[Not yet edited — sorry!]
Well, I actually finished these reviews in a fairly timely manner.  Hooray for me.
1. Christ’s Body in Corinth: The Politics of a Metaphorby Yung Suk Kim.
 In this, the third book of the recent “Paul in Critical Contexts” Series from Fortress Press, Yung SukKim is interested in presenting us witha Pauline vision of community that is far more open to diversity, and far less limited by boundaries, than many other more traditional readings of Paul.  Thus, Kim argues that it is Paul’s opponents at Corinth who are pushing for a very narrow vision of unity, whereas Paul is pressing the Corinthians to recognise and affirm the diversity that is embraced within the body of Christ.
Now, the term ‘the body of Christ’ is one that is very important to Kim in this book and, rather than seeing that term as synonymous with the word ‘ekklesia’, and thereby simply another title for the institutional church, Kim argues that Paul’s understanding of ‘the body of Christ’ refers to the practice of ‘Christic embodiment’ — the ‘body of Christ’ should be understood as a way of living, individually and communally, that is modelled after the crucified Messiah (Kim argues that it is only in the later Deutero-Pauline epistles that the meaning of ‘body of Christ’ is changed and institutionalised [Jonas, if you read this, perhaps this is a way of resolve our thoughts on ‘the people of God’ vs. ‘the Church’?]).
I find this interpretation to be quite interesting and exciting, but I felt sort of let down by the way in which Kim then applied this understanding of Christic embodiment by focusing almost whole-heartedly on ‘diversity’.  It is disappointing to see a concept with so much potential being used to simply reaffirm contemporary liberal-democratic values.  Surely the implications of this line of thought are much deeper than this!  (To be fair to Kim, Kim does mention how Paul’s understanding of this Christic embodiment was formed within the context of his radical relational acts of solidarity with the oppressed of his day, but Kim never really seems to urge a similar form of solidarity in our day.)
There are to other areas of Kim’s book that I find troubling.  First, Kim is so driven by his desire to shift our focus from unity to diversity, he never really deals concretely with the notion of boundaries around the community of faith.  Rather, boundaries are presented in a very negative light, and so Kim never spends time on situations that would seem to require boundaries — such situations are never recognised or addressed.  In my opinion, this seriously weakens his argument (not in relation to Christic embodiment, but in relation to his call for diversity).  Second, I found Kim’s source material to be a little odd.  Kim does engage biblical scholars, but he doesn’t seem to engage the most influential commentaries on 1 Corinthians (Matthew first pointed this out on his blog), instead Jacques Derrida seems to be his primary dialogue partner.  Now let me be clear, I’m not opposed to scholars engaging in inter-disciplinary work — far from it, I wholly affirm this endeavour and think that most scholars should be inter-disciplinary (my own thesis is a blend of biblical studies, theology, social theory, economics, and philosophy!).  However, when a scholar chooses to write on a particular topic — like Kim does on 1 Corinthians — then it is good to know the key material related to that topic, before you draw in alternative sources.
So, all told, I think Kim has made an important contribution with his understanding of ‘the body of Christ’, it’s just that his application falls a little short.  Truth be told, this is often the case with biblical scholars, and it is certainly true of my favourite New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright, so Kim is in good company here.
2. Seek the Welfare of the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens by Bruce Winter.
This book is Winter’s study of how the early Christians approached politeia or public life (the Greek word politeia, usually translated into English as ‘politics’, is usually left untranslated in this book, because the word politeia is broader than our contemporary understanding of politics, as it encapsulates the whole realm of public life).  In particular, Winter is interested in showing that the early Christians were a civic minded group (and not a sectarian association), who wanted to seek the welfare of the city — a concept found both in the Old Testament and in Graeco-Roman literature.
Now, what is particularly interesting to me about Winter’s arguments is that he demonstrates that the early Christians could be both civic-minded and subversive, all at the same time.  Let me explain how this works.  In the society of Greco-Roman cities, the welfare of the city was largely dependent upon the benefaction of wealthy patrons and was, therefore, an outworking of the patron-client relationships that existed at that time.  To a certain extent, the wealthy benefactor would act as the patron of the city — providing food or games or building projects — and the city would respond as a faithful client — bestowing honours upon the benefactor through public recognition, inscriptions, perhaps an honourary statue, that sort of thing.  Thus, Paul calls upon Christians to at as benefactors in the realm of politeia.  However, Paul calls upon all Christians to act as benefactors, and this is the subversive element.  For, according to Winter, this means that Christians cannot simply accept client status, and live off of the benefaction of others.  Rather, they must be more proactive and learn how to benefit the broader community.  Thus, Winter asserts:

The secular client must now become a private Christian benefactor… when this social change was introduced into new Christian communities, it must have been the most distinctive public feature of this newly-emerging religion in the Roman East.

Of course, as Winter notes, the ultimate outworking of this would be “the abolition of the patronage system”!  Further, in a society wherein people were constantly driven to defend or increase their own status and honour, this would produce a community with an altogether different focus — the well-being of others.  Therefore, Winter concludes:

The Christian social ethic… can only be described as an unprecedented social revolution of the ancient benefaction tradition.

3. After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change by Bruce Winters.
In this book, Winter posits a very interesting thesis question: given the time that Paul spent in Corinth (18 months according to Acts), why didn’t he address the seemingly commonplace issues that he deals with in 1 Corinthians?  After all, it would make sense for Paul to have already addressed these things.  Yet, apparently, he did not.  Therefore, Winter posits a second question: What happened after Paul left Corinth that brought these issues to the fore in new ways?
Winter’s response to this question is summarised in the subtitle of this book: the Corinthians came up against some significant social changes, and the pervasive, and persuasive, secular ethics of the community in which they lived.  In particular, after Paul left Corinth, three things occurred: (1) a rapid rise in the prominence of the imperial cult; (2) the Isthmian games received a new location resulting in new benefits for citizens at Corinth; and (3) there were severe grain shortages.  Consequently, what Paul is doing is presenting a Christian alternative the the ingrained Romanitas of the Corinthian colony, which leads the Corinthians — including the church at Corinth — to respond these changes in a way that Paul finds distressing.
Winter then uses this insight — coupled with his thorough understanding of Greek language, Roman culture and the Corinthian context — to systematically work through the issues presented in 1 Corinthians, and I found interpretation of things to be exciting and enlightening.  To take just one example, Winter relates 1 Cor 8.1-10.21 to the recent establishment of the imperial cult on the federal level, and its close relationship to the Isthmian games.  As part of the celebration of these games, Roman citizens at Corinth were invited to feasts hosted by the President of the Games, in honour of the imperial cult.  There would likely be great social pressure to attend these elitist festivities.  Therefore, the challenge Paul is facing from some at Corinth, is that they are seeking to justify their privilege, and their presence amongst thoseof higher status, by arguing that there is really only one God and that idols are nothing (and that, therefore, one can take part in meals related to the imperial cult).  Consequently, Paul’s response is that these Christians have been blinded by their rights as Roman citizens (and it is these rights that Paul that Paul seeks to limit — not ‘Christian freedom’ per se).
I definitely recommend this book.
4. Walking Between the Times: Paul’s Moral Reasoningby J. Paul Sampley.
Nijay Gupta recently reviewed this book on his blog (see here) so I won’t repeat what he has already stated quite well.  I will, however, re-emphasise that Sampley, like many others, is absolutely correct to root Paul’s ethics in eschatology and apocalyptic Judaism.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that Sampley really understands the subversive nature of Paul’s apocalypticism (and apocalypticism in general) and so, in my opinion, this leads him to come to some faulty conclusions.  In particular, Sampley argues that Paul’s supposed faith in an imminent end of the world is expressed in a social conservatism, which leads to quietistic and spiritual (i.e. disembodied) approaches to issues like slavery, work, possessions, and the governing authorities.  Now, if Sampley truly understood apocalyptic literature, and that which gives birth to apocalyptic literature, than he would see that it is anachronistic to pair this spiritualised social conservatism with apocalytic Judaism.  Therefore, to pair the two together, as Sampleydoes, requires some sort of defense or justification — a defense Sampley  does not offer (no doubt because he misunderstand apocalypticism).
5. Pauline Partnership in Christ: Christian Community and Commitment in Light of Roman Lawby J. Paul Sampley.
In this study, Sampley is interested in exploring how Pauline partnership in Christ builds upon the partnership of consensual societas in Roman society and law. 
In Roman society, the consensual societas was a partnership wherein partners each contributed something to the association with a view towards a common goal.  Hence, these stand out because they are united around a common goal (and not a common background, family, or social standing), and because partners were treated as equals.  However, the consensual societas also tended to be fragile and fleeting due to a lack of regulations, due to the influence of greed, and due to the fact that they ended once the common goal was achieved.
Therefore, noting how language related to the consensual societas is found in Paul’s letters, Sampley argues that Paul uses this model as a part of his community-building (although he also recognises that this is not an all-pervasive model for Pauline communities), but is faced with the challenge of how to overcome the issues that tend to put an end to this type of association.  In resolving these issues, Sampley argues that Paul both introduces new members into the established partnership (an unprecedented innovation) and draws upon other models of interaction in order to maintain the community of faith.
This book provides some information that is useful for painting a complete picture of what the Pauline communities were like, and how they related to their own time, but it seems to me that all the key points could be stated in a much shorter article.
6. Holy Fools: Following Jesus with Reckless Abandon by Matthew Woodley (many thanks to Mike Morrell of the Ooze for this review copy).
This book ended up being a real delight to read.  In fact, it produced a mini-revival in me and touched me a lot more than a good many things I’ve been reading these days.  I actually found myself putting this book down, mid-paragraph, in order to pray, sing hymns or spend quiet time with God (the only other authors I’ve found that really do this to me with any consistency are von Balthasar and Nouwen… so Woodley has joined a pretty elite group!).
You see, I’ve been growing tired of simply speaking about God, and all these related topics, in language that is limited to ‘academic’ circles.  Increasingly, I am interested in learning how to communicate the insights gained in academica, within a broader context.  I am interested in this change for a few reasons. First, it is something that I need to time when I preach at my church.  Given that most of the members of my church are street-involved, and given that many members have various mental illnesses, how a preach a sermon is obviously very different than how I write a paper.  This is not to say that some of the insights or wisdom is lost in the proclamation of the Word to another audience.  Far from it, the insights are retained — there is no ‘dumbing down’ — but the words are modified and the method of presentation is altered.  Second, I have noticed that commentators on this blog will sometimes say things like, ‘now I’m not really an academic, so I’m not sure if what I say will make sense…’ or ‘I don’t usually comment because I’m not as educated as you or other people here…’ and I am tired of making readings feel as though they are stupid.  Because they are not.  The fact of of the matter is that many of these readers are actually probably smarter than me, or have excellent insights to offer… it’s just that academics create a language that ends up excluding and intimidating others.  So, those of us who are interested in participating in genuine dialogue within both the Church and the world (and thereby seeing the fruits that genuine dialogue can bear) must learn to modify our means of communication.
Woodley does exactly this.  he speaks of desire and discipline in ways reminiscent of Deleuze or Hauerwas and his disciples; he speaks of brokenness like Nouwen and Vanier; and he speaks of solidarity and ‘demolishing ghetto walls’ like liberation theologians.  But he does all of this in a clear and straight-forward way based not upon his readings of theologians, philosophers, and critical theorists (although he is certainly not ignorant of thesethings), but upon his engagement withthe Church Mothers and Fathers, and with the tradition of holy fools one finds within the Church — fools like Saint Francis, Saint Seraphim, Paul, Moling, Jesus, Mary Slessor, and many more.
Now, like many popular-level pastoral books, Holy Foolsis fairly anecdotal but, unlike most anecdotal books (wherein I usually skip the bulk of the stories to get to the point the author is making over and over), I found Woodley’s use of narrative to be both effective and interesting.  These are great stories, not just Sunday School illustrations.  Further, even the personal stories Woodley tells of his own movement from stale, status-oriented middle-class Christianity to holy folly, are useful and I think they help the reader to open up to what Woodley is saying.  Perhaps the author has discovered something of the charm that holy fools exhibit towards those they love — even as they call those people to alternative ways of living!
Having said all that, I should probably actually say something about the structure and content of this book.  Woodley structures this book around four awakenings: (1) awakening to a life of compassion (which involves subverting self-righteousness and demolishing ghetto walls); (2) awakening to a life of vulnerability (which involves ‘receiving the gift of tears’ and engaging our own brokenness); (3) awakening to a life of discipline (which focuses on discipline, prayer, and humility); and (4) awaking to a life of spiritual passion (which involves living with joy, walking with discernment, and partaking in a broader movement of holy folly).
