Wendell Berry, The Need to Be Whole:: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice
(Shoemaker & Company, 2022), 513 pages including index and bibliography.
I came across Wendell Berry as a 21-year-old college student. I had read a review of his recent book, The Unsettling of America, and checked it out of the library. Since then, I have purchased and read 16 of his works in three genres (non-fiction, fiction, and poetry). In Barry’s latest work, he returns to themes he first laid out in The Unsettling of America (1977) and The Hidden Wound (1969). Nearly 45 years later, I have entered the latter half of my sixth decade as Berry fast approaches his ninth.
In The Need to be Whole Berry reflects on thoughts over his lifetime that involve how we get along with one another and with the land in which we’re to steward. The result is a book that, at times, wanders. It’s also a book that will anger many: conservatives and liberals. But Berry has never been one to fit into a comfortable niche of what’s popular now. He is beholden to no one. He thinks for himself. The reader can either accept or reject his thoughts.
While Berry’s subtitle suggests this is a book about Patriotism and a history of prejudice, it’s much more than that. Berry calls on his readers to love, each other and the land. While he writes about prejudice and racism, he understands the roots of both grounded in the lack of respect for work and the land. He criticizes the work philosophy of John Calhoun, who saw menial labor as beneath white gentleman in his defense of slavery. Berry criticized Calhoun for alienating the white population of the South from the land, which was just as destructive to yeoman white farmers as it was to slaves.
Interestingly, however, Berry doesn’t allow us to discard someone just because he or she made politically incorrect statements. He even concedes that not everything Calhoun did or stood for was bad, although he didn’t outline what was good about him. He does, however, delve into the good of another discredit Southerner, Robert E. Lee. Berry defends Lee as he understands Lee’s desire to defend his state. One of the places Berry wanders is the recent movement to remove statues of slaveholders. While agreeing that nothing about slavery can be justified, Berry is also against removing such statues. He’s also against just about any movement, as if he wants to be saved from such do-gooders. Nor does he have time for what passes as political correctness.
Berry’s home state of Kentucky never succeeded from the Union, yet it was a slave state and the Civil War era brought hardship and violence to it. Berry wanders around his state’s Civil War history as he attempts to make a point. If I understand Berry, while he thinks slavery is horrible, yet he finds the South’s connect to the land to be more noble than the industrial north. However, at the time of the Civil War, both north and south were mostly agrarian.
This brings to Berry’s understanding of patriotism. He understands the patriot to be linked to the land and in opposition to the “nationalism.” Drawing on the writings of George Bernanos and John Lukacs, nationalism is aggressive and based more on a myth of the people. Patriotism is more defensive and rooted not in the people but in the land. Nationalism seeks to make enemies among fellow citizens.
Another thread which Berry follows in his book is theological. He certainly understands the stewardship concept (the earth is the Lord’s, and we’re just stewards of it). His chapter on sin is an insightful commentary on the Ten Commandments. He is also critical of both conservative and liberal or progressive views on sin. Sin much more encompassing, involving our hubris, than the popular (media) sins argued in the political arena (conservatives: abortion along with regulation and taxes; liberals: racial slurs and sexual harassment). The popular sins effectively divide the innocent from the guilty, where sin divides us from God and neighbor (156).
The chapter on sin is followed by a longer chapter on forgiveness (where he discusses the current debate over statues to slave holders). He understands that freedom requires forgiveness. Otherwise, we’ll continue the battles repeatedly. Toward the end of the book, in his last chapter which is titled “Words,” he calls us to love. He acknowledges that legislating equality won’t change our hearts. Only love can do this. And for Berry, love involves both the land and its people.
There is a lot in this book, and I’ve just scratched the surface. I invite you to read the book. I’d love to discuss it with some people.
Colin Thubron, The Amur River: Between Russia and China (New York: HarpersCollins, 2021), 291 pages with an index and a map.
This is the second book I’ve recently consumed on the Amur River. I’m not sure of my renewed interest in Eastern Russia, but having once visited Siberia on the Trans-Mongolian Train from Beijing to Moscow, I had wanted to go back and take the train on to Vladivostok, and perhaps take a round trip, utilizing the BAM (Baikal-Amur Railroad). With the conditions of the world and Russia’s horrific war, such a trip may not be available during my lifetime. But maybe, if I can be as active as Thubron, who was nearly 80 when he made this trip, the world will settle down and I can make such a trip.
In July, I listened to the unabridged audible version of “Black Dragon River” which is the Chinese name for the river that runs between it and Russia. This is the 9th longest river in the world and the one few people have heard about, probably because much of it is off limits because of the fortified border. This is my third book by Colin Thubron. While traveling across Siberia in 2011, I read his book, In Siberia. I’ve also read Shadow of the Silk Road, which he describes a western trip along the old Silk Road, from China to the Mediterranean. Sadly, I didn’t review that book.
Thubron is a wonderful travel writer. In this book he describes his experiences as he attempted to follow the Amur and its tributaries from its source in Mongolia to the Pacific Ocean. Like Dominic Ziengler, in Black Dragon River, much of Thubron’s travels are mostly on land. But he says close to the river. He begins with an expedition in Mongolia, to find the headwaters of the Onon River, which requires special permission as they are entering a “strictly protected area”. While on this trip, he falls off his horse and breaks an ankle (but only thought it sprained) and cracks some ribs. But he continues to hobble along own despite his injury.
As he and his guides make their way through the northeast of Mongolia in a we learn about the Buryats of Russia, many who moved to Mongolia to escape Stalin, only to find themselves dealing with Khorloogiin Choibalsan, the leader of Mongolia after it became communist. Choibalsan was as cruel as Stalin, he just had fewer subjects to torment. It is estimated that between 1937 and 1938, when the purges in Mongolia were the worst, ½ of the nation’s intelligentsia and 17,000 monks were killed.
Tubron leaves Mongolia and picks up a Russian guide, following the Onon River. After the confluence with the Ingoda River, the Onon becomes the Shilka River. He stops in towns along the way which appear to have seen their better days. He’s asked about his purpose. When he says he’s following the Amur to the sea, he’s informed he’s on the wrong river, that the Amur is far away. It’s as if people don’t realize that the Shikla is the main tributary to the Amur. He also has run in with Russian security, who are suspicious of his travels. But after a few days, it works itself out. Part of the problem may have been he accidentally saw the maneuvers along the Amur with Russian and Chinese troops.
After the confluence of Argun and Shilka Rivers, which form the Amur, the river becomes the boundary between Russia and China. While it is a fortified, there is some trade across the river. But there is also much prejudice, with the Russians looking down on the more prosperous Chinese, who many see is only interested in making money. At the city of Blagoveshchensk, Thubron crosses the river into the much larger Chinese city of Heihe. From here, he begins to travel along the river’s southside, before crossing back into Russia where the Ussuri River meets the Amur. In the border city of Khabarovsk, he learns of archeologists who have discovered ancient Chinese artifacts being punished as the Russians doesn’t want the Chinese to have any claim to their territory. Russia claim on its eastern land is weak. It was only after the building of the trans-Siberian railway that the country was united, and much of its land in the east was squeezed by treaties from a weaken China.
While the border seems to be somewhat stabilized along the Amur, many Russians have xenophobic views about the Chinese. Eastern Siberia is a long way from Moscow. In some ways, both sides of the border are frontiers. But most of the Russians Thobron meets on his travels are Europeans and they feel China is destroying their forest and lands for their own development. By the time Thorbon reaches Khabarovsk, it’s October. He’s been traveling since August. The river is beginning to freeze, so he heads back to the United Kingdom for the winter.
The next June, Thubon returns to Siberia. After Khabarovsk, the river turns north. From here, the Ussuri River, which flows from the south, becomes the border with China. Thubon travels along both sides, stopping in remote places, traveling with a Russian outdoorsman who takes him fishing and discusses survival in the deep cold of winter. He gains a vision of another side of Siberia. Most of this area is remote, except for Komsomolsk-na-Amure, which is where the BAM (Baikal-Amur Railway) crosses the river. This was a site of Soviet weapon factories which has produced aircraft. Along the river, nuclear submarines were built. But Thubon is not able to secure a permit to visit these sites and continues to make his way by car and boat to the river’s mouth into the Pacific. made this trip, most of the capacity is limited.
I enjoyed reading this book. It reads like a travelogue, with the author providing just enough detail to give you a feel for the land and its history. While I also enjoyed Black Dragon River, it felt less like a travelogue as Ziengler goes much deeper into the history, not only of the Amur, but of the Mongolian and Chinese influence in the larger world. Both books are worth reading. My one complaint is that Thorbon tends to use obscure words, especially adjectives. But he writes some beautiful sentences. An example: “Perhaps it is the intimacy of the town, cradled in its hills and wrapped by the river, that sheds a gentle euphoria.”
Ger Camp in Mongolia Thubron had a number of colorful descriptions of these such as “mushroom caps”
Daniel G. Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2023), 382 pages including a glossary, biographic essay, and index. The text includes a handful of charts and prints.
A broad definition: Dispensationalism is a belief that God works differently at different periods of time (dispensations) to reach humanity in different ages (dispensations). The doctrine rose from the teachings of John Nelson Darby in the 1830s, an Irish pastor who founded the Plymouth Brethren sect. However, the term Dispensationalism wasn’t coined until the 1930s. Dispensationalists believe we are nearing the final age and that before the end comes, the church will be raptured out of the world. When this happens, the world will enter a period of tribulation. The theology became more popular through the writings of Hal Lindsay and the “Left Behind” series.
My experience with dispensationalism
I read Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth in high school. While Lindsay didn’t provide a date for the world’s demise, he certainly hinted it would be in the 1980s (I graduated from high school in 1975). I felt we were living in the last days. But we’re still here! Things weren’t moving toward the end, just yet. I slowly understood that the future is not ours to know. Jesus makes this clear when he said no one knows the date or the hour of his return.
The concept of the rapture, which is behind such theology, seems far-fetched. The idea that God is going to yank the church out of the world before things go to hell in a handbasket (pretribulation premillennialism), saving the church from the horrors to come. This idea, which is rather recent in the history of the church, became even more problematic as I became more aware of suffering of Christians in the world. Such beliefs seemed just too comfortable for Christians in the Western World. But what does it say to Christians in the Sudan or Pakistan or North Korea or any of the other countries with persecution. The purpose of the rapture, according to most dispensationalists, is for God to give Israel one more chance at salvation.
