Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky

Among the many factors that can determine the longevity of an artist's career beyond his lifetime is a compelling life story - one that adds the barest seasoning to an already intriguing catalog of work. Because of this, David Foster Wallace is well on his way to becoming the transcendent American author of our times, judging by David Lipsky's recent book, "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace." The book is equal parts mythmaking and mythbusting, allowing the reader to engage in whichever feels right.

With the release of David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel "The Pale King" only weeks away, I thought it was time to tackle this work, which frankly cries out to be made into a movie. It's an obvious road picture, as Lipsky transcribes the running dialogue he recorded between himself and Wallace during the book tour for "Infinite Jest." Lipsky taped their conversations as part of a profile he was preparing for "Rolling Stone." Wallace was flush with success, his likeness gracing news magazine covers, the words of his cult sensation essays gratefully quoted, his abundant ambition evident in his newly published 1,000 page novel. He arrived in the popular consciousness like a thunderclap, and twelve years later was dead by his own hand following his surrender to clinical depression.

Because of Wallace's tragic end, it is impossible to read these conversations without feeling various emotional tugs - poignant appreciation of how talented he was, a mournful anger when considering what was ahead of him, a knowing laughter at some of his opinions, seasoned with humor. What grabbed me in reading it was the spiritual dimension to many of his observations.

When reading, it's necessary to remember that Wallace is not offering his opinion out of a need to express himself. He's selling a book, and its a book that he knows is good and will forge his reputation as a serious American writer. Moreover, he's responding to questions designed to ferret out his opinions on life, his background and what he's hiding about his nervous breakdown and drug use, and his answers (and off the record comments) are calibrated to satisfy a reporter's curiosity.

The book is overflowing with his particular persona, right down to the awkwardly structured, overly long title, which comes from one of Wallace's statements. It's amazing how vague the dialogue is. Wallace is hesitant to make a definitive statement, so he qualifies his statements, and sprinkles them with mitigating phrases, and kinda, sortas and maybes, like, abound. This is a painfully self-conscious dialogue, as the interview is self-conscious when the interviewee is overly conscious of what he perceives are his own inadequacies to the moment itself. But he is also refreshingly honest about some aspects of his career, such as how unsatisfying he thinks the ending to "The Broom of the System" was. He both praises and savages John Updike, and points out the flaws of Stephen King while at the same time lauding him. He believes that the death of serious reading will mean that identity has also ceased to exist. He sees the flaws in experimental writing. He has endless riffs on movies. All of these observations are laid out in caffeinated, postcollegiate patois, complete with all the you knows, uhs, and likes that we all struggle against in our own daily speech. Some of this is superficial pedestrian woolgathering masquerading as philosophy, and some of it is brilliant observation. The distance between the two isn't all that great.

Wallace also lays out some of his theories on what it will take for the writer to grab the attention of his over-stimulated, undereducated, 24-hour-news cycle audience. As Wallace is talking, we are pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook, with the Internet only just beginning to grab the attention and time of the public. What strikes Wallace, again and again, is the "loneliness" of modern life - how little connectivity has actually connected anyone. And upon reading, the horrifying reality is that this condition has only worsened since these interviews took place.

But Wallace also believes that human beings are "absolutely dying to give ourselves away to something." He believes this, but he also believes it is virtually impossible to write in a contemporary voice about God:

"I mean the culture, it's all wrong for it now. You know? No, no. Plausibly realistic characters don't sit around talking about this stuff. You know? So...I don't know. But the minute I start talking about it, it just, it sounds number one: very vague. Two: really reductive. And the whole thing to me was so complicated, that you know it took sixteen hundred pages of sort of weird oblique stuff to even start to talk about it. And so feel stupid, talking about it."

Of course, the real characters of this book are talking about it, and neither sounds like Dostoevsky. So why does he feel uncomfortable talking about it? "Because I don't have a diagnosis. I don't have a system of prescriptions," he says. Yet later, he and Pinsky understand that modern America and their generation is growing up in "the rubble of the old system" - that is, the "ridiculous and hypocritical...old authoritarian...don't-question-authority stuff." But, like Jonathan Franzen, Wallace has nothing to replace it with, no direction to point to, no diagnosis, no prescription. He knows enough to know that the same generation is "dying...on the toxicity" of the idea that pleasure and comfort provide the ultimate meanings for life.

