Ron’s #37: Short Cuts by Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver is one of my favorite short story writers. His short, terse prose paints a world full of broken people trying to fix broken lives. I first read a Carver short story in a literature class at Clackamas Community College (still the best lit class I’ve taken) where we read “The Third Thing that Killed My Father.” I knew there was something different about his writing, and I’ve loved him ever since. I think that if I were a writer, I’d want to emulate his style. Simple writing, uncomplicated story, believable characters.

Short Cuts is not an original collection. It was culled together for Robert Altman’s 1993 film of the same name. He took a sampling of stories for the movie, and this collection was released. While they are not my favorite Carver selections overall, there are gems here. My favorite in this collection is “A Small, Good Thing.” It tells the story of a couple dealing with the sudden death of their son on his birthday, finding solace in the local baker.

Many of Carver’s characters are people at the end of their moral rope, hopeless in marriage, work, or just life overall. While some may consider this depressing subject matter, Carver is able to show the need for grace in our lives. These people are people just like us: broken, imperfected, confused, in need of grace and hope.

If you are interested in exploring more of Raymond Carver, I suggest buying his collection, What We Talk about When We Talk about Love. In that book, you can read “The Third Thing that Killed My Father” and “Everything Stuck to Him.” The latter is one of my favorite stories of all short stories. I teach it almost every year to Juniors, and it still touches me as it did when I first read it.

Recently, Will Ferrell starred in a film based on a Raymond Carver short story, Everything Must Go. While it is not a good reflection of Carver’s minimalist style, it offers a sampling of the people who live in Carver’s universe.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2kXUY7SmkE

Ron’s #36: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I put my goal to read Moby Dick on hold in order to read The Scarlet Letter as I prepare to teach it with my AP Language & Composition class. As Hawthorne and Melville were friends, I didn’t think that Melville would mind.

While I read and taught The Scarlet Letter before, I never had the appreciation for it as I did in this reading. I was captivated by the story, but the language and style of its writing was preeminent for me. Hawthorne crafts a beautifully written story that tells the familiar tale of Hester Prynne’s public shame and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s private tormented guilt after an adulterous affair set in the backdrop of Puritan Boston. The story is simple, as Hester faces a judgmental crowd in the town, and Dimmesdale suffers from a burning conscience as he does not admit to his sin. One man, Roger Chillingworth—Hester’s husband—knows the secret and is bent on revenge against them both.

While The Scarlet Letter is often used to criticize and demonize the Puritan era, it rather shows the importance of what the consequences of sin lead to within our hearts. The public consequences are temporary, but the private consequences are far longer reaching as the “Hound of Heaven” chases after us to confess and repent. While Hawthorne does not condemn adultery as a sin, we see the destruction causes by infidelity with the Prynne family. Hester Prynne is indeed a model of feminine strength and virtue in accepting responsibility and guilt, but she also provides us a picture of the results of our sin and the need for redemption in a Savior.

The book begins with this excellent line, showing the coldness of the scene and the tone of the entire novel:

 A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

In our first picture of Hester, Hawthorne contrasts the ugliness of sin with the beauty of the woman:

 On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.

If you are looking to read novels that you should have read in high school but didn’t, I heartily recommend starting with this one.

Ron’s #35: Coffee Shop Conversations by Dale & Jonalyn Fincher

Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk was a free offering in the Kindle Store for a short time. It was worth every penny I paid for it.

I enjoyed the premise of this book a great deal: People have a desire to talk about spiritual matters, so find ways to discuss them to bring a positive view of Jesus to the conversations. I think this is important in our evangelism. Often times, we are the ones who offend our friends and family, not the message of the Gospel.

“When our categories become more important than the people in the categories, we have become thoroughly modern adults who know how to justify our distance from our neighbor.”

“If we are eager to talk about Jesus’ sacrifice, we need to show them our own willingness to love them with sacrifice. We may find ourselves welcomed into someone else’s life when we lay down our sword of ridicule. Mocking others, even behind their backs, destroys our capacity to respect them when we speak face to face.”

“We’ve learned to bring up Jesus first and not our denomination, church’s name, or even the word Christian. Labels have baggage. We don’t want to be too quick to slap a label on others because we want to know them individually.”

