Category: Review

Douglas Coupland wrote a brilliant biography of Marshal McLuhan called “You Know Nothing Of My Work!” and I got to read it this week. On a Kindle! McLuhan would have hated that. Considering my last post was a hastily scribbled diatribe against Adam Gopnik’s power-play dressed up as defence of individualism, Coupland’s book is a rare thing – a piece of writing that takes the faith of its subject seriously.

Here is an example of how Coupland, whose own work is so heavily inspired by McLuhan, takes his distinctive voice to the job of praising this strange, angry, Catholic prophet:

But boy-oh-boy-boy did he string together words in a way that now seems like dense, fabulous poetry! And he saw the world as a book created by God, and believed that there is nothing in it that cannot be understood – and that we fail to try understanding it at our peril.

– Douglas Coupland, You Know Nothing Of My Work!, p. 17.

Your Correspondent, This is the best introduction to McLuhan.

This book is sub-titled “The Refusal to Cease Suffering”. That is a stunning concept. When you compare it to the book I reviewed earlier this morning, that saw suffering as something to be avoided, it becomes evident that there are very different approaches to theology and wealth. Bell is writing from the underside of the history that Francis Fukuyama declared finished in 1990. Tanner is writing as a Yale professor. Bell’s book is written in deep and attentive dialogue with the liberation theologians of South America. Tanner’s book is written in thrall to technology and the power of capital.

I have read few books as invigorating as this one. And what is depressing is that it put shape on the set of ideas I thought I would research in my doctorate. But what is encouraging is that I can stand on the shoulders of giants like Bell and maybe contribute something towards a liberation theology for Ireland. This is the amazing paragraph that I most sincerely appreciated:

Therefore, only a more substantive ecclesiology, one that begins by collapsing the distinction between the theological and the social, between religion and politics, stands a chance of resisting capitalist discipline. This ecclesiology must reclaim the theological as a material, that is, as a fully social, political and economic reality. This ecclesiology will recognize the practice of faith as intrinsically – instead of derivatively – social, political, economic. It will begin by conceiving of Christianity not as the apolitical custodian of abstract moral values like “love” that have to be translated into politics but, rather, as a social, political, economic formation (an ensemble of technologies of desire) vying with other formations (technologies of desire) on a single field of lived experience. It will start with the recognition that the Christian mythos finds its political correlate, not in the state – even one ordered toward the common good – but in the Church as the exemplary form of human community. This is to say, it begins with the recovery of the Augustinian insight that politics as statecraft is but a secular parody of the true politics that is the fellowship of the saints.

– Daniel M. Bell Jr., Liberation Theology After the End of History, p. 72.

In the next two weeks, Daniel Bell will be publishing what I suppose might be a sort of sequel, which further interrogates the way our desires are shaped and formed by capitalism. I look forward to it almost as much as I look forward to Justin Cronin’s second book in the Passage series.

A simply outstanding book.

Your Correspondent, Is “about the work of liberating desire from the clutches of capitalism”

Man I wanted to love this book. I wanted to adore this book. I wanted to buy extra copies of this book and give them away to everyone who ever made eye contact with me again. I read the opening chapter and basically cursed God that this Spufford chap can write so well when all I can do is Powerpoint presentations that don’t need bullet point lists. But at the same time I thanked God for this Spufford chap because he wrestled words into a shape that looked like experiences I knew were true from my life. Yay Spufford!

And there is a chapter in there where he recapitulates the whole story of Jesus in such a way that actually made me cry, sitting at the breakfast table, right before I had to go to lectures. It is beautiful.

And throughout the book the prose has that kind of flowing cleverness that is enjoyable to simply sit with.

And! His tone is conversational without being glib. This is the way to talk about Christianity. He doesn’t pretend that he is walking to Vespers with C.S. Lewis. He writes like he sounds, by which I mean he sounds like an actual human man from 2012.

And there are many other things that can be endorsed in this book; the conviction at its heart is that reality is in some senses merciful, and that is a deep idea. His robust defence of original sin, cast as HPtFtU, is compelling. But fundamentally it failed to impress me. Perhaps by writing out why, I can figure out if my reaction is just a manky, biased response or whether it has merit.

I realise that every brief introduction to the faith is going to have to cut corners. But the edges that are polished off to describe what it means to follow Jesus really matter. The Jesus that is drawn here didn’t seem Jewish. He launches an audacious effort to set human depravity at the centre of the emotional satisfaction of Christianity but he fails to give Genesis 3 all that much credit.

