Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude

For the first 200 pages of this book, I prayed that it would go somewhere and such intoxicating, compelling images and characters would not simply be tossed in the dungheap of my memory for want of relevance. I worried that I was reliving the reading of Villanueva's Rain of Gold, an experience which I enjoyed at the time but of which I cannot recall a single detail. For the third quarter of the book, I was heartened by the foreshadowing of a profound and tidy truth that would only be revealed at the end of the book. For the last quarter, however, I abandoned myself completely in the indelible details of this masterpiece, and only then did I receive the message. Not only does the book not go anywhere, it does so purposefully and pointedly. The book is a wheel on which Marquez spins an elaborate shroud, and on which he then spends just as long unravelling it. It is this trait which, in my mind, defines the most masterful works of literature: Each scene is a microcosm of the book as a whole, and each character does to themselves what the author does to the universe which he creates.

Which is not to say that I am entirely on board with Marquez' message. From the title to the tiniest detail, he demands that the reader accept that the human experience is inescapably solitary. What is compelling is that each character is alone in his or her own way. The women especially are so clearly drawn, so simultaneously fantastic and human, that one is struck by the vast and inexhaustible variety of solitude that exists in the town of Macondo. Each of them, Fernanda, Remedios, Amaranta, Ursula, Pilar, and even the minor female characters are so crisply created that one is never in danger of confusing them. The same cannot be said for the male characters, which fact might be a literary device and might equally be a lapse in authorial attention. The copious and varied populace of the novel careen into each other like depraved bumper cars in a praody of human existence that invokes the perspective of Virginia Woolf, who seems to have shared Marquez' faith in the fundamental isolation of the human spirit. I simply do not concur. The human spirit is undoubtedly adrift in a social sea. But one can authentically, if briefly, touch and hold the spirit of another. The experience has more than once driven me to weep with an emotion that is neither sorrow nor bliss, but simply the neutral, flavorless emotion which serves as the canvas on which all other emotions are painted. But that's just my experience. Even though I cannot endorse Marquez' theme, I will never escape the image of Rebeca eating earth to escape her animal passion, of the locket with a strand of hair locked in a suit of armor at the bottom of a river, of Amaranta's black bandage, or of the myriad other burning images with which this novel almost carelessly overflows.

John Shelby Spong: Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism

Despite my attraction to his message, I was feeling rather ambivalent about Spong's style until an inspired passage more than halfway through clarified it all for me. I can think of no better endorsement of this message than to quote it directly:

Both the Sacred Scriptures and the creeds of the Christian church can point to but they can never finally capture eternal truth. The attempt to make either Bible or tradition "infallible" is an attempt to shore up ecclesiastical power and control. It is never an attempt to preserve truth . . . Only truth that can constantly call out new words capable of lifting yesterday's experience into today's mind-set will finally survive.The formulations of today or tomorrow will be no more eternal than the formulations of first-century people. this is not a plea to give up inadequate ancient words for ultimately inadequate modern words. It is to force upon us the realization that all words are, in the last analysis, inadequate (169).

Spong, despite a slightly muddled delivery, succeeds in communicating several important perspectives: first, that the Bible cannot possibly be taken literally. I would add that nobody even believes in a fastidiuously literal Bible, no matter what they might say. Even the most ardent fundamentalists can appreciate the beauty of the Bible's copious figurative and metaphorical language. Furthermore, a Bible that was delivered word for word from the mouth of God with no iota of filtration through human perspective would have no need of four gospels. The fact that the four gospels differ by so much as a single word (let alone other clear stylistic elements that are attributable to human authorial influence) is evidence enough that they are told through a human perspective. The fact that they differ by more than a little and are, in places, contradictory, only strengthens this position. Secondly, Spong argues that enshrinement of the Bible as infallible and verbatim Divine revelation is nothing short of idolatry, and that God is far too expansive to be thus described. All the Bible can do is give us a second-hand account of God through the pens of those who had an intimate experience of the God-essence. Once we recognize this, and release the Bible from chains of literality, the message is accessible to thinking and credulous persons alike.