I highly recommend this book.
7.  In Defense of Lost Causes by Slavoj Zizek.
I believe that I am turning a corner with Zizek.  This is now the fifth book I have read by him and, what do you know, he is beginning to make a lot more sense to me.  Now this could be the result of any number of things — perhaps he has begun to write more coherently, perhaps I have begun to think more incoherently, or perhaps I have gotten a better grasp of the things about which Zizek writes — but I am quite happy with this, and it is making me appreciate what he has to say more and more all the time.  Perhaps this is why this book is my favourite book of his thus far (it is also the longest one I have read by him, coming in at almost 500 pages).
Although Zizek has a lot to say in this book about a lot of things (I feel sorry for anybody who is assigned to review Zizek’s books so, if a person like Terry Eagleton can’t do a comprehensive review [see here] then I don’t feel so bad about my ramblings!) the main focus of this work is to review moments in history that now seem like tragedies based upon horrible manipulations of good intentions — tragedies like Leninism, like Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism, like Mao’s cultural revolution, and so on and so forth.  In exploring these moments, and other causes we now consider ‘lost’, Zizek persistently argues that there was something truly good, revolutionary, and redemptive involved in the occurance of those events.  In particular, Zizek is interested in returning to ‘messianic’ politics which seek the universal liberation of mankind by employing a mixture of solidarity and terror — the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’!  (You can see why Zizek is considered so provocative!)  Of course, he has much to say about this, and much more to say on other topics as he engages those from Lacan, Laclau, and Badiou, to Robespierre, Stalin, and Mao, but this book is never boring, and Zizek seems to be getting better at explaining the terms that he uses (which is quite the relief — perhaps he realised that nobody knew what the hell he was talking about half the time!), so I highly recommend this book.  In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I think I’m going to bite the bullet and read The Parallax View (which is said to be his magnum opus).
8. Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot.
I thinking I might be starting to change my mind about the value of reading plays.  After studying Shakespeare for five years in highshool — and concluding English departments were crazy for making us read works that were intended to be either viewed or performed (especially when there is so much good English literature out there) — I had decided that I didn’t want to ever read another play.  But then I read Camus’ wonderful play, Les Justes… and then I read Waiting for Godot… and now I’ve read Eliot… and I think I’ve changed my mind (who knows, maybe I’ll go back and read some more Shakespeare!).
Murder in the Cathedralis a wonderful bit of poetic prose (think of something like the voice of Michael Ondaatje in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid or of the voice of Timothy Findley in The Warsand you’ll know what I mean).  It is about the return of Thomas Becket to Canterbury in the 11th century and his subsequent murder by three knights acting on the desires (if not the explicit order) of Henry II.  In order to tell this story, the play is based upon Greek tragedies, employing a Chorus, and rooting religion and ritual in cycles of purgation and renewal.  A short but pleasant read.
9. The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher: A Novelby Rob Stennet (many thanks to Mike Morrell from the Ooze for this review copy).
Any book that is compared to the writings of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Douglas Coupland (comparisons made both on the back cover and by the author himself in an interview included at the end of the book) is setting the bar pretty high in terms of the expectations those comparisons create in the reader.  Unfortunately, this book doesn’t come anywhere close to clearing that bar.  Like nowhere close.
It’s too bad.  I tried to like this book, even though I’m immediately suspicious of fiction authors who need to be published by a Christian company — Zondervan in this case.  After all, quality fiction is quality fiction, and dealing more explicitly with religious themes never stopped a good book from being published by mainstream publishers.  So, the problem is that I’ve just read too much high quality fiction to be able to enjoy this book (one of the things I secretly really like about myself is the amount of quality ‘classic’ literature that I have read… but I guess that’s not a secret anymore… and I mention that here because it’s possible that I didn’t enjoy this book because I’m too much of a snob when it comes to fiction).  Regardless, the storyline was weak, the funny parts weren’t funny, the characters were superficial, the type of Christianity presented (and affirmed by the author) was repulsive, and so on and so forth.  Hell, the best part of the book was the opening quote from Vonnegut, but if you want to read that, I suggest you go and read Mother Night.

Unfortunately, I’ve been crazy busy lately, so these reviews (as inadequate as they are) have been delayed. My apologies for any spelling or grammar errors in these reviews. I have yet to reread them in detail (Busy, you know? Did I say I was busy these days?)
1. Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World by John G. Stackhouse, Jr.
I’m still hoping to find the time to write a more detailed review of this book, so I’ll leave this to the side for the moment. Essentially, this book is Stackhouse’s attempt to find a ‘third way’ of being Christian today. Therefore, Stackhouse formulates a way of being Christian that eschews the poles of triumphalism and sectarianism, while actively, but ‘realistically’, seeking the greatest possible good in the world in which we find ourselves. To be honest, I’m pretty conflicted about what Stackhouse has to say. For example, he uses the language of ‘realism’ to argue that perfection is impossible and so we must accept some compromise in order to attain to the limited good we are able to achieve. Hence, amongst other compromises, he argues in favour of ‘just’ forms of violence and war. In terms of accepting violence, Stackhouse and I completely disagree with each other as I believe that — short of some sort of massive divine act of affirmation — violence is never an option for Christians. Therefore, this makes me want to refuse Stackhouse’s understanding of ‘realism’. However, when I think of my own approach to some things, and other non-violent approaches of which I have spoken approvingly (say, for example, those in Europe who lied and deceived the authorities in order to harbour Jews during WWII), I have realized that there is also some ‘compromise’ involved in these things. Thus, for example, I have absolutely no problem with lying to authorities in order to save a life; but I have major problems with taking a life in order to save another life. Consequently, Stackhouse’s argument would suggest that I have created an arbitrary distinction amongst two actions that are both compromised. Very interesting. I haven’t yet determined where to go with this. However, I’ve met with Stackhouse to discuss his book, and will hopefully meet again with him in the near future, so I’ll save further thoughts for later.
2. Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology by Jurgen Moltmann.
This book, which functions as something of an introduction to theology, is actually the conclusion to Moltmann’s “contributions to systematic theology” series. Although other theologians tend to deal with method and other traditionally prolegomenal matters at the beginning of their contributions, Moltmann argues that such things are best left to the end, after one has spent several years (or decades) exploring these things. Method, Moltmann suggests, is something that emerges as one actually does theology, not something that can be predetermined. Further, is is only after that work has been done, and those years have gone by, that one can comment on the various foci and emphases that determine the work of other theologians.
So, this book is broken into four main parts plus an epilogue. In part one, Moltmann asks, “What is theology?” wherein he explores the significance of one’s own Sitz im Leben/locus theologicus. He works through the relationship of theology to one’s experiences, to the church, to the university, to atheism, and to other faiths. Ultimately, Moltmann argues that God is the centre of theology and the theolgians is most defined by his or her “passion” for God. Significantly, Moltmann means “passion” in both senses of that word — God is both the torment and the delight of the theologian. From here, Moltmann wishes to draw attention to three aspects of Christian theology: its historicity, its reasonableness, and its natural-ness. The historical aspect of Christian theology must be emphasised because it is grounded in the biblical narrative, the reasonableness of Christianity must be understood in solidarity with (and not over against) Christian hope and love, and the natural-ness of Christian theology is, itself, that natural-ness that is revealed by God.
In part two, Moltmann goes on to clarify some of the key concepts that are central to his first break-out book, Theology of Hope, and which ocntinue to run through his work. He explains his use of the terms like ‘promise’, ‘covenant’, ‘hope’, and ‘future’, which are all a part of his broader ‘hermeneutic of hope’, which seeks to ‘interpret God’s promise, out of which the awakened hope makes men and women creatively alive in the possibilities of history’. This then leads Moltmann to conclude with some reflections on various theological epistemologies.
In part three — probably the part that I found most exciting, although I really enjoyed the whole book — Moltmann explores various streams of liberation theology, from the perspective he brings given his own locus theologicus. Thus, he explores ‘black theology for whites’, ‘Latin American liberation theology for the First World’, ‘Minjung theology for the ruling classes’, and ‘Feminist theology for men’. Throughout, Moltmann is concerned to discovers ways in which both the oppressed, and the oppressor are able to overcome the dehumanization that occurs amongst all parties, when oppression is operative (this particular emphasis has always been one of Moltmann’s strengths — which is quite apropos given that Moltmann writes as a German survivor of WWII).
Then, in the final chapter of this section and, IMO, the best chapter in the book, Moltmann poses a series of ‘unanswered questions’ for liberation theologians. Here are the questions that he asks:
(1) If praxis is the criterion of theory, what is the criterion of praxis? In response to this, Moltmann argues that it is Christ, and the discipleship of Christ crucified (who is also not present in the poor, the sick, and the children), who must be the criterion for praxis, and for the praxis of justice supported by liberation theologians.
(2) If the crucified people are to redeem the world, who then redeems the crucified people? On this point, Moltmann suggests that the liberation theologians are simply adding to the burden of the poor — not only are they burdened with the consequences of our sins, they are now also burdened with being made the agents of our salvation. The people, Moltmann argues, must be called to ‘break their chains and throw them away’; they should not be called continue to bear the sins of the world.
(3) If the goal of liberation is to make the people the determining subject of their own history, what is the goal of that history? In other words: if the goal is liberty, what is liberty for? Moltmann argues that liberty ‘must have as its goal justice, peace and the integrity of creaiton, in expectation of the coming kingdom of God’.
(4) Does liberation theology lead to the liberation of the poor and women from Christian theology? Given what we now know of Christianity’s complicity with forces of colonialism, imperialism, and oppression, Moltmann wonders if liberation theology risks leading people away from Christianity back to pre-Christian forms of religion.
In part four, Moltmann returns to a (perhaps the?) dominant theme in his own work: the Trinity. Here he discusses his reasons for focusing upon this theme (its political significance, its rootedness in a theology of the cross, and ways in which he has been influenced by Orthodox theology). He then reiterates some of what he has said about the historical nature of our understanding of the Trinity, before going on to explore a more spatial understanding of the ‘broad place’ of the Trinity. Hence, Moltmann’s prior, more eschatological, understanding of the Trinity, are filled out by an understanding of the Trinity as a ‘home’ defined by perichoresis. He then relates this to the person’s of the Trinity, to our experiences of the Trinity, to our relationships with one another, and our relationship to society more broadly.
Finally, in the epilogue, Moltmann concludes with some thoughts on the relationship between theology and science.
All told, this is a really excellent book and a fantastic introduction to Moltmann’s own thinking, as well as to the thinking of some other, complementary streams in contemporary theology. Usually I find books that deal with matters of method, and other prolegomenal issues to be rather dry and, well, boring, but this one was anything but that. Damn good.
On another note, it was also interesting to read this book at the same time as Stackhouse’s book as they nearly polar opposite approaches to the voices they choose as dialogue partners. Stackhouse is quite comfortable in prioritising white, middle or upper class intellectual men as his primary dialogue partners (i.e. those who are like Stackhouse) whereas Moltmann chooses to prioritise dialogue with those who are different than him. It makes for some interesting comparisons.
3. Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.
There are a lot of reasons why this is a really good book but let me be as clear as possible from the start: this is a really, really good book. Indeed, of all the ‘post-Marxist’ theorists I have been reading lately, I would recommend Hardt and Negri (H&N) as a starting point because they are able to saw, with great clarity, what many others say much more obliquely (notably Deleuze and Guatarri, but also Zizek and Baudrillard). If one reads H&N, one will be able to more readily understand the discussion that is going on in these circles.
That said, the primary thrust of H&N’s argument is that the new global form of ’empire’ is found within the politico-economic institutions of global capitalism. Their ultimate goal is to be able to resist this empire, but they emphasise that we must be certain of the nature of the empire we are resisting if we are to be effective. Hence, they argue that the Nation State has now been marginalised within the global context, and efforts that focus there are misguided. In order to make this point, they provide a captivating historical overview that spans from the middle ages up until the present, and focuses upon the ways in which sovereignty is maintained even after the shift from the plane of transcendence to the plane of imminence (i.e. while the plane of transcendence was used to control the masses in an earlier era, the movement into the plane of imminence is one that has the potential to overthrow the powers-that-be; therefore, the powers-that-be must renegotiate the socio-political sphere in order to maintain their sovereignty).
H&N offer a convincing analysis and criticism of the way things are. However, they are hesitant to offer much in the way of solutions, as they believe that such solutions will only be found ‘at ground level’ as the multitude (H&N’s multi-faceted alternative to codified ‘people’ created and controlled by the nation state) continues to assert itself against all forms of sovereignty. Indeed, they argue that it is the resistance created by the multitude that is the driving force of history, for, if things were left up to the power-that-be, they would ensure that everything stays as it is. Therefore, it is the multitude which is responsible for each new mutation in sovereignty, and it is the multitude, H&N suggest, that will ultimately be responsible for destroying empire as we know it.