Dispensational theology wasn’t a class I took in seminary. I have only one memory of a professor addressing it, Doug Hare, a New Testament scholar. Essentially, he said that if we don’t do proper exegesis on the text, and understand it from the culture it arose, it would be easy to create such fantasy interpretations of scripture.
In my own journey, dispensationalism was something that I felt I needed to study after I graduated from seminary. Part of this came from study of American religious history and reading George Marsden’s books on the history of fundamentalism and evangelism. Then I read Charles Ryrie’s Dispensationalism Today and John H. Gerstner’s Wrongly Dividing the Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism.
By the time of the publications of the Left Behind series, I was convinced of the danger of such teachings and spoke about it. This caused me to lose a potential new member when I was in Utah. A man took offense at what I said about dispensationalism. I later learned he was a friend of Tim Lahaye, one of the authors of the Left Behind series. During this time, I started to write my own “dispensational parody novel.” My title, “Left Behind at Denny’s” seemed to capture the worse place I could think of being left at. . I only wrote a few pages before I decided it wasn’t worth my effort.
While I don’t accept dispensationalism and have often pointed to the Southern Presbyterian Church call of the movement as a heresy, I must give them credit for reminding us that Christ will return. Eschatology is important.
My review of Hummel’s book
While I had a broad concept as to what dispensationalism was about, Hummel’s work opened my eyes. It’s not a mono-cultural movement, but one with many diverse threads. While the movement’s beginning is related to John Nelson Darby, the Irish theologian in the 1830s, there are aspects (especially in America) that goes back further to a premillennialist view (Christ will return before the millennial) and to the Millerites (followers of William Miller, a Baptist pastor in the United States, who predicted Christ’s return in the 1840s). Blending into these threads are how the theology became adopted by different groups from mainline denominations, evangelicals, and Pentecostals. Hummel does an amazing job describing these various understandings of dispensationalism.
In the 19th Century, Darby made many trips to the United States. He found a receptive ear in the Great Lake region and with the evangelist Dwight Moody. This led to the first institution dedicated to the teaching, Moody Bible Institute. From the beginning, American dispensationalism differed from its British counterpart. Darby’s Brethren were separatists from the main Protestant bodies. In America, dispensationalists were at home in many denominations including Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists, and to a lesser extent in Lutheran and Methodist traditions.
Dispensationalism had a regional component. At first, it was strongest in the northern and border states. Then, a separate group developed on the West Coast, with the organization of Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles). The movement was slow to take hold in the South, especially in the early years, but eventually did with the establishment of Dallas Theological Seminary, which became the hub of academic dispensationalism. Interestingly, dispensationalism was primarily a “white” Protestant phenomenon and failed to take deep roots within the African American churches.
The movement gained considerable support after the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible by Cyrus Scofield, a Congregational pastor from Texas. Scofield linked together passages in the Bible that supported dispensational teachings. His Bible was published by Oxford University Press. The popularity of his Bible allowed dispensationalism to influence those outside of their own circle.
While dispensationalist beliefs grew in the early decades of the 20th Century, there were critics. This was especially true among more conservative and even fundamentalist Protestants, especially those within the Reformed tradition. While these critics challenged dispensational hermeneutics, they were often on the same side with many of the social battles such as fighting against the teachings of Darwin or Communism.
Among all the many divisions within dispensationalism, Hummel divides dispensationalism into two broad eras. The dispensationalism of the first half of the 20th Century he labels Scholastic. Then, in the 60s and early 70s, with the publication of books like Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, a more popular version of the movement rose. This popular version later gave rise to the Left Behind novels, which earned their authors a fortune and helped spread dispensational views. However, as dispensationalism became unmoored to its scholastic roots, it also began to decline as a movement, especially under the attack of groups such as the “new Calvinists.” Even Dallas Theological Seminary began to scale back its requirements for professors and students to affirm dispensationalism.
Dispensationalism had to change over time (when Christ had not yet returned to rapture the church). While most tended to hold to the teaching that the tribulation would be after the rapture, some suggested we are going through a “humanistic tribulation” that will precede the rapture. This allows them to explain the liberal shift in culture and why the church has not yet been raptured.
While Hummel does an excellent job tracing all these various threads of dispensationalism in America, he only briefly covers the role the theology had in “shaping a nation.”
Dispensationalists were involved in many of the social movements of the past half century, but often with others who were conservative in their theology. However, their biggest impact was toward our country’s support of Israel. Dispensationalists sees the state of Israel as the defining moment in history pointing to the end. Many believed there are two ways of salvation, through the free grace offered by Jesus through the church and through the Jewish faith who are still God’s people. On the positive side, such thought makes dispensationalism a ready critic of antisemitism. However, it also allows one to justify total support of Israel without questioning the nation’s policies. When you believe you are on God’s side, who can argue with you about the morality of your actions?
Another area where dispensationalism had an impact was the fear of the accumulation of power and one world government. To a dispensationalist, this was evidence of the approaching end, but it also allowed for many conspiracy theories to rise and find a home in churches teaching such doctrines.
The role of end-time beliefs in our government is dangerous. Not only is it no way to run a foreign policy (as with Israel), but it can also create other policy disasters. If you are sure the world is ending, why be concerned about the environment. After all, why not max out your credit cards? I hope Hummel’s research will continue to explore such issues.
Daniel Hummel grew up within the dispensational tradition. He currently works at Upper House, a Christian center located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His first book (which I haven’t read and may go deeper into the role the movement had on our foreign policy) is Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israel Relations). I would recommend The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism to those deeply interested in the history of American religion or who would like to understand dispensationalism more.
Patrick Wyman, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World
(Audible, 2021), read by the author, 11 hours and 33 minutes.
Wyman makes the case that the four decades from 1490 to 1530 set Europe (and the Americas) on the course to become the world’s center. Prior to these decades, no one would have bet on Europe. The Ottomans to the east, China, areas in India, and even some unknown kingdoms such as the Incas and Aztecs in the yet to be discovered Americas, all seemed to have superior cultures.
But that began to change in the 1490s. The not-yet united Spain repelled the last of the Muslim invaders who had occupied parts of the peninsula for centuries. Not only did Columbus sail to the Americas, but other explorers also sailed down the coast of Africa and on to India. This was soon followed by the Reformation, the defeat of the Ottoman armies at the gates of Vienna in Austria, and the establishment of larger European nation states. Several things gave rise to European power including credit, printing, and the advancement in the art of war. This was also a violent era and Wyman ends his story with the Holy Roman Empire under Charles V sacking Rome (which was one way to settle the debt owed to the soldiers).
I have read many books focusing on this period of history, but I can’t recall any of the books beginning with a detailed discussion of currency in use at the time. Most of my books focused foremost on the Reformation and perhaps the printing press. Wyman, however, spends much more time discussing finance and trade before he ever gets to Martin Luther. Credit becomes the means to expand the power of the state as well as to explore and to share ideas. Credit involves a trust that one will be repaid and can make a profit, which often led to the abuses of the era. When it came to being repaid, no one was overly concerned as to how the profit was made, whether from slave trade or plunder.
While Wyman concentrates on a few key leaders of the era (Christopher Columbus, Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottomans, Charles V of Spain, and Martin Luther), he often tells his story through more common people such as a trader in England and a printer in Venice. Each chapter begins with what might be called “Creative Non-fiction” as he places the reader in the setting described, allowing us to experience first-hand what life was like in this era.
Having listened to this book, I am glad that the author was also the reader. As an experience podcaster, he made an excellent reader. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in this era of history and how the modern Western world came about.
narrated by Adam Verner (2022), 8 hours and 36 minutes.
McGrath, a writer for the New Yorker, met Dick Conant through his neighbor. Conant was paddling the Hudson River and had tied up his canoe along his neighbor’s seawall. Learning that the odd canoeist, who paddled an cheap over-stuffed boat, was heading to Florida perked McGrath’s interest. He wrote a short piece on him for the New Yorker. He thought that was it until a few months later when he received a phone call from a wildlife officer in North Carolina.
Conant’s canoe had been found overturned in the Albemarle Sound. They never recovered his body. The officer discovered McGrath’s phone number in the mass of stuff in the boat and called for clues as to who had lost the boat. McGrath sets off scouring the country looking for clues as to Conant’s identity and what happened to him.
Conant didn’t look like a canoer. He wore over-all’s. Conant brought cheap canoes (often Colemans) which he overloaded. After an adventure, would sell the boat. He didn’t carry river maps or guides, but a road atlas. He had an odd way of preserving meat (hot dogs in pickle juice).
Those he met along the way, he would tell of the woman he loved and was to whom he was faithful, a woman he met (only once and briefly, it appears) in Montana. Conant would live in Bozeman, Montana between adventures. Conant covered quite a bit of territory, paddling the Yellowstone into the Missouri and then down the Mississippi. Another time he started out new his childhood home in New York State, paddling the Allegheny into the Ohio and down the Mississippi. Essentially, Conant eked out a homeless existence on American rivers.
McGrath’s research is amazing. He reached out to the people Conant touched over the years to paint a better portrait of this lone canoer.
narrated by Norman Dietz (1957, audible 2017), 10 hours and 41 minutes.
This collection of stories I first read as a student at Roland Grice Junior High in Wilmington, NC. Most boys my age read this book at that time. And why not, as the author grew up in our hometown. Ruark would go on to become a well-known author writing about outdoor adventures in exotic places like Africa. But this collection of stories focuses on him and his grandparents, who lived across the river in Southport, NC in the years between the Great War and the Depression. Ruark spent a lot of time with his grandparents. From his grandfather, he learned not only outdoor skills, such as hunting and fishing, but about getting along with others and even wildlife conservation (never kill off an entire covey of quail, leave some birds for the future).
There are a few things in the book that would be considered taboo today. Poaching turtle eggs is now a crime, but in the 1920s, no one knew better (and because there was little development on the coast, there were more turtles). Another is the Old Man’s patriarchal manner of relating to African Americans. But at least the old man insisted they be treated as humans and despised those with racist attitudes. Besides, this allowed him access to hunt quail on some of African American farms. However, most of these stories stand the test of time. This was my first time listening to the book, but I had already read it three time and may listen to it again, just for the delightful stories. The narrator does a wonderful job of bringing the book to life.