"I'm talking about the number of privileged, highly intelligent, motivated career-track people that I know, from my high school and college, who are, if you look into their eyes, empty and miserable. You know? And who don't believe in politics, and don't believe in religion...And who just..who don't believe in anything. Who know fantastic reasons not to believe in stuff, and are terrific ironists and pokers of holes. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just, it doesn't seem to me that there's just a whole lot else."

But reading this, it's evident there is indeed something wrong with that, and Wallace knows it. One wonders whether he did have some idea of what was wrong, but didn't feel comfortable providing an answer. I'm not suggesting a Christian answer, though it is interesting that Wallace leaves Pinsky to go to a church where "everyone more or less wants to leave each other alone." Much of Wallace's work deals with the loneliness, the lack of meaning, the aimlessness of existence, and the search for meaning, or just, how to kill time. But a writer with the ambition to write an epic novel, with the courage to look at the hole in modern existence, is also mature enough to recognize that he doesn't have all the answers. The question of existence remains. Being able not to believe in something isn't necessarily a strength, when one ultimately doesn't believe in anything at all.

In the book's forward, Franzen provides an observation: "Does it look now like David had all the answers?" In retrospect, we can see that he at least was on to the right questions. But Lipsky's epitaph resounds: "His life was a map that ends at the wrong destination."
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The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

Among the plays slated for later this year at the Lincoln Center Festival will be the American premiere of "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" by Japan's Kanagawa Arts Theatre, a dramatization of Yukio Mishima's most well-known novel. Anyone who saw Paul Schrader's "Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters" will remember that one of those chapters was taken up with this spell-binding story, replete with Mishima's customary violence and obsession with obsessions.

“The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” tells the story of the stuttering, antisocial Buddhist acolyte Mizoguchi, who will eventually set the fire that destroys Kinkaku-ji, the 550-year-old temple in Kyoto. Based on an event that occurred in 1950, Mishima supposedly went so far as to interview the real arsonist, a schizophrenic, in prison in preparation. Inside this novel is a carefully drawn portrait of a mind’s slow descent into madness, but also the struggle of an individual frustrated by his surroundings, searching for freedom.

“He who chases fantasies lacks judgment,” or such is the judgment of Proverbs 12:11. Mizoguchi, from an early age and inspired by his father, sees the Golden Temple as the very essence of beauty. Not the Temple itself, which initially disappoints him, but the image he has created in his mind. Because of this, he easily contrasts it against himself, the personification of ugliness. Interestingly, Mishima - or his translator, Ivan Morris - decides not to let us hear Mizoguchi’s stutter for ourselves. His thoughts, of course, which tell the story, flow freely. But they are a contradictory lot, with conflicting observations about the nature of beauty, ugliness, being and nothingness, good and evil. From an early age, Mizoguchi is alone and proud of being misunderstood, which is the beginning of his fall. It gives him a sense of mission, which is key to his development as the story unfolds.

Halfway through the book, Mizoguchi reminds himself that “the essence of Zen is the absence of all particularities, and that the real power to see consists in the knowledge that one’s own heart possesses neither form nor feature.” In a way, he longs for the nothingness, the lack of attachment, of his calling, but his pride in his otherness keeps drawing him out of this. “It is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other,” he says. But he stands in opposition to the beauty of the Temple, the ever-present, suffocating, undeniability of the Temple. Mizoguchi does not “have any feeling of solidarity with nothingness.” Indeed, he cannot, not because of his defect, not because of the Temple. It is little wonder that his encounters with women repeatedly find him impotent.

One can spot several different messages arising within the story. Beauty acts as an ideal, but also as a curse. It reminds Mizoguchi - and us - that the trials of the world are not so easily escaped even by the devoted and devout. The obsessions we wrap ourselves in can dominate us, and easily turn what is just a historical building of great beauty into a reminder of the unworthiness we perceive in ourselves. One is left to wonder if the individual within Mizoguchi might have been encouraged, in a different setting, or if the process of encouragement itself would have any effect. After all, what would he be encouraged to do? But we also have an all-too familiar picture of the angry loner, a figure who comes to believe that only through destruction does he define himself, that destiny has fingered him for an awful end, but it is his own end, and he will embrace it willingly because it is his. The Christian idea of sin, of malignant desire for that which is beyond redemption or even beyond understanding, is recognizable. But there is something else - a rebellion against the eastern concept of the ideal, which is an existence beyond attachment, identity and struggle.

