will be gods. The rest of us are humble hermeneuts. There’s no doubt that Lovecraft touched on a deep and abiding current in human experience when he held alienation high as the standard of life on earth. Somehow we resent Cthulhu for not being there, even though his is no octopus’s garden under the sea. Other galaxies were discovered and partially understood for the first time during Lovecraft’s lifetime. Suddenly it felt pretty lonely down here with all that empty space up there. It is better to populate such a large expanse with gods. Not seeing is believing after all.

Baptizing Virgil

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Dante Alighieri was curious as to Heaven and Hell. Like most mortals, he wasn’t sure of his way around and so he needed a guide. Descending to the nether regions, he enlisted the services of Virgil. Virgil is best know for his epic poem The Aeneid, the early Latin account of the Trojan War. I’ve often wondered why Dante chose this particular writer as the “good pagan” who might lead him through the inferno without becoming ensconced within it. Then I found out about Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue. In addition to The Aeneid, Virgil wrote The Eclogues, or idylls of rustic life. In the fourth of these he included what some early Christians considered to be a pagan prophecy of the birth of a special child, although Virgil was never a Christian and indeed overlapped with Jesus by a decade or two. He is the author of the Roman national epic, as Aeneas was believed to have escaped Troy and gone on to found Rome. Virgil tells the tale. What would he be doing, predicting Rome’s spiritual conqueror?

Virgil; photo credit, A. Hunter Wright, Wikicommons

Virgil; photo credit, A. Hunter Wright, Wikicommons

When Rome became Christian, under the knowing gaze of Constantine, the fourth Eclogue of Virgil was reinterpreted as a prophecy of Jesus’ birth. You see, the special child born ushers in a golden age, and what could be more golden than imperial Rome? Virgil’s foresight suggested him to Dante as a reliable guide through the infernal regions where, despite his suspect religion, he never falters. This whole episode once again highlights just how influential Christianity was to become even in the secular world. Prophecy can be read back into any significant passage, biblical or not, and new religions are founded all the time on such a basis. Such is the power of the written word. It is not just Mormons who baptize those who don’t believe.

Rationally we know that Virgil did not predict the coming of Jesus some three decades in advance. Yet, even such a brilliant scholar as Dante Alighieri was swept along by the tide of belief that had convinced the eternal city of its heavenly pedigree. All roads lead to Rome, and all prophecies point to Bethlehem. Beatrice was, however, a real woman, who, Dante believed, was tasked with revealing Heaven to him. He fell in love with her when he was but nine, and when he married it was to another woman, pre-arranged by his family. Beatrice was married to different man and yet she would succeed where Virgil had failed. Ever after it would be known as the Divine Comedy indeed.

Shining Meaning

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AllThingsShiningWriting with the hopes of eventually being included in the Western Canon, I suspect, is often somewhere in the back of an author’s mind. We want our efforts to be noticed and our voices to be heard. The Western Canon, however, is a very exclusive club, and the members don’t get selected easily or quickly. We value our classics. More amorphous than the biblical canon, the list of books that define western culture is slightly different with every analyst, but the biggies always make the cut. Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly see the great classics as a source of meaning in an increasingly secular world. All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age is a fascinating consideration of how the writing we’ve turned to for inspiration has changed over time. Older members—including the Bible—don’t drop off the list, but newer ones are continually added. According to Dreyfus and Kelly the polytheism of Homer shone with possibilities, and monotheism led to necessary changes where the shining shifted to new characters and new stories. It is an intriguing concept.

Reading about writing generates a fire within. Some of the classics All Things Shining discusses are those you’d expect: The Divine Comedy and Moby Dick. Others are more personally meaningful, such as the work of Elizabeth Gilbert or David Foster Wallace. We all have the authors that shine for us. Moby Dick, of course, has been on my personal canon since seminary and the chapter on Melville helps to bring the thesis of this brief book together. We all know the white whale is more than an albino cetacean, and the world has benefitted from that fact ever since Melville put pen to paper.

As enjoyable as All Things Shining is to read, I was left with the impression that meaning itself has become greatly fragmented in the modern world. Without the social glue of religion, we’ve been left to chart our own course through parts of the universe yet unexplored. We select our crew by the books we read, and we decide whether Jesus or Captain Ahab is better able to guide us through such dangerous waters. They both, in their way, captain ships. Since this is an exercise in fragmentation, we don’t know upon which shore this craft will ultimately land. While Dreyfus and Kelly are philosophers, many of us have followed other paths and have come to our amateur ways of finding meaning. Some of our ships never come ashore at all. “One does not have to believe that the Greek gods actually exist in order to gain something deep and important from Homer’s sense of the sacred.” Well said! If only we could learn the lesson to be literary rather than literal, religions would allow for many ships upon this vast ocean. And still we hale each other with the words, “Have ye seen the great white?”

Holy Hollow

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HollowCityEveryone wants to belong, to fit in. Growing up, I seldom felt I managed it. When you’re very young you don’t know enough to notice that you are more melancholy than other kids, or that you can’t afford the nice things they can. As you reach your teenage years, however, and you know that you come from the kinds of families that other parents warn their kids about (fairly poor, very religious, and just a bit peculiar). No wonder I find Ransom Riggs’ books so engaging. Yes, they’re written for young adults, but just about anything that Quirk Press publishes is worth the read. As an adult, if I’m honest with myself, I’m still waiting to feel like I fit in. The kids in Hollow City, the peculiars, know that they can never fit in. They have special, impossible talents that make them the targets of monsters called hollowgasts, or hollows, who try to gobble down as many as possible. Monsters, outsiders, and very human relationships—it’s a winning combination.

Quite apart from the spellbinding pace Riggs spins out (he’s a master of building tension), there are some quasi-religious elements in the books as well. I read Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children a couple years back, and Hollow City develops the mythology a bit more. The real enemies are the wights—mean-spirited malcontents who rule the monsters. They learn that they can become demigods if they extract what makes a peculiar peculiar. That’s a religious concept: the essence that materialists tell us isn’t really there at all that makes us what we are. The children are self-sacrificial toward their mistresses, birdlike and godlike at the same time.

Peculiars have two souls, although most of us don’t know what to do with even one. The soul has, of course, come under great suspicion over the last century or so. There seems to be something that makes us what we are, and it isn’t just cells and DNA. Some call it consciousness, others personality. There are those with élan and others with spirit. We can’t call it “soul” because that smacks of superstition and yesteryear. So we read of children with two souls and none to spare. Even Philip Pullman had souls for his children in His Dark Materials. The soul, in both these book series, leaves a person completely dehumanized when it is excised. Of course, materialism will do that for free. Yes, I know it’s fiction—young adult fiction at that—but my money’s on Ransom here. Let’s hear it for those who have a surfeit of souls!