Okay… hmmm… this reviews doesn’t sound nearly as exciting or stimulating as the book is, so don’t let that throw you off — you should read this book.
4. Social Aspects of Early Christianity by Abraham J. Malherbe
Malherbe, along with E. A. Judge and Gerd Theissen, is one of the key foundations for current sociological readings of the Pauline letters. Such readings were largely inspired by Adolf Deissmann’s classic Light From the Ancient East. In that work, Deissmann argued that Paul, his companions, and the churches he helped birth, were firmly rooted amongst the poor, uneducated, lower classes of Graeco-Roman society. Due to Deissmann, and others like Karl Kautsky and his Foundations of Christianity, this became the dominant sociological reading of the Pauline letters. However, Malherbe, Judge, and Theissen, all challenged this position, and have created a new consensus. They have convincingly argued that Paul’s churches had members from a range of social locations. Although the majority may have been poor and had little status, they have demonstrated that there were currently wealthy and relatively influential people in Paul’s churches and, in particular, in places of power in those churches.
Thus, in this book, Malherbe seeks to demonstrate that Paul would have been a person of relatively high status, with a level of rhetoric and an awareness of Greek philosophy, that demonstrates a level of advanced (i.e. privileged) education. Consequently, he seeks to demonstrate that Paul was drawn to people at a status level similar to his own, who then became the leaders in the local churches. Further, due in part to Paul’s social position, Malherbe argues that Paul was largely a political conservative who trusted in the social structures of power.
In my own opinion, Malherbe, Judge, and Theissen are correct to point out the mix of status levels in Paul’s communities. In this regard they offer an helpful corrective to Deissmann et al. However, I’m not convinced that Paul had such high status, nor am I convinced that Paul wanted those with high status in society to also have that high status within the church. Further, we should not forget that, although there was a minority of people in Paul’s churches who had relatively high status, there still were no members (that we know of) who came from the elite ruling classes, and the vast majority of members were still those with little status, who lived in poverty, performing labour work (a type of work despised by the aristocratic members of society — something those of us with a bourgeois Protestant work ethic should keep in mind when we read what Paul has to say about working with one’s hands!).
Even less convincing is Malherbe’s portrayal of Paul as socially Conservative. However, I’ll hold off commenting on that in detail, as I’m writing a thesis on that topic.
5. Paul: A Jew on the Margins by Calvin J. Roetzel.
I’ve got to say that Roetzel has been growing on me. I worked my way through the relevant sections of some of his earlier writings as a part of my thesis research (and felt mostly ambivalent about what he said), but this book certainly stands out, and seems to mark a self-acknowledged turning point for Roetzel himself.
This is how Roetzel explains the shift, his title, and his thesis:
I have come to see Paul more and more as a marginal Jew who stood on the boundary between religious convictions and cultural commitments that strained in opposite directions… He was marginal… in a double sense. He was pushed to the margin by his critics in positions in power, and he was able to exploit that location as a scene of radical possibility. But his life on the margin possessed a[nother] dimension… He was absolutely convinced that God had assigned him, like Jeremiah, to his location on the margin.
In exploring this type of marginal and ‘radical’ Paul, Roetzel roots Paul firmly in apocalyptic thought, for it is apocalypticism that especially gives to the margins the space for radical, even revolutionary, possibility. However, unlike other apocalpytic thinkers, Paul stresses the need to love and missionally engage with outsiders (rather than simply withdrawing and waiting for the destruction of those outsiders). Thus, Roetzel writes: ‘In a world in which oppressive inertia holds sway, apocalypticism envisions change — radical, dramatic, revolutionary, even convulsive change’. But in all of this Paul, due in part to his embrace of his own marginality, stresses a theology of the cross that counters any theology of glory, or any over-realised eschatology. Thus, Roetzel concludes: ‘Paul’s convictions and fertile mind combined to exploit that location to articulate a vision that was so daring and so demanding that it was soon compromised, and yet it remained in these seven occasional letters to subvert the very compromises made.’
Not surprisingly, I enjoyed this book very much. It is pregnant with (mostly) unexplored implications for how we live today as Christians.
6. Social Distinctives of the Christians in the First Century: Pivotal Essays by E. A. Judge, edited by David M. Scholer.
Although I mentioned Judge above, in my comments on Malherbe, I should highlight that, although they agree on some things, they completely disagree on Paul’s relationship to society at large. While Malherbe sees Paul as a fairly high status defender of the status quo, Judge sees Paul as a social radical, who is trying to create subversive communities within the cities of the Roman Imperium. Thus, in these essays Judge explores a number of topics: the way in which the Christian associations were a genuine alternative to the ‘family values’ that were the conerstone of the empire, as well as an alternative to the impotent voluntary associations that existed in Paul’s day; the way in which Paul deliberately eschews the relatively high status he possessed in an act of ‘radical self-humiliation’; the way in which Paul conflicts with Jewish and Greek ideals; the way in which Paul subordinates individual rights to the needs of others; the way in which he engaged in an ‘head-on personal assault on the status system which supplied the ideology of the established order’; and so on and so forth.
Judge really does seem to be ahead of his time in a lot of these essays, so it is good to see his insights bearing fruit in our time.
7. Theocracy in Paul’s Praxis and Theology by Dieter Georgi.
In this book, Georgi explores the way in which Paul understands God’s sovereignty, as well as the way in which that understanding impacts the kind of Christian politics practiced in the name of that sovereignty (yep, as you’ve already guessed from this one sentence, this is also a damn good book, and one that had me hooked from start to finish).
Given, Georgi notes, that God’s power and rule always had a political dimension in the Old Testament, it is not surprising to find that this carries over in the New Testament, in the lives of first century Jews. Further, Paul was rooted in rather radical streams of Second Temple Judaism: apocalypticism, Jewish missionary theology, and Gnosticism (well, two out of three isn’t bad!). However, this too is unsurprising, for, as Georgi states, ‘radicalism to the point of intellectual and political rebellion was not an invention of Jesus or his followers. It is the heritage of the Jewish Bible’.
However, Georgi argues that Paul rethinks all of these things in light of the fact that Jesus has been revealed as the Messiah and the Lord who presides over the order ordained by God. This, then, continues to have significant political and communal implications, and leads Paul to shape ‘collective alternatives to the ongoing community of the people of God’. In particular, Paul begins to shape communities that offer an alternative to the order, and power structures, found within the Roman empire. In making this point, Georgi provides a thematic, and rhetorical overview of Paul’s epistles, demonstrating the ways in which Paul is countering imperial ideology (i.e. Augustan theology). This overview (a stimulating read!) leads Georgi to conclude that Paul is not simply engaging in ‘passive resistance’ but is in fact engaging in active resistance — ‘an act of political aggression’ — which is precisely why Paul was charged with treason.
As I stated above, I really enjoyed this book. Another one that seems ahead of its time.
8. Travels in the Skin Trade: Tourism and the Sex Industry by Jeremy Seabrook.
For whatever reason, the location of Thailand (which is the focus of Seabrook’s book) seems to have dominated much of the mainstream press’s attention to the subjects of the sexual exploitation of children, human trafficking, and sex tourism. Granted, things seem to occur on a larger or more public scale in Thailand, but we need to remember that there is nothing going on in Thailand that isn’t also occuring in our own backyards (this is certainly true of the two cities I know well — Vancouver and Toronto — and I am sure it is also true of most other urban centres around the world). For this reason, I have tended to stay away from reading more detailed reports on Thailand, and have been trying to read literature that addresses what is going on in other places of the world.
However, I ended up picking up Seabrook’s book (in a free bin), and am glad that I did so. He brings a couple of comparatively unique emphases to his take on this subject. First of all, he continually links issues of sexual exploitation, trafficking, and sex tourism to the broader economic realities of global capitalism. He also emphasises the role that (predominantly American) military operations and bases have played in developing the sex trade in Thailand, and other Asian countries. This is an important emphasis because it causes us to begin to see some of the ‘big picture’ issues that surround sex work. It distances the subject from the question of personal vices, or morals, and reveals the broader systemic structures that undergird these things. Secondly, Seabrook’s approach is somewhat unique because he listens to voices on both sides of the issue. That is to say, her interviews women, children, and those who work on their behalf, but he also interviews a good many of the johns who go to Thailand. It was especially interesting to hear these men speak of how they understood what they were doing. Frequently, there was an interesting reversal, wherein the men saw themselves as victims (giving women or children money, and then feeling betrayed when it turned out that the women wanted more money!), and there was a continual justification process, wherein everyone involved rationalized what they did (this was true even of the pedophiles Seabrook interviewed — those who slept with thirteen year olds despised those who slept with eight year olds, and so on and so forth).
So, all in all, this book was an quick and interesting read. It is mostly full of interviews, and never goes into too much deal on the broader issues, but it would be a helpful primer for any who are interested in learning more about Thailand’s history with sex tourism.

Good grief, another month come and gone and I’m still buried in a paper that I am writing for a seminar on “Christianity and Capitalism” (it’s a little worrisome that I just finished typing up an 8 page bibliography [I always type my bibliographies first] for a paper that is only supposed to be 20 pages… I might be in trouble).
Anyway, on with my woefully inadequate reviews (hey, at least I’m actually doing reviews this month!):
1. Faith & Wealth: A History of Early Christian Ideas on the Origin, Significance, and Use of Money by Justo L. Gonzalez.
This is a damn good book, and one that is extremely relevant for those of us who have the ‘privilege’ of living within the context of a well-advanced form of global capitalism. Gonzalez traces the writings of the New Testament authors, and the Church Fathers, up until the fourth century, and what he finds is impressive. The issue of wealth was one that was addressed regularly (i.e. Christian reflections on economics need to go back to this period, and not simply begin with the Reformers, like Calvin — who, by the way, broke tradition with all the Church Fathers when he permitted people to lend at interest). What is especially impressive is the way in which Gonzalez shows that the early Christian attitude to property was basically the attitude of the Church described in Acts 2 & 4. Christians were said to hold all things in common with one another and, apart from the bare necessities, they were to sell everything superfluous and give the money to the poor (deserving or not!). I found this book to be very convicting, and I highly recommend it to everybody.
2. Easy Essays by Peter Maurin.
Peter Maurin, along with Dorothy Day, was a co-founder of the Catholic Workers’ Movement (although Day become more of the spokesperson, the impetus and vision were largely Maurin’s). Collected here are a number of his essays, published in short, very readable lines, intended for the working man or woman. It makes for quick reading, but Maurin writes with wit (he refers to Utilitarians as Futilitarians — oh snap!) and his focus on combining cult, culture, and agriculture in communities where the worker learns how to be a scholar and the scholar learns how to be a worker provides much food for thought (especially for those Christian academics who are interested in pursuing intentional community living today).
3. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures by Jean Baudrillard.
This book was so good, and so full of content, that it is hard to know how to describe it in a few sentences. Essentially, Baudrillard argues that, within the consumer society, signs and images have replaced reality because consumption is increasingly driven by the desire for status and distinction from one’s neighbour, instead of the desire to meet basic needs. Consequently, the consumer society is defined by its deep and “radical” alienation from reality and by its insatiable desires. As he makes this argument, Baudrillard engages in some fascinating studes of consumption, growth, personalization, mass-media, the body, time, solicitude, and affluence. Of course, I’m basically murdering this book in this review, as it is probably the best work of philosophy that I have read this year. I would likely make this required reading for any who are studying capitalism (along with the Gonzalez book, and the Klein book I mention below).
4. Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International by Jacques Derrida.
You know, I’m really beginning to wonder if Derrida is really worth the time it takes me to figure out what the hell he is talking about (an especially frustrating process given that, when I finally do figure out what he’s talking about, the content of what he is saying can usually be massively reduced and stated in much simpler language without much harm being done to anybody). This book was a bit of his shout-out to Marxism, after Marxism had (supposedly) been defeated with the collapse of the USSR (because, you know, he didn’t want to talk about Marx before that, lest he was identified with the wrong kind of Marxism and ended up *gasp* being misunderstood — which really seems to be Derrida’s problem: he’s so afraid of being misunderstood that he spends so much time hedging what he is saying that it takes for-freakin’-ever to understand him!). Anyway, apart from two chapters, one on the underside of capitalism and the atrocities it has wrought, and one on Fukuyama and the neo-evangelists of capitalism, I hardly connected with this piece. I wouldn’t recommend it, and I think it’ll be awhile before I think about reading Derrida again.