With the death of Mizoguchi’s father, he begins his career at the Temple, and he befriends Tsurukawa, an upright man. But Mizoguchi’s malevolence is growing, “a wordless force” that seeks to possess him. He nurtures it as he recognizes it, and it blooms when he makes a new friend, Kashiwagi. An arrogant, malicious, self-absorbed man with a club foot, he projects all of these twisted qualities onto Mizoguchi and shows him how to use his disability to his disadvantages.

The appearance of Kashiwagi midway through the novel is Mizoguchi’s catalyst, and the beginning of his emotional apprenticeship. Mizoguchi also learns about the nature of hypocrisy from the Superior, Father Dosen, who has both frustrated and advanced Mizoguchi’s career. At its beginning, Mizoguchi held the ambition to one day succeed him, but only later does this contort itself into the desire to destroy the Temple. After all, the Temple is more alive than Mizoguchi.

Near the end, before Mizoguchi carries out his plot, he begs a visiting father to see past his face and look into his heart. We realize that he too recognizes what is going on inside him, that he does care, that he perceives the outer “ugliness” has taken root inside him, but the father cannot see inside him, and instead unknowingly inspires him to go ahead. Given the author, one might expect Mizoguchi to kill himself in sight of the flames of the Temple. But instead, he smokes a cigarette and embraces the freedom he has found for himself, the individuality, the singularity of his existence. It is not our thoughts which define us to others - but our actions. But our thoughts define us to ourselves, and make the action inevitable.

Set Your Fields on Fire

The award-winning novel by William Thornton

Available now

Read the first chapter here 

Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"

 You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.

It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.   
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast. 
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book. 
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here. 
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.

Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here. 
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.

This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.

Silence by Shusaku Endo

One of the director Martin Scorcese's future planned film projects is reportedly a movie based on "Silence," a novel by the Catholic Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. In an interview with the writer Richard Schiekel, Scorcese states that he has been contemplating a film about the book since a copy was given to him following the release of his 1988 film, "The Last Temptation of Christ." Endo's tale, steeped in the early history of Christianity in Japan, reveals the story of people whose faith survived even as they outwardly denied it.

Endo uses several strategies of structure and voice to tell his story. It begins with news from Japan relayed back to Europe that the Jesuit priest Ferreira, after 33 years on the island, has become an apostate following torture. This inspires the journey of two priests, Sebastian Rodrigues and Francisco Garrpe, who go to Japan to discover the truth about their former mentor. As Francisco observes, "there is no one more wretchedly alone than the priest who does not measure up to his task."

There is more than the fate of a single priest at issue though. The Shogun of Japan is waging a bloody campaign to stamp out Christianity, torturing and killing priests and requiring thousands of villagers to desecrate the holy images they venerate. The Japanese authority does not wish to become yet another European colony in the Far East, with the church serving as its advance guard. The church, in turn, is afraid that its toehold on this island at the edge of the world is disappearing.

After a brief introduction by a narrator, we then follow several chapters of letters penned by Rodrigues, who relates the journey of the priests to Japan and their struggles to remain underground once they reach the islands. Their journey is aided by Kichijiro, a Japanese drunkard later revealed as a Christian brother who succumbed to fear and became an apostate at the point of death. We hear Rodrigues' voice as he thrills to the adventure of discovering that Christian faith thrives still in secret, as he administers baptisms, conducts mass and hears confessions from Japanese starving for the sacraments. It is in these chapters that we relate most to Rodrigues, the reader bonding with his devotion to the faith.

Two themes begin to introduce themselves at this point. One is the image of the face. Rodrigues studies the faces of the Japanese, who look alien and expressionless to him. Are they really devoted followers, and who among them may be ready to betray them to the authorities? Behind the face, we see, is the truth of a person and, we believe, the measure of his faith. Rodrigues senses that Christianity acts as an antidote to the fatalism endemic in the Japanese people, but he detects a diabolical nature behind their outward passivity. Even still, Rodrigues observes that "Our Lord himself entrusted his destiny to untrustworthy people." The face that is mentioned more than any is that of Jesus. Rodrigues, as his situation deteriorates, obsesses over the portrait of Jesus he paints in his own imagination. This is necessary, considering that that very face will be the one that measures his own destiny during the course of the book.

