Great Books Archives - Page 21 of 26

Child of God

When I am asked to pick one contemporary author whose books are most likely to be called Great Books in a hundred years, the answer is easy. Cormac McCarthy.

The best thing about making predictions for 100 years from now, is that there is no chance of having to explain how I could have been so wrong.

Child of God is not McCarthy’s best novel, but it is brilliant in its laser–like precision in asking a question.

The novel is about a social outcast, a homeless guy who is loved by nobody, has no friends, no means of support, and no social capital. The novel opens when Lester (our protagonist) has his homestead sold after being taken by the county, presumably because friendless, jobless misfits have little ability to pay property taxes. Lester then wanders into the hills to live, with no means of support and few possessions of any type. Throughout the novel, he interacts with others, but never once does anyone treat him as anything much above subhuman. Yet, as McCarthy introduces Lester, we read:

To watch these things issuing from the otherwise mute pastoral morning is a man at the barn door. He is small, unclean, unshaven. He moves in the dry chaff among the dust and slats of sunlight with a constrained truculence. Saxon and Celtic bloods. A child of God much like yourself perhaps.

Much like yourself, indeed.

When you think about people like Lester, what do you feel? Do you have an obligation to love Lester? Is it your obligation to notice Lester? Do you have an obligation to help Lester? Because, you see, nobody else loves or cares for Lester; nobody else is going to help Lester. He is a child of God, much like yourself. So, what are your obligations toward Lester?

And, by the way, Lester is a necrophiliac. Does that change anything?

Oh, and he isn’t just a passive necrophiliac. Sure, his first girl was dead when he found her, but after that, he created the corpses himself. Does that change anything?

At what point does our friendless, loveless, social outcast deserve to be a friendless, loveless, social outcast? But, before you go dismissing Lester as something beneath notice, just remember he is a child of God…much like yourself perhaps. That sentence, which occurs on the second page of the novel, haunts the entire story.

One part of the Reader wants to dismiss Lester as something Other, but another part of the Reader knows the Truth. Deep down, are you really any better than Lester? Are any of us really any better than Lester? And before you hastily answer that yes indeed you are different, ponder what entitles you to be considered a Child of God while Lester is not.

Stephen Crane could have provided the epigraph to this novel.

I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
And carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said, “Comrade! Brother!”

The End of Work

I once mentioned to a friend of mine that I was determined to read more Hermann Hesse.

He enthusiastically told me that I simply must read Beneath the Wheel, that it was by far his favorite book by what turns out to be one of his favorite authors.

I had no idea that Hesse was among anyone’s favorite authors, let alone someone I knew, let alone someone I knew who didn’t dress in all black with black earrings and black fingernail polish. (Truth be told, I have no idea why I associated Hesse with that particular type of person. Really no idea at all.)

You don’t have to hunt hard for the thesis of this book.

Nor did it occur to any of them that a fragile creature had been reduced to this state by virtue of school and the barbaric ambition of his father and his grammar-school teacher. Why was he forced to work until late at night during the most sensitive and precarious period of his life? Why purposely alienated from his friends in grammar school? Why deprived of needed rest and forbidden to go fishing? Why instilled with a shabby ambition? What had they not even granted him his well-deserved vacation after the examination?

Now the overworked little horse lay by the wayside, no longer of any use.

Yep, overworking young school children, turning the academic enterprise into drudgery and endless hours will destroy them. By about a third of the way into this book, you know it won’t end well.

My first thought: I wish some of my students would read this book. I have far too few students who know anything at all about the joy of learning. Too many college students treat school work as nothing other than tedious, arduous tasks. Why shouldn’t school be fun?

My second thought: my first thought is wrong. I wish some of my students would not read this book and actually learn that not all of life is having fun, but sometimes you have to, you know, work. Sometimes, you have to spend some long hours (yes, hours, not minutes) studying.

My third thought: one thought does not fit all.

My fourth thought: one thought does not fit any. As I ponder the book, I realize that I have a hard time connecting the details of our protagonist’s life with the modern age.

I have students who are too obsessed with grades, far too obsessed with grades, students who take no joy in school, who in one sense feel just like our protagonist in the way they see school work as something which chains you to a desk to learn ever more, but who seem to miss out on the rest of life because they are so obsessed with learning exactly what needs to be learned for a class and nothing else. But, it is rare that those are also the students who work the hardest in a class. (This may be a product of the place where I work; it may be different at other schools. Indeed, there is reason to think that it may be different elsewhere.)