5. Fascism: what it is and how to fight it by Leon Trotsky.
You know, I imagine that the USSR would have been a very different place if Trotsky had beat out Stalin but, as with any power structure, it seems like the ‘bad guys’ always win (whether that is exemplified in communism in Russia or democracy in America). Regardless, I think that, given the option of choosing how to die, being killed by an ice-pick to the head while living in exile in Mexico would be pretty high on my list. But I’m getting off topic… this book (hardly a book, more like an encyclical) is a combination of selections on fascism pulled from Trotsky’s oeuvre. It was interesting as an historical piece (i.e. especially interesting is his analysis of the rise of fascism in Germany and the way in which he is able to foresee some of the dire consequences before they occur) but I didn’t find it to be all that helpful in exploring the topic of fascism itself. It has, however, whet my appetite for Trotsky and I’m discovering that his books are hard to find.
6. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.
This very well might end up being the best book I’ve read this year. That is to say, I think that everybody should read this book. Klein engages in a decimating examination of neoclassical economics (i.e. the dominant form of contemporary capitalism) as it has arisen to a state of global dominance. In country after country, from Chile, to Poland to China, to the United States and Iraq, she demonstrates the horrendous human cost of imposing the ‘free market’ ideology that was perpetrated by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School (or, as I like to call them, the MFers). If this book doesn’t make you reconsider your attachments to Western culture, then I think we’re pretty much screwed.
7. Economics Today: A Christian Critique by Donald A. Hay.
Speaking of being screwed, if I really believed that Hay accurately represented the Christian approach to economics, then there is a good chance I’d convert to a violent form of socialism. Hays approach to Scripture, theology, and hermeneutics is shallow and borders on the absurd (when, for example, he quotes Jesus’ reference to divorce being allowed in the OT due to ‘hardness of heart’, as an authoritative text for the pursuit of capitalism as a necessary ‘second best’ option, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry). Not surprisingly, at the end of the day, Hay just ends up proposing a form of economics that looks almost identical to contemporary capitalism — except that everybody is just a little nicer to everybody else. Whoop-dee-doo.
8. Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World by Benjamin R. Barber.
This book was alright, I suppose. Maybe it’s hard to give it a fair shake after reading Klein’s tour de force. Essentially, Barber argues that both globalisation and violent forms of resistance are opposed to democracy and actually mutually support one another. Hence, the more of globalisation we see, the more of ‘jihad’ we will see, and the less democracy we will have. I think it’s a good point, but I think Barber’s solution (recover the values of civil society as they were first proposed by liberalism in the 18th century) is flawed and too dependent upon the what William Cavanaugh calls ‘the myth of the State as saviour’ (although, in this case, it is a democratic civil society, which is somehow vaguely differentiated from that state, that ends up saving us).
9. Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking and Resistance by Louisa Waugh.
I was a little disappointed in this book. It had its strong points — highlighting trafficking that occurred in migrant workers outside of the sex trade, linking human trafficking to globalisation, and avoiding condescending or romanticised ‘victim’ language in relation to women who are trafficked — but, by and large, it seemed like the book was a document about somebody learning how to write a book about trafficking. It touches upon many of the same issues raised in Victor Malarek’s book (The Natashas) but I think Malarek deals with those issues in more detail. Both books, however, provide a number of handy references to documents that have been released on this issue, and to organisations involved in fighting human trafficking so it is a helpful resource in that regard.
10. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.
I enjoy Ondaatje’s voice quite a lot — he reminds me of Timothy Findley (when Findley is at his best) in his ability to write prose that sounds like poetry. Unfortunately, I’m not all that gripped by his content so this story about desert exploration, WWII, a pilot covered in burns, a Canadian nurse, an East Indian sapper, and an Italian thief (sounds like it should be good, right?) didn’t end up griping me all that much. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t really seem to get into Canadian literature (apart from the odd book, like The Wars by Timothy Findley — which is exceptional).

Once again, I find myself too busy to be able to post full reviews of these books. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to one or two of them (the book by Kelly Johnson was especially good, and the book by Milton Friedman was especially bad [Friedman may not be the devil but his version of capitalism may very well be “the devil’s wet dream,” as Ani DiFranco once said]) but I’m not holding my breath — for now, I’ve just selected one quote from each book that I found especially gripping or definitive of the piece. Not surprisingly, given that I am taking a seminar on “Christianity and Capitalism” a lot of my reading is based upon that topic.
1. The Fear of Beggars: Stewardship and Poverty in Christian Ethics by Kelly S. Johnson.
“[V]oluntary begging is not merely about an individual’s pursuit of holiness, but rather concerns the possibility of a Christian social order… The beggar instigates an order of gift-giving, searching out those who will join in a cycle of gift which does note exclude work or exchange, but orders them to serve the good of proclaiming Christ… a steward may practice her craft without a church, but the beggar must have one.”
2. Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church by Walter Brueggemann.
This is a collection of essays/sermons by Brueggemann, and the last one “Some Theses on the Bible in the Church” was especially concise. I’ll just quote Brueggemann’s theses:
1. Everybody has a script.
2. We are scripted by the process of nurture, formation, and socialization that may go under the large rubric of liturgy.
3. The dominant scripting of both selves and communities in our society, for both liberals and conservatives, is the script of therapeutic, technological, consumer militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life.
4. That script promises to make us safe and happy.
5. That script has failed.
6. Health depends, for society and for members of it, on disengagement from and relinquishment of that script.
7. It is the task of the church and its ministry to de-script from that powerful script.
8. That task is undertaken through the steady, patient, intentional articulation of an alternative script that we testify will indeed make us safe and joyous.
9. That alternative script as an offer of a counter-metanarrative is rooted in the Bible and enacted through the tradition of the church.
10. That alternative script has as its defining factor the Key Character in all holiness, the God of the Bible who is variously Lord and Savior of Israel, Creator of heaven and earth, and is fleshed in Jesus, we name as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
11. That script of this God of power and life is not monolithic, one-dimensional, or seamless, and we should not pretend that we have such an easy case to make.
12. The ragged disjunctive quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed out and made seamless, as both historical-critical study and doctoral reductionism have tried to do.
13. The ragged disputatious character of the counter-script to which we testify is so disputed and polyvalent that its adherents are always tempted to quarrel among themselves.
14. The entry point into the counter-script is baptism.
15. The nurture, formation and socialization into the counter-script with this elusive, irascible Key Character at its center constitute the work of ministry.
16. Ministry is conducted in the awareness that most of us are deeply ambiguous about this alternative script.
17. The good news, I judge, is that our ambivalence as we stand between scripts is precisely the primal venue for the work of God’s spirit.
18. Ministry, and the mission beyond ministry, is to manage that inescapable ambivalence that is the human predicament in faithful, generative ways.
19. IF what I have said is true, then it follows that the work of ministry is crucial, pivotal, and indispensable; as in every society, so in our society.
3. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times & Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner.
“A man who thinks that economics is only a matter for professors forgets that this is the science that has sent men to the barricades.”
4. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber.
“A specifically bourgeois economic ethic had grown up. With the consciousness of standing in the fullness of God’s grace and being visibly blessed by Him, the bourgeois business man, as long as he remained within the bounds of formal correctness, as long as his moral conduct was spotless and the use to which he put his wealth was not objectionable, could follow his pecuniary interests as he would and feel that he was fulfilling a duty in doing so.”
5. Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman.
“Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market.”
6. Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill.
“[T]he ‘greatest happiness principle’ holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.”
7. The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
“Let the ruling classes tremble at the Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen, of all countries, unite!”
8. Marxism and Literary Criticism by Terry Eagleton.
“[W]hat perished in the Soviet Union was Marxist only in the sense that the Inquisition was Christian… The Marxist critical heritage is a superlatively rich, fertile one… We do not dismiss, say, feminist criticism just because patriarchy has not yet been dislodged. On the contrary, it is all the more reason to embrace it.”

Well, I had intended to write more detailed reviews of some of the books that I read in July. Unfortunately, I have had little time for reviews (or blogging) over the last month and now I find myself at a place where August has come and gone and I am only just finishing July’s reviews. Therefore, I am posting my reading list in an incomplete state as I don’t know when I’ll have time to get to writing my “reviews” of the books I read in August. I might try to poke away at them, but if there is one book in particular that appears on August’s list that folks would like me to review, then I would be willing to do that. Anyway, these are the books that I read this summer (most of which were read in preparation for a seminar I am taking on “Christianity and Capitalism” — say what you want about “postmodern” philosophy and theory, it is still an important tool for answering the question: “What time is it?”).
July Books
1. Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration by Joseph Ratzinger.
I have already reviewed this book in some detail in a separate post (cf. http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/117003.html) so I’ll say no more about it here.
2. Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion by Ernst Bloch.
This book is a collection of pieces selected from Bloch’s oeuvre. By and large, the essays were incredibly stimulating and provocative. Despite the fact that Bloch is an atheist and (gasp!) a Marxist, I think that he has an excellent grasp on some of the major themes within the biblical narrative (his reflections on the exodus, on the prophets, and on Jesus and the kingdom of God reminded my of both Walter Brueggemann and N. T. Wright) although he does seem to go wrong with Paul (i.e. he sets Paul over and against Jesus). In fact, having read their books together, I almost wonder if Bloch has a better understanding of Christianity than Ratzinger! With that in mind, let me quote from what Moltmann says in the introduction to this collection:
God’s defenders are not necessarily closer to God than God’s accusers. It is not Job’s theological friends who are justified, but Job is. In the Psalms, protest and jubilation ring out in the same voice. Wherever in history the combination ceased to work, the theologians would learn as much about God from atheists as the atheists could perhaps learn from the theologians.
3. Forget Foucault by Jean Baudrillard.
Because I think so highly of Foucault, I thought it might be worthwhile to read what some of his detractors have to say. Consequently, I thought I would pick up this piece by Baudrillard (which also includes an interview Sylvere Lotringer conducted with Baudrillard entitled “Forget Baudrillard”). To be honest, I have some rather mixed feelings about this book.
Essentially Baudrillard argues that Foucault, far from engaging in a “discourse of truth,” is actually engaging in a “mythic discourse” that simply mirrors the power Foucault describes. Furthermore, Baudrillard goes on to argue that Foucault is able to speak so compelling of power, only because power is dead. Baudrillard pushes Foucault’s thinking “over the edge” and argues that power hasn’t simply been disseminated, rather, it has completely dissolved. He then spends the bulk of this essay making the same argument in relation to what Foucault has to say about sexuality. Essentially, according to Baudrillard, Foucault’s work is “magisterial but obsolete.”
Over against Foucault, Baudrillard (at least as far as I can tell — I’ll admit that I found this essay somewhat dense) argues that it is better to think through the contemporary situation through the lenses of production and seduction. He argues that “production” should be understood not as material manufacture but as a “rendering visible” or a causing to appear (pro-ducere). “Seduction,” therefore, “withdraws something from the visible order and so runs counter to production.” Furthermore, Baudrillard understands reality as essentially fluid and devoid of meaning and so Foucault’s discourse on sex and power is then understood as a form of seduction (and the mirror of the powers Foucault assaults). Thus, because he understands reality as “the locus of simulacrum of accumulation against death,” and “no more than a stockpile of dead matter, dead bodies, and dead language,” Baudrillard argues that it is seduction that is stronger than both power and sexuality (which are caught up in illusions about the real and, consequently, fall into the realm of the imaginary).
Thus, the true secret of power, and sexuality, is that they don’t exist (indeed, the secret of the great politicians was knowing that power did not exist). Consequently, Baudrillard argues that the way to respond to power is not to resist it but to “dare” those who hold power to push it to its limit. He writes:
A challenge to power to be power, power of the sort that is total, irreversible, without scruple, and with no limit to its violence. No form of power dares to go that far… And so it is in facing this unanswerable challenge that power starts to break up.
What does Baudrillard mean by this sort of challenge? I’m not entirely sure, but I think that he means that, rather than acknowledging power and struggling with it, we should simply choose to disregard it… and in this way we force its hand. This form of action, perhaps, can be seen in the early Christians who said, “Caesar may tell us not to call Jesus ‘Lord,’ and he may threaten to kill us if we do, but we will continue to call Jesus ‘Lord,’ regardless.” In this way power was pushed to its limit, and broken up.
So, what is one to do with all this? To begin with, I don’t entirely buy Baudrillard’s critique of Foucault, rooted as it is in nihilism. If our discourse is somehow related to truth (and not simply to myth), if our concepts and structures are somehow related to reality (and are not just simulacra) then I think that Baudrillard’s case is undermined. Indeed, part of the reason why I am so attracted to Foucault is because of the way in which his discourse on power parallels what the Pauline (and deutero-Pauline) literature has to say about the Powers (cf. Walter Wink’s trilogy).
