Book Review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)

The premise of Ray Bradbury’s classic homage to books is simple: in the future, it is illegal to own books.  To own them risks seeing your home burned and potentially seeing yourself and/or your loved ones killed.  Knowledge is the enemy—the status quo reins and is pumped into people’s brains through their TV sets.   The novel is contemporary for many obvious reasons, but it’s timeless, too, as it explores how an individual can survive in society and what role education is meant to play.  In an interview for the 50th anniversary edition, Bradbury is clear that the aim of his anger was not politics, but education and entertainment.  In that light, he succeeds in skewering the social maladies reduced, and still reduce, knowledge to pop culture tabloid news.

The novel follows Guy Montag’s journey from fireman to outlaw, from insider to underground.  He burns people’s books until his crew one day happens upon an old lady who refuses to leave her books but instead starts the flame herself.  Her devotion rattles Montag.  He later finds a book, reads some, shares about it, and finds himself quickly on the run from his own fire crew.  On the lam he encounters a terrific entourage of old scholars devoted to keeping knowledge alive.  “I am Plato’s Republic,” one tells him, as each has committed books or portions of books to memory.

They have existential purpose, as the lady did, something that Montag is searching for.  After seeing the lady burned, Montag laments to his wife, Millie, “We really need to be bothered once in a while.  How long has it been since you were really bothered? About something important,about something real?”  Faber, the prophet of the book, tells Montag, “I don’t talk things, sir…I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.”

Faber puts forth the key idea that books are simply a means to an end, not the end themselves.  This is echoed by the final image of the ragtag group of men at the end who don’t need the actual books to keep what’s important alive and real.  “We’re remembering,” one says.

Beatty plays to the foil to these men. He is a fire captain wrapped up in the legalism of his duty—to eradicate books.  A former reader, he now believes that fire is the solution to “messy” problems created by books or the ideas found in them.  Rather than confront unpleasant truths, it’s easier to simply destroy them.

Among the novel’s rich ironies is the ending.  As the state is hunting for Montag, who has successfully eluded them, they must create their own fiction of his capture to save face.  In the end, they become story-tellers to keep and maintain their strangle-hold on power.

In historical context, Fahrenheit 451 tackles some of the same fears of conformity that The Crucible and The Catcher in the Rye did.  It is appropriate that one is sci-fi, one is drama, and one is hipster in style as each seeks out its own voice during a time when thought was closely policed.  A more contemporary connection can be found in People of the Book by Pulitzer-winner Geraldine Brooks.  Her novel focuses on one book and how it is kept alive over time and place, in ways that transcend east and west, Christian, Jew, and Muslim.  She pulls together some of Bradbury’s ideas in one of my favorite anti-censorship passages when a rabbi pleads with a priest to not burn their holy books:

“So, my good father, you go and write the order to burn that book, as your church requires of you. And I will say nothing to the printing house, as my conscience requires of me. Censura praevia or censura repressive, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you” (156).

Brooks’ fear is that when an environment of self-censorship exists it’s even worse than censorship coming from the outside.  That’s one reason Bradbury is so hard on the education system in his interview.  He feels there is a lack of courage to teach reading and writing.  His books still stands as a warning about the consequences.

Contests Around the Blogosphere

You can win a complete set of the Clique Summer Collection a couple of places on the web, including at The Book Muncher’s, Bookluver Carol’s, and Shooting Stars Mag.

You can also win a copy of Cyn Balog’s Fairy Tale, a really cool necklace, and a bottle of Twilight Perfume on Brooke Taylor’s blog.

There’s also tons and tons of places where you can win a copy of Sarah Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summer, which I reallyreallyreally want to read! These places include: Pop Culture Junkie, And Another Book Read, Shooting Stars Mag, Bookluver Carol’s, The Book Muncher, Temppatt, and That Teen Can Blog.

Presenting Lenore is giving away copies of Liar, Shiver, and Chasing Fire.

Lauren’s Crammed Bookshelf is giving away a copy of One Lonely Degree by C.K. Kelly Martin.

Shooting Stars Mag is giving away a copy of Entrapment by Michael Spooner.

Summer Reading Blitz is giving away the full set of Diana Peterfreund’s Ivy League series.

Lauren’s Crammed Bookshelf is giving away a copy of A Sweet Disorder.

Hope’s Bookshelf is also giving away a copy of One Lonely Degree, I Know It’s Over, and a mousepad.