I was reminded what I learned from Greg Koukl’s excellent book, Tactics, and it was indeed a good reminder. However, there was much to get in the way of the message in this book to make me not recommend this. I will list three of them.

The first is the writing style. One of my biggest annoyances is when two people co-author a book, and they both take part in telling the story. The Finchers go further in this by putting their name in parentheses whenever the person telling it switches. Annoying and distracting. It continued throughout, and I never got used to it. It seems amateurish.

The other was Jonalyn’s harping on egalitarianism (the philosophy that there are no distinct male/female roles in the biblical text. This is contrary to complementarianism, where male/female have different roles, but are equal in standing before God). She would offer mini-diatribes about it as though it was part of another book, but she was trying to cram it in here regardless if it were germane to the discussion or not. While I disagree with egalitarianism’s interpretation of key texts, I respect those who hold it and can articulate it well. Jonalyn is not one of those who can. Rather, it felt preachy and simple. In fact, my problem with this second point complements (pun intended!) my first criticism with the book. Jonalyn tries so hard to fight her way into equality that she not only needs to insert her name whenever she can, she also overshadows Dale’s stories. Ironically, her egalitarianism gave her a higher and more important role than her husband has in the book. Dale’s contributions are secondary to the story, and feel incidental to Jonalyn’s preaching.

To round out my criticism with the book is that while I love her focus on having important spiritual conversations, she seems to not have as high a view of Scripture as she has on conversations, whether about homosexuality or other world religions. Like the Finchers, I want to have important conversations about Jesus with those around me. However, I want to do that because of my love of Jesus, my love of others, and because of his love for them. All these reasons are grounded in the Bible itself. We are to be people of the Book, even those parts that we don’t like or understand completely.

If you are looking for a way to talk to others well and to encourage conversations on spiritual matters, skip this book and pick up Greg Koukl’s Tactics.

Ron’s #34: Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I’m not even a real runner. My friend recommended this book to me two years ago, and told me that it was a story of a tribe of excellent runners in Mexico. I thought it sounded interesting, but never rushed to read it. When I was in the States this summer, Born to Run came up again and again in airports, bookstores, and my conversations. I thought it was time to read it, and I’m so glad I did.

My friend was right that there is a tribe of super-runners in the book, but that is far from the whole story. The frame story of the book is the author’s experience with runner. The book begins with his visits to several doctors to find treatment for his many running injuries. He is told many times that running is bad for us, and that we all are injured. His only solution, he was told, is to quit running or get a few cortisone shots to relieve the pain. McDougall was not ready to give up on his sport, so he began a search to run better.

Throughout the book we meet the Tarahumara runners from Mexico, a cast of characters involved in ultra-running (any race more than a regular 26.2-mile run, usually 50 to 100 miles), and the strange, elusive Caballo Blanco, a white man from Colorado who lives among the Tarahumara. Much of the story is the background on the runners: Barefoot Ted is a character too wildly obnoxious to be a real man; Billy and Jen the surfer/runners, and Scott Carrier, the vegetarian super-runner from Seattle. Caballo attempts to bring all of these superathletes together for a 50-mile race in Tarahumara country.

Born to Run is even more than a fascinating story of an impossible race with superheroes. As McDougall continues to find out how to run better, he offers a history of running, running shoes, and the Nike marketing machine. Along the way, he preaches on the benefits of barefoot running, and how modern running shoes actually cause us injury. You’ve no doubtedly have seen those silly Vibram Five Finger shoes. Those skyrocketed in popularity in response of this book. Around where I live, people wear them seemingly as a fashion statement (a poor one at that!). However, this book made an excellent case for barefoot running, and I’ve been looking online for a pair.

McDougall offers us a book that defies to be labeled as one type of book. It’s part biography, auto-biography, magazine reporting, science journal, sport history, and man-vs-nature story. He does all of these well.

Do yourself a favor and read this book, regardless if you like running or not. Just try to leave your Five Fingers in the closet unless you are running.