Furthermore, I think that I was being rather gracious to Baudrillard when I used the example of the early Christians to illustrate his case. Rather than leading to that sort of “radical” lifestyle, Baudrillard seems to live a life that says, “Look, none of this is worth anything anyway, so why waste your time fighting anything.” Ultimately, Baudrillard engages in philosophy because he finds it amusing. And so he lives a rather comfortable life, plays with words, and waits for death.
4. The System of Objects by Jean Baudrillard.
I found this book to be so exciting that I immediately went out and picked up two more by Baudrillard (who, in this work anyway, reminded my a great deal of both Barthes and McLuhan — indeed, unless one is not at least a little familiar with these authors, adjusting to Baudrillard’s topics of discussion may take some work).
This book, as the title suggests, is Baudrillard’s attempt to provide a “system of objects” — i.e. to classify objects the same way that we have classified flora or fauna. However, rather than simply classifying objects by their function, Baudrillard is especially concerned to provide a system of meanings, thereby exploring the process whereby people relate to objects, and the ways in which those objects impact human behaviour and relationships. “In sum,” Baudrillard argues, “the description of the system of objects cannot be divorced from a critique of that system’s practical ideology.”
Consequently, Baudrillard goes on to explore the system of objects in four ways — he explores the “functional” system, the “non-functional” system, the “metafunctional and dysfunctional” system, and the “socio-ideological” system.
In his exploration of the “functional” system (also called “objective discourse”), Baudrillard examines things like interior design, furniture arrangements and materials, colours, lighting, clocks, mirrors, wood, glass, and atmosphere. In the premodern period, Baudrillard argues that the arrangement and use of these things perpetuate a certain ideology. That is to say: “[t]he real dimension they occupy is captive to the moral dimension which it is their job to signify.” Consequently, in the modern period, with the increasing drive for “mobility, flexibility and convenience,” what we see is a form of liberation of the object, as the object is no longer required to signify old moral categories. However, Baudrillard emphasises that what is liberated is the function of the object, and not the object itself. As he says: “[Objects] are thus indeed free as functional objects — that is they have the freedom to function and… that is practically the only freedom they have.” Of course, the corollary of this is that “just so long as the object is liberated only in its function, man equally is liberated only as user of that object.” Consequently, whereas the premodern obsession was moral, the obsession today is functional. People have become “interior designers” living in a world that is no longer given; it is a world that they themselves construct.
If this is the case, if there is a technical need for design, then Baudrillard argues that the functional system is only completed when a cultural need for “atmosphere” is also considered. In particular, in his study of colours, “hot” and “cold” tones, “natural” and “cultural” wood, and other objects, Baudrillard examines the way in which atmosphere is created by a nostalgic echoing of the state of nature, resulting in a (contradictory, and therefore illusory) “naturalness.” What we end up with is “simulacrum of nature… thriving not on nature but on the Idea of Nature.” Of course, the key thing to realise is that all the values being ascribed here (from the way in which we value “warm” colours, to the way in which we value a wooden table more than a synthetic table) are all entirely abstract. Consequently, Baudrillard concludes that “the consistency here is not the natural consistency of a unified taste but the consistency of a cultural system of signs.” Therefore, “‘man the interior designer’ is always coupled with ‘man of relationship and atmosphere’, and the two together give us ‘functional man’.”
Consequently, in concluding this section, Baudrillard argues that the key thing to realise is that functionality has ceased to be about attaining a certain end or goal and is not about the ability to be integrated into an overall scheme. This leaves us with a fundamentally ambiguous system that is, one the one hand, about organization and calculation, and, on the other hand, about connotation and disavowal.
From discussing the “functional” system, Baudrillard turns to discussing the “nonfunctional” system (subjective discourse”) by focusing on “marginal objects” that seem to fall outside of the system he has just described — objects like antiques, for example. However, the central point Baudrillard makes here is that these marginal objects are not an anomaly relative to this system because “the functionality of modern objects becomes historicalness in teh case of the antique object… without this implying that the object ceases to function as a sign within the system.” Thus, the role of the antique is to signify — specifically, to signify time. Just as with “naturalness,” so also with time: history is simultaneously invoked and denied. Essentially, the antique provides the functional system with its myth of origins, for whereas the functional object is efficient, the mythical antique is fully realised — it is “authentic.” Thus, Baudrillard concludes: “Fundamentally, the imperialism that subjugates nature with technical objects and the one that domesticates cultures with antiques are one and the same.”
This signification of time and authenticity within marginal objects also explains the passion that many people have for collecting. Objects that are collected exist, not to function, but to be possessed. Such collections are endowed with the abstraction that is necessary for possession (i.e. they are abstracted from their function and brought into a direct relationship with the collecting subject). Of course, “rare” or “unique” objects are especially prized in collections and the possession of an absolutely singular object is prized because it allows to possessor to recognise herself in the object as an absolutely singular being. This is so because, Baudrillard argues, “what you really collect is always yourself.” However, this form of possession is a tempered mode of perversion: rather than apprehending the object qua object, one transforms the object into the paradigm of various other things which are then seen as referring back to the perverting subject. Ultimately, Baudrillard concludes, “the collector strives to reoconstitute a discourse that is transparent to him, a discourse whose signifiers he controls and whose reference par excellence is himself.”
Having now considered objects from the point of view of their “objective systematization” and their “subjective systematization,” Baudrillard now turns to the “metafunctional and dysfunctional” system and the issue of connotation. In particular, Baudrillard argues that technical connotation is epitomised by the notion of automatism — which grants the object, in its function, “the connotation of an absolute.” Now there is some irony here: because the degree of perfection in a machine is considered to be proportional to its automatism, functionality is increasingly sacrificed and, consequently, risking the arrest of technical advance. The reason why we are so interested in automatism relates back to the ways in which we relate to objects as images of ourselves and objects are increasingly invested with the autonomy of human consciousness, power, control, and personhood (which is why this section is subtitled, “Gadgets and Robots”). Furthermore, this pursuit of automatism explains the category of objects that Baudrillard calls “gadgets,” “gizmos,” and “thingummyjigs.” These are objects that exist without any operational value — they simply function in an automated way. Thus, functionality with this objects is not merely their function, but also their mystery, a mystery that “mystifies man by submerging him in a functional dream, but it equally well mystifies the object.” All of this, then, leads to the “superobject” of science fiction: the (metafunctional) robot. Baudrillard writes: “The robot is the symbolic microcosm of both man and the world… it simultaneously replaces both man and the world, synthesizing absolute functionality and absolute anthropomorphism.” Consequently, we can see a concomitant dysfunctionality running throughout this system of projection which refers all real conflicts to the technical sphere. It appears as though a “short circuit” has occurred wherein, automatism and projection, threaten to end any actual functionality.
This finally leads Baudrillard to reflect upon the socio-ideological system of objects, which relates to consumption. Here Baudrillard notes the use of a “model/series” scheme (wherein the privileged few enjoy the “models” and the less privileged majority consume from “series” that reference the “models”) that is not premised upon an object’s practical functionality but is premised upon the ways in which an object can be “personalized.” Through a proliferation of choices, the consumer is able to transcend the “strict necessity” of a purchase in order to be personally committed the object that is purchased. However, the elements that personalize an object are what Baudrillard calls “inessential differences” (differences in colour, in cut, etc.). Consequently, because these differences are inessential, personalization and integration end up going hand in hand, as our choosing places us squarely within the socio-economic order. This combination is “the miracle of the system” — a miracle that causes people, in their insistence on being subjects, success only be becoming objects of economic demand.
Further, these differences aren’t only inessential, they can also become parasitic as they begin to proliferate in ways that run counter to an object’s technical purpose. For example, Baudrillard mentions how objects are deliberately manufactured in order to become obsolescent. This occurs in three ways: an object can be made obsolescent because a better object replaces it (“obsolescence of function”); an object can be made obsolescent because it is designed to break down or wear out (“obsolescence of quality”); or an other object can be marketed in such a way that the previous object is no longer desirable (“obsolescence of desirability”). Consequently, Baudrillard asserts that: “In a world of (relative) affluence, the shoddiness of objects replaces the scarcity of objects as the expression of poverty.”
Baudrillard then turns to the idea of “credit” and asserts that credit causes a new system of ethics to arise. Because credit allows for the precedence of consumption over accumulation, because it allows for us to possess that which we have not earned, society is returned to a sort of complicit feudalism, wherein consumers embrace an allocation of their labour in advance to the feudal lord (the lords of credit). Hence, that which is taken as a “right” and a basic “freedom” (i.e. credit) is actually form of social colonization.
Finally, Baudrillard concludes his discourse of objects, by exploring discourse about objects — advertising. Advertising, he argues, is not only about objects, but it has, itself, become an object of consumption. Thus, although we may become better at resisting advertising in the imperative, we tend to miss this point and become more susceptible to consuming advertising in the indicative. Hence, it is our ceaseless consumption of advertising that forcibly socially conditions us. Hence Baudrillard writes that advertising ensures “the spontaneous absorption of ambient social values and the regression of the individual into the social consensus…. advertising tells you, in effect, that ‘society adapts itself totally to you, so integrate yourself totally into society’.” But this is a scam because, whereas it is only an imaginary agency that adapts to you, you adapt to an agency that is distinctly real. In this way, advertising creates a “reign of a freedom of desire,” but it is a desire that is co-opted by social controls. Therefore, the message that we are “free to be ourselves” really means that we are “free to project our desires onto commodities.”
Therefore, in his conclusion, Baudrillard provides this definition of consumption: “consumption is an active form of relationship (not only to objects, but also to the world)… consumption is the virtual totality of all objects and messages ready-constituted as a more or less coherent discourse… consumption means an activity consisting of the systematic manipulation of signs.” Hence, the reason why consumption has no limits is because it no longer has anything to do with the satisfaction of needs or with reality.
An intriguing read, no? This book certainly had my wheels turning in all sorts of different directions. It was my favourite book of the summer.
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowlings.
To be honest, I’m sort of glad that this series is over. A few years ago, I decided to see what the hype was about, so I picked up the first few books of this series and, because I’m rather obsessive about finishing what I start reading, I’ve stuck with Harry right until the end. All in all, I found the books to be mostly fun, but neither especially well-written (in fact, Rowling’s presentation of Harry’s character often annoyed me a great deal), nor nearly as “profound” as people seem to want to make them out to be. Unfortunately, in commenting on this final volume, several people seem to be eager to point out “Christian” themes and motifs that run through the story but I fail to see why those things should catapult a fairly average piece of children’s literature into something great. We can find Christian themes in most everything, if we look hard enough.
Granted, due to the brisk pace of the plot, I read the book rapidly (and wanted to do so) but I think that most pulp fiction is written in a similar manner. Reality television is also capable of drawing me in like this (“I just couldn’t put the book down!” and “I just couldn’t change the channel!”), but I’m not about to suggest that this makes reality television great. However, watching reality television sure is good for letting a person “space out” and have a little fun at the end of a hard day, and this, too, is what Harry Potter is good for.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, I’m a little concerned that this is what popular reading amounts to these days. Similarly, I’m a little bothered by the observation that, even for those who are given to more academic reading, this is all the fiction that a lot of them are reading these days. How about, instead of going on about the “Christian” undertones in Harry Potter, we simply start reading something else? How about Hardy, or Dostoevsky? Steinbeck, or Hugo?
So, please, have fun with Harry, but if you want substance, look elsewhere.
August Books
1. A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity by Stanley Hauerwas.
2. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Vol 1), by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.
3. A user’s guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guatarri by Brian Massumi.
4. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings, 1972-1977 by Michel Foucault (edited by Colin Gordon).
5. The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity by Slavoj Zizek.
6. Fragments: Cool Memories III, 1990-1995 by Jean Baudrillard.

I had originally planned to include this review in a post on my “July Books” but, given its length, I thought I would post this separately. This review, like all my reviews, doesn’t claim to be comprehensive (or even adequate).
Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI (part one of a two volume series).
If I were to boil this review down to one sentence, I would say this: what Ratzinger has always gotten wrong, he continues to get wrong, and what he gets right has been done much better elsewhere. (To be honest, I can’t help but wonder if this book was such a big hit simply because most people haven’t read anything at all about the “historical Jesus” — a term I need to put into quotes, given that Ratzinger’s criteria for historicity are different than those generally accepted by Jesus scholars.) Of course, there is a two-edged sword to all of this. Because he is the current Pope, Ratzinger is guaranteed a much larger audience than pretty much all other Jesus scholars. So, even if what he gets right has been better explored and expressed elsewhere, chances are many of those who read this book wouldn’t bother reading any of the other (better) volumes on Jesus, and in this way Ratzinger’s book accomplishes some good. The problem with this is that this larger audience is also just as likely to swallow all of Ratzinger’s mistakes because they are not reading any of the other (better) volumes on Jesus.