I have other students who are a bit too obsessed with recreational activities, who take their school work lightly, and who could benefit from, you know, working. But those are rarely the students who are actually most enjoying their leisure; 14 hours of Netflix and social media per day is not as enjoyable as it might sound.

The longer I ponder this, the more I realize: the idea of work is dead in educational institutions. What is the proper end of work? I suspect very few students could offer an answer, even a bad answer, to that question.

And what about those of us who are no longer students? We work to earn a wage. For some of my friends, it is obvious what constitutes the end of their work. For college professors? Ah, therein lies the rub: what is the end to which the work of a college professor should strive?

Faith of the Unchurched

Is it possible to have faith in the existence of God and not know you have faith? At first glance, that question seems a bit odd. Surely you know if you have faith. Right?

Graham Greene’s novel A Burnt-Out Case is a fascinating exploration of this question.

The protagonist is a world-famous Catholic architect, Querry, who shows up one day at a leper colony in the middle of the jungle in the Congo. Querry unrelentingly insists throughout the novel that he no longer has faith. Nobody believes him. The Catholic priests who run the leper colony, the atheist doctor who treats the lepers, the devout Catholic businessmen who is in awe of Querry, the journalist who tracks him down…none of them believe that Querry is anything other than the most devout Christian imaginable. Querry’s every action lends support to their faith that Querry has faith. Yet, Query says he doesn’t. Does he?

The title refers to the progress of leprosy. A patient has the disease and it runs its course, wreaking havoc with the body. After the disease has done all the damage it can do, the patient is released from the hospital as a burnt-out case; the disease has burnt itself out.

Querry is a burnt out case. Of that there is no doubt. But: what was the disease?

Is faith in God the disease and Querry has now suffered all he can from that belief and has now reached the end result which is unbelief? That is what Querry insists is true.

Or is unbelief the disease and Querry has now reached the end result which is belief, but he has not yet realized it?

It seems like it should be obvious which of those two things is the case, but the brilliance of the novel is that it is not clear at all.

The central question of this novel is of immense importance in the modern world. We see the constant lament that children who have grown up in the church have left the church. We see the rise of an entire generation which professes to have no religion. The common reaction to this state of affairs is the defensive cry asking how to bring this generation back to the church.

But, imagine for a second that many of the people in this generation who say they have no faith are wrong about their own beliefs. Imagine for a second they do have faith, they just don’t know it.

Why would this be? Imagine you grew up in a church which had entombed the message of the gospel, that the message of the church never felt alive to you. Imagine you confused your lack of attachment to the church of your youth with a lack of attachment to God. And then imagine that in your confusion, the church insisted that if you lacked attachment to the church, then you lacked attachment to God. What if you believed the church when you were told that?

If that is the case, and having talked with a large number of college students who grew up in the church, I suspect it is, then it calls for a radically new message.

The message needs to become: the church is flawed, it is full of sinners in need of the grace of Christ. If you think the church is flawed, then you are right. But, the failures of the church are not evidence of the nonexistence of God. You think you don’t believe in God, you think you don’t have faith that there is a God because the church seems so flawed, but consider for a moment that maybe, just maybe, deep down inside, you do know there is a God.

As Querry thinks, and maybe even concludes: “The King is dead, long live the King.”

The Oddity of Trust

Trust is a strange thing.

I started Melville’s The Confidence-Man expecting a novel. I discovered something else. What? I am not sure what it was. There is a story here, if you define story loosely, very loosely. On a Mississippi riverboat, there are a lot of conversations. The whole book is conversations.

There is presumably—it is never stated explicitly—one person—presumably the titular character—again, it is never stated—who is a party in all the conversations in the book. But, said person is constantly changing everything about himself from conversation to conversation. In one conversation he is a wealthy seller of stock, in another he is a seller of patent medicine, in another he is dressed as a harlequin. The parties with whom our titular character converses change too, but not always. Sometimes the same person has conversations with multiple incarnations of The Confidence–Man. Confused? It gets better. There is no narrative progression from conversation to conversation. The book starts with a blind man (presumably the main character) walking through the crowd with a signboard. It ends with a conversation in the dark with (presumably) our main character leading a blind man to his bunk. In between? Uh…never mind about it getting easier to describe.