The Story Siren is giving away a copy of Crazy Beautiful.

That’s one crapload of contests so you better get entering!

Bounded by Nothingness: Bearing the Weight of <i>Weight</i>

Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

by

Jeanette Winterson

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Much has been said about the labors of Heracles, but not often is his mental state addressed in the tales. Winterson comically yet seriously addresses the buzzing “thought-wasp” that Heracles very seldom engages, being more inclined to smack himself upside the head until the buzzing ceases, couching this tale within her larger exploration of the internal life of Atlas, he who bears the burden of the world’s (and we discover, his own) weight.

As part of Heracles’ twelve labors, in exchange for his help, Heracles assumes the burden of the world while Atlas fetches three golden fruit from the garden of the Hesperides which, in Winterson’s telling, was Atlas’ own, tended by his daughters, but now gone to seed, save the tree he stewarded for Hera. After Atlas, being of the race of Titans who warred with and lost to the Olympians, was punished by yoking his strength to carry the Earth upon his back, his only other mention is of this encounter with Heracles, played out as if he refuses to resume his burden, but tricked by Heracles into doing so. Passing mention turns Atlas into a fixture, but not a character in the classic tales.

Winterson takes this silent Titan and gives him a glorious internal imagining, exploring her stated themes of boundaries and isolation and freedom and responsibility within the character she develops of Atlas. His punishment becomes a space of rumination; he can hear what happens upon the world, he learns over the long years to differentiate the buzz of a bee from the low of cattle, the strains of song from the vilifying attack. He dwells in isolation, supporting life but never able to cross the boundary and interact.

Enabled by Heracles to be free, Winterson complicates the scenario by engaging Atlas’ deep sense of responsibility – he has carried the Earth for an unfathomable time and not merely let it drop, leading one to wonder why if not for this sense of duty, emphasized perhaps in his pre-punishment devotion to his garden – and while there is an element of trickery involved in Heracles getting Atlas to reshoulder the Earth’s weight, it is left arguable that Atlas was complicit in this. Heracles may be portrayed as crafty, but Atlas has the wisdom of long meditation; he knew what he was about. A silent isolation for Atlas commences after this time, bounded by the disappearance of his familial gods, leaving him to ossify and calcify under the weight of the Earth, his mind kept contained within the duty his body performs.

“Then the dog came.” With this seemingly benign yet heraldic utterance Winterson brings us to 1957 and a little dog named Laika shot into space by Russia. Atlas frees Laika from her little pod, saving her from the needle that would end her life, and she in turn saves Atlas from hardening into nothingness – a state he has previously longed for, yet which can never be regained. And then he has the thought that took milennia to come to him: why not put the Earth down?

Within this mythic retelling, this central question constantly buzzes in the background; why not just put it down? Why not release the boundaries? By what are we really bounded? Or whom? Winterson revitalizes this tale of Atlas and Heracles, contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of both, pulling from a little space-born pod a reason to dwell upon how we ourselves invoke our own limits.

View all my verbose reviews.

First Law Trilogy by Jon Abercrombie

I guess this is a good news, bad news situation.

The good news is this is well-written high fantasy.  It’s a self-contained trilogy (only in fantasy would a story spread over three books earn the label self-contained) that moves its story across vasts distances and many viewpoint characters without ever losing control of its narrative.  The story is interesting, and even better, the story seems like it is really about something more than just a good story.  More on this in a moment.

Before I get to that, though, I should note that while reading The Blade Itself I figured this was high fantasy written with an eye for avoiding the “usual” glorification of combat and authoritarianism.  I put usual in scare quotes there because is it really that common any more?  I am not widely read enough to know whether we have hit the critical point after which the majority of fantasy stories are not in fact poor Tolkien imitations that mindlessly trumpet poorly understood midevalism, but if I had to guess I’d think we actually hit that point quite a while ago.

In any case, in the first book I noticed that although there are characters from every walk of life, it seemed that the band of crusty veteran warriors from the wartorn north were the ones the author was really interested in.  I thought maybe he really wanted to be writing a grunts-eye view book but felt obligated to throw in the usual tropes.   That guess turned out to be incorrect.  By the time I got into Before They Are Hanged, I realized this was not really a realistic fantasy with some high fantasy tropes, it was a point-for-point anti-high fantasy.  Every trope was introduced so it could be subverted later.  This is somewhat more rare but someone reading this site has likely read at least one other example of it, Thomas Covenant perhaps.  By setting up high fantasy cliches and then deconstructing them, at first there’s a nice unpredictability to the narrative.  However, by Last Argument of Kings, I realized that deconstruction was the entire point of the novel and that every single narrative strand would be tuned for this purpose, so the final book was extremely predictable.