So what was good about this book? First, Ratzinger’s ongoing emphasis on Jesus as the prophet that is like Moses and greater than Moses is excellent. This is really the leitmotif of the book — Jesus is the prophet who sees God face-to-face (whereas Moses only saw God’s back) and Jesus therefore makes God and God’s word known to us. Indeed, Ratzinger pushes this idea to its end-point, asserting that Jesus sees God face-to-face because he himself is God — the divine Son of the Father — and thus, as God, he himself is the fullest revelation of God. This, I think, will cause a bit of an uproar amongst historical Jesus scholars, even though, conversely, I think that this is also a major part of the reason why this book has been so praised in Christian circles (especially since other Christian Jesus scholars — even ‘evangelicals’ like Tom Wright — have been much more circumspect in how they have approached the issue of Jesus’ divinity). The scholars will argue that Ratzinger has imported “confession” into “history,” and they may be right (however, I wonder if all our attempts at doing history are confessional!). Regardless of the divinity debate, I found Ratzinger’s ongoing Moses/Jesus comparison to be insightful and worthwhile.
Secondly, I appreciated the way in which Ratzinger included the Gospel of John in his study of the historical Jesus. Most studies focus entirely on the Synoptics and reject John’s Gospel from the get-go, seeing it as a theological, and not an historical, portrait of Jesus. Similarly, Johannine scholars tend to neglect or ignore the Synoptics. I like the idea of reading the two together and bringing them into a much closer dialogue than they generally receive.
Thirdly, many of Ratzinger’s topical reflections on things like prayer, forgiveness, and suffering are quite insightful, and well-written. There is much of substance and much that is good to be found here.
So, what got me so frustrated while reading this book? First, I was very annoyed by Ratzinger’s incredibly shallow portrait of Marxism (this has always been one of his faults). in his discussion of Jesus’ first temptation in the wilderness (“turn stones into bread!”), Ratzinger argues that this is the core of Marxism’s promise of salvation — that no one should go hungry; that all should have bread. This, Ratzinger argues, ends up placing our focus on the wrong thing (i.e. one should focus on God who supplies us with bread that we should share with one another) and so “the result is not justice or concern for human suffering. The result is rather ruin and destruction even of material goods themselves.” The problem here is that Ratzinger is painting all Marxists with the same brush. To assert that all Marxism results in ruin, destruction, and the absence of concern for human suffering is about as absurd as asserting that all Christianity results in patriarchy, colonialism, and homophobia. Sure, some strands of Marxism ended disastrously (like the strands found in much of Eastern Europe) but other strands were destroyed before they had a chance to flourish (i.e. the reason why most of the strands of Marxism and socialism in Latin America resulted in ruin and destruction was because they were destroyed by fascist and totalitarian forces that were armed, funded, and protected by Western democratic States and their business interests). The fact is, there is much that we can learn from Marxism, and few other political philosophies exhibit the concern for human suffering that is found in Marxism.
Ratzinger’s reductionistic understanding of Marxism leads him to make absurd comments. For example, when commenting on the appeal for God’s kingdom to come (in the Lord’s Prayer), he writes the following:
This is not an automatic formula for a well-functioning world, not a utopian vision of a classless society in which everything works out well of its own accord, simply because there is no private property. Jesus does not give us such simple recipes.
Well, Marxism, socialism, and anarchism, also don’t give us such simple recipes. That Ratzinger thinks he can present such a caricature (in my line of work we would call this a “cheap shot”) as a real picture of any of these movements is ridiculous. That Christians reading this book might be nodding their heads to all this just shows how ignorant we are.
Secondly, I was bothered by Ratzinger’s seemingly arbitrary selection of passages to highlight or neglect. Of course, I use the word “arbitrarily” to suggest that Ratzinger has no good historical or textual reason to pick and choose passages the way that he does; Ratzinger’s choices seem to be motivated by an underlying ideology. Consequently, in his discussion on the “good news” proclaimed by Jesus — the good news that “the kingdom of God is at hand” — he focuses on inaugural passages in Mark (Mk 1.14-15) and in Matthew (Mt 4.23, 9.35) but completely neglects Jesus’ inaugural speech in Luke (Lk 4.14-20) which is full of socio-political language and implications, and chooses to skip on to Jesus’ much more enigmatic statement in Lk 17.20-21. Why does Ratzinger neglect Lk 4? Probably because it does not fit as comfortably with the highly Christological understanding he applies to the kingdom, and because it seems to support a political application of religion — just the sort of application that Ratzinger opposes and calls “utopian dreaming without an real content.”
Thirdly, Ratzinger’s apolitical (i.e. conservative) and anti-material stance continues to surface in his exegesis of the passages that he does select. Thus, he makes it clear that the poverty that is praised in the Sermon on the Mount is not for everyone, but is for the “great ascetics” who are called to “radicalism” as they journey alongside of the Church (i.e. the important thing is not for you to be poor but for you to have a friend that is poor). Thus, he makes sure to emphasise the the Sermon on the Mount is “not a social program” and goes on to say that “discipleship of Jesus offers no politically concrete program for structuring society. The Sermon on the Mount cannot serve as a foundation for a state and a social order.” Of course, on the one hand, Ratzinger is correct to question the idea of a State imposing the Sermon on the Mount as a social program for society (lest we go down the road of Christendom). However, on the other hand, what Ratzinger altogether misses, or fails to mention, is that the Sermon on the Mount is precisely the social program of an alternate social order — the Church. Instead of grasping this point, Ratzinger prefers to go the road of Christian conservatism and thus he asserts: “The concrete political and social order is released from the directly sacred realm, from theocratic legislation, and is transferred to the freedom of man.” In this way, he continues to push the old divide between “Church” and “State” — a divide that inevitably leads to the defeat of the Church. What Ratzinger fails to realise is that his apolitical theology is really a conservative political theology and so he contradicts himself when he argues that: “political theologies… theologize one particular formula in a way that contradicts the novelty and breadth of Jesus’ message.” What Ratzinger is really saying here is that “political theologies” (i.e. liberation theologies) contradict the conservative political theology that he has attached to Jesus. Consequently, when Ratzinger concludes that “Jesus stands before us neither as a rebel nor as a liberal” one can’t help but wonder: but does Jesus stand before us as a conservative? Why bracket out those two political categories and not this third one as well?
Indeed, it is the opposition to liberation theology that I suspect underlies Ratzinger’s comments on the fact that the Apostles are commissioned to preach, excorcise demons, and heal the sick (Mt 10.1). Ratzinger rushes to make it known that healing is “a subordinate element within the overall range of [Jesus’] activity, which is concerned with something deeper, with nothing less than the ‘Kingdom of God’: his becoming Lord in us and in the world.” Why healing is necessarily subordinated, why healing seems to have nothing to do with the Kingdom of God, with Jesus becoming Lord, I don’t know. At this point, Ratzinger is performing eisegesis, not exegesis.
Ratzinger’s conservatism also comes through in the reassurance he provides the reader by taking the edge off of Jesus’ more “radical” statements. Thus, while discussing the passages wherein Jesus assaults the traditional family unit (passages where Jesus calls his followers to “hate” their parents, to abandon their families, and to redefine their families around those who follow him), Ratzinger begins his discussion by quoting Ex 20.12 (“Honour your father and mother”) and quickly goes on to assure us that “from her very inception, the Church that emerged and continues to emerge, has attached fundamental importance to defending the family as the core of all social order.” Somehow, Ratzinger puts a “family values” spin on Jesus’ statements.
Furthermore, Raztinger’s conservatism also leads him, in his discussion of the “Our Father,” to reject the idea of referring to God as “Mother.” “Mother,” he argues, is used sometimes as an image for God in the bible, but never is it used as a title. The language of Father “was and is” far more appropriate to the biblical context and so he concludes: “the prayer language of the entire Bible remains normative for us.” Such a conclusion, from Ratzinger, is not surprising, even if it is disappointing. After all, this is the man who accused feminism of “imposing an ideology of gender” onto God, never realising the ways in which the patriarchal structure and theology of Roman Catholicism have already imposed an ideology of gender onto God (cf. http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/27191.html for further comments on that).
Fourthly, I was somewhat bothered by Ratzinger’s ever-present Christological focus. It seems that everything Jesus did, or said, was really all about Jesus. Hence, as I mentioned above, talk of the kingdom of God is overwhelmingly Christological. Furthermore, all of the parables are to be understood Christologically — they are “hidden and multilayered invitations to faith in Jesus”! Such an understanding of the kingdom, and of the parables, is too simplistic, too reductionistic. Sure, Christ is an element of these things, and often plays an important, even central, role in them, but there is more to them than that. Some parables are really about Israel (the parable of the vineyard’s wicked tenants) some parables are about the imminent fall of Jerusalem (the parable of the of the green tree that becomes dry) some parables are about the return from exile (the parable of the prodigal son), and so on and so forth. As for the kingdom, well, sometimes the kingdom really does come in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and healing the sick.
Finally, I also don’t think that Ratzinger spends enough time addressing, or wrestling with, the Jewishness of Jesus. Because he relies so much on the Christian tradition, and even John’s Gospel, he never really asks the question of how Jesus’ divinity can be placed within first-century Jewish monotheism. Furthermore, in his chapter on Jesus’ identity wherein he explores “three fundamental titles” (Christ, Lord, Son) he only devotes one paragraph to the first title — the most Jewish title — because it “ceased to function as a title and was joined with the name of Jesus… therein lies a deeper message: He is completely one with his office.” Now that’s all well and good, as far as it goes; it just doesn’t go very far, and leaves us with many unanswered questions.
So what do we get from all this? A half decent book about Jesus. Not great, not terrible, just so-so. There are some very stimulating passages but, not surprisingly, Ratzinger has also used this book to grind some old axes. His book about Jesus also becomes a part of his ongoing attack on anything hinting of marxism, socialism, feminism, or liberation theology.

Hmmm, it seems like these “reviews” are taking more and more time to write. I might have to start making them even more inadequate than they already are.
1. Church Dogmatics I.2: The Doctrine of the Word of God by Karl Barth.
Well, I’ve been poking away at this 900pp monster for the last few months and, now that I’ve finally finished it, I’ve got no clue how I can possibly summarise it here. Within this volume, Barth continues to address the topic of the revelation of God (begun in Vol. 1), through the incarnation of the Word (within this section he explores God’s freedom for man, the time of revelation and the mystery of revelation) and through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (and in this section Barth explores the freedom of man for God, the revelation of God as the abolition of religion and the life of the children of God). Barth then goes on to explore the topics of “Holy Scripture” (as the Word of God for the Church, as authority in the Church, and as freedom in the Church) and the “Proclamation of the Church” (here, Barth explores the mission of the Church, dogmatics as a function of the hearing Church, and dogmatics as the function of the teaching church).
There were times when I found this book to be very exciting, and other times when I found it to be very, well, boring. I think the main reason why it took me so long to work through this book is because Barth spends a great deal of time addressing issues that I’m not altogether that interested in addressing. While Barth goes on about “subjectivity” and “objectivity,” I am reminded of a famous saying from Wittgenstein: “Don’t think. Look!”
2. With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology by Stanley Hauerwas.
It had been awhile since I picked up anything by Hauerwas so I finally got around to reading this publication of his Gifford lectures. I’m glad that I did; this is an excellent book and one that is much more comprehensive than many other things Hauerwas has written (I’m slowly working my way through Hauerwas and, if my count is correct, this the 9th book that I have read by him).
Within this book, Hauerwas traces the development of twentieth century theology by examining the “natural” theologies of William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Karl Barth (all previous Gifford lecturers). Barth, Hauerwas argues, succeeds where James and Niebuhr fail, because Barth recognises that any sort of “natural” theology must be rooted within the doctrine of God. Therefore, such a theology cannot be developed by rational arguments; rather, it is developed by bearing witness to God’s activity within the world. Hence, Hauerwas’ central thesis is that:
natural theology divorced from a full doctrine of God cannot help but distort the character of God and, accordingly of the world in which we find ourselves. The metaphysical and existential projects to make a ‘place’ for such a god cannot help but ‘prove’ the existence of a god that is not worthy of worship.
Therefore, in summarising the differences between James, Niebuhr, and Barth, Hauewas argues that:
James was committed to the criticism of criticism for the sake of living well. Alternatively, Reinhold Niebuhr’s life was a political life in which all convictions were tested in terms of their significance for sustaining the democratic enterprise. In contrast, Barth’s convictions were tested by their ability to sustain service to God.