He misrepresents C.S Lewis. Lewis’ Trilemma, from Mere Christianity, which has become a topic of fun in the contemporary world of letters. It is not a rock-solid argument but it isn’t meant to be either. In context, the Trilemma is a lovely illustration. But Spufford critiques it as a dilemma. This is unfair. And me and Jack will slag Francis over it in heaven.

But Francis seems a bit ashamed of heaven. And he seems positively dismissive of hell. And while he appears to believe in Catholic unity, “we’re all, collectively, the ecclesia, ‘the gathering together'”, that Catholicity of spirit isn’t extended to the apparently small group of old-fashioned conservatives within the church still believe in hell. Also, the same small group make a big deal of sexual ethics when there allegedly isn’t a Biblical support for their stances. Also, there is little love shared for Christians in Nigeria, Uganda or those wrong kind of Christians in the USA. Christian sexual ethics, by the way, are just liberal political free choice.

And then he seems to not realise that Christianity is non-violent. And he actively supports the establishment of the Church of England. And on and on my disagreements could go. It’s a phenomenally well written book but in the end, while it may account for the emotional satisfaction of Christianity as Spufford has experienced it, it is not an introduction to the strange particularity that the faith represents for all the people who aren’t Spufford.

Plus he never mentions Barth.

Still, let me end with a quote about the so-called Gnostic Gospels that is hilarious and which shows that this book has massive plus points standing in its credit:

The Jesus of the orthodox story treats people with deep attention even when angry. Their Jesus zaps people with his divine superpowers if they irritate him. Orthodox Jesus says that everyone needs the love of God, and God loves everyone. Their Jesus has an inner circle you can be admitted to if you collect enough crisp packets. Orthodox Jesus likes wine, parties, and grilled fish for breakfast. Their Jesus thinks that human flesh and its appetites are icky. Orthodox Jesus is disconcertingly unbothered about sexuality, and conducts his own sexual life, if he has one, off the page. Their Jesus can generate women to have sex with out of his own ribs, in a way that suggests the author had trouble talking to girls.

– Francis Spufford, Unapologetic, p. 155-156.

Maybe it is just that I am so immersed in studying theology right now that I can’t get out of the pedant’s stance of the know-nothing-who-has-learned-a-little?

Your Correspondent, Will not stand for a world free of sexual and religious intolerance

This is the kind of book that makes one glad to be an evangelical. I don’t think it could be written from within any other Christian tradition. It is a gracious, deeply thoughtful and surprising account of what the Bible has to say about wealth and possessions. The whole Bible. And inter-testamental literature. It takes it chunk by chunk, bit by bit, spending more time in places that need it (Luke, Proverbs) and a little less where it isn’t as relevant (Numbers, 2 John).

It admirably locks down its analysis in suggested application and I know from having met and spent time with the man that Blomberg walks the walk that he talks about.

If you read it, you will be surprised by how radical it is.

… so long as prosperity is yielded to devotion. Although it is premature to speak of summarizing pervasive patterns throughout both Testaments, one of the theses of this volume is that the avoidance of extremes of wealth and poverty is a consistent, recurring biblical mandate. Of course, before we too readily label this a ‘middle-class’ ideal and content ourselves that we fall within this range, we must remember two things: first, polls consistently suggest that more than 80% of Westerners consider themselves middle-class, thus largely evacuating the term of any meaning; and second, the nature of the ‘middle-class’ ideal of Proverbs 30:8 is defined by the clause, ‘give me only my daily bread’, a far lower standard of living than that to which most people calling themselves middle-class today aspire.

– Craig Blomberg, Neither Poverty Nor Riches, p. 68.

Your Correspondent, Founder of the Pre-Marital Sextet

Next time someone (like me) tells you we don’t have atheists as interesting as generations past enjoyed, slap them (even me) around the head and remind them of St. Kurt; a divine comedian, a prose-angel and a heavenly atheist:

I got a sappy letter from a woman a while back. She knew I was sappy, too, which is to say a northern Democrat. She was pregnant, and she wanted to know if it was a mistake to bring an innocent little baby into a world this bad.

I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me was the saints I met, people behaving unselfishly and capably. They turned up in the most unexpected places. Perhaps you, dear reader, are or can become a saint for her sweet child to meet.

I believe in original sin. I also believe in original virtue. Look around!

– Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake, p. 211.

This book is many things. It is partly a memoir, in that wandering, almost bloggy way of late Vonnegut. It is partly a novel in that post modern high sci-fi way we grew to love. It is also, I could be wrong here, a narrative musing on Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence. It’s saved from disintegration by the clarity of prose and moral vision. That those things go together is no coincidence and even if we had to relive a hundred years, it’d be worth it.

Your Correspondent, God forbid but he suggest that Kurt is up in heaven now