Dominic Ziengler, Black Dragon River: A Journey Down the Amur River at the Borderlands of Empires
narrated by Steve West (2015), 14 hours and 6 minutes.
The Amur, the world’s ninth longest river, is also the most unknown rivers among the world’s great rivers. The river’s headwaters rise in Mongolia, not far from the birthplace of Genghis Khan, and flows to the Pacific, mostly along the border of Russia and China. So much is unknown about the river that for much of history, both Russia and China claimed the river’s origin. A joint Soviet and Chinese scientific expedition set out to settle the dispute. They discovered the river’s headwaters were in Mongolia.
The author sets out to travel, as much as possible, the entire river. However, it’s not as easy as one might think. Heading out on foot, by train, boat, and car, he makes his way down the river, mostly sticking to the north (Russian) side. Because the river is an armed border, the opportunity to float it is limited.
As he travels, we learn of the history of the region, from the Khans to Russian eastern migration. As with the mountain men in the American West, Russia eastward expansion was first based on fur trade. Later would come mineral exploration and prisons. Also, like the American West, it includes bloody campaigns to conquer. We learn about the this as well as the conflicts between Russia and China along the river, which has raged for hundreds of years. Such conflicts are ongoing. A month after I listened to this book, China published new official map claims total ownership of an island in the Amur over the two nations fought over as recently as the 60s.
Ziengler also informs the readers about the natural history of the river. It’s a great breeding grown for swans and other birds. The river also teams with fish. Sadly, the Siberian tigers are disappearing due to the lost of forests. The environmental issues along the river’s watershed are also covered.
While the travelogue part of this book is lacking (because of the author’s limited access to much of the river), the book contains great stories and is packed in the history of Europe’s eastward expansion.
narrated by Xe Sands (2020), 9 hours and 37 minutes.
Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT, looks for exoplanets in distant galaxies. These are planets in the “goldilocks’ zone,” where it is not too hot and not too cold. Such places hold the possibility of life. Because they are so far away to be observed, astrophysicists have devised new techniques such as registering a small drop of light as the planet crosses in front of its sun. Her work is amazing, and she describes it in a manner that can make it more understandable.
But this is not a science book, it’s a memoir. We also are taken into the author’s life, from her first interest in the sky as a child growing up in Canada, to the academic politics today (such as having one’s findings stolen by another scientist). We also learn about her personal life. In addition to being interested in the sky, we are taken along with her on canoe trips to remote parts of Canada with a man who would become her husband and the father of her children. Then, we are told about his illness and death from cancer. This part of the book is tragic, which came as her career as a scientist was ascending. Later, she meets a new man, at a talk given for amateur astrometry club, and they marry eventually marry. She also comes to understand her own life with Asperger’s.
I enjoy this book, especially her insights into her scientific work. However, at times I felt the book was a too personal. I certainly enjoyed some of what she wrote about her personal life (especially, because I’m me, long canoe trips in northern Canada). But wondered if she had ended her personal struggles with her first husband’s death, leaving the reader wondering what’s next, might have made a stronger book. Instead, it seemed this was a “lived happily ever after” type of ending.
Narrated by Matthew Waterson. (2019). 12 hours and 3 minutes.
After reading about deep space, I jumped into this book about the underworld. It’s interesting to think how we know more about space (as in the book above) than we do about what’s underground. In this book, Macfarlane sets out to explore the unknown, mostly by traveling through caves and mines and the underground network of tunnels in cities such as Paris.
Macfarlane also explores what’s just underneath our feet. Dig down and you’ll find a great world of bugs and worms along with roots and various types of soil. As he makes such pilgrimages, Macfarlane muses about our uses of the earth (burying the dead to that which is dangerous, like nuclear waste). He frequently draws on literature and mythology about the underworld. In Junior High, when I was into a Jules Verne kick, I read Journey to the Center of the Earth. However, I didn’t realize that in the 19th Century, there was a sub-genre of exploration into the earth.
I found this book fascinating and look forward to reading and listening to more of Macfarlane’s work. Two years ago, I read Macfarlane’s The Old Ways. He’s a British author and explorer that draws on a vast knowledge as he shares his explorations. As in all the books above, rivers also appear in this book, they’re just underground .
The 1970s was a pivotal decade for me. I became a teenager just two and a half weeks into the decade. By the time it ended, I had graduated from high school and college, began a short-lived marriage, and travelled halfway around the world. These three books describe a lot of what happened in the ‘70s. The first one, about baseball, I recently listened to while driving home from Pittsburgh. I wouldn’t become a fan of Pittsburgh until well into the 1980s, when I moved there to attend school. The other two books I read and wrote the reviews in 2008 and 2014 and are republishing them here.
Dan Epstein, Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ‘70s
(2010, 2019 Blackstone Audible, read by the author), 12 hours and 54 minutes.
There were lots of crazy things going on in the 70s and this included baseball. Throughout the 60s, baseball remained conservative. As hair grew longer, ball players stayed clean cut with no facial hair. Drugs were shunned. Politics avoided. Oddly, which I didn’t know, the Detroit Tigers played a game while riots were burning much of the city just blocks from the ballpark. In the 70s, baseball caught up with society. I began listening to this book in my drive back from Pittsburgh the other week. It was a good book to listen to, as I had just watched the Pirates drop two games. In the 70s, the Pirates were often in contention, and they bookended the decade with World Series wins (1971 and 1979).
This book is probably not for everyone. The chapters deal with each season during the 70s, with chapters intersperse that deal with multi-year issues such as players hair, artificial grass, tight-fitting polyester uniforms, mascots, and promos that included cheap beer, wet t-shirts contests, and anti-disco events. It was a decade that saw a new dynasty rise and fall in Oakland. They will forever be remembered as the “mustache gang.” as they broke new barriers with facial hair. And then there were the Cincinnati Reds, who also set records with Pete Rose and Johnny Bench.
Baseball and Culture in the 70s
The 70s was a decade that saw many of the greats from the 50s and 60s retire as well as many long-term records broken such as Henry Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s homerun totals. While it was a decade that seemed to overcome many racial issues of the sport with the Pirates at one point having all nine players being of color. But there were still racial issues, especially as older ballplayers were looked over for coaching positions. It was the decade that saw George Steinberger enter the game as he purchased the New York Yankees. It also saw new teams emerge, including the first teams outside the United States as franchises began in Toronto and Montreal. And it was the decade in which players began to have more control over their livelihood and able to negotiate for better salaries and working conditions.
For one with roots in the 70s, there are a lot of good stories that I had vague memories of, and others that I didn’t know, but enjoyed listening to them being told. While I remember Roberto Clemente, it was nice to be reminded of his incredible 1971 World Series (he would die in a plane crash three months later while on a rescue mission for those suffering from an earthquake in Nicaragua). By the late 70s, I was no longer keeping up with baseball (I’d start again during the 80s), but it was nice to learn about Willie Stargell’s bringing together the Pirates for their last World Series in 1979, with “We Are Family” playing in the background.
Statistics
Of course, because this is book about baseball, you have statistics. Every chapter, and most paragraphs, contain numbers. My ears began to gloss over them (or would have glossed over them if I had read the book instead of listening to it). Hits, home runs, stolen bases, earned run averages, wins and loss, the numbers just kept coming and became a bit of a distraction. After a certain point, the numbers began to run together. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and the walk down memory lane. While I always admired Clemente, I came to also appreciate Willie Stargell for more than the stars placed in the upper deck of the old Three Rivers Stadium, where he’d launched homeruns.
My recommendation
Throughout the years of the 70s, there were many funny stories that today almost seem unbelievable. Such as 10 cent beer (what would go wrong with that?). Or a wet t-shirt contest in Atlanta. And then there was Doc Ellis pitching for the Pirates. In 1971, he threw what will probably be the only no-hitter ever pitched while high on LDS. And finally, at the end of the decade, a promo offered a discount for turning in a disco record at the turnstile. Late in the game, the vinyls were blown up which destroyed part of the field and led to an inside the park riot. Baseball, which had become respectful in the middle of the century, was a different game in the ‘70s.
A quote about Stargell
QUOTE ON THE 1979 WORLD SERIES: Stargell insisted on giving full credit to his teammates, but his teammates gave it all back to him. “He taught us how to take what comes and then come back,” Dave Parker said. “He taught us how to strike out and walk away calmly, lay the bad down gently, then get up the next time and hit a home run. From him we learned not to get too high on the good days or too low on the bad days, because there are plenty of both in this game…”
Edward D. Berkowitz, Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 283 pages.
For Berkowitz, the 70s as an era ran from 1973 to Reagan’s inauguration in 1981. He cites ’73 as a beginning because so many things that helped define the era occurred that year: the end of American involvement in Vietnam, an Oil Embargo, and the crisis of a president that included the resignation of the Vice President (Nixon would resign a year later).
Berkowitz does a great job of describing the 70s. He reminded me of all the twist and turns we had in those turbulent years. We had a president who, by visiting China, changed the history of the world. I don’t think I realized how close we were to National Health Insurance in the early 70s. Sadly, this idea that died with Watergate and the economic downturn in ’74. And then we had a whole series of scandals. While it may have started Nixon and Agnew, they weren’t nearly as colorful as Wilbur Mills and his strippers.
From optimism to pessimism
The sixties were an optimistic decade; the seventies were pessimistic. In the 70s, according to Bruce Schulman, America was “made over.” Our “economic outlook, political ideology, cultural assumption and fundamental arrangements changed.” It was an era of declining productivity and extreme inflation. It was the era when much of the United States industrial strength started to slip and countries like Japan made great strides in their own productivity.
politics in the 70s
Politically, Berkowitz divides the seventies into political eras: the fall of Nixon, the Ford years, and the Carter years. Reading the book, I felt sorry for Carter. he inherited many problems. Berkowitz also points out Carter’s attempts at transparency made it harder for him to get things through Congress. Furthermore, Congress had new powers inherited from a weakened executive branch following Watergate. Carter was also the first post-World War II president not to have a period of economic growth. Then, just when it seemed his luck couldn’t get any worst, it did. His administration ended with Three Mile Island and the Iranian hostage crisis. Berkowitz notes that the problems Carter inherited and faced may have been beyond any politician ability to handle, but that Carter’s moralizing issues didn’t help and probably only made things worst.