This brings to me the bad news, at least for me.  I very much want to read books that have something to say, but in this case I hated the underlying message of the narrative.  Hated it.  Beyond the negation of fantasy stereotypes was something more subtle that I found genuinely distasteful.  In this trilogy’s world, those in power use their power for their own gain and nothing else.  If they espouse an ideology, they are manipulating people.  Anyone who buys into an ideology is a rube who is being manipulated by the powerful.  Yes, there are a couple people in power who are motivated by a desire to live up to some sort of ideals, but these are just dangerous rubes, for they are nevertheless being manipulated by the Nietzschean ubermensch who crafted the ideology.

I feel like this outlook isn’t just wrong, it’s dangerously wrong.  It’s true that a quick survey of history will locate plenty of politicians and other leaders who have cynically used ideology for their own gain.  Yet just as frequently, maybe even more frequently, I think you’ll find leaders who genuinely believed what they preached, and being sincere were far more persuasive and therefore dangerous.  Isn’t the lesson of the twentieth century that idealism is the poison that results in irrational actors leading states into self-destruction?

However, I won’t penalize the trilogy just because I disagree with it.  It was genuinely thought provoking, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of what I read.  Now that Jon Abercrombie has gotten this out of his system I’m hoping he will write something more to my tastes.

New Spring

New Spring (in Legends)

New Spring by Robert Jordan

Tor, 2nd mass-market printing, 2000

149 pages

Genre: fantasy

Summary: A prequel to The Eye of the World, New Spring finds Moiraine Damodred freshly raised to the shawl, and traveling the Borderlands in search of boys born on Dragonmount during the last battle of the Aiel War. If she finds him, she will have found the Dragon reborn, prosephied savior and destroyer of the world. But other Aes Sedai are also in the Borderlands, and some of them may be Black Ajah, and trying to find–and kill–the Dragon Reborn in his infancy. There she meets with a al’Lan Mandragoran, a diademed battle lord and King of the lost land of Malkier. As politics swirl about them both, the two must decide how best to fight the Shadow and preserve the world.

New Spring is one novella in Legends (ed. Robert Silverberg); I’ve never read the others, and picked up the book solely for New Spring. Though this was my second time reading it, it was almost like reading something new, for the first time I read it was quite hurriedly in a Borders or Barnes & Noble in Iowa, while my then-boyfriend looked at Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal books. Ah, college. As a consequence, I was far less familiar with it than with the rest of the Wheel of Time books (WoT, for future reference).

Though there is some interesting information on the cultures of the Borderlands, and more details on the events leading up to the series proper, New Spring is only recommended for the most avid fans. It is not the finest addition to the already turgid WoT series, for Jordan’s best work, world-building, is done in the series proper. The comparative brevity of New Spring emphasizes his overblown prose and weakly developed characters. Also irritating is the heavy reliance on blatant exposition throughout the story, making the resolution seem feeble. Completely unnecessary.

Cover: Cluttered with a bunch of names in silver on a black backgorund. Features a tiny, inset illustration by Darrell K. Sweet, who does the notoriously bad WoT covers.

Unwillingly, his eyes followed her gesture to a flat, lacquered box on a small table beside the door. Lifting the hinged lid took as much effort as lifting a boulder. Coiled inside lay a long cord woven of hair. He could recall every moment of the morning after their first night, when she took him to the women’s quarters of the Royal Palace in Fal Moran and let ladies and servants watch as she cut his hair at his shoulders. She even told them what it signified. The women had all been amused, making jokes as he sat at Edeyn’s feet to weave the daori for her. Edeyn kept custom, but in her own way. The hair felt soft and supple; she must have had it rubbed with lotions every day.

29 May – 30 May

Book Review of The Cure For a Troubled Heart by Ron Mehl

Book Review of The Cure for A Broken Heart: Meditations on Psalm 37 by Ron Mehl

Rating: 10 out of 10

An assignment for a class I am taking at BBC calls for me to write a research paper on the Psalm of my choice. While I’ve read the Psalms several times over, I must admit that I was at a loss over what Psalm to choose. That’s when Stefanie informed me, rather quickly, that her favorite Psalm was Psalm 37. As I began looking for sources, I found this little book on Amazon for only 70 cents (used). I had never heard of the author, Ron Mehl, but the reviews were positive and the price was right.