The other theme, though, gives the book its title. "Silence" may stand for the kind employed by the Japanese Christians, who practice their faith in secret and are driven to deny it even as they cling to it. But Rodrigues mentions the awful silence of God, as his faith is challenged again and again. After a few believers are killed, and Kichijiro questions why they must endure alone among men, Rodrigues pens these words:

"I have long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints - how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with glory in Paradise, how the angels had blown trumpets. This was the splendid martyrdom I had often seen in my dreams. But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. What a miserable and painful business it was! The rain falls unceasingly on the sea. And the sea which killed them surges on uncannily - in silence."

But the scene abruptly shifts to a narrator again once Rodrigues is captured. The silence he mentions is overpowering, even as Kichijiro again proves himself, in Rodrigues' eyes, as an unreliable believer. The inevitable meeting comes with Ferreira, who is now an unrepentant apostate with a Japanese name and wife. He is a defeated man, and he believes Christianity will never take root in Japan because the Japanese will eventually twist the faith into whatever gods and superstitions they already possess.

Rodrigues feels himself twisted, as the pain mounts, even questioning the existence of God and his own place in an increasing absurd fate. He has traveled around the world to find his mentor an unbeliever, and he feels his impending death as the final death blow to the faith in this alien land. He will be "a missionary defeated by missionary work." And he compares himself to Christ in his sufferings, drawing inspiration, but also asking questions and nursing doubts. The peril of free will is that even as we may be succeeding in life, we can still fail in the ultimate test of divine approval. The closer we draw to God, the more we are aware of how far away we are, how utterly lost without Him.

In hearing a final confession, Rodrigues hears what he thinks is the voice of Jesus, with the distance of the cross providing a last blessing and comfort. The silence has been necessary, he learns, so that he could identify with his Lord in a special way unlike any other. His existence has kept the faith going, even if his example has failed. By giving us this novel, Endo speaks on the paradox of evangelism - that even the outward failure of the individual can lead to ultimate success if the message is carried on, if the life speaking of it draws sufficient attention with its passing on of the light. It is not the individual who succeeds, but the Word itself. In the telling of the story of Jesus, we not only identify with Him, we discover Him, even as we bring others to Him.

In the end, God thunders loudest in appalling, scandalous silences, when our spirit gnaws at the end of our faith like a ravenous dog on a dessicated bone. It is the craving for His voice to comfort, to reassure, even to explain, that ultimately reveals His face, and ours.

 Set Your Fields on Fire

The award-winning novel by William Thornton

Available now

Read the first chapter here

Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"

 You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.

It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.   
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast. 
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book. 
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here. 
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.

Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here. 
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.

This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here. 

Sanshirō by Natsume Sōseki

Reading Haruki Murakami again led me to this classic of Japanese 20th century literature, since Murakami provided the introduction to this latest translation by Jay Rubin. "Sanshirō" is the story of a young country boy who goes to Tokyo for his university education, and Murakami's introduction points out that, if the book is effective, it is because it provides an affectionate and accurate representation of the "fragrance" of this particular time in one's life, regardless of where the reader may live.

The setting is 1908. Japan, after centuries of non-contact with the West, is open to European and American influences in art, dress, religion, politics, philosophy and expression. The setting, then, is a hurricane of societal change, and that alone would be worthy of a panoramic novel of ideas. But Sanshirō, who has experienced rural life with its suppositions and superstitions, is thrust into modern Japan to receive his education. He approaches the city with a mix of skepticism, innocence, fear and expectation.

What follows then is a story with an intimate setting and a small cast of interrelated characters. "Sanshirō" is a novel of college life, but its most important aspects are not lectures or the ideas the characters wrestle with, but what characters learn about the world they will encounter, and themselves, and how they deal with each other. Just as in every university the world over, passionate young people display inordinate emotion over ideas they barely understand, but which dominate them. The students give birth to ideas that have been rubbed raw, already thought and rethought a thousand times. These minds are too young to know how unoriginal these fancies are, but vain enough to exult in the ideas as if they are brand new. "How many aeons did nature expend in fashioning a precious jewel?," one asks. "And how many aeons did the jewel lie gleaming in the earth until fate brought it forth?"

Sanshirō is a familiar character, a wise fool who is oblivious to experience as he makes friends with the ebullient Yojirō and pursues the shy Mineko. He "smells of the farm," Yojirō tells him, but his reticence keeps him in awe of the figures he encounters and mindful of danger.

