A Father Figure: Michael Lewis' 'Home Game'

In a year, I may not remember much from Home Game . That's not to say Michael Lewis' writing is bad; it isn't. He writes here in just the style I like -- a kind of themed memoir that weaves together anecdotes and life lessons. The theme is, per the subtitle, An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood. Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott is a parallel that quickly comes to mind, and Paris to the Moon too (Adam Gopnik), which contributes to a laugh line in Home Game.

I laughed more than once. Home Game was easily entertaining. I suppose Lewis would have been in trouble if I -- an educated new father with a dry sense of humor and sympathies for themed memoirs -- didn't laugh. I was I believe, part of the book's target audience. He hit his target.

Here's my one knock. Lewis playfully describes how fatherhood is, at least in his experience, for the bourgeois America. He hardly touches on how fatherhood should be. This isn't strictly a criticism as Lewis doesn't claim to cover this ground (can you deride baseball for not having enough tackling?). But fatherhood itself -- the ideal, the archetype, the form -- is what I find moving, compelling. Wisdom along those lines is what would have made the book, more than entertaining, memorable.

Felonious Jazz, A Novel

A colleague’s husband had the gumption to come into the office and hawk his self-published novel. I respect that and so read the book. It’s called Felonious Jazz.

My gut reaction is that it reminds me of The Da Vinci Code in pace and tone. It sticks to the murder mystery genre with the plot being driven by the dark mind of the villain. The mood is conspiratorial. A dashing detective is in pursuit. Can he match the mind of the criminal before another innocent woman is savaged?

A superficial comparison of Felonious Jazz and Da Vinci Code would put the two worlds apart – the suburban culture of north Raleigh, N.C. and the ecclesial intrigues of Europe. But, besides the tone, the quick, page-turning scenes seem similar to me. I am reminded of the advice of radio producer Ira Glass to close out a scene every 30-45 seconds with a flourish that will carry a listener forward. Bryan does that, well, in Felonious Jazz. With my brother-in-law visiting, I snuck off to find out if Jeff Swain would catch up to Leonard Noblac before baby Jacob was harmed….

Praying Poetry: Wendell Berry's "Given" Poems

Two images stay with me having recently read Wendell Berry’s Given book of poems. An older man, after a snow, comes to his wife’s grave and wishes he could lift the snow like a blanket and join his wife as if climbing into bed. “But he is not her husband now./ To participate in resurrection, one/ first must be dead. And he goes/ back into the whitened world, alive.” This, from "The Rejected Husband".

The other image is of trees standing patiently in just the place where they were put by God. Then, this poem, "IX" in the Sabbaths 2000 series, turns the image upon man: "I stand and wait for prayer/ To come and find me here."

Robert Frost comes to mind, reading these poems from Berry. That may not be such a profound thought given that I just discovered a blurb from his publisher that says the same (along with a comparison to William Carlos Williams). Frost and Berry both write about nature and eternity -- but don't all poets! (I leave it for someone else to sort out how the Christological orientation of Berry's poems separate them from Frost's.)

Lastly, given the character of this blog, I can't ignore Berry's "How to be a Poet". "Stay away from screens," he says -- uh oh, reader! Craft, place and silence are the poem's themes, in that order. Poems are, it concludes (itself included, I suppose), "like prayers prayed back to the one who prays."

Why books should always have happy (redemptive) endings

I am an honorary member of my aunt Ann's book club. Every year she sends me the best couple of novels she read. I got Atonement from her (Ian McEwan) and read it. While reading it, I remembered bits and pieces of Crime and Punishment, which I read six years ago. Why? Here's my guess.

The landscape of Atonement is as much interior as exterior, that is, as much in the characters' minds as outside in the visible world. The main character Briony, a budding writer, in particular is described by her thoughts about the malleability of reality. The book's drama centers on Briony's false witness -- intended? -- that sends an innocent young man to prison. The sympathetically portrayed psyche of a guilty person is what brought to mind Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Briony's "crime" is not nearly as severe or overt as Raskolnikov's, but the believable layering of rationalizations is similar.

I liked Atonement; I snuck away from family during Christmas to read a chapter or two now and then. I attribute that to the masterful description of the characters' thoughts. I recognized some of Briony's thoughts as my own, and I'm sure I know people like her mother, father and older brother (her sister Emily I can't quite place). This is not what reading was like for me as a boy. I didn't like to read up through my sophomore year of high school. I thought novels assigned in school were loaded with boring "description", by which I meant scene setting, as opposed to cool "action", by which I probably meant depictions of events that would stir my hormones. What changed my mind about reading is that I found books were a way to engage in philosophical debate with heavyweight minds. I was, and am, contemplative by nature. So when my friend Brian lent me The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, I realized I was getting some high-powered thinking delivered directly to my mind. I was hooked. To tie this back to Atonement, I was reminded while reading it that I still don't like lots of scene-setting verbiage. I like action and thinking. That's what the book had.

I disagreed with Atonement the way I disagreed with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Both stories carried me right along but the existential shape of the world being presented in each did not sit with me. In the case of Dan Brown I thought he was being decitful in his use of fiction to propose a conspiracy theory about the church. With McEwan, I just honestly disagree. Back to Crime and Punishment to explain. Dostoevsky sees Raskolnikov redeemed at the end. McEwan leaves Briony's situation ambiguous (on a couple of levels). There's no doubt about the ending's cleverness, and I know the mantra about literature relishing ambiguity, but I don't think you're telling the whole truth in fiction if you leave out God's providence. I'm not saying every ending has to be happy, but if you're going to depict a world shouldn't you give a nod to the character of its creator?

A Blog is Born

The optimism of a new year brings this blog to birth.

I aspire to grow as a writer and every book I've read on writing says writers need to do two things: 1) Read. 2) Write. Stephen King says he reads 80 novels a year (On Writing). Anne Lamott says she rarely takes a day off from writing, not even Christmas (Bird By Bird). Keeping a blog is not necessarily a reading discipline but it can help because of this: You don't know what you think until you write it. That's from Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones). It's my other cornerstone of writing advice. I do read; keeping a blog begs that I write.

Also, there's my dad. One time during college, back when I kept a journal in various notebooks, he and I were traveling and shared a hotel room. He noticed my routines of yoga, meditation and journaling. He already knew about the yoga and meditation, and teased me about the journaling -- gently, as is my dad's nature. He said I was writing my memoirs for posterity. Ah yes ... we can't forget aiming for grandeur. Making the move from diary to internet just makes it more explicit.

Reader advisory: This blog is going to be "churchy". The church and Christian life is what I think about, and per the Goldberg rule it will be what I write about. I also hope to get some poems up here, and of course vignettes involving friends and family.