According to Berkowitz (and others like Thomas Wolfe, whom he likes to quote), the 70s was the decade that everyone else began to demand rights. Women’s rights were at the forefront. 1970 saw the release of a new brand of cigarettes that focused on women. Virginia Slims came packaged with the logo, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Much of the decade was also spent arguing over the ERA amendment. I hadn’t realized that the ERA passed Congress with the support not only of the left, but with right-winged senators like Strom Thurmond and Barry Goldwater. Berkowitz goes into detail on reasons why it failed. One reason was the economic downturn, which made people afraid of change. The other two major reasons were the political savvy of those against it, and the ERA debate framed around the abortion issue that moved to the forefront at the end of the decade.
Demanding of “rights”
In addition to women’s right, the 70s saw the rise of the gay movement, disability rights and rights of immigrants. In many ways, all the new groups demanding their rights paralleled a shift from the Civil Rights era, which spoke of doing what was good for all America, to a focus on more individual concerns. The 70s is seen as the “ME” decade, which helps explain the rise of Reagan in the 80s.
Growing up in the South in the 70s, I was shocked that Berkowitz discussed the integration of Boston’s public schools and spent little time talking about the integration of the schools in the elsewhere. Interestingly, the ruling which started busing wasn’t in Boston but in North Carolina (Swan vs Charlotte Mecklenburg, 1971). Three years later, this ruling was applied in Boston. As a Southerner who’s lived much of his adult life up north, I am still shocked at how segregated schools remain in th north. It seems strange that in upscale neighborhoods around northern cities, one can still find school districts that are mostly white.
Cultural changes
Berkowitz does a better job on describing the political changes in the s70s than the culture changes. Culturally, he explores only movies and TV in depth. Although he acknowledges significant authors like John Updike, he does not explore the role they played in defining an era. In movies, he focuses mostly on “blockbusters,” a new way of marketing movies in an era that was seeing declines at the theater. As for TV, the 70s were the golden years as they didn’t have competition from cable and other forms of media. He discusses not only sitcoms, but also news programs and sports.
Outside of a few brief mentions, Berkowitz does not discuss the role of music. Maybe it was because I spent most of the decade as a teenager, that I think that music defined the era. It was the era when “album stations” bucked the top-40 trend and migrated to FM. There, the airways were filled with the likes Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan and southern rock. The last years of the decade was also, sad to say, the era of disco.
My recommendation
I enjoyed reading this book and recommend it; I just wished Berkowitz had gone further. He does a wonderful job discussing American politics. One final criticism, he overlooks lots of major world changes that were occurring, especially in Africa. Maybe the book should have been called a political history of the 70s in America
Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics
(Free Press, 2001), 352 pages.
I have a confession to make. I may need to do some serious penance. Reading this book, I realize in the 70s, I might have been a chauvinistic, misogynistic, homophobic racist. At the time, I just thought I hated disco and liked rock-n-roll. Mr. Shulman points to the errors in my thinking, suggesting those of us who shunned disco were guilty of a host of society’s evil (73-75). Or maybe I should revert to my redneck anti-elite ways and ask, “What do you expect from a professor in tweed from the Northeast?” Sadly, this makes me sound like Richard Nixon who hated the Northeast elite (24). Bruce Shulman, a disco loving Yankee, teaches at Boston University.
Despite what I said in my opening comment, I mostly enjoyed this book. I disagree with Shulman’s comments on disco and on how he looked disdainfully on the South. But if you can overlook his biases, he provides a good cultural and political history to the decade.
The 70s is often seen as a lost decade, squeezed between the optimistic 60s and the opportunistic 80s. Interestingly, as Shulman recalls, the 60s began with the Kennedy Camelot and ended with the widowed queen of Camelot (Jackie) marrying a rich Greek tycoon, twice her age (4). Shulman strives to interpret several wide cultural shifts occurring between 1969 and 1984. In this work, he explores music, books, television, movies, economics, and politics.
changes in the 70s
Several things happened during this decade. America lost a broad cultural consensus as the era of special interest groups gained prominence. Many of these groups were based on ethnic heritage. There a continual interest in African American culture held over from the 60s (the mini-series “Roots” premiered in the decade). Interest also included Hispanics, Italians, and Irish. The 70s also saw the rise of women’s interests with the ERA. As America began to gray, the elderly became a political force. Tip O’Neil, the Speaker of the House, was first referred to Social Security as the third rail in American politics. You touch it and die. Following up on the Stonewall Riots in the late ’60s, gay rights also gained ground.
In addition, there were shifts in regions. Shulman refers to the decade as the “Southernization of America” (256). Three were also religious shifts. Although religion became more important, it also became more personal and less able to lift a common vision for society. There were also changes in the American economy. The era gave rise to the “rustbelt” as factories in the northern part of the country closed. The inflation of the late 70s caused Americans to use more credit (why put off buying when it will cost more tomorrow).
Economic changes and the rise of the conservative movement
Also, due to regulation changes, Americans began to look at savings differently. Investing become more important than savings. Inflation ate up savings. And finally, the era saw the end of the old liberalism in American politics. No longer was the government seen as a force for the good with an obligation to help those unable to help themselves. Now, voices bemoaned any government involvement. Shulman discusses the tie between government involvement and civil rights in the 60s and how it took the decade for a new conservative collation to rise out of the old. Racial prejudices slid into the background as new conservatives found other issues to excite their causes.
my recommandation
Although I took offense at Shulman’s comments on those who disliked disco (as evident by my sarcasm), there is a lot to ponder on the role changes in religion, region, and race made to America during the decade. However, the nature of this book requires a certain amount of subjectivism, and one could draw different conclusions. That said, this is a good book for a trip down memory lane.
That’s me in 1975, paddling the Black River (photo by Donald McKenzie)
narrated by Scott Sowers, (1990, audible release 2014), 14 hours and 18 minutes.
It’s 1989. Montana is coming up on its Centennial celebration and newly widower Jick McCaskill drives a newspaper photographer and writer around the state in search of stories in his Winnebago. The photographer is his daughter, Mariah. The reporter is her ex-husband, Riley. Jick doesn’t care for Riley ever since the couple’s split. He’d hoped the two of them would take over his sheep ranch.
The three set off on their journey with Jick as the narrator. They mostly seek out small towns where they strive to learn more about their home state. Jick realizes change is coming, but he doesn’t like it. Pressured to sell out his sheep ranch to a large cattle operation (who wants to maximize the livestock on it), while coming to terms with his wife’s death, and attempting to keep his daughter from falling in love again with Riley, Jick begins the story as a bitter soul. Yet, even in his bitterness, there’s lots of humor mixed into his storytelling. But he softens and as the story continues, he (and we) learns more of his history. This is especially true after Riley’s mother joins them for part of the trip. The story ends on the day of the Centennial celebration in November with some surprises.
In this novel, the reader gets to meet many interesting characters along with gaining insight into the state’s history. Jick’s background is Scottish and Swedish, and I couldn’t help but think of two other Swedish sheepherders I knew in Utah, Roy and Eddie. As I lived in Utah during that state’s Centennial, I was curious as how he used that celebration to tell this story. While much of the story is about loss, there is also hope in it for the future. I recommend this book and now look forward to listening to the first two books in this trilogy (English Creek and Dancing at the Rascal Fair).
This is my fourth book by Doig. Twenty-some years ago, when I lived in Utah, I read two of his non-fiction works (House of Sky and Heart Earth). Earlier this year, I listened to and reviewed, A Bartender’s Tale.
Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water
revised edition (1986, New York: Viking/Penguin, 1993), 582 pages including notes and index. Also, two collections of photographs. Audible: 27 hours and 58 minutes.
I read parts of the original book back in the early 1990s when I was living in Utah. There, the problems of water were real. This time, I mostly listened to the book and was caught up in the story Reisner tells.
The book begins with a brief historic account of Western exploration and migration in the 19th century, especially focusing on the survey of the Colorado River by John Wesley Powell. Reisner also reminds his readers that there were other civilizations there before the coming on European-Americans. For some unknown reason, these civilizations collapsed before European migration, probably because of a change in weather patterns. He also frequently reminds the reader that all desert civilizations in human history have collapsed with one exception, Egypt. Of course, the Aswan Dam may change this. While the country had 3000 years of life without a dam, Aswan ended the annual flood that brought new soil and enough water to grow crops. In addition, irrigating without fresh soil causes salts to build up in the soil. Sooner or later, the soil wears out.
Much of the first part of the book focuses on the growth of Los Angeles and their taking water from the Owens Valley. From there, Reisner speaks of many other water projects in the West. From the Mormons who irrigated on a small scale and brought agriculture to the great basin to the big projects during the Depression that provided (temporarily) a surplus of water and electrical power for the West. The power these dams produced help fuel a growth in industry that was especially helpful during World War 2.
In addition to building the dams and providing water and electricity, he acknowledges the problems. Backing up water floods places where people live. They must be moved. The larger dams (like Grand Coulee), block migrating salmon and have destroyed commercial fishing operations. I didn’t realize how valuable canned salmon was, but it was the cheapest meat available during the Depression. The safety of dams is another issue. Reisner goes into detail about the breach of the Teton Dam in Idaho. On rivers like the Colorado which carries a lot of silt, dams trap it, reducing the availability of electrical power and the amount of water available. Finally, using irrigated water also has a long-term detrimental impact on the land as salts build up in the soil.
Reisner captures the battle that existed between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corp of Engineers. Both were vying to build more dams in the West, often for different purposes. Bureau of Reclamation looked to irrigation while the Corp of Engineers were more interested in flood control and navigation. Both had questionable ways of making a project look economic feasible as they tried to justify their projects, such as using the electricity produced to offset the cost of irrigation water. As Reisner shows, the economics of most dam projects didn’t make sense. After all, some of the crops grown with subsidized water were the same crops the Department of Agriculture were paying farmers not to grow in the East and Midwest.
The politics behind water projects are terrible (as is the economics). With everyone wanting a piece of the pie, strange alliances form and no one questions the value or the wisdom behind the projects. I came away thinking that Eisenhower might have been the last true fiscally conservative President, as he questioned many of the projects. Carter was another who tried. stop a lot of projects that didn’t make economic sense. Reisner suggests that because of the way he attempted to stop them, it doomed his Presidency long before the Iranian hostage crisis. In the end, Carter’s hit list was narrowed, and many moved forward under Reagan.