This marks him, though, as a "coward," as evident in his first encounter with a woman on a train headed to Tokyo. He ends up sharing a bath and a bed in an inn with a strange woman, but nothing passes between them. It is only at their parting that he realizes she was waiting for him to make a move. Later, his mother repeats the charge that he has always been cowardly. Yet it took some courage for Sanshirō to venture to college in the first place. What we see is not so much a man who is avoiding danger as one who is blind to it. The only question is how willingly blind he is. He is learning, and more than anything, learning to understand. The emotional language of those he meets is foreign to him - just as foreign as "Hamlet" is when he waits for the Danish prince to say something more recognizably Japanese.

The question of Japanese identity lies dormant in the novel, as the definition is still being debated during this period. The Japanese are learning, in the early 1900s, to become part of a larger world community. There is awe at some western ideas and healthy skepticism. But a professor counsels Sanshirō from the beginning "not to surrender himself" to the ideas he encounters, which is also a theme running through the novel. All of these grand philosophical and societal ideas are nothing, the same professor says later, because man does not operate according to mechanical laws. The same experiences inspire different responses from men living side by side.

The professor offers another critique, in that western ideals have made people less hypocritical, because they are "hyper-villains" - instead of caring for others for the benefit of public approval, they now care for themselves out in the open. This has made society meaner, but more honest, "natural ugliness in all its glory," the professor says. This is one of the paradoxes of modern living, of course. We surrender civilization in the service of "honesty," but we instead give dishonesty a bigger home in wider society. We surrender altruism because it inconvenient, but we mourn the loss. And where does Sanshirō fit in? All he seems to want, even though he doesn't understand it, is Mineko.

The bittersweetness of college, though, is that it eventually ends, as does youth. Mineko will not marry Sanshirō, but only because he eventually proves the prophecy of his cowardice. Later on, Sanshirō learns that Mineko is a Christian, which makes her common judgment on others - that they are "stray sheep" - more understandable. It also makes the heart ache to hear her parting words to him, from Psalms 51: "For I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me." She has mistakenly given her heart to a man who will not take it. He has learned something, but we are unsure if it is enough to change him.

Set Your Fields on Fire

The award-winning novel by William Thornton

Available now

Read the first chapter here

Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"

 You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.

It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.   
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast. 
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book. 
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here. 
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.

Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here. 
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.

This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.

after the quake by Haruki Murakami

The indelible pictures of devastation following this month's 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan continue to mesmerize - with YouTube videos of cars bobbing in the water, homes carried away on currents, and the smoldering ruins of nuclear reactors, with no one knowing where the devastation may end. The Japanese themselves struggle with not only how to rebuild, but what "meaning" they may attach to this parade of disasters.

The last time the nation went through a comparable catastrophe was the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which killed more than 6,400 people. It also inspired "after the quake," a short story collection by Haruki Murakami peopled with characters dealing with its aftermath.

But the effect is largely at a distance. The book's six stories do not feature even a single survivor of the quake, nor is there a description of the moment of devastation. The characters of the book tend to experience the disaster as much of Japan and the world did - secondhand, through television images and reports of the devastation. Komura, the main character of the opening story, "UFO in Kushiro," (which is being reprinted in this week's New Yorker) sees a morning paper of reports:

"He read it from beginning to end on the plane. The number of dead was rising. Many areas were still without water or electricity, and countless people had lost their homes. Each article reported some new tragedy, but to Komura the details seemed oddly lacking in depth. All sounds reached him as far-off, monotonous echoes."

The stories have common traits, common images, common themes. One is obviously a sense of loss. Komura's wife has used the earthquake to leave him. Another character has run away from his wife. One story takes place not in Japan but Thailand, with the earthquake only mentioned in passing, reminding a woman of a lost child. Still another character has what may or may not be a mystical experience that prevents a larger quake from striking Tokyo, but with the expectation he may lose his life.

Another element is the aftermath of sudden calamity. In all cases, the earthquake is only a far-off trauma that mirrors one closer to home. The death of loved ones, the loss of certainties in life, the suddenness of unwanted loneliness, the approach of death - all of these shake and shape our characters in ways far beyond that of trembling earth. The heart figures prominently in a few of them, as an image and the obvious stand-in as the seat of our emotions, our longings for freedom, and our insistence on love.

But the characters in these stories also deal with meaning, and the loss of meaning brought on by disaster. Komura, our hero from the opening story, does not know why his wife left and struggles with understanding how he can continue in her absence. Katagiri, in "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo," believes he is being guided by a walking, talking frog who means to save the capital city. He is told that if he has faith in the frog, who has been watching him and silently admiring his integrity, then they will be successful. But even if they are successful, no one will know it has happened.