I can list on one hand the authors that I have truly felt blessed to read. A few names come to mind; Dallas Willard, Mike Yaconelli, and David Jeremiah all have touched me in a way other writers haven’t. I can now add Ron Mehl to the list. As you read his words, you can actually sense the closeness of Mehl’s relationship with God. It is hard to explain, but having read his book, I actually felt closer to God myself. Stefanie compared it to the feeling she got when reading The Imitation of Christ.

The beauty of this book is its simplicity. Written for anyone to understand, each chapter begins with a verse of two from Psalm 37. The author then offers reflections from his life, experience, and other Scripture to drive home the powerful nessage of the Psalm. The focus of this book is not on Theology or doctrine, but rather on Jesus Christ. It is a humble effort by a humble author.

If I have any complaint at all, it is that the book is too short. Mehl could of held my attention for another 100 pages easily. I am sure that this is a title I will go back to time and time again. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants insight into Psalm 37 or, as the title suggests, anyone who has a troubled heart.

Jesus, Interrupted Review

Bart Ehrman is all the rage these days.  His book, Misquoting Jesus, was immensely popular, earning him the status of being a household name.  He’s been on tons of press spots; heck, he even got interviewed by the distinguished journalist Steven Colbert.:)  With his followup, Jesus, Interrupted, Ehrman continues the same line of claims he began with Misquoting Jesus.  As a result of his writings, countless people who at one point claimed to follow Jesus abandoned their faith, as Ehrman “obviously” proved that the Bible was an unreliable document, and if the document is unreliable, the faith it speaks of must be unreliable as well, right?

 

Bart Ehrman is a competent scholar.  I think that’s what really baffles me about his writing.  No, I’m not saying what he is writing is dumb at all.  He’s obviously brilliant and has some good points to make.  The problem is, his generalizations and many of his one-sided assertions don’t mesh with a scholar of his caliber.  

 

Let me give you an example.  Ehrman says, “Most of the books of the New Testament go under the names of people who didn’t actually write them.  This has been well known among scholars for the greater part of the past century, and it is taught widely in mainline seminaries and divinity schools throughout the country.  As a result, most pastors know it as well.  But for many people on the street and in the pews, this is ‘news’.” (p.112)  The problem lies in his sweeping generalization that this is taught widely and that most pastors know this as well. In reality, he is talking about liberal scholarship.  Conservative scholars rise up to stand against his claims.  Ehrman makes it sound like all of academia (in the Christian world, at least), believes this.  In truth, many liberal scholars do while most do not.  To further the point, many books in the New Testament were NOT written by the person we traditionally associate authorship with.  News to you?  Yes, many letters were written down by what was called an amanuensis, a person who essentially took dictation down from the author.  So, in Galatians, it’s most likely Paul did not physically write the letter.  But, he did speak it, and his amanuensis wrote it.  Paul signed off on the writing, however, saying “See what large letters I write with my own hand!”  This doesn’t mean Paul wasn’t the author- it just means that as was typical of the day, he dictated it to someone else who wrote it down.  Paul likely read and approved the final copy as authentic.

 

Ehrman likes to speak about contradictions in the text.  The truth is, the contradictions he speaks about are there.  He says, “When students are first introduced to the historical, as opposed to a devotional, study of the Bible, one of the first things they are forced to grapple with is that the biblical text… is chock full of discrepancies, many of them irreconcilable.” (p.19)  He goes on to discuss discrepancies between stories contained in the gospels.  Ehrman fails to really capture the opposite view that each of these gospels are written from starkly different viewpoints, written to vastly different audiences.  Finally, the Bible nowhere claims to be a historical document.  God allowed things to be written through the eyes of the respective writer, and it’s natural that perspectives are different.  There are no theological discrepancies.  Sure, one gospel may contain a glimpse of a story (the crucifixion, for example) that seemingly has contradicting accounts (did Jesus cry out to His father and seem fearful of the cross or was He calm and collected?).  But reconciling these against the theological message of the Scripture is not a problem at all.  One must remember genre when discussing the Bible, as well.