This is a book that needs to be read by more voters and concern citizens. More people need to understand the short-sightedness of many of these boondoggle projects. Unfortunately, it’s a long book that will overwhelm many people.
I finally have a construction crew working on an addition to my house. When done, there will be an additional 384 square feet walkout basement that will serve as my shop and cool storage of produce. On the main level will be another 384 square feet of living space (with a half bath for guest) that will open out to a 200 square feet deck. The top level will add another room of roughly 140 square feet. In addition, we plan to put a porch on the front of the house. So, things are a little hectic, with a lot of waiting for workers and inspections.
In addition, yesterday I had a laser procedure done on my left eye where I have a leaking blood vessel. It didn’t hurt. However, it felt like I was forced to watch a dozen nuclear explosions, the bright light exploding in my eye. The good news is that they only dilated my left eye, so I still had one good eye with which to drive home.
In this blog, I’m still trying to catch up with recent books I’ve read or listened to. I listened to the Horwitz book in March when I traveled to the beach. This month I listened to the Foote book and read the Morris biography. All three books have ties to the Deep South.
Larry L. King, In Search of Willie Morris: The Mercurial Life of a Legendary Writer and Editor
(New York: Public Affairs, 2006), 353 pages with index and bibliography with 8 plates of b&w photos.
I was introduced to Willie Morris in the late 90s when I read North Toward Home. As a southerner who was then living in Utah, the idea of the South no longer being my home resonated with me. (And like Morris, I eventually returned). I later watch the wonderful movie version of his book, My Dog Skip. Several years later I stumbled upon Taps, a book published after Morris’ death. Taps, which draws on his memories as a high school student playing his trumpet for military funerals during the Korean War, also says a lot about how we treat the dead as well as the racial tensions in the American South during the Jim Crow era. I recently read a reference to King’s biography of Morris and decided to check it out.
Larry L. King (the writer, not the TV host, author of the comic play, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) was a good friend of Willie Morris. However, like most friendships, theirs had rocky roads including several years of estrangement after King had an affair with a woman with whom Morris had been seeing. In some ways, their closeness makes this a more difficult biography as you can see King’s obvious bias toward a man he admired. However, this also allows King to have a more intimate portrait of Morris. King doesn’t just rely on his own memory, but checked out his stories with many others who were close to Morris, including his son, ex-wife, widow, and friends. In places he offers competing insights, his as well as those from others.
This book doesn’t provide much detail into Morris’ younger life in Mississippi, which I found disappointing as Morris mined his childhood for many of his stories. He focuses more on Morris as a student at the University of Texas. He also writes more about his time ss a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford, something that Morris only briefly mentions in his books.
Willie Morris was the youngest editor ever in the long history of Harper’s Magazine, taking over the helm at 32 years of age. From this point, King begins a much more detailed examination of Morris’ life. He established a staff of talented writers which included King. Those writing for the magazine that I read include William Styron, Norman Mailer, and David Halberstam. I’ve reviewed three of Halberstam’s books in the last few years: The Fifties, October 1964, Summer of ’49.
After a battle with the magazine owner, Morris was forced out as editor. All the big-name writers he assembled at the magazine refused to write again for at Harpers. Others, including his friend Truman Capote, joined the boycott. According to King, at publishing of this book 35 years later, they’d all kept their promise. Afterwards, Morris received all kind of offers, but ignored them. He also received a letter of condolence from a young attorney in Arkansas, who Morris had met when the future politician left for Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. Morris would meet him again, on his return. This was Bill Clinton. As President, he would write a piece read at Morris’ funeral.
After Harpers, King focuses on Morris’ difficulty focusing, amplified by the divorce from his first wife, Celia. It was also a time when people were realizing that Morris was drinking too much. For this next period, Morris mostly lived on Long Island.
I was amazed by how Morris not only gave a voice to those young writers at Harpers, but to other talented writers. Later, after he returned to the South and was a visiting writer at the University of Mississippi, he encouraged and helped a law school student by the name of John Grisham publish his first book. He also helped Larry Brown (I’ve read a few of his books) and Winston Groom (who wrote Forest Gump). Morris became a close friend of Jim Jones, who had completed two of a trilogy on World War II. The first two books were Here to Eternity, and Thin Red Line. When Jones’ died, Morris took over and completed his third volume, Whistle. Both of Morris’ wives were authors and involved in the publishing business.
Practical jokes stand out in the books I’ve read by Morris. King shares many more such jokes, including taking William Styron on a night stroll through the Yazoo cemetery. There, upon a grave, Styron found a copy of his novel, Lie Down in Darkness. Inside the cover was a note from the one buried in the grave, that read, “To William Styron. Come lie down in darkness with us. It is not as bad as it has been made out.” At an Ole Miss home football game in Hemingway Stadium, Morris delighted telling two French journalists how the school wanted to honor Faulkner, but he refused. So, the name went to Hemingway, implying it was named for the author. The truth was that the stadium had been named for a former dean. King found himself at the blunt of some of these jokes, including many prank phone calls. It became so frequent that when Nelson Rockefeller called King to offer him a speechwriting job, he assumed it was Morris and said some inappropriate things.
When Morris was asked about the truthfulness of his stories in his book, Good Old Boy, he said they were all true. Then he quoted Mark Twain, “sometimes you have to lie to tell the truth.”
But with the jokes come sadness and Morris had a melancholy streak. Imagine your son’s dog (and later a friend’s dog) dying after being hit by a car while in your care. It happened to Morris. Or having to endure lectures about your drinking from your mother who (it was later discovered) had her own alcoholism issues. Morris’ relationship with his mother was so difficult he seldom went home without taking a friend. And then there are the critics who could be brutal. Yet, as King points out, while Morris often hurt those close to him, he probably hurt himself most.
The last decade of Morris’ life was one of his most productive. He had married JoAnne Prichard, who stabilized his life. He became more focused. But sadly, that ended in 1999, when he died of a heart attack. His beautiful book, Taps, which he had worked on for thirty years came out after his death.
Willie Morris was a fascinating man. He had faults, but we all do. But I found it amazing how well connected he was with the literary world of the era. Now I am wanting to read more of his works. If you’re interested in his life or in the writing life, I recommend this biography.
Shelby Foote, Jordan County
(1954, Audible, 2004: 10 hours and 5 minutes. Narrated by Tom Parker
I have read some of Foote’s Civil War accounts, but this is the first time reading (or listening) to his fiction. The setting for this novel is a fictional county in the Mississippi Delta, between Memphis and Vicksburg. Through a series of stories, the author creates a portrait of the country stretching back over 200 years. Each vignette is more like a short story or novella, with the location being the main connection. In an interesting twist, the first story is set in 1950, five years after the Second World War. Each story thereafter moves back in time. The second, about a blues musician who is executed for killing a man involved with his lover, was set in the 1930s. There is a story about old plantation homes being burned during the Civil War, in which the infirmed owner had fought with Andrew Jackson at New Orleans in the War of 1812. Then came the stories of those same homes being built and slaves hauled into the region, after the discovery of the cotton gin made cotton valuable. Then we learn of those who settled this country, as the local natives were being pushed out. The last story is set before this land would become a part of the United States, as Christianity was being brought to the native people.
I found reading these stories chronologically backwards interesting. It was kind of like peeling an onion to get back to the roots of the land. In this case, it shows the connection to the land. I need to read more of Foote’s writings. If this is any indication of his fiction, he is a much more accessible writer than his friend, William Faulkner.
Tony Horwitz, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide
(2019, 17 hours and 11 minutes). Narrated by Mark Deakins and Tony Horowitz.
Long before I started blogging, while living in Utah, I made a cross country flight. A friend had given me a book, Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic. I never laughed so much on an airplane. I kept trying to mute myself and about bit through my cheeks, but the book was so funny. Everyone around me wanted the name of the book. I’m sure many of them went out an brought a copy!
In Confederates in the Attic, a Yankee explores Civil War reenactments in the American South. In his new book, he returns South just before the 2016 election, and traces the second journey William Laws Olmstead made into the American South in the decade before the Civil War. Olmstead had been a farmer. Before he became famous as a landscape designer, he struggled as a journalist. He made two trips into the South to learn about the differences in agriculture. He travelled under the name, Yeoman, drawing on his farming past. In his first journey, which took him down along the Atlantic seaboard, he began to question slavery. When he took his second journey, which went down the Mississippi and across Louisiana to Texas and on into Northern Mexico, slavery haunted him. While Olmstead books were not well received in the United States, they were well-received in Britain. Some think his books on the South may have helped keep Britain from joining the Confederacy during the war. To read my review of a recent biography of Olmstead, click here.
In this book, Horwitz sets out to travel as closely to Olmstead’s path as possible. He takes the train South to Washington and then west. When he gets into the navigable waters on the other side of the divide, where Olmstead took a steamboat, he arranged transient on a tug pushing coal barges. This allows him to learn about the life of the deckhands as well as exploring the use of coal and how its link to global warming. Then he cuts across country through Kentucky and part of Tennessee before joining a riverboat for his travels down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Along the way, he sees plantations and reflects on what Olmstead might have seen and how the plantation life is portrayed today (somewhat whitewashed from the harshness of antebellum South. He then travels by car across Louisiana and into Texas and barely into Mexico (where he discovered it was much safer for Olmstead than it is today.
In addition to interesting travels, Horwitz draws out the most unique people and events along the way. His retelling of being at a monster truck mud rally is classic. But he also tells the stories of folks he meets in dive bars and tourist attractions, from the Creation Museum to the Alamo. He even finds some cowboys to take him out riding a few nights with pack animals as Olmstead had travelled, which creates more humorous stories. Horwitz can make most any adventure funny, which is why I have enjoyed the books I’ve read by him.
But there is also a serious side to this book. Traveling in the lead up to the 2016 election in some of the more conservative parts of the country, Horwitz wonders if America will face a similar divide as it did when Olmstead made his journey in the 1850s. Like Olmstead, he attempts to set the historical record straight, which challenges some the myths of the Old Southwest. While Horwitz befriends all kinds of people along the way, and seems to get along with them, I’m sure if many of those he met read his book, they would not like the bite in his humor. In this way, Horowitz is like Olmstead, they both spied on the South.