Hauerwas argues that both James an Niebuhr remove both the cross (i.e. christology) and the Church (i.e. ecclesiology) from the centre of theology. Consequently, he concludes that Barth must be seen as the greatest “natural” theologian of the three because Barth understands that “people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe” (a line Hauerwas takes from Yoder). Is it any wonder I enjoyed this book so much?
3. Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture by David A. deSilva.
This book is probably the best introduction to NT culture that I have read. It is a scholarly work, and deSilva spends a lot of time exploring the cultural values of both Greco-Roman culture, and the Jewish subculture in NT times. However, he does this in order to bring a new perspective on a much of the NT writings themselves (thus, each theme [honor, patronage, kinship & purity] receives a chapter on how those values operated within ancient culture, and then a separate chapter exploring how our understanding of these themes impacts our reading of the NT). Furthermore, this book is easy to read and understand (i.e. you don’t have to be a biblical studies student to understand what deSilva is talking about) and it also also a pastoral focus; deSilva points to some of the ways in which the insight he provides impacts how we live as Christians today. The method deSilva employs is one that I think a great deal of biblical scholars should learn to use. I highly recommend this book.
4. In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed.
Within this book an NT scholar (Crossan) and an archaeologist (Reed) team-up to see what new insights might be brought to bear on Paul if we are more aware of the context in which he lived (although you don’t see any mention of this, I think that Crossan and Reed were led to to this approach [and to some of their conclusions?] by the work co-authored by Horsley and Silberman in ’97).
Essentially, Crossan and Reed argue that a proper understanding of Paul’s context should lead us to conclude that Paul was engaged in a highly subversive mission — on that directly opposed the values and reign of Rome, with the values and reign of Jesus. Although the text is rather meandering (Crossan prefers to write for popular audiences), I think that this central thesis is valid. Unfortunately, there are other places where the argumentation is sloppy and completely unsubstantiated, and it becomes clear that much of Crossan’s writing is motivated by other agendas that end up restricting his picture of Paul. Thus, Crossan’s “radical Paul” ends up looking strikingly similar to a 21st-century American Liberal.
5. God & Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now by John Dominic Crossan.
This book is largely a summary and synthesis of Crossan’s earlier books on Jesus and Paul and it thus continues to argue that Christianity originated as a non-violent, counter-cultural movement that focuses on the kingdom of God and the equality of people. However, in this work Crossan wants to engage with the Christian canon more fully, and so he traces a fundamental tension/ambiguity that he sees running through the biblical narrative. This is the tension between the portrayal of sanctioned, divine violence, and the portrayal of sanctioned, divine non-violence (Crossan also describes this as the tension between God’s distributive and God’s retributive justice). Essentially, Crossan is asking: is God violent or nonviolent? His answer to this is as follows: “My proposal is that the Christian Bible presents the radicality of a just and nonviolent God repeatedly and relentless confronting the normalcy of an unjust and violent civilization.” Furthermore, this is the conclusion Crossan comes to because, despite tensions within the canon, this is the answer that is incarnated “by and in” the historical Jesus.
Now, that’s all well and good but, despite my sympathy for Crossan’s basic conclusion, I find his argument is often too simplistic, many passages (and even whole books — like the Apocalpse of John) seem to be discarded a priori, and there are other areas that Crossan just doesn’t seem to understand at all (his perspective on the resurrection, well known it a lot of circles because of his ongoing debates with N. T. Wright on this topic, is a prime example of one of those areas). I guess I find Crossan so frustrating because, although I agree with a lot of what he has to say about Jesus and Paul as people who were “against” empire (then and now!), I think that he ends up discrediting himself precisely in that key area because of his sketchy scholarship in other areas.
6. A Long Way From Tipperary: A Memoir by John Dominic Crossan.
So, because I was working through Crossan’s material on Paul (part of my thesis research), I decided to read through Crossan’s memoir (after all, scholarship reminds us, over and over again, of the importance of reading a person’s work in context). In this book, Crossan tries to explore how his own life and experiences may have impacted his research on Jesus (he hadn’t started writing about Paul when this book was published). What I find most interesting about this is not what Crossan discusses but what he leaves out. For example, Crossan spends some time talking about how he grew up in Ireland, in a family that was inspired by the violent Irish resistance to the British Empire, and notes how many people have argued he was reading his own experiences in Ireland into his interpretation of Jesus as a Galilean peasant, who engaged in non-violent resistance to the Roman Empire. Thus, he spends some time showing why (or at least asserting that) he thinks his upbringing in Ireland, didn’t warp his scholarship. However, apart from one throw-away comment, Crossan spends no time at all questioning how his academic rootedness in a twentieth-century American Liberal environment may have impacted his scholarship. However, the impact of this environment is one that concerns me far more than Crossan’s upbringing.
I suppose what I found most interesting about this book is Crossan’s explanation of his own language. In this memoir, Crossan makes it clear that when it talks about things like “resurrection” he doesn’t literally mean “resurrection” as it has traditionally been understood; nor, when he talks about the “trinity” is he actually referring to the “trinity” in any sort of orthodox manner; nor when he talks about the “second coming” does he actually believe in any sort of literal “second coming.” And, finally, when he calls himself a “Catholic” it also becomes obvious that no Catholic would agree with his understanding of membership within the Catholic community. Of course, where his appropriation of biblical language and themes is concerned, Crossan would argue that he is simply being faithful to the biblical authors who never intended for things like the “resurrection” or the “second coming” to be taken literally (indeed, Crossan suggests that we would be “dummies” if that was the way we read the texts).
To be honest, I can’t help but find Crossan to be somewhat obnoxious. Although he argues that he is now more “polite” than “nasty” when arguing with orthodox Christian, it seems to me that he is now more condescending than crass. That is to say, it seems to me that Crossan’s “nastiness” is now simply more polished.
7. How to Read Lacan by Slavoj Zizek.
This was an exceptional book. I have found Zizek to be a very stimulating writer but, in part due to his writing style (the flow of his argument is often non-existent), and in part due to the fact that I have no academic training in the realm of psychoanalysis (Zizek is a psychoanalyst — among many other things!), I have strugged with some of his writings. However, this book (an introduction to Lacan, which ends up serving as an excellent introduction to Zizek as well), flows very well, carefully defines all the technical language it uses, and offers very helpful illustration. Indeed, I find Zizek’s reading of Lacan’s language of “the Big Other” (i.e. the symbolic order; i.e. society’s “unwritten constitution) coheres very well with Walter Wink’s reading of Paul’s language of “the Powers that be.” Add to this, Zizek’s understanding of Lacan’s take on the way in which desire is conditioned and alienated, as well as with the role fantasy plays in sustaining our (fake) “reality,” in combination with Paul’s understanding of the impact of Sin and Death, and you’ve got some incredibly provocative results. Oh, and the book is also very short — highly recommended.
8. Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
This book contains a number of disconnected aphorisms and observations that were recorded as asides by Wittgenstein in his various journals and notebooks. Here Wittgenstein explores themes of music, ethics, pedagogy, faith, and the existence of God. There is a great deal of insight in some of these comments, although a familiarity with Wittgenstein’s main works is probably helpful for understanding a number of the remarks. Here is are a few remarks I found particularly interesting.
On Christianity:
A theology which insists on the use of certain particular words and phrases, and outlaws others, does not make anything clearer (Karl Barth). It gesticulates with words, as one might say, because it wants to say something and does not know how to express it. Practice gives the words their sense.belief, it’s really a way of living.life. (Or the direction of your life.)
It seems to me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it’s
I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your
On Philosophy:
This is how philosopher’s should salute each other: “Take your time!”for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.
Don’t
On Science:
Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.
[P]erhaps science and industry, having caused infinite misery in the process, will unite the world — I mean condense it into a single unit, though one in which peace is the last thing that will find a home.
9. Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was pretty disappointed with this book — which is too bad because I’m sympathetic to Perkins’ cause. You see, in this book, Perkins describes how he worked as an “Economic Hitman” (EHM). As an EHM, Perkins worked for multinational corporations that would give false statistics to nations in the two-thirds world, thereby inspiring those nations to receive massive loans from the IMF or the World Bank, or the USA. This would then drive these nations into an ever-increasing debt and dependence upon the ones who granted the loans. Thus, the USA, for example, could then manipulate those nations, using that debt to garner their votes at the UN, to build military bases on their territory, or to plunder their natural resources.
That this sort of thing has been going on for the last fifty or so years should come as no surprised to the informed reader. However, Perkins’ book, because of his insider perspective, left me with the impression that we would get a lot of the nitty-gritty details of the parties involved, the transactions that occurred, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, this is almost no supporting documentation for what Perkins says, and most of his anecdotes are incredibly vague. Instead we get the ramblings of a guilty conscience (Perkins has since tried to expiate himself by working for an environmental organization, supporting other non-profits and, of course, writing this book). So why does this bother me so much? Well, it bothers me so much because I think Perkins writes a book that is too easily discredited. If I compare Perkins to Chomsky, for example, I find that both reach very similar conclusions, but Chomsky has a long track record, a vast collection of sources to which one can be referred, and an equally vast collection of specific examples to which he can appeal. However, despite these things, Chomsky is often blown-off, so my question is: what chance does Perkins have of being taken seriously by those who are immersed into the system as it is?
10. Batman: Year One written by Frank Miller and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli.
Okay, if I’m not nerd enough reading all these books, I’ve recently taken to reading comics. Stumbling onto the whole genre of “illustrated novels” a few years back introduced me to some really excellent pieces, and this process has now led me back to some acclaimed comics (like Watchmen which I read a few months ago). I never read Miller’s most famous collection of graphic novels (the “Sin City” collection — a collection that overlaps sex, violence, and glory in ways that make me uncomfortable) but I thought that I’d give his take on Batman a go. And it’s a good take. This comic was a lot of fun and a pleasant distraction from all the reading I’ve been doing for my thesis.

Well, I’m hoping to write one or two more entries before I take off for my wedding/honeymoon. Apart from this book update, I’m hoping to write a post on the topic of “losing perspective” and might post a copy of a sermon I preached on Lk 24.1-12 last weekend (if I find the time). Then I’ll be heading away to Toronto and then Fiji and Australia for the next month, so don’t expect too many more entries before the end of March (when I get back to Vancouver). Anyway, here are February’s books:
1. Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement by Brant Pitre.
This is easily one of the most exciting books I have read in some time. Within this book, Pitre argues that Jesus spoke and acted on the basis of Jewish expectation regarding the (two-stage) eschatological tribulation and the (inextricably) connected expectation of the end of exile and the restoration of all twelve tribes of Israel (thus, Pitre follows Wright in exploring the motif of the “end of exile,” but he thinks Wright is wrong to argue that the Babylonian exile is still ongoing at the time of Jesus; rather, it is the Assyrian exile that is still ongoing, as the ten northern tribes have still not returned and Israel as a whole as not been restored). Pitre summarizes his conclusions in this way:
In short, Jesus taught that the tribulation had in some way begun with the death of John the Baptist as “Elijah” and that it was Jesus’ own mission to set in motion the “Great Tribulation” that would precede the coming of the Messiah and the restoration of Israel. In fact, he even taught that he would die in this tribulation, and that his death would function as an act of atonement that would bring about the End of the Exile, the return of the dispersed tribes from among the nations, and the coming of the kingdom of God.
There is a whole lot that could be said about this book — and I actually intend to write a series about this book in conjunction with another blogger — so for now I’ll just say that this book is highly recommended reading for all those who are interested in the historical Jesus.
2. Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit by Richard A. Horsley.
This short book is vintage Horsley (although I will say that that subtitle is a little deceptive, since Horsley doesn’t spend a lot of time talking about “life in the Spirit”). It is an exploration of the (often suppressed or ignored) relationship between religion and imperial power. Horsley explores three patterns of relations by examining a contemporary and ancient example of each pattern: (1) cultural elites who construct subject people’s religion for their own purposes (i.e. modern and postmodern approaches to “classical” and “Tibetan” Buddhism, and Rome’s approach to the Isis cult); (2) people subjected to foreign imperial rule mount serious resistance by renewing their own traditional way of life (i.e. the revival of Islam in the Iranian revolution, and Jewish and Christian resistance movements in ancient Judea); and (3) those situated at the apex of imperial power relations develop an imperial religion that expresses and eventually constitutes those imperial power relations (i.e. Christmas and the festival of Consumer Capitalism, and the Roman Emperor Cult). I found the essays on Buddhism and Christmas to be particularly interesting and provocative. Recommended (and quite easy!) reading.