 

A favorite topic of Ehrman comes regarding variants between Greek manuscripts.  Many scholars and critics use big numbers in an effort to make a point.  Sure, the NT has over 100,000 words, and 300,000 variants.  What liberal scholars fail to point out is that most variants are as simple as inverting the words Jesus Christ for Christ Jesus, or putting the letter n at the end of the word rather than in the word (the variable nu).  No cardinal doctrine is affected by this.  Another topic is copyist errors.  Ehrman claims that copyist errors throughout the centuries have led to an unreliable manuscript.  He also claims that the documents we have came hundreds of years after the original writing.  Again, in a case of selective presentation, he fails to mention that the earliest extant manuscripts have been traced back to 125AD, a generation from their writing.  No other ancient literature can boast anywhere near this claim.  What he has done is give stats that at first glance cause everyone to say, “Holy Cow!” without qualifying them (which would greatly reduce the shock value).

 

What bothers me is that his attempt to bring “what the scholars know” to the laypeople who this supposed truth is kept from doesn’t present all the information, leading good people who trust the Word of God to doubt their Holy book and the Christ it speaks of.  I enjoy when good scholars present their view but clearly state other views as well.  Ehrman writes matter-of-factly (and why shouldn’t he, it’s his book?) about heavy topics that are by no means “settled” in the academic community.  Textual Criticism has operated within ebbs and flows for the last two centuries, and competent scholars on both sides of the issues produce excellent scholarship.  But to present things as if they are widely accepted without giving the inverse argument is a scary place to be if I’m a scholar like Ehrman.  It undermines his credibility and causes deep doubt to set in the hearts of many people unnecessarily.   I’d encourage you to read Ben Witherington, Dan Wallace, Scot McKnight, and other competent scholars to see their take on the same viewpoints.  They frequently bring both sides of the issue into their writings.  Ehrman has a nasty habit of making his and other liberal scholars’ beliefs the norm.  

 

Here are three important takeaways I’d ask readers to think on.

• First, I think Ehrman is absolutely correct that pastors have not done a good job conveying some of the concepts he speaks of (NT manuscripts, controversies, etc).  I personally believe a healthy discussion about how we got our bible could do a lot of people good in the church today.  It’s important that as followers of Jesus, we have open and honest discussion about important issues like this, and people learn the history of the faith they engage in. 

• Second, I think it’s important for people to read from people who disagree with their beliefs.  Despite arriving at different conclusions than I have, I appreciate Ehrman’s contributions to the field of study.  He’s right- we need to talk about these issues.  They ARE important.  We shouldn’t shy away from them. 

• Finally, if you’re a pastor and you checked your brain at the door when you graduated bible school or seminary and your only reading today is popular how-to methods books, you NEED to read books about the Bible.  I can’t say that strongly enough.  The field of study didn’t stop when you left school.  It moves on.  People in your church are reading Ehrman and John Shelby Spong’s books, and they are filled with doubt, some eventually leaving the church and their faith altogether.  Don’t be ignorant of some things that are being discussed right under your nose.  I have a rule of thumb- I try to read a balance of 50% of books about the Bible/Bible-related and 50% about other subjects (practice, etc).  That’s why I read books like this one.  I want to know the current issues.  I want to learn what new discoveries have been made.  I want to keep my mind sharp.  When was the last time you looked at a commentary other than to pull a quote for a sermon?  When was the last time you thought about  how this book or that book arrived at it’s present state?  Dig!

 

Ultimately, I think Ehrman did genuinely follow Jesus as a young man.  I think his brilliant mind was afforded the opportunity to study with the best of the best (Dr. Bruce Metzger).  I don’t think the academics really were the reason he chose to go this other path.  I believe he began to wrestle with the problem of suffering (how does a good God allow suffering), and his bright intellect ate at him and overwhelmed his faculties, and once he crossed the line of doubt, his intellect kicked in yet again and took him down this path.  I understand that.  I know it’s a tough issue, and I admit I don’t fully understand it as well (although I can give you a nice textbook answer).  I think Erhman’s faith unraveled over this fact, and his academic mind began to see things in another light.  In short, God just doesn’t tell us everything.  We have to trust in Him and ask Him for truth.  Ehrman believes he found the truth, and is now an agnostic.  Jesus said “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”  I believe the truth Ehrman believes he has found has taken him down a defensive path of un-freedom.  I pray that his heart meets up with the Creator of all truth once again.