While I don’t review all that I read, I’m way behind in writing reviews of books I planned to review. Here’s an attempt to catch up a bit on what I have been reading in the religious and theology realm.
Adam Neder, Theology as a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith
This is a small and somewhat simple book with profound insights into the teaching profession. While Neder is a professor, much of what he says in this book can be applicable to all levels of teaching (especially teaching the Christian faith). This book grew out a lecture the author gave at a Karl Barth symposium on Barth’s Evangelical Theology. Neder shifted focus from Barth’s thoughts on writing to teaching. In addition to Barth, he draws heavily on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Soren Kierkegaard and the Scriptures. He also draws on his own experience in the classroom and acknowledges the lessons (sometimes hard lessons) he has learned.
Each chapter focuses on a different theme that together helps create a portrait of one who might teach Christian thought. The first theme is “identity.” Our identity must be bound in Christ, who reconciles us to God. Everyone, the teacher and student, must make a decision as to whether or not the accept Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the teacher needs to understand his or her inability to teach faith. That can only come from the Holy Spirit.
The second chapter examines “knowledge.” The author begins by noting that some of his best students of theology were not Christian. In an academic setting the teacher can only evaluate academic work. However, as the case was made in the first chapter, knowledge doesn’t save us. It’s our willingness to trust and follow Jesus. As Kierkegaard insisted, “the Christian life cannot be “reduced to thinking the right thoughts about God.” The teacher has to help the student develop his or her own thoughts about God, which is risky as the teacher cannot control the outcome. Neder also examines objections to such knowledge such as the idea that God is unknowable. While that it true we can’t know God with our own efforts, we must remember that Jesus reveals God to us.
The third area of exploration is ethos. Christian teachers need to be humble for we are witnessing to a larger truth. While Barth lays out such ideas in Evangelical Theology, Neder acknowledges that he, too, fell short. It’s easy for us to think higher of ourselves that we should. We need to be humble and to realize that we’re always teaching, not just when we are behind the podium. Can God’s truth be seen in our lives? How can we, as a teacher, remain connected to the truth? Can we become less so that someone else become greater?
Danger is the subject of the fourth chapter. Our theology takes place in an encounter with a living God, which means we’re moving out from our comfort zones and walking a precarious path. Using the story of Nicodemus (John 3), Neder demonstrates how we can’t follow Jesus from a safe distance. Christianity is more than knowledge and doctrine. While that might think we can maintain a safe course, faith demands otherwise.
Neder’s final chapter is titled “Conversation.” Here the conversation is between us and God (and God’s word). Barth describes this as “primary conversation.” But we also need what Barth called secondary conversation, that between the student and other students (past and present). We learn from others, not just from the living, but also from those who preceded us. That’s why we study their written records, but it’s all in service to the primary conversation. their attempts at understanding God. Neder encourages his students to read widely and outside their tradition, to gain appreciation of and to maintain a healthy skepticism of their own traditions. Learning from a broad perspectives reminds us that in this imperfect world, we can always improve ourselves.
Neder then goes into detail about having such conversations in the classrooms. He encourages the teacher not to answer their own questions and to engage the students to help them arrive at the answers. It is also important for the teacher to understand the student’s questions. Failure to do so will cause a student to shut down.
There is much to commend in this book for teaching, but especially for the Christian teacher.
Some quotes:
Grace is not opposed to working but to earning and self-reliance. (30)
Jesus wants followers, not admirers. (41)
Christians do not only receive from him (Jesus Christ), they also partner with him in the work he is doing in the world. (72)
Conversations with Jesus rarely unfold according to plan. Jesus continually shocks and astonishes people, rattles their cages, upends their expectations, eludes their traps, and zeroes in on their deepest motivations.” (96)
“Jesus is the most hazardous of all hazards.” -Barth in his Epistles to the Romans commentary (99)
“[W]e tend to talk about God as if he is not present. Few things are harder than remembering that God is alive and active in our classrooms, few things easier than teaching as if he is not.” (101)
“The pressure to sell Christianity at discount prices is intense, and Christian leaders who refuse to adjust to these conditions create very real problems for themselves.” (111-I would add, and for others.)
“Our aim is to lead students more deeply into the subject matter to which Scripture bears witness, and we cannot do that apart from the history of Christian reflection on Scripture.” (121).
“We read because we are not yet who we want to be, because our knowledge and our lives are not yet what we think they could or should be.” (128)
Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
(2019, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing 2022), 342 pages including notes and index.
Katherine Stewart focuses her journalistic lens into the rise of religious nationalism within the United States. Following the money along with individuals who seem ubiquitously present (but always in the background such as David Barton, Tony Perkins, Peter Wagner, and R. J. Rushdoony), she shows how the movement is more than a cultural crusade against perceived social ills such as abortion or the LBGTQ community. Instead, she suggests the movement is about power. The movement isn’t necessarily conservative (as in maintaining the status quo), but radical at its core. One of its goals is to undo the democratic processes and grab power. As one founder noted, if they could just get support of 10% of the county, they could control the change. Along with being political, the movement seeks to mobilize churches to achieve their goals of creating a society based on their vision of a biblical worldview.
Stewart acknowledges the best resistance to the Christian Nationalism will probably come from other Christians. However, she only focuses on the movement itself. While she is honest about this from the beginning, her reporting left me feeling hopeless against such an onslaught.
In each chapter of the book, Stewart follows a particular organization or idea within the larger movement. She begins with a gathering of religious leaders in the Carolinas at Unionville Baptist Church just before the mid-term elections in 2018. The gathering was a forum for Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, to reach pastors to help them organize voters. While he didn’t mention the Republican party, everyone present knew he was promoting their candidates. Much of the danger of the Christian nationalist movement is they use politicians, preachers, and key moral arguments to consolidate power.
As has many others before her have pointed out such as Kristin DeMez in Jesus and John Wayne, Protestant Churches haven’t always been against abortion. Even in the early 70s, the Southern Baptist Convention supported abortion rights. Ronald Reagan as governor signed the most liberal abortion law to date. The big issue for many pastors of large conservative churches (such as Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones) was how to maintain tax exempt status of their segregated schools. Into this discussion came Paul Weyrich. He was a former Catholic (who’d joined a Melkite Greek Catholic Church after Vatican II). Weyrich saw an opportunity to help conservative causes as they made abortion a political issue hidden within a religious framework. This decision helped the conservative movement “Get Religion.” In the 60s and 70s, the liberals appeared to have religion on their side. This was especially so during the Civil Rights movement.
In other chapters, Stewart examines how Christian Nationalist attempt to rewrite history. Some within this movement draw deeply from historic teachings from the likes of Robert Lewis Dabney. He was a Southern theologian and an apologist for slavery before and during the Civil War. However, it’s wrong to think of the movement as only white as she explored those of other races within it. She looks at how others in the movement have developed massive data bases to help conservative pastors to get out the vote. Not surprisingly, home schooling is a big issue for many, as well as helping church sponsored schools.
Writing a few years before the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, she explores the movements attempt at remaking the nation’s courts. In addition to abortion, she also looks at how the movement, especially within Roman Catholic hospitals, who often limit medical care that’s provided. In the final chapter, she looks at the global movement and the draw to authoritarian leadership in other countries (including Russia) for those who identity with Christian Nationalism. While she shows the international reach of Christian Nationalism, I would recommend the reader check out Ann Applebaum’s The Twilight of Democracy.
We live in a fast-changing world. As a result, some of this book is out-of-date after less than five years. After all, after January 6, we have some Americans being willing to undermine democracy openly. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe vs. Wade thanks to the packing of the court with those who had that as a primary focus. And Russia has shown its hand in its invasion of Ukraine, claiming partly their goal is to save Christianity. This study provides the background for how this came about. It will be up to us to heed Stewart’s warnings. If not, the book might become prophetic. It’s my hope, by pointing out the goals of Christian Nationalists, this book can be an antidote to bringing about a world view that seems out-of-step with that rabbi from Galilee.
I recommend reading this book. Even more than that, I encourage those who see the danger of Christian Nationalism and strive to follow Jesus to consider how we can confront this attack on American Democracy. The abortion debate is one area that I find particularly disheartening. How can we discourage and reduce abortion on demand, which I feel should be the goal, while removing it from arena of politics? But if it has political advantages for some, I’m afraid it will continue to divide people and make our society even more unstable. Christian Nationalists have their own world view. Christians who strive to be faithful to their Savior need to articulate a world view that’s faithful to Scripture and Jesus Christ.
This morning–the smoke from fires in Quebec are filling our skies and making the air unhealthy.
I wasn’t going to post this week. I’ve been busy. A contractor is preparing to add a large addition to our house and I’ve been trying to get the garden in, and I’ve done volunteer work, and I have all kind of other excuses. Then, today, I learned of the death of Timothy Keller. After a long battle with pancreatic cancer, our last enemy death finally claimed him this morning. In recent days, knowing this time was short, Keller (and his son) sent out tweets telling of his struggles and his hope to soon be with his Savior.
I first became familiar with the ministry of Timothy Keller while on a month Sabbatical for Preachers interested in how literature can inform our preaching led by Neil Plantinga at Calvin Theological Seminary in the summer of 2003. In discussing Franz Kafka’s writings, he played a sermon that was in a serious Keller preached on the hopeless many feel in today’s world. In these sermons, in addition to scripture, Keller depended upon Kafka’s The Trial. I was impressed and had never imagined using Kafka in the pulpit.
While I never met Keller, I heard him speak once. Even though we are from different Presbyterian denominations, I once worshipped at the church he founded, Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City. But it was summer, and he wasn’t preaching. I’ve read six of his books. In addition to the two below, which I first reviewed in another blog, I have read and have on my shelves The Reason for God, The Meaning of Marriage, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, and Centered Church: Doing Balanced Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City. I may not have always agreed with him, but I learned a lot from him. His arguments were always compiling and his gracefulness came through in his writing as well as in his speaking.
May Timothy Keller rest in peace.
Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters
(New York: Dutton, 2009), 210 pages
Idolatry is not just a failure to obey God, it is a setting of the whole heart on something beside God. (171)
Idolatry is prevalent in our world, our communities, our churches, and our individual lives. As Keller points out over and over, idols are not necessarily bad things. In fact, they are seldom bad. They are generally good things (family, sex, money, success, and even religion), but when we look to them to “satisfy our deepest needs and hopes,” they fail us. They become a counterfeit god. (xvii, 103). I found this to be a powerful and challenging book. It was published following the 2008 financial melt-down, written by a pastor whose church on Manhattan draws many of the investment bankers that were at the forefront of the crisis.
