if i were discussing this novel: big machine

in the last year, i spent a month doing nothing but staring at computer monitors. i spent nine intolerable months plotting the destruction of the very thing i valued most in my life (which was not a computer monitor). and i spent most of my nights in clumsy chase of questions i couldn't ask. i also did some ordinary things, like drive my ford, make soup, and write stupid stuff on the internet. there was enough existential angst in that year to people a squabbling troop of teenagers, enough relationship madness to secure a plot line on days of our lives.

but i don't think my year would have made a good novel, unless, that is, someone like victor lavalle got a hold of my story.

lavalle's big machine is the kind of novel that blends emotional depth and ordinary life with the absurd. he takes a troubled character--an andrew, if you will--and bends him around a series of ever-more shocking circumstances. imagine haruki murakami's the wind-up bird chronicle without the strange sexual fixations and with a more tangible sense of personhood and culture--lavalle's story consciously focuses on particular racial and economic groups (and the protagonist, in his cleverness and humble beginnings, and perhaps, i'll admit it, his non-whiteness, actually reminds me of the narrator of aravind adiga's the white tiger).

big machine is a novel that confronts some of the whys, whats, and hows of my 2010. and in doing so, it sidles right up to the darkness and says, have faith.

xoxoxoxoxox

i'm leaning toward a 13/17 rating, which makes big machine a 17 point scale-recommended title, unless you prefer to avoid titles with profanity, fantastical events, and almost-too-perfect chapter-ending cliff-hangers.

you can purchase big machine here.

if i were discussing this book: "god is dead" and i don't feel so good myself

in my transition from the college to post-college life, i responded to the decreasing frequency of late night musings and existential inquiry by instead spilling my thoughts online. strangely enough, the e-place that i most frequently turned to for ravenous debate was englishforums.com, a website where moderators and well-meaning amateurs helped ESL speakers tackle this great monster we call english. and so when i got bored answering grammar riddles, i wandered into the controversial subjects forum.

yet rather than argue for my own causes, i ran to the side of perspectives that seemed, to me, falsely maligned. perhaps because of the vitriolic, one-sided tenor of argument that is a universal fact of the internet, or perhaps because of some innate character flaw, or perhaps because of the empathy-inducing influence of fiction and the gospel, whatever the cause, in between offering advice on commas and prepositions, i ignored my own quest to prove that mormonism wasn't a subset of christianity, for example, to prove that catholicism was (clarification: i'm not catholic).

this tendency for counterintuitive apologetics has, i think, found its way into my real-life character as well. at many a cousin-camping trip, i've stood at the fire, defending catholic theology to my fellow protestants. i campaign for liberal causes among my conservative friends, and conservative causes among my liberal friends.

and now, with the help of my fellow editors, chris keller and jon stanley, i've taken the ultimate crazy step: i've published a book that uses analytic essays, social commentary, poetry, interviews, and art to ask what we christians can learn from atheists. that is, how can christian theology approach atheism, that very concept that seems opposite and anathematic to christianity?"

my intentions are a bit different here--i don't intend to argue that atheists have been misunderstood--but they are related. as we suggest in our introduction, the cultural conversation surrounding new atheism and christianity has become a great swelling of voices, so loud and so self-righteous, that there's no space for quiet, compassionate consideration.

in any case, i encourage you to check out our book, "god is dead" and i don't feel so good myself: theological engagements with the new atheism, and see what you think.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

this is clearly a 17/17 read! OK, OK, you probably shouldn't trust me. i'm a bit biased by the fifty cent royalty for every thousand or so copies sold. look at the website below to see what brian mclaren says about this "brilliant book," or how james k. a. smith refers to it as a "stunning collection" and an "intellectual feast."

you can purchase and read about god is dead here (where it's cheaper than at amazon!).

if i were discussing this book: the brief wondrous life of oscar wao

i'm hesitant to mark my return to the 17 point scale flash-book reviews (pretend that's an n-dash) by examining junot diaz's the brief wondrous life of oscar wao--the book jacket includes quotes from famous publications that pretty much nail my every thought on the book. it's "extraordinarily vibrant" (NYT), "hauntingly horrific" (SFC), "deliciously casual" (TBG), and "achingly personal" (LAT). and even beyond the ubiquity of glowing adverb + adjective constructions for oscar, if you pick out nearly any oscar blurb, i think you'll find me nodding along, "yes, yes. he's right. it is a brilliant multigenerational, globally enacted tragicomedy of sex and nerdom, an epic bildungsroman with voice and pizazz!" (T17PS).

but then i remember the point of this series: i'm not attempting reviews. i'm not even attempting to discuss books in any meaningful way. i merely want to give a sense of what i think of books and what i might say if i were forced to pen a thoughtful essay on said books. it's really quite liberating.

which brings me back to my rather common response to oscar.

a responsible thinker might question whether books like oscar perpetuate latin american stereotypes in the U.S. psyche (my friend dalia, an IU grad student, reminded me of this, which reminded me of this article about roberto bolano in the guardian). or perhaps he might study the sexual ethics and norms in oscar and then contrast those behaviors with the mind-splitting oppression of the dominican republic under trujillo and his "nazgul" minions; that'd be my second choice.