3. Matthew by Stanley Hauerwas (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible).
This book doesn’t read much like a traditional commentary. Rather, Hauerwas sort of rambles his way through Matthew and highlight themes and narrative trajectories along the way, in order to springboard into pastoral and theological implications for Christian discipleship today. In fact, this commentary is a “commentary” in the same way that Colossians Remixed (by Walsh and Keesmaat) is a “commentary.” Those who enjoyed Colossians Remixed will probably enjoy this work as well. It is, for me, very exciting to see the boundaries between “theology” and “biblical studies” blurring more and more these days. This theological commentary series could very well spark some much needed discussion.
4. From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman.
This book was pretty disappointing. A friend of mine told me that this was, in his/her opinion, the best book s/he had read on the topic of politics in the Middle East, and so I came to it with high expectations. Unfortunately, the author is, well, quite biased, as he himself admits:
when people ask me, “So, Friedman, where do you come out on Israel after this journey from Beirut to Jerusalem?” my answer is that I have learned to identify with and feel affection toward an imperfect Jerusalem. Mine is the story of a young man who fell in love with the Jewish state back in the post-1967 era, experienced a period of disillusionment in Lebanon, and finally came back out of Jerusalem saying, “Well, she ain’t perfect. I’ll always want her to be the country I imagined in my youth. But what the hell, she’s mine, and for a forty-year-old, she ain’t too shabby.”
I suppose the fact that Friedman wrote for the New York Times should have tipped me off to the fact that this would hardly be an objective piece. Of course, it’s not all bad — the section written in/on Beirut is quite good. It’s just that the section written in/on Israel/Palestine is biased at best, and condescending and/or obnoxious at worst.
5. Watchmen by Alan Moore (illustrated by Dave Gibbons).
At the suggestion of Eric Lee, I thought I would try to take another stab at the whole “illustrated novel” genre. And I wasn’t disappointed. Watchmen is a great multi-layered story that is hard to describe in my oh-so-inadequate “reviews.” This book, by the way, is the only illustrated novel to be listed in Time Magazine as one of the 100 best English novels written in the last 100 years, and it has garnered many other awards — including an Hugo Award. Essentially, Moore reworks the whole idea of “superheroes,” and the genre hasn’t been the same since. Within the novel Moore explores key themes like engaging in violence to assure peace, social authority, what happens to a person who does evil in the pursuit of good, determinism, nostalgia, and so on and so forth. I’ll be reading this one again sometime soon.

Well, I’ve finished off the year and was able to read over 100 books, thereby attaining my goal of reading 200+ books in the last two years. These are the eight that I read last month:
1. The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical by Shane Claiborne.
This is a book that I had heard a lot about but I had hesitated to pick it up. Sometimes I struggle reading authors who are associated with “counter-cultural” movements because they often seem so self-absorbed or egotistical. Thus, I had sort of put off reading Claiborne’s book because I was worried it would just end up sounding like another (perhaps more radical) Blue Like Jazz. However, I’ve been invited to lead a few seminars at a conference in March and Claiborne is one of the main speakers… so I figured it was about damn time to read his book.
And it’s a helluva good book. Although personal and anecdotal (with a good measure of pithy quotations from people like John Chrysostom, Kierkegaard, John Wesley, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc.), I found Claiborne’s writing did not rub me the wrong way. In fact, it did quite the opposite. I found myself delighted, inspired, humbled, challenged and encouraged.
Claiborne is able to offer a narrative critique of popular Christianity and pop culture that is both emphatic and tender. However, unlike many voices of criticism, Claiborne does not simply stop with his critique, nor does he offer a few suggestions on things that might be done differently. No, he and the other members of The Simple Way (the community of which Claiborne is a part, which is associated with a broader movement known as “the new monasticism” — look it up if you don’t know about it) embody a positive alternative and, IMHO, a more genuine way of living Christianly in our world. This book is a witness to a community of people who have taken Christianity (and Christ) so seriously that they actually allow the love of God and of neighbour to guide the whole of their lives (and not just parts of their lives).
You should read this book.
2. Street Journal: Finding God in the Homeless by Gary N. Smith, S.J.
I picked this book up on a whim in a Used Book Store (it was cheap, and I was a little bit familiar with the town where Smith was writing) and I quite enjoyed it. This book is a selection from the journals kept by Smith when he was overseeing a drop-in for street-involved people in Tacoma, Washington. What I especially appreciated about Smith’s journal was the way in which he was able to capture some of the delight, humour, and joy that often bursts forth on the margins of society (he relates one especially funny story about a time two men were gearing up to fight and all of a sudden one of the fellows popped his teeth out, passed them to Smith, and said, “Hold my teef, fadder!” At that point, all three men sort of stopped and burst out laughing and the fight was averted). It is important to remember the humour that exists here lest we move from loving those on the margins as equals to pitying them and treating them with condescension.
Furthermore, I also appreciated the humble tone of Smith’s writing. He is honest about his struggles as he journeys through his job and as he enters into burn-out. There is a candidness here that is quite refreshing.
3. After Virtue: a study in moral theory by Alasdair MacIntyre.
Well, there is no way that my shockingly inadequate “reviews” can do justice to this outstanding contemporary classic. I apologize in advance for what follows.
Basically, MacIntyre is disturbed by the observation that contemporary moral discourse seems to be at an impasse. How is it that, in our day, two (or more) very different moral views can be held and neither view can convincingly triumph over the other(s)? That this is the case would seem to suggest that the language of morality is in very serious disorder — and this is precisely what MacIntyre claims. In fact, MacIntyre believes that current moral discourse only contains fragments of, or the simulacra of, genuine moral discussion. MacIntyre believes that this is so because, after the Enlightenment, moral discourse moved away from the classical Aristotelian tradition that saw a community of people possessing a narrative-identity pursuing a telos (the common good). Thus, according to MacIntyre, in the Aristotelian tradition, the virtues where those things which aided a person-in-community in the pursuit of that telos.
However, with the post-Enlightenment rejection of teleology and narrative-identity, with the rise of emotivism and individualism, there was no longer a commonly agreed upon foundation for the virtues and thus moral discourse, and discussion of the virtues, became increasingly fractured, contested and arbitrary. Indeed, MacIntyre is convinced that Nietzsche is correct to argue that, after the Enlightenment, no moral philosophy has provided an adequate foundation for the virtues. Yet MacIntyre has no desire to see Nietzsche’s philosophy triumph and so this book is an effort to revive and recover the Aristotelian tradition of the virtues, of narrative-communal-identity, and of teleology.
In the end, MacIntyre concludes with these stirring words:
What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us… We are not waiting for a Godot, but for another — doubtless very different — St Benedict.
Therefore, reading MacIntyre’s book at the same time as Claiborne’s book was quite intriguing. After all, Claiborne — and the other “new monastics” — are engaged in precisely this activity. Oddly enough this is also a goal that I have been pursuing for the last few years (which just goes to show how much of MacIntyre comes through in the writings of Hauerwas).
Finally, as something of a philosophical aside, I think that it would be well worth reading this book in conjunction with Jean-Francois Lyotard’s book The Postmodern Condition. Both books begin with something of the same observation/problem and it is therefore quite interesting to compare the solutions offered by MacIntyre and Lyotard since they are members of two very different communities.
4. Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics by Sigmund Freud.
This book rounds off my reading of Freud’s major works on religion and culture (the other two works being The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents). It is not one single piece but it is a collection of four essays that deal with the topics of (1) incest, (2) neurotic (and totemic) “ambivalence” and “projection,” (3) animism and the “omnipotence of thought,” and (4) the “Oedipal complex” in relation to the origins of human society.
So how does this relate to religion? Well, religion ends up being revealed as an essentially primitive neurosis that civilized man (yes, man, not woman) should be able to move beyond.
Honestly, I’m not sure what to do with some of Freud’s arguments. Some of them (especially those that relate the Oedipal complex to the rise of civilization) are so far out that they would seem laughable… if so many people hadn’t taken them so seriously for so long. I guess it just goes to show what we’re willing to believe it if ends up gratifying our own undisciplined desires.
5. Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles (Hank) Bukowski.
So, the first think to know about Bukowski is that he’s an asshole. That’s probably also the second and third thing worth knowing about him, so consider yourself warned.
Bukowski, for those who don’t know, was an American writer and poet who wrote largely about booze (he was an alcoholic), living on “skid-row” (he lived in the ghetto in L.A.), working shitty manual jobs (he worked for various factories and spent a number of years filing mail at the post office where he ended up going, well, postal), going to the races (he was also addicted to gambling), and having sex with lots of women (see prior comments about Bukowski being an asshole — Bukowski was reputed to be a misogynist, and he hits — and is hit by — various women. When asked about this in an interview Bukowski stated he assaulted women, and not men, because of the “chickenshit” blood that he inherited from his father — who used to beat Hank quite regularly and violently when Hank was a child). So, this book is a collection of short stories that Bukowski bases upon his life experiences and the experiences of his friends (he knew a lot of, um, “interesting” people).
So, if this is the case, why read Bukowski?
Well, for one thing Bukowski is also a damn good writer and he can also be very funny. However, aesthetical appeal isn’t, IMHO, a good enough justification for choosing to view something. After all, a person could be a damn good film-maker but if they’re making porn, I’ll not be viewing it (I mention porn because Bukowski’s writing does, at times, border on the pornographic).
However, the main reason why I stuck with Bukowski was because, after having read so many books written by people who commit themselves to journeying alongside of those on the margins of society (cf. Books 1 & 2 this month), reading Hank is like getting a glimpse from the other side. Hank is one of the guys who would come into the drop-in or stop by for dinner on Friday, and reading his books is not simply reading words about the exiles, it is reading words of the exiles. Of course, Hank does not represent all those on the margins (far from it!) but he does represent a segment and, although a lot of what he writes about is rather… graphic, he just might be a voice worth hearing.
6. Women by Charles (Hank) Bukowski.
So, figuring that Bukowski might be a voice worth hearing, I thought I would pick up one of his longer narratives (since I enjoy longer stories more than short stories). Again, we get much of the same — beer, gambling, work, sex, and hard times — but this book pays especial attention to the protagonists relationships with women. Furthermore, one once again finds Bukowski’s mix of good writing, graphic depictions, wit, and dark humour, within this book. At the end of the day, I’m pretty torn as to what to think about this type of literature. If other people out there have read Bukowski I’d be curious to hear their thoughts.
7. Underworld by Don Delillo.
About 70pp into this 825pp monster of a story I fell upon this snippet of conversation between two former lovers who meet again after many years:
“I thought I owed us this visit. Whatever that means,” I said.
“I know what it means. You feel a loyalty. The past brings out our patriotism, you know? We want to feel an allegiance. It’s the one undivided allegiance, to all those people and things.”
And it gets stronger.”
“Sometimes I think everything I’ve done since those years, everything around me in fact, I don’t know if you feel this way but everything is vaguely — what — fictitious.”
It was at this point that I knew I would be hooked. The quote resonated with me because I often feel that “fictitious” element about the way we seem to live our lives. However, after reading coming to the end of the book — which is a swirling, and sometimes deliberately confusing, movement from the present to the past — I actually think that, within this conversation, Delillo is commenting on the nature of the story he is telling.
So, what is the story Delillo is telling? It’s hard to pin-down. I guess you could say it’s something of the story of America from the 1950s to the 1990s, a story of baseball games, the cold war, consumption, New York, Texas, art, and the internet. It’s a story of all sorts of characters with vague or passing connections to one another — sometimes through relationships, sometimes through objects, and sometimes through events.
I enjoyed this book, although I was slightly frustrated that Delillo didn’t “tie up” all of his loose ends (which, I suppose, may be part of the point of it all) and I think the book could probably afford to be a few hundred pages shorter. However, it’s always good to find authors of this calibre and so I look forward to reading more Delillo in the near future.
8. Would You Rather? Over 200 Absolutely Absurd Dilemmas to Ponder by Justin Heimberg & David Gomberg.
When I used to plant trees up north the members of my crew would sometimes play a game called “would you rather” wherein we would formulate totally absurd either-or situations and attempt to determine which alternative would end up being the better choice (i.e. would you rather vomit violently at an unknown time once every day, or have a minor leak coming out of your bum all the time?). Ah yes, there’s something about tree-planting the brings out the best in everyone.
Anyway, this book (a Christmas present), makes for good toilet reading, or good conversation after a few drinks (although, I tend to think that people like my half-crazed hairy little Polish foreman came up with some better material).
So, to select but one example from the book, would you rather…
have a flair for interior design but smile fiendishly and constantly rub your hands together when talking to members of the opposite sex
OR
be able to type 90wpm but moan like Chewbacca whenever you use the bathroom?