This is not to say that I support Spong wholeheartedly. I endorse his perspective of the Bible, but it leads him to an impassioned plea for rengagement of the Christian community. I cannot deny that the Bible is "alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword" (Heb 4:12). I have frequently been laid low, abased, and pierced to the very bowels by the words of this electric book. I cannot, however, wrap my mind around the declaration that it and it alone is an authentic, notarized expression of the Divine. I percieve that Spong is setting his sights too low by trying to breathe inclusivity and expansiveness into the Christian community. It is my fervent belief that the more organized a religion becomes, the more it must, by necessity, stifle dissent and indiviual epiphany. This is not to say that organized religion has no place, simply that the second it becomes organized it loses something personal and alive even as it gains power and stability. This is especially ironic, because the very epiphanies and revelations that make any dissenting opinion possible were at one time necessary to the establishment of the church; it is only now that the church has something to lose that they must be labelled heretical and dangerous. The key, then, is to maintain constant contact with the dangerous and heretical for only there can exponential growth of understanding be experienced, but also to keep ones spiritual feet on the ground, and to have some harbor of doctrine to return to after a period of expansive and revealing postulating. This is the only way for organized religion to have any merit to the honest individual.

Zora Neale Hurston: Dust Tracks on a Road

This was exactly the book I needed right now. I relate very closely to Hurston insofar as I, too, have gone through my youth as an alien in this world. Now that I am leaving adolescence at last, it is a source of comfort and inspiration to read the autobiography of one who came to find her niche and touched the world in the process. In fact, Hurston entered the world with both fists at the same approximate age I am now. As a bonus, Hurston is more than up to the difficult task of making me laugh out loud when nobody is around to witness it.

As a side bar: so clear and passionate is her writing, she accomplishes the remarkable task of rebutting the objection raised by Maya Angelou in her otherwise glowing foreword. Angelou hints that Hurston is an apologist, and thereby something of a coward. Hurston's position is far more compelling, however, than Angelou's accusation, though the latter has the advantage of writing after the fact.

Marcus Aurelius: Meditations

It is very tempting to buy into Marcus Aurelius prescription for content living: "To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing--here is the perfection of character." (VII.69) Upon reflection, however, it occurs to me that this approach is phenomenally depressing. Aurelius seems to typify what Kierkegaard calls the "knight of perfect resignation," that is to say, he subsumes himself to the universal, and finds contentment in the understanding that the individual is but an insignificant fraction of it. The logical conclusion of this approach, however, is such morbid and counterproductive statements as, "In death, Alexander of Macedon's end differed no whit from his stable boy's. Either both were recieved into the same generative principle of the universe, or both alike were dispersed into atoms." (VI.24) It is no wonder that Kierkegaard found ultimate resignation unsatisfying; it leaves one with little motive for action or hope for improvement. To take the next step and say, by virtue of the absurd, "although the individual is subordinate to the universal, nonetheless the universal serves the individual" seems to be the step that escaped Marcus Aurelius, and which even Kierkegaard could only admire from a distance. Indeed, if the individual has no claim on the universal, if--insignificant though I am--God has no investment in my welfare, why continue to live? My passing would be of no more import than that of a film of dust.

Soren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling

Kierkegaard's Panegyric for Abraham is, as I have written elsewhere, one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. His philisophical conclusions are less interesting to me, simply because I don't share his fascination with the questions he poses. Nonetheless, the work is filled with awe-inspiring turns of phrase that occasionally gave me chills and often served to crystallize my own thoughts.

C.S. Lewis: Out of the Silent Planet

Although I am not quite sure how to apply the allegorical elements of this novel to human society, the prose was compelling and (unlike The Magician's Nephew) the more pedantic elements were not off-putting. All in all, a refreshing read.

William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience

A more accessible and relevant version of Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason. James makes his point with force and style, although he spends twice as long as necessary to do it, and doesn't go nearly as far as he might. In the end, I was left with the sensation of having learned something, although I would be hard pressed to say exactly what.

Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

John (the brother of my soul) said that this was the best book he ever read, and I like other Nabokov I've read, so I gave it a whack. To put it succinctly, style:9, contents:6. To think that so many beautiful words and passages were wasted on as thoroughly detestable a character as Lolita is irritating.

Spencer Reese: The Clerk's Tale

A book of mostly forgettable poems by an entirely forgettable poet. Interestingly, I bought the book because I could tell from the cover (with no real evidence, just one of those natural knowing things) that the author was gay, and I suspected he might have some interesting insights. He was. He didn't.