but my essay would focus on that one trait that seems to have made oscar a universal sensation, the winner of the pulitzer prize for fiction, the national book critics circle award for fiction, time's #1 fiction book, et cetera: voice.

i'd attempt to locate the book in the context of other works throughout the centuries that have successfully combined a literary style (i.e., poetic language, thoughtful plot, full characters) with a not-so literary (and funny!) idiom. that is, diaz combines a sense of the literary--take this, for a random example, "It went up in a flash, like gasoline, like a stupid hope, and if I hadn’t thrown it [the burning wig] in the sink it would have taken my hand. … That was when she slapped at me, when I struck her hand and she snatched it back, like I was the fire"--with hilarious shout outs to contemporary vernacular. in oscar we read about the One Ring, about Galactus and the Watchmen. we learn of the protagonist's desire to "combine world-class martial artistry with deadly firearms proficiency" and his sister, who unleashed one of the great Street Fighter chain attacks of all time (OK, as essay on violence could work, too).

and so i wonder what other books of fiction might fit in this canon of works that dare to combine the high and low (?) art to humorous and strangely profound effect.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

i'm leaning toward a 13/17 rating, which makes oscar a 17 point scale recommended title, unless you prefer to avoid titles with copious amounts of violence, profanity, and sex. after all, if you condense this story to the simplicity of its most central device, it really is nothing more than the story of its protagonist's quest to lose his virginity.

you can purchase oscar here.

i'm also tweeting cool passages from the book at #oscarwao.

if i were discussing this book: jesus girls

a friend recently emailed me to inquire about my personal thoughts regarding jesus girls (buy the book here!), a book that my friends at cascade books recently published and a book that i helped edit and have been actively marketing on facebook.

i had the sense that she wanted something more than the back-of-the-book blurb (which is actually quite good and rather apropos to the book) or the glowing publisher's weekly review, and so i attempted to avoid pure promotional speak. i don't know that i succeeded, but here's what i said:

Personally, this is the coolest project I've ever worked on. To some extent, editing psychiatric genetic research is rewarding, because some of the things I work on may help lead to a cure or otherwise improve people's lives. That's pretty cool, but the writing itself is dry and makes no attempt to create meaning for readers. My work at THE OTHER JOURNAL is much more interesting--I get to edit theology essays, social justice articles, and poems; I get to work on writing that speaks truth to people's lives.

But JESUS GIRLS moves beyond those mediums (well, perhaps not poetry, but that's another story). JG is a collection of what you might call creative nonfiction or personal essays. Like good fiction, these essays creatively propel readers to an unconscious empathy, to see the world from someone else's shoes, and perhaps to reconsider our own lives. I've wanted to work with creative nonfiction (and novels) for a long time, so helping Hannah (the book's primary editor) edit these essays has been a very fulfilling experience.

Now, more particularly, as its title suggests, JG is a collection of reflections about growing up evangelical. What's unique about JG--and I can imagine this turning some readers off--is that it's not your typical account of growing up evangelical. That is, if you go to a Christian bookstore, you'll probably find books that closely follow the lost-and-then-found formula of conversion; if you go to a secular bookstore, you'll probably find books that blame their evangelical childhood for all of their problems as an adult. Instead, JG gathers essays from women who are still evangelical, women who now belong to other Christian denominations, and women who no longer consider themselves Christians. And so JG aims to be authentic and honest about Christian culture, about the struggles, rewards of faith, and about real-life experiences in the church.

You asked what I think about the book, and I'm guessing that you're curious about more than my biased opinion that the essays are very powerful and well-written--as an evangelical, I think it's important that we read and write this kind of literature, that we avoid sugarcoating the truth or parading a testimony that isn't really our own, that we ask the important questions JG suggests. I think it's important that we acknowledge that our church is both broken and beautiful, and that we take the liberty to honestly consider these things. JG does these things, and this may strike some as Christianity-negative, but I definitely don't see it that way.

I'm excited that you might buy the book, and I'd love to hear what you think of it.

Andrew

to learn more about jesus girls, come to our launch party this thursday! MHGS, 2501 Elliot Ave, Seattle, WA, from 7PM to 10PM--free food, drinks, and readings (including sara zarr and hannah notess!).

if i were discussing this book: the shipping news

the shipping news deserves a high rating; perhaps a 14 or 15 on the 17 point scale. unfortunately, i moved on to the next book before really gathering my thoughts, and so the the authentic-seeming wacky characters (with names like quoyle and wavey) have faded into the thick newfoundland fog where i last left them.

still, if i were to scratch out an essay from the cobwebbed corners of my mind, i think i might approach the novel from the perspective of an editor. (quite a shock, eh!) as i recall, annie proulx's style is somewhat unconventional: she somehow gets away with fragments. sentence shreds. and her characters, the madcap way they talk on and on about knots and the hulls of frigates--pages and pages of dialect about nothing, about nothing but getting to know the characters themselves. anyway, i think i'd try to articulate how this works and doesn't work; i'd try to understand whether this unique writing style somehow reflects the themes of the shipping news or whether it's a way of speaking that proulx carries with her everywhere she goes; and then i'd recommend the book, because, well, it's really quite good.