Using Biblical stories as illustrations, Keller attempts to expose the idolatry of our lives. For idolatry of the family, he draws on the story of Abraham and how the old man pinned his hope for a legacy on Isaac, essentially making his son into an idol. For sex, he explores the story of Jacob’s courtship with Rachel and Leah. For money and greed, he looks at the call of Zacchaeus. For success, he looks at Naaman, the leper, who question Elijah’s method of healing. For success, he looks at Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of clay feet. His examination of how “correct religion” can become an idol leads him into the story of Jonah. And finally, he looks at how we need to replace our idols with God by exploring Jacob’s wrestling.
There are two levels to our idolatry according to Keller. We all have surface idols that mask our deeper idols. These surface idols are mostly good things, but they become idols because we place our ultimate trust in them as we strive to satisfy our deeper longings for power, approval, comfort or control. (64) We can fight against the surface idols, but new ones will pop up unless we address our deeper needs, which can only be handled by replacing such idols with a total trust in God.
Keller confronts our worship of success. He even challenges how some place total trust in “the free market.” “The gods of moralistic religion,” he proposes,” favors the successful.” It could be argued that such folks are attempting to earn their salvation. But the God of the Bible comes down to earth to accomplish our salvation and give us grace. (44) Later in the book he writes that the “Biblical story of salvation assaults our worship of success at every point.” (94) He challenges Adam Smith’s theory of capitalism for “deifying” the invisible hand of the market which, “when given free reign, automatically drives behavior toward that which is most beneficial for society, apart from any God or moral code.” He ponders, in light of the financial crisis, if the same dissatisfaction that occurred with socialism a generation earlier might also occur with capitalism. (105-106)
Keller also challenges our political and philosophical ideals, especially those that we place above our faith in God. Straddling the political fence and refusing to place himself on the right or left, as a Republican or Democrat, he observes that a fallout of us making idols out of our philosophy/politics may be the reason why when on group loses and election there is often an extreme reaction.
“When either party wins an election, a certain percentage of the losing side talks openly about leaving the country. They become agitated and fearful for the future. They have put the kind of hope in their political leaders that once was reserved for God and the work of the gospel. When their political leaders are out of power, they experience a death. They believe that if their polices and people are not in power, everything will fall apart. They refuse to admit how much agreement they actually have with the other party, and instead focus on the points of disagreement. The points of contention overshadow everything else, and a poisonous environment is created. (99)
The author closes with an Epilogue where he discusses the discerning and replacing our idols. To discern our idols, Keller suggests we contemplate where our imagination goes when we’re daydreaming, where we spend our money, or where we really place our hope and salvation instead of where we profess to place it, or where we find our uncontrolled emotions unleashed. (167-9) To handle our idols, we have to do more than repent, they have to be replaced with God. I found this last part of the book to be the weakest, with just a few pages of suggestions, drawing heavily from the opening of Colossians 3. He calls for us to rejoice and repent together and to practice the spiritual disciplines as a way to invite God to replace our idolatrous desires. His final comment is an admission that this is not a onetime program, but a lifelong quest for as soon as we think we’re got our idols removed, we’ll discover deeper places within our psyche to clean out.
This book has given me much to think about. We can all benefit from what he says about the difficult to discern our own greed (52) and on how we worship success and our political ideals. Only one did I get excited about a “theological error,” and I feel pretty certain it was more from carelessness in language than in what Keller actually believes. On page 162, Keller speaks of when our “Lord appeared as a man” on Calvary, which sounds to me a lot like the Docetism heresy. Docetism held that Jesus’ humanity was an illusion. However, Keller concludes the sentence saying that Jesus “because truly weak to save us,” which sounds as if Jesus’ humanity wasn’t just an illusion.
I recommend this book and am grateful to Mr. Keller and Dutton Publishing for providing extensive notes and a detailed bibliograhy.
An Essay and Review of The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
(New York: Dutton, 2008), 139 pages.
There are two kinds of sinners, as Timothy Keller explores in this book. One kind of sinner is rather obvious. They live only for themselves, breaking God’s laws and perhaps even the laws of the land. Such sinners are represented by the younger son in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, who after wishing his father’s death so he can inherit his portion of the estate, is given his inheritance and runs off to a foreign country.
We have a love/hate relationship with the younger boy. In God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, James Weldon Johnson captures the flavor of American-American preachers early in the 20th Century. Many of these preachers could not read and write, but the way they told stories were poetic. In a sermon on the Prodigal Son, the preacher paints a vivid picture of the young wayward son with his daddy’s inheritance burning a hole in his pocket…
And the young man went with his new-found friend, And brought himself some brand new clothes, And he spent his days in the drinking dens, Swallowing the fires of hell. And he spent his nights in the gambling dens, Throwing dice with the devil for his soul. And he met up with the women of Babylon. Oh, the women of Babylon! Dressed in yellow and purple and scarlet, Loaded with rings and earrings and bracelets, Their lips like a honeycomb dripping with honey, Perfumed and sweet-smelling like a jasmine flower; And the jasmine smell of the Babylon women Got in his nostril and went to his head, And he wasted his substance in riotous living, In the evening, in the black and dark of night, With the sweet-sinning women of Babylon.
Why is it that we are fascinated with the younger son? Certainly we’re glad that he’s redeemable, but we also relish in the visions of his sinful past. If truth be told, we’re a little jealous of his freedom. Over time, the parable has even been named for him. He’s the prodigal, the one who lavishly spends his inheritance. And we forget about that this is a parable of two sons.
Timothy Keller reminds over and over again that there are two ways to be separated from God. Yes, we can be like the younger son and live wildly. This is the popular view of a sinner and many of us have been down that road. But we can also be the dutiful son and do what’s expected of us, but deep down despise the father for whom we work. Sometimes even free-spirited younger sons can become zealous older brothers. The sins of the older son are not so evident. Such sins live in the heart where they fester and boil and eventually boil over in anger and rage. Keller makes the point that churches are filled with “older sons,” those who look down on their younger brother’s sinful ways. But these “older sons” don’t enjoy the father’s company any more than the “younger sons” who want to strike out for the territories, sowing their oats along the way. Older sons are those who give religion a bad name and make the church seem harsh and judgmental. Because of their hard hearts, they don’t get to enjoy the banquet the father throws for the return of the younger son. Instead, they sulk in anger, showing the condition of their hearts.
Prodigal means reckless extravagant, having spent everything. Keller suggests that the true prodigal in the story is the Father in the story, who represents God. God goes to great distances to restore the lost son, that even though the son has already cost him a fortune, he spends it again to reclaim the boy. Redemption is not cheap, as the older boy discovers, for he feels the father is stealing from what belongs to him in order to redeem the younger boy. He’s not gratiful at all. Keller is writing, not to call the wayward younger son home, but to remind those who have never left, the older brother, not to be so self-righteous and to look down on others. This book calls those in the church to task, asking that we not be so judgmental. It’s also a book that confirms one of the main critiques made against the church, that it is a place of hypocrites. Certainly, if our hearts are like the older brother, such a critique is justified. We should take the critique as a warning for in the story, it is the younger son, not the older boy, that experiences salvation.
This is a good, easy to read, book. It can easily be read in a sitting. I recommend it.
Years ago, I read several books by Martin Clark and reviewed them in an old blog. Clark, a retired judge, just down the mountain from me in Stuart, Virginia. I meet him in person about a year ago. I’ve finally have read and now reviewed his most recent book. Much of his recent book takes place around where I live and serve in ministry.
A note about my reading: We’re 1/3 of the way through 2023. When I reviewed my readings from 2020, I noted that I needed to read more fiction and books by women authors. So far, I have exceed my 2022 totals for both categories.
Martin Clark, The Substitution Order
(2019, New York Vintage Books, 2020), 338 pages.
A substitution order is a legal term for when an attorney turns over a case to another attorney and a judge has to sign off on the exchange. This is just one of a string of events Protagonist Kevin Moore secretly arranges to obtain revenge on those who had scammed and helped ruin his life even more than he had already done. On his own, attorney Kevin Moore quickly developed a cocaine habit after trying it at a law conference. The urge to get high led to his quick downfall, ending in an arrest, the loss of his law license, and his divorce. While he confesses his mistake, he didn’t need someone trying to scam him from legal malpractice. But that happened.
With his life in ruins, Moore lives in a cousin’s house in Meadows of Dan, Virginia. Disbarred, he leaves his legal career and now spreads mayonnaise on sandwiches at the SUBstitution, a Subway knock-off in Stuart, Virginia. Substitution orders and orders at SUBstitution, Clark is a master at double-entendres. While working at the restaurant, Moore saves a puppy from a dumpster. He names the dog Nelson, and he becomes a part of Moore’s life. A stranger offers him an opportunity to benefit on a scam. Moore who (except for three months) appears to have lived the life of a Sunday School superintendent, declines. The stranger who offers Moore the chance also threatens him if he doesn’t participate with them.
It appears Moore’s life couldn’t get worse, but it does. A crooked probation officer plants dirty urine in his drug test as well as a gun and bags of drugs in his car. Moore finds himself in real trouble.
In the middle of his problems, Moore has a stroke. Thankfully, a farmer who was renting farmland from Moore’s cousin, happened to be driving by and see’s Moore collapse. As a member of the local rescue squad and fire department, he rushes in. Seeing the obvious symptoms, he takes Moore in his truck down the mountain to the hospital. Moore slowly gets better and falls for a home health nurse.
While he is getting better, he must deal with a legal malpractice scam. His insurance company is willing to settle, but Moore has an idea of what’s happening. To everyone else, Moore’s theory seems farfetched, and he must take things in his own hands. But everyone is skeptical.
It looks like Moore is going to attempt to run from the law. But there are some twists in the plot. Despite a somewhat happy ending, Moore spends time behind bar. He also would prefer everything would not have happened and that he would have never tried cocaine.
I enjoyed this book and surprised by the ending. My copy of the book came from a gift without an expectation of a review.