Yoshida, the main character of "All God's Children Can Dance," deals with the absence of the defining idea of his life, as his religiously devout mother raised him to believe, as part of her pseudo-Christian cult, that he was a Son of God. Consequently, as the years continue, he abandons his faith because of "the unending coldness of the One who was his father: His dark, heavy, silent heart of stone." In the face of so many losses, Yoshida asks the question why "if it is all right for God to test man, why was it wrong for man to test God?" Even Yoshida, in the end though, cannot totally abandon God anymore than he can abandon the faith he barely comprehends. Like our other characters, he struggles against a profound sense of loneliness that seems just as persistent as it is indefinable. More than one character struggles against a sense of personal darkness that threatens to overwhelm him or her.

The New York Times, in reporting on the response of the Japanese people to the 2011 earthquake, noted that at least one citizen mentioned tapping the nation's "hidden strength." "Implicit in the praise of Japanese traits of endurance, perseverance and grace - strengths evident in the orderly response to the unfathomable destruction up north - is a criticism of the perceived values that led to the nuclear accidents: the postwar blind pursuit of material wealth and comfort..."

The stories of "after the quake" illustrate that disasters sometimes serve only as the background music in the lives of individuals to illustrate the loss of control we all experience, even at our sanest and safest. We struggle for meaning because we do not want an accident to be responsible for carrying away all we ever knew, but we struggle against it simultaneously because we don't think the meaning we perceive may be one we wish to confront. We want to assign blame elsewhere, or we are too quick to attach it to ourselves. We want clarity, until we perceive it, and then we insist on ambiguity, with nothingness growing in our hearts, in order to preserve our all-too-fragile notions of who we are and where we think we are going.

A headline this week in the USA Today on the disaster read, "For survivors, daily struggle of life and death." Murakami, in evoking Kobe, reminds us that such a headline can deal with much more than the aftermath of an earthquake.

I also wrote about Murakami's "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" here. 

Set Your Fields on Fire

The award-winning novel by William Thornton

Available now

Read the first chapter here

Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"

 You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.

It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.   
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast. 
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book. 
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here. 
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.

Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here. 
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.

This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.

The Man by Ray Bradbury

One of the more tantalizing verses of Scripture is John 10:16, where Jesus tells His disciples: “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”

The verse is usually interpreted to mean the gentiles who will believe following the Resurrection and the work of the disciples. But this is the verse I thought of after I read Ray Bradbury’s interesting short story, “The Man,” one of the stories collected in “The Illustrated Man.” I also wrote about "The Martian Chronicles" here.

Published in 1948, “The Man” is full of the whiz bang fun of classic science fiction - rocket men traveling through the stars in search of meaning. The story is like others of the period, it quickly gets to the business of storytelling, with characterization in a few phrases and mannerisms, right before the main idea is served up for the reader.

In this case, our story concerns two rocket men, Hart, the captain, and Martin. Their rocket lands on the outskirts of some town on some planet in full view of the city folk, who make no effort to come out and welcome them. Hart is a cynical, cigar smoking voyager, impatient for answers, “looking for our own lost souls.” He laments that science has left man with little except traveling into the heavens looking for a better world than the one they left. One is reminded of Charlton Heston’s Taylor from “Planet of the Apes.”

Martin listens but doesn’t comment on these observations. He goes along with them amiably enough until Hart sends him into town to discover why the townspeople don’t come. When he returns, he is visibly shaken and momentarily unable to speak. The reason there was no welcoming committee for the rocket, Martin says, is that the town was busy celebrating. An unnamed man “they’d waited a long time for” had suddenly appeared again, rendering their landing meaningless. Who is he? An unnamed man who heals the sick and comforts the poor, who fights hypocrisy and dirty politics. “He didn’t have a name. He didn’t need a name. It’d be different on every planet, sir,” Martin reports.

“You don’t mean - you can’t mean - That man you’re talking about couldn’t be -” Hart stammers, until Martin nods that the man, indeed, is.

The two go into the city, where vague talk of miracles are on everyone’s lips. But Hart wants more than the pie in the sky poetry he receives in return for his questions. When asking the mayor of the town about what happened, the mayor replies, “We are all witnesses.” When asking a woman what color the man’s eyes were, she says, “The color of the sun, the color of the sea, the color of a flower, the color of the mountains, the color of the night.”