So, this isn’t really a novel. It isn’t really anything. The closest thing would be a series of conversations all of which more or less, usually less, are about confidence. At first, I thought the book was going to be a long build-up to finding out how The Confidence-Man was setting up some elaborate scam on board a ship. But, the scam never materializes. There are lots of scams—well, at least I assume they were scams, but since there never really is a story which goes anywhere, why do I mistrust the Confidence Man? Maybe they weren’t scams at all. Maybe the stock being sold was real. Maybe the charity was real. Maybe the crippled guy really was a crippled guy.

All of which leads to the question of trust. I don’t trust the Confidence-Man in this book. I think it was one guy who kept changing his appearance. But why? Why don’t I believe all these people were genuine and different people? Why do I have no confidence that the characters in this book are actually who they say they are?

This is a whole book with conversations about the nature of confidence. It is meandering and convoluted and odd.

So, getting at the question another way: Why does anyone ever trust you? We often talk about when you should trust other people. But, why should you, the Reader, be trusted? What makes you, the Reader, worthy of trust? And if you had to convince someone that you were worthy of trust, how would you do that? Is the way you would convince someone you were worthy of trust the same as the way others could convince you that they are worthy of trust?

I think about trust a lot, actually. Why do people trust me? I am never quite sure. It is not that I think I am unworthy of trust. It is that I have no idea how anyone ever arrives at the conclusion that I am worthy of trust. What is it that I do that signals to someone else that I can be trusted? How do people know I am not running some elaborate scam? How do people know I won’t instantly betray them?

Could I sell patent medicine to total strangers on a Mississippi riverboat? I don’t think so. But, that is because I cannot imagine ever perpetrating such a scam and so I have an impossible time imagining I could be convincing.

I realize that a trustworthy person would have a difficult time gaining trust under false pretenses. But, how is a trustworthy person able to convey that aspect of his nature? If trustworthiness is by definition not amenable to experimentation, then how is it displayed? This is not some hypothetical problem. Every day, every person has to constantly face the question of whether someone who was just encountered is trustworthy. We make the decision on trustworthiness instantly, all the time. How do we know?

Which gets me back to the book. Why do I mistrust the character in this book? Why do I assume all these people are really one person? Why do I assume that this is not one person is trying to demonstrate the importance of trust? Why don’t I just think this is a book all about a virtuous person who got on a boat with the sole intention of improving the lives of everyone on the boat by enabling them to demonstrate trust in a complete stranger?

Trust is odd. And, after reading a book about it, I have no more answers to the quandaries of trust than I had before I read it. Indeed, I feel betrayed by this book. I thought it was going to be a novel, and it wasn’t. I thought there would be a story, and there wasn’t. Melville has betrayed my trust.

Watching the World Go By

“An occasion for serious study and reflection.”

In the late 19th century, Stephen
Crane (shortly before he published The Red Badge of Courage) spent a few years writing accounts of New York City, collected by the ever-invaluable Library of America. In “Coney Island’s Failing Days,” we read this:

As we walked toward the station the stranger stopped often to observe types which interested him. He did it with an unconscious calm insolence as if the people were bugs. Once a bug threatened to beat him. “What ‘cher lookin’ at?” he asked of him. “My friend, said the stranger, “if any one displays real interest in you in this world, you should take it as an occasion for serious study and reflection. You should be supremely amazed to find that a man can be interested in anybody but himself!”

The quotation there could stand in for a summary of the whole section. One imagines Crane wandering through the town for three years simply observing and writing down what he sees. We get portraits of the lowest of the low and the wealthiest. We get snapshots of odd moments in the life of the city. All done with Crane’s eye for the telling detail.

Is such observation enough? Crane certainly observes more than most. Is he right that the objects of notice should be grateful for the simple fact of being noticed?

Consider: “When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers.” In this brief sketch a man walking along with his boy falls to the ground, insensible. A crowd gathers. (The alert and perceptive reader can see from whence the title of this piece comes.) Five pages later, an ambulance has carried the man off. And what have we learned?

Curiously, Crane’s story is much like watching the evening news. Man falls. CNN reports on it. Next story. Sometimes we continue to stare after the ambulance as it leaves the scene. “It was as if they had been cheated. Their eyes expressed discontent at this curtain which had been rung down in the midst of the drama. And this impenetrable fabric suddenly intervening between a suffering creature and their curiosity, seemed to appear to them as an injustice.”

