Reader Roundup

So, the other day I was reading and listening to music simultaneously—because recreational multitasking is the only kind of multitasking I do—and the strangest thing happened. The book was, as I’ve mentioned, Daniel O’Thunder. The music was Kaiser Chief’s 2007 album Yours Truly, Angry Mob. And then the book and the music aligned. I won’t get into spoilers, but fictional Victorian London erupts into…an angry mob, complete with outbursts of violence, property damage, and many a well-meaning idealist spiraling out of control.

As the Kaiser Chiefs describe such scenes:

You can try anything

And no-one would know apart from you and me

You can stop anything

It starts with just one and turns to two then three

And now I will forever associate that band with 18^th century London drubbings.

More recently, I started reading March by Geraldine Brooks. I was reading Caleb’s Crossing not so long ago, and I’ve read People of the Book, so this makes it a Brooks trifecta. I’m ecstatic to be own a postmodern version of Little Women. I read Louisa May Alcott’s novel repeatedly as a tween. March is obviously much darker, mostly because it explores the perspective of the March family patron as he witnesses the American Civil War. Of course, I still squeal like a 5^th grader on pixie sticks and pop-rocks every time he mentions his daughters.

I’ve also started Albert Hourani’s History of the Arab Peoples, which seems relevant, no? This one is textbook sized, so it will take me a while to get through it. My sister, an Air Force Reservist, is being deployed to Kuwait soon. I therefore think it’s important to get myself a bit more familiar with the culture.

Meanwhile, I would really like to see The Interrupters, a documentary about the former gang members involved in CeaseFire, an organization on a mission to end pervasive urban violence. From what I’ve read, the doc is no propaganda piece, unrealistically optimistic and thus totally inaccurate.

At the blog In the Library with the Lead Pipe, Gretchen Kolderup wrote about the experimental developments in Young Adult literature that have transformed the literary “category”. Indeed, such categorization should never be proscriptive. Right what you like, people. Especially if what you read deviates from the standard formula.

I also enjoyed this piece over on the Information Tyrannosaur blog about the Tao of Librarianship. It inadvertently reminded me of the Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. Literature and Taoism! Meant to be? Probably.

Finally, The Chronicle of Education informs us that many universities are trying to extend their broadband service to surrounding communities. That is so sweet.

Lawler Literature: Lucifer's Lit

I cannot write of what took place in that wetu, because I made a solemn oath, which I have never broken. Some would say it was a pact with the devil, and therefore I am not bound by it. But after that day I was no longer certain that Tequamuck was Satan’s servant. To be sure, father and every other minister in my lifetime has warned that Satan is guileful and adept at concealing his true purpose. But since that day I have come to believe that is not for us to know the subtle mind of God. It may be, as Caleb thought, that Satan is God’s angel still, and works in ways that are obscure to us, to do his will. (Caleb’s Crossing, p. 295)

I am not the devil. I need this to be understood from the outset. If you won’t accept it, then please stop reading. Set these pages aside, and go away. Go and judge someone else. God knows I am not an angel, either. I don’t even profess to be a very good man, for we are none of us good, not in the way that Heaven yearns for us to be. I am just a man. I have needs and desires, some of the lamentable, for like yours my nature is Fallen. I have from time to time indulged these desires, for like you I am weak. At moments indeed I have walked at the Devil’s side, and heard his sweet seductive whispers and perhaps even for the span of a heartbeat been his man—as you have—body and soul. (Daniel O’Thunder, p. 7)

There’s no denying history. For a long time, the average person from the Christianized West believed not just in God, but in the real, physical, non-metaphorical existence of Satan. Eerily enough, I’ve spent the last week reading the fictional accounts of people who believed that the Devil was among them.

The first was Geraldine Brooks’ novel Caleb’s Crossing. It is the first person narrative of Bethia Mayfield, a Puritan minister’s daughter in 17^th Century New England. Her father is a missionary, dedicated to converting the native Wopanaak natives to Christianity. As the above paragraph illustrates, the Puritans believed that native religious leaders were the embodiment of Satan. As Bethia learns the native language and befriends the locals, she slowly discovers that Tequamuck, the powerful pawaa, is merely dissimilar, not demonical, as she has been told.

The second excerpt comes from another era and another age, but not one so very different. Ian Weir’s Daniel O’Thunder tells the legendary tale of the titular Daniel O’Thunder from the perspective of the fawning multitude. Some might call the narrators Daniel’s disciples. Daniel, a boxer-turned-Evangelical preacher in mid-19^th Century London, wants to thrash Satan. Really thrash him. With his fists. The perpetually benevolent Daniel takes Satan literally.

The excerpted passage is from the primary narrator, Jack, who is more than a little bit like Judas (There also seems to be a Mary Magdalene equivalent). In any case, Jack gets nice and acquainted with a man who seems to be Satan himself. His claim that he is not Satan, therefore, are more than just a rhetorical flair.

So, in Caleb’s Crossing, in the small world of the Puritans, Satan is a foreigner, worshipping strange idols. Two hundred years later, he is a moneyed Lord, arrogant, but otherwise unremarkable. He melts into the London throng, just like everybody else.