The two spacemen, though, cannot agree on what they are seeing. Martin resolves to stay on the planet, telling Hart, “They’ve got something you’ll never have - a little simple faith- you’re boiled because someone stole your act, got here ahead and made you unimportant…Take your filth somewhere else and foul up other nests with your doubt and your - scientific method!”

The captain, though, is unconvinced. He sees this as an elaborate scam, perpetrated by his nemesis Burton. His logic is simple - what they have seen can’t possible be what it appears to be. But another rocket crash lands, and the two men discover that Burton has been dead two days and never made it to this planet. This is no ruse.

Hart, like his name, is impulsive, even reckless, we later discover. We see that he has a logical, scientific mind, but we also see that the logic is in the service of his nature. He does not believe, perhaps, because he does not want to believe. Faith is beyond him. He must have proof. But we sense that even proof will not be enough for Hart. Even truth might have another explanation. Martin, (perhaps Luther?) on the other hand, is a believer, because he wants to believe. Even the doubts that Hart plants in him do not take root. He is just as passionate, though he sees Hart’s doubt as something corrosive and harmful, not to himself, but the people they were meant to discover.

But after this revelation in a burning rocket, though, Hart is ready to believe. The two men go back into the city, but cannot find The Man. “Each man finds him in his own way,” the mayor tells Hart. But the captain, impatient for answers, pulls a gun on the mayor, convinced he is hiding The Man. The mayor observes that while Hart thinks he wants to believe, that he finally can believe, the reality is - the spaceman just wants an answer. Any answer perhaps will satisfy him, for the moment.

Hart resolves to go on to the next world, and the next, until he finally catches up to the mysterious man. Maybe he’ll keep missing him, but eventually, he’ll find him. And what will he ask The Man for? “A little peace and quiet,” he says. He will not rest, nor can he rest, and when asked why, he does not understand the question.

It is only after he leaves that the Mayor reveals to Martin that “The Man” is still there, and mustn’t be kept waiting.

So what is Bradbury trying to say, if anything? We can sense another face of the Almighty in Hart himself, the impatient captain who flew his rocket over the city, expecting hordes of curious townspeople to come out in expectation, but instead, is left with his lonely ship. Why don’t they come? he wonders, like the lord of the feast from Jesus’ parable, who has prepared his house for guests but finds it empty. The questing heart is wounded by the indifference of the one he seeks.

In the mayor’s comment, that each man finds Him in his own way, one senses a creeping pantheism, that Jesus is just another name for any other vehicle man might worship. But the inability of Hart to believe, and his stubborn insistence on finding out for himself, leads the reader in another direction - even proof does not necessarily prove. One must have faith to believe in anything, whether it be resurrection, reincarnation or radioactivity. Yes, some things are easier to prove than others, and some things are undeniable fact. But even the hardest, truest things in life sometimes cannot overcome a brittle heart.

And some journeys of unimaginable distances don’t require a rocket ship, simply because they have already been made for you.

Set Your Fields on Fire

The award-winning novel by William Thornton

Available now

Read the first chapter here

Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"

 You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.

It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.   
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast. 
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book. 
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here. 
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.

Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here. 
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.

This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here. 

Read a piece I did for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
Read another interview with the fleegan book blog here. 

The History of History by Ida Hattemer-Higgins

This first novel by Ida Hattemer-Higgins is subtitled, “A Novel of Berlin,” and the city literally seethes and breathes on every page. Margaret Taub is a tour guide, with an intimate knowledge of its streets and the ability to describe not only what is seen on them but what the streets themselves have witnessed. For any modern novel of Berlin must have a memory, unspeakable memories, and a voice to reveal them.

But Margaret has amnesia - a limited case of amnesia, covering a period in 2002 and 2003. Her amnesia though, is meant to remind us of the collective amnesia of the German people over the mass insanity of the Nazi period. As Margaret begins her investigation into what happened during her missing months, she is pursued by the spirit of Magda Goebbels, the wife of Hitler’s propaganda minister, in the form of a tempting, accusing harpy. Magda, of course, is notoriously remembered for having murdered her six children in the Fuhrer Bunker, even after Hitler’s suicide, rather than spirit them to safety.