After finishing reading this set of pieces by Crane, I am quite troubled by it all. Compare it to, say, Evangelii Gaudium, Francis’ first encyclical. Francis was desperately trying to convince the Church, Christians everywhere, and indeed the whole world, that we need to pay more attention to the poor, the disenfranchised, the weak, the lowly. And surely he is right. But, Francis is missing the bigger point being made by Crane: do we pay sufficient attention to the not-so-poor and not-so-weak? Indeed, do we pay sufficient attention to anyone, anyone at all?

Man falls. Not just the poor man, but the rich man too. Perhaps the crowd surrounding the rich man is bigger than that surrounding the poor man, but is that enough? Shouldn’t we do more than watch, shouldn’t we also help the poor man out a bit? Obviously. But, what about the rich man? Should we say that since he has wealth, it is enough to gather around when he falls?

We don’t notice people as people. We notice that they fall, and we gather when they do, but who are these nameless people? Who was that student I just saw walk past my office? Shouldn’t I care?

Crane offers no solution; this is voyeurism, pure and simple. I am not sure what to make of it. I read about people in the depths of a coal mine in the late 19^th century and I think…I have no idea what I think. I read about gawkers gathered around a fire and I think, “Here I am gawking at the gawkers. I am being exactly as helpful as they are.”

Shrinking Man

Richard Matheson’s The Incredible Shrinking Man is, as the title might suggest to the perceptive reader, about a man who shrinks. Being written in the 1950’s, the cause of the shrinking was obviously going to be radiation. People were really worried about radiation in the 1950s. (Now we have become more sophisticated and only worry about radiation when it doesn’t involve giving up our cell phones.)

So, at one level the book is just another warning about the horrors of the modern world. Get in line.

Matheson is a good, solid writer—the tale never loses its forward momentum. It does this through a nice switching back and forth between our protagonist when he is less than an inch tall and the stops along the way to his (literal) descent into the microscopic. The story when he is small is a constant struggle to find food and ward off the seemingly mammoth Black Widow which hunts him. The story when shrinking is a series of set pieces about the problems of the world as one gets smaller and smaller.

There is a real terror at the heart of this book. It’s not the Black Widow. It’s this: every day, Scott (the protagonist) gets smaller (one-seventh an inch a day). From the outside, we think of Scott as getting smaller. But, flip the viewpoint—from the viewpoint of Scott, every day the world gets a little bit bigger.

As the world grows, the problems of the world grow. His wife thinks he is a freak. A child molester picks him up. His daughter loses respect for a father shorter than she is. Some local teenage hoodlums threaten him. The cat terrorizes him. The spider chases him down. His financial struggles grow day by day; he loses the ability to work; he dreads the attention of becoming a media sensation. And he is getting smaller. And smaller. He can count down the days until he reaches a height of zero. And as these problems grow, Scott can do nothing about them.

The book could easily have been entitled, with an Einsteinian relativistic twist: The Growing World.

So, imagine that life. You have problems. You know that not only will the problems not go away the next day, but that the problems will be bigger the next day. And the day after that they will be bigger still. And bigger the day after that. Eventually, what you see as problems now will be so large, you lose sight of them because you are focused on a whole new set of problems which have arisen. And they too will inexorably grow every day. Day after day after day. There is nothing you can do to stop your problems from getting larger and larger and larger. There is no way to halt the process, nothing at all that you can do.

How many days could you endure that life? How many days could you endure knowing, with utter mathematical certainty, that your problems will be larger tomorrow than they are today, and that will be true every day for the rest of your life, which isn’t long anyway because you already know the date at which you reduce to nothing.

What do you do? Curiously, the novel is not one of despair. Even though there is no end to the spiral downwards, Scott still struggles day after day to survive. He makes it through another day. Why? Is the survival instinct that strong? If you knew you were going to reduce to a height of zero in less than a week, would you too bother to wage war against a spider which is larger than you are? Would you endure a day of struggle and toil to gather up a few more cracker crumbs in order to feed yourself for another day?

Oddly, this book is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit. Yes, the world is a big, very big, nasty place, but Scott endures. Despite having no reason to endure, despite having no prospects for improvement, Scott endures.

This novel is included in the Library of America’s American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953-1956. Curiously, and I have no idea if this is by design or not, that is the same lesson as the other three books in this Library of America volume (Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants, Sturgeon’s More Than Human, Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow). The theme in all four is survival against all odds, survival in the face of despair.

That certainly was a theme in the air in the 1950s, but this volume has me wondering—is the consistency of that theme in the four books selected by Library of America for this volume a curious accident or would it have been the same if they had picked any four of the best of Science Fiction from 1953 to 1956? I have no idea.