Martin Clark, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living
( )
This is one crazy book. My life has been crazy for the past few weeks and it has been a pleasure to occasionally retreat into Evers Wheeling’s world. Wheeling, a young district court judge in Norton, North Carolina is bored and ready for adventure. It arrives one day when the beautiful Ruth Esther English, one of the top car sales associates in the Southeast, seeks his help with her brother’s trial. She must get her brother Artis out of jail to help her recover money and a letter left by her father. Wheeling refuses to do anything illegal to help Artis, but when his case comes up, the police have screwed up the evidence so that he has no choice but to free him.
Soon everyone, including Evan’s brother Pascal, are off on a trip to recover the hidden money in Salt Lake City. Pascal, like Evers, had inherited a small fortune from their parents. Unlike Evers, Pascal lived as the Prodigal (except there was no father to come home to), and after blowing much of his inheritance, spends his days living in a double wide, smoking pot. Evers also has a fondness for the weed and seems to get most of his caloric intact in the form of distilled spirits.
When I reviewed Clark’s other novel, Plain Heathen Mischief, I noted that it had more twist and turns than Lombard Street, San Francisco. The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living has more twist and turns than the highway out of Owen’s Valley and into Yosemite via Tioga Pass.
There are many characters and more than a few deaths and a lot of “who-done-it” questions. Those who die include Evers’ non-live-in wife (she refused to live in Norton). After Evers discovers her in bed with a “cow farmer,” they are locked in a divorce battle. Although her death seemed to be a suicide, it was also suspicious. At first, Evers seems a likely suspect, but then Pascal confesses although he later recants. Due to the many problems with his confession, he is offered a plea bargain that nets him only a couple of months in jail.
Of course, there’s more to the story but to tell it all would be to ruin the story. Read it and laugh. And don’t get too hung up on all the characters, because some just disappear without explanation and not all questions that are raised by the story get answered. The book may not be neat and tidy in that way, but such is life in a double-wide inhabited by a bunch of lazy pot smokers.
There are also many characters in the book. Paulette is a sharp dressed African American attorney from Charleston, West Virginia. Paulette represents Ruth Ester and later defends Pascal. Ruth Esther’s brother Artis is short and African American and obviously not blood related to his stately “white” sister. There are also boozing doctor and a handful of good ole boy cops. And then there are some mysteriously white tears. A hint of mysticism is found in the pages of the novel and at one point, I wondered if I was reading a legal thriller or fantasy. The mix-mash of characters create lots of humorous moments—such as when Judge Wheeling does a double take when he’s introduced to Artis, Ruth Esther’s brother, realizing there is no way they’re real siblings.
There are a few things in this book that I will have to blog about later. The first is the town of Climax, NC (yes, there is a town and when I was a high school debater, we often drove through it going to tournaments in the High Point, Greensboro, and Winston Salem area).
Next is William Jennings Bryan. The letter that Ruth Esther wanted was written by Bryan to a “teenage” lover of his, a letter which is real would have tarnished Bryan’s Puritan image. When I was in college, I did a paper on Bryan and discovered that I wasn’t at all interested in the Scopes Monkey Trial (for which he is remembered) but as him being a populist (probably in reality a socialist) candidate for President in 1896. He carried much of the nation. Although many in the religious right revere Bryan for being the prosecutor in the Scopes Trial, they would be horrified to realize that his political philosophy wasn’t anywhere near theirs.
The final thing I should blog about sometime is Salt Lake City. I’ve spent a lot of time in that city when I lived in Utah. Two corrections that I might suggest to Clark, you don’t need a cab to get from the Hilton to Temple Square (if I remember correctly, the Hilton is only two blocks west). Secondly, Mormons don’t’ wear crosses.
Martin Clark, Plain Heathen Mischief
(New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004), 398 pages. Reviewed in 2007
The Reverend Joel Clark has lost everything. The pastor of Roanoke’s First Baptist Church pleads guilty to having sex with Christy, a 17-year-old parishioner. He’s sent to jail for six months. When released, his wife serves him with divorce papers. He’s also issued a lawsuit from Christy. She hopes to receive five million for her emotional damages. With his world crumbling, he left with only one loyal friend, Edmond, who picks him up when he’s released and takes him to his sister’s house in Missoula, Montana.
On the way, they stop to see Sa’ad X Sa’ad, Edmond’s Las Vegas lawyer friend (Las Vegas, Edmond assures Joel, is just a little detour on the way from Virginia to Montana). Both guys are flim-flam men. They offer Joel a stake in an insurance scam. The disgraced preacher at first rejects the temptation, but when he’s unable to secure a job and he finds himself with a crook for a probation officer, he accepts the offer to make some quick cash so that he might help his sister and his former church (Good motives, bad ideas). As soon as he agrees to participate in the scam, Joel’s luck changes and he lands two jobs, one as a dishwasher and the other as a weekend fishing guide on Montana’s rivers.
Plain Heathen Mischief has more twist and turns than Lombard Street in San Francisco. Every time I thought I had the plot figured out, Clark threw another twist. This book was anything but predictable; making it both enjoyable to read while keeping me from doing other things because I was unable to put it down. I will not spoil the ending of the book by giving additional details of the plot except to say that Joel’s interpretation of “having sex” is a lot broader than our former President’s interpretation.
Through the misfortunes of Joel, many which he brings upon himself, Martin Clark explores ethics and morality. By seemingly resigning himself to the notion that he must do something, and the end justifies the means, Joel finds himself deeper and deeper in trouble. Although he preached grace, Joel appears to have little of it for himself. He seems to think it’s up to him to keep his former congregation and his sister afloat. Such a burden almost drowns him. The book also demonstrates how wrong we can often be about other people and their motives. Although Joel is an educated man with a master’s degree, he is naïve, which provides many comic scenes throughout the book.
I wonder about Martin Clark positioning Joel as a Baptist minister. In many ways, he seems Baptist in name only. I don’t know too many Baptist ministers (or any or ministers for that matter) who keeps Aquinas’ Summa on the nightstand. Joel also reads Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr and Barth. Although Joel doesn’t drink, he doesn’t have a problem being with those who do, as we learn when he enjoys a night in Vegas, accompanied by Edmond and Sa’ad and three beautiful women.
My favorite characters in the book are Sophie (his sister) and Dixon (his boss at the outfitting service). Like Joel, Sophie’s life crumbled when her well-off doctor husband left her and took off for France in the hopes to make it as an artist. Although she has problems with organized religion, she comes off as a good person who refuses to cut corners or to do anything that’s morally questionable. Likewise, Dixon is a person who tries to do right. I love his comparing churchgoing to the blues.
Churchgoin’ to me is a lot like blues music. Everybody always talks it up, says great things about it, and you know its supposed to boost your soul, but when you actually do it, when you go sit in a smoky club for two hours hearing some old brother with a bum leg an a pair of Ray-Bands play the same slow, self-indulgent, strung-out three notes and squeeze his eyes shut, you start thinking, man, his crap ain’t so hot. Truth is, you’d rather be down at the Holiday Inn lounge tossin’ back dollar shooters, pawing the strange women and dancing to disco… (page 263)
My only complaint is that the book is a bit long. The story could be tightened up a bit, which I think might make the book funnier. However, I’m really shouldn’t complain. Not only did I enjoyed the book, I didn’t want it to end. I’m looking forward to reading Clark’s other book, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living. Martin Clark is a circuit court judge who lives in Stuart, Virginia.
Martin Clark, The Legal Limit
(New York: Alfred Knopf, 2008), 356 pages
Mason Hunt, the Commonwealth Attorney, has come a long way from his horrific childhood with an abusive father. Respected in the community, he’s married to a devoted and sexy wife. They have a beautiful daughter and live on a gentleman’s farm. He also has a dark secret, one that can destroy him. And then, fate turns against him. His wife is killed in a tragic car accident and his convict brother, with whom he shared the secret, decides he’s going to use the secret to get himself out of jail. Life unravels.
Gates Hunt, Mason’s older brother, took the blunt of his father’s blows, often protecting his younger sibling. Gates was a promising football player, but couldn’t hold it together and as a young adult, slipped into the world of drugs and crime. Mason graduates from college and goes on to law school. Home one weekend, Mason and Gates are riding together when they have a run-in with Wayne Thompson, Gates’ girlfriend’s ex. They were on a remote road, no one was around. Threatened, Gates pulled out a pistol, shoots and kills Wayne. The two of them flee. Mason creates alibis, which they rehearse over and over. He also takes his brother’s pistol and disposes of it. The crime goes unsolved.
Twenty years later, Mason has come back to his hometown as the prosecutor. His brother, having shunned a plea bargain and demanded a jury trial for a drug bust, is serving a long sentence in the state penitentiary. As a single parent after his wife’s death, Mason finds himself struggling to raise a teenage daughter. He also finds himself being wooed into supporting a business opportunity for the country, an opportunity which promises short-term jobs and is funded with money from the state’s tobacco settlement. Then, to get out of prison early, his brother fingers him in the unsolved murder of Wayne Thompson.
I won’t spoil the ending, but it suffices to say that Mason’s troubles are never truly over. The book demonstrates how secrets come back and haunt us. We also see howitzers are nearly unredeemable. Finally, we see how we get caught in our lies. Except for his youthful mistake, helping his brother beat a murder rap, Mason is a good man. In fact, his honesty and integrity (in all but this one area of his life) causes his downfall (he wasn’t about to let an innocent man take the fall for his brother’s crime).
This book raises many questions for the reader to ponder. What role does fate play? Why was Gates the older brother? Why does one’s wife die in an accident? It also raises questions about the evil intentions of some people (Gates, prosecutors, those in law enforcement, and those involved in schemes to spend tobacco money on a questionable development which only promise that they’ll be financially rewarded). Another question is about loyalty to family (Mason to Gates, Mason’s mother relationship to Gates, Mason to Curtis, his colleague who also have secrets, and Mason to his daughter). And finally, as the reader I pondered the question of justice. Was justice done in the case? Not really. We’re reminded of the Thompson family and their questions. A better question might be, “Could justice be done in this case?”
I enjoyed this book. The Legal Limit is not as funny as Clark’s other two novels, but in many ways, this is a more serious and tightly constructed work. I’m still pondering the ending of the book. Although I think I understand what Clark is driving at, I also feel that the ending is the weakest link in Clark’s cleverly told story.