Margaret sees herself in Magda, and in Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress and wife for a day. She sees herself in the family Strauss, who killed themselves rather than face the horror of the war. She sees herself passing judgment on victim and murderer alike, finding kinship with each alike, until all human action is revealed as corrupt. Her observations and obsessions lead her to believe that what she is doing is domesticating her fear, homogenizing the terror.

Margaret is an American with German ancestry, so she (believes she) is an outsider to the recriminations and excuses that modern Germany’s collective memory offers to the Holocaust. But the creeping insanity that she battles is something that anyone who plunges into the history of the Third Reich feels. We see the camps, we see the abandoned shoes and abandoned clothes and abandoned lives, and we desperately want it all to mean something. The sufferings of millions crystallize for us for just a moment in one solitary life, and we mourn, though we are not sure what precisely we are mourning.

Margaret’s visits to a Dr. Arabscheilis confirm some of this:

“’If you read some scrap of history,’ the doctor said, ‘you are doing nothing but replaying your own life, only in heavy makeup. The world is pregnant with your own face, and it will never give birth to anything else. You know nothing but this life of yours, which is plain and pure emotion, stripped of all gratification of meaning - just a whimper in the dark. A story, by contrast, is a symphony blooming in the sunlight, trying to draw you away from chaos.”

Later in the novel, Margaret again speaks to the doctor about the similarity, on a smaller and at the same time more epic scale, between the Holocaust and the Crucifixion. Margaret wonders that if since the death of one man led to spiritual enlightenment, can the death of millions more help the world in the same way. The doctor dismisses this, saying, “The murder of the Jews of Europe in the twentieth century is only interesting to people for whom it is not unbearable. Interest in terrible things is always a sign of detachment.” In the beginning, we tried not to talk about it, and now we perhaps talk too much about it, with the feeling we will never comprehend it at all.

Humanity still hasn’t figured out a way to make sense of the murder of six million Jews, much less the death of 50 million in the Second World War, which is one of the reasons why fiction dealing with the Shoah usually suffers from two defects - the story does not do justice to the reality we know, or the story attempts to borrow the clothes of the event for itself and disguises a defective story. But Hattemer-Higgins wisely uses the idea of the tour guide as both outsider and insider, and her prose mirrors the mental confusion of Margaret Taub as she realizes her journey is one of self-discovery. The narrative veers into magic realism occasionally, and adopts an almost Biblical language at times, as if conventional English is somehow unworthy of the trauma at the heart of the story.

Because this is a story not just about collective, historical evil, but about personal evil and the will to want to forget. I was reminded of Ron Rosenbaum’s “Explaining Hitler,” a wonderful book written in 1998 about Hitler explainers - those philosophers, historians, psychologists, theologians and Holocaust survivors who argue over the question of whether Hitler was evil - in other words, did he know his dream of mass murder was evil, or was he, in the words of one biographer, “convinced of his own rectitude?” It is not a small question, as Rosenbaum states:

“…what we talk about when we talk about Hitler is often not the Hitler of history but the meaning of evil. Not evil as some numinous supernatural entity but evil as a name for a capacity of human nature. To what degree does Hitler represent some ultimate, perhaps never-before-seen extension of that capacity? Or does he represent not a qualitative leap in that capacity but rather a figure whose distinctiveness and importance in this regard have been inflated by the quantity of his victims?”

But Margaret Taub, her name means deaf, is not a victim of Hitler, but of a man named Amadeus, whose name means “work of God.” Her love affair with this older man starts her on a bitter road that brings her face to face with her own origins, and headed for a destination that ends up being her undoing. It is the memory of Amadeus and what became of their affair which is the genesis of her amnesia. Her suffering is a particularly feminine kind of suffering, and we perceive that her passion will not be assuaged by the passage of time. The fact that the world continues in the face of her pain is real and devastating. We often abandon our secret shame at the doors of others, only to see it wither in their indifference, the screams going ignored, and then silent.

In this regard, Margaret Taub’s odyssey through the pulsating streets of Berlin, her ears ringing with the accusations of millions, the hands of creeping death fondling her imagination, bears some kinship with the narrator of Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” herself employing the language of the Shoah to describe her fascination with death:

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call.

Because the picture of Hitler, trapped in the bunker of his own creation, a victim of his own accumulating sins, fascinates us in the same way as grand opera, only more so because we know it to be real. And we know that the nature of humanity’s capacity for evil has never fully been appreciated or understood, just as the supreme sacrifice to undo it has remained, for many, ignored and unaccepted.

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