Collected Miscellany

I am not usually that sensitive, but this post ticked me off. Michael Schaub over at Booslut takes a NYT story about a school wrestling with how to deal with student’s and parent’s complaints about the reading list and uses it to stereotype and mock Christians. Brittany Hunsicker didn’t like reading a book that contained passages about boys becoming sexually aroused and so complained to her teacher and, when her teacher was unwilling to help, the school board. This launched a process where the school board voted to take the book off the reading list, not ban in from the school, voted to put it back on, and eventually set up a system to let parents no what is on the reading list.

Because Brittany didn’t like the book and because she is a Christian Mr. Schaub makes a snide comment about how “lucky Brittany gets to tote her seven bitter children to Bible study class.” Now I realize that this is just a smart ass comment likely offered of the cuff, but is nonetheless indicative of the kind of sentiment one runs into frequently. Christians who object to aspects of popular cultures are stupid unenlightened hicks likely to end up with large “bitter” families. Christians, particularly southern ones, are one of the last remaining groups you can feel free to mock and stereotype.

And Mr. Schaub can take this kind of pot shot because he knows all of his liberal, hip, urban friends will laugh at it and nod in agreement: aren’t those Christians stupid (and dangerous). As I noted above, this post originally ticked me off. But in the big picture it isn’t that big of a deal. What I do find sad is that Schaub took a interesting story where a community is trying to work out these issues in a fair and democratic way and all he can do is mock a girl he doesn’t know because she thinks differently than him. Nice work.

I find myself of two minds about The God Particle by Richard Cox. This should be exactly the type of book I enjoy: interesting intellectual hook, fast paced plot, and suspenseful ending. But despite the above, I found The God Particle a little disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong, if you enjoy techno thrillers that use real life science as a jumping off point for their extraordinary plots you will enjoy this book. The basic hook is creative: while a scientist searches for the Higgs Boson – the so called God Particle that unifies the universe – motivated by the pure search for truth and understanding (and maybe a little glory for himself) a sinister conspiracy is funding that search for more nefarious reasons.

Steve Keeley is on a business trip to Zurich when things go wrong. He has a nasty argument with his secretary; finds out that his girlfriend – to whom he had planed to propose when he returned to the states – is cheating on him; visits a cabaret/brothel and drinks himself into a impotent stupor; and finally wakes up only to have a bouncer throw him out of a third story window.

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I find myself of two minds about The God Particle by Richard Cox. This should be exactly the type of book I enjoy: interesting intellectual hook, fast paced plot, and suspenseful ending. But despite the above, I found The God Particle a little disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong, if you enjoy techno thrillers that use real life science as a jumping off point for their extraordinary plots you will enjoy this book. The basic hook is creative: while a scientist searches for the Higgs Boson – the so called God Particle that unifies the universe – motivated by the pure search for truth and understanding (and maybe a little glory for himself) a sinister conspiracy is funding that search for more nefarious reasons.

Steve Keeley is on a business trip to Zurich when things go wrong. He has a nasty argument with his secretary; finds out that his girlfriend – to whom he had planed to propose when he returned to the states – is cheating on him; visits a cabaret/brothel and drinks himself into a impotent stupor; and finally wakes up only to have a bouncer throw him out of a third story window.

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I noted yesterday that Human Events made a list of most harmful books from the last two centuries. World Magazine’s blog followed up that report by asking their readers to list the most beneficial books from that time period. Editor Marvin Olasky also throws out some thoughts in a couple posts. He writes, “I come out of it thinking there’s a big different between ‘greatest’ (or ‘best’) and ‘most beneficial.’ For example, George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm aren’t great novels, but they were certainly beneficial as the Cold War began in helping people see the dangers of totalitarianism and strengthing opposition to the Soviet Union. Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ, is also not great writing, but in the late 19th century it helped lots of people to come to Christ.”

I agree with commenter dad dog in nominating Richard Weaver’s “Ideas Have Consequences.” This should be required reading in the Ivy League; but then they would deconstruct it into meaninglessness.

Jess Walter is a writer you may not have heard of. He is the author of Over Tumbled Graves, a book I read a few years back and enjoyed. His latest is Citizen Vince out from Regan Books, a division of Harper-Collins. Judith Regan’s imprint is not known for crime fiction, but this novel alone could alter the perception that her books are torn exclusively from the frothy confines of Page Six.

Citizen Vince tells the story of Vince Camden, a demi-wise guy who finds himself exiled to Spokane, Washington in the autumn of 1980. Carter and Reagan are running for president against the backdrop of the Iran hostage crisis; mortgage rates are hovering at twenty percent. God knows what the vig on a Jets game is, but Paul Volker as Fed chairman is wringing inflation out of the economy with the gusto of a Survivor candidate eating worms. Spokane is depicted as a dreary town with the flat aspect associated with long haul trucking, motel architecture, and the middle of nowhere consensus that leaving town is always a good idea.

Vince enjoys the place, setting up a credit card theft operation while working as a donut maker. His presence in the witness protection program is the result of a miscalculation by prosecutors eager to believe that Vince is a stepping-stone to the top of the mob hierarchy. When a serious made guy named Ray Sticks arrives in town, Vince becomes a homicide suspect and bolts for the familiar territory of the Big Apple.

What sets the novel apart is Vince. He is appealing and interesting from the first page, a man of La Mancha with a good heart, poor judgment, and a lonely skill set he employs to survive. The story divides roughly into thirds, Spokane, New York, Spokane again, with a cop named Dupree taking some ink as a point of view character. All of the elements blend together for the climax and resolution, but Vince is the glue. When Vince, a convicted felon at age eighteen, exercises his right to vote for the first time, it strikes the prefect note in setting up the ending.

Jess Walter has yet to achieve a lot of fame as a novelist; that will change. His style is low-key, but the prose always rises to the occasion without drawing attention to the author. This light touch is antithetical to the bloated stylists of modern thrillers, yet the result is far more engaging, convincing, and ultimately enjoyable than the work of many of his competitors. Walters comes in, takes the ball, strikes out the side, and disappears into the dugout. Time for a curtain call.

For those of you not paying attention we are shinning the spotlight on Michelle Herman this week (and by “week” I mean “an indiscriminate period of time”). Tuesday we tackled her first novel Missing, today we move on to her next book, A New and Glorious Life, which is a collection of three novellas that inaugurated Carnegie Mellon’s short fiction series

The first novella in the collection, Auslander, was first published in Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America’s New Young Writers. The story centers on a translator living in New York who is asked to translate some Romanian poetry. The catch: she is asked to do so by a stranger who found her number in the phone book and the poetry is his wife’s and she doesn’t want her work translated. For a variety of reasons – pity, curiosity, the faint hope of a discovery – she agrees to meet with this gentleman; and subsequently agrees to read the poems but not to translate them without the author’s permission. Slowly but surely Auslander finds herself caught up in an awkward triangle between the wife, and brilliant poet, who refuses to have her work translated and the husband whose inability to let the issue go seems to be threatening the marriage.

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