Ron’s #33: Demonic by Ann Coulter

I know I’m going to catch flack for this one, but I am happy to say that I enjoy a dose of Ann Coulter once in awhile. She’s an intelligent woman who is a good writer, and she is often pretty funny. I think her jokes/insults go further than I would go at times, but it is difficult to disagree with her conclusions. Lots of folks say terrible mean things about her, but it is not about her major points in politics. In fact, when I told a friend that I was reading this, his first comment was, “She is so hateful.” I disagree with him, but it does show a persuasive opinion about her and other outspoken conservatives.

I’ll be brief on this book. I really enjoyed it. Coulter’s premise is that unruly mobs control and guide liberal politics in the world, whether through violent protests, ad hominem attacks, or fear tactics to force people in “politically correct” line. She offers an excellent overview of both the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The first was led by ideas, the second was led by knives and axes. Even the most anti-Coulter folks would enjoy these summaries. She continues in showing how violent mob protests are from liberals, almost never conservatives. When conservatives are violent, conservatives condemn them. Not so with liberals. Smashing windows, booing speakers, forcing people to leave for their safety are all praised as “power to the people” movements.

If you enjoy political discussions, this is a good addition. In fact, I would read your favorite liberal treaty if you read this one. Stop just blasting Ann Coulter without knowing anything about her work.

I’ll end this review with a few quotations that I highlighted because they were insightful or funny or both.

Liberals were more sympathetic to Islamic terrorists than they were toward President Bush.

Dissent is patriotic only when a Republican is president, and we must have “respect for the office” only when a Democrat is president.

Jimmy Carter was unable to comment because he was in Pyongyang with Habitat for Humanity building Kim Il Sung a new missile silo.

This country’s founders were strongly against the mob—as are today’s Tea Party patriots. Noticeably, modern Tea Partiers haven’t engaged in one iota of property destruction, in contradistinction to nearly any gathering of liberals.

Liberals hate the idea of a revolution by gentlemen, which is why they celebrate hairy, foul-smelling revolutionaries like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Susan Sarandon.

The mob demands total chaos in sexual traditions, morals, and decorum—but fascistic uniformity when it comes to opinions.

Liberals loathe conservative women beyond reason, perceiving them as the natural keepers of religious faith and morality.

Ron’s #32: Erasing Hell by Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle

Rob Bell’s Love Wins made quite a stir in March as it proposes that no one will go to hell, and that all will, in the end, go to heaven. Because of God’s love, the salvation of all mankind is a reason to rejoice that “love wins.” Sounds like a good story, but the problem is that Jesus spoke of hell often, and he seems to disagree with Rob Bell’s premise. Between Jesus and Rob Bell, I’ll choose Jesus, even if Bell has cooler hipster glasses.

The doctrine of hell is not one that excites me and brings me joy. In fact, I try to avoid thinking about it when I can. If Jesus is telling the truth when he says that he is the way, the truth, and the life and that no man may go to the Father except though him, that means there will be others—many others—outside of the Father in hell. This is troubling and motivating.

I’m usually not interested in books that spring up to counter or critique another book, and I was a little shy about reading this, thinking that it would attack Rob Bell on his views of non-hell. Gladly, I was wrong in my fears. While this book addresses Rob Bell a few times, the content is more on the bigger debate on hell, its presence, its purpose, and its punishment length. It’s a good cross between being scholarly-technical and clear for the average reader (like me). Erasing Hell is not about knocking Rob Bell down, or even in revealing that our neighbors will burn in everlasting fire like some sideshow preacher; rather, it is a sobering look at a doctrine that is in the Bible, discussed by Jesus, preached by Paul. Shouldn’t we look into it ourselves to see if these things are true?

If it is true, Chan and Sprinkle contend, this should change the way we speak, think, and pray.

Here is an excellent quotation that I think captures the essence of the book:

“This is not just about doctrine; it’s about destinies. And if you are reading this book and wrestling with what the Bible says about hell, you cannot let this be a mere academic exercise.  You must let Jesus’ very real teaching on hell sober you up.  You must let Jesus’ words reconfigure the way you live, the way you talk, and the way you see the world and the people around you.”

This book helped me to see this a little better.

(Post script) I just read Mark’s review after finishing mine, and they are remarkable similar, even down to the one quotation. This goes to show why we are such good friends! He is a bit better because he has a video. Mark Wins.)