The Best Books Are Humble

It strikes me, having reread my previous post "The Best Books Are Hard to Read," that there's a vulnerability to conceit on the part of readers and writers of books that are hard to read. I maintain that the best books are clearly and compellingly written, yet leave the reader uncomfortable and in need of company. But the best books aren't merely hard to read; the best books are also humble.

That's not always been the case. Once upon a time the best books were written by the best people--at least according to the best publicists. Books were the domain of the privileged, the wildly successful, the ridiculously influential, the most likely to succeed. Thomas Merton wrote cavalierly about the inevitability of his friends being published in Seven Storey Mountain. Not to compare the two, but Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf could be published because he was going places.

But the best books are necessarily humble, in the sense that they can be written with only a modicum of authority. Merton does that; Hitler doesn't. Meanwhile, although book-writing still has some of its mystique, it has been effectively stripped of authority. If I--some random guy from the suburbs--can write two books (one about comic books, even though I have no background in the comic book industry beyond throwing a lot of my money at it), then really anyone can be elevated to the authority of the author. Ah, democracy.

That's OK, though, because authority is really somewhat ephemeral to begin with, and with some 200,000 titles in English being published every year, every book is ephemeral. No book can reasonably claim to have the final word, and woe to all of us if one book did have the final word, because only the heavy hand of providence could ensure that we'd find it in the enormous annual pile of print.

So the best books recognize that the hard things they have to say are only one voice in a much, much larger conversation, and that the conversation is ongoing, and that the things they say will, in the best world, ultimately be supplanted by better words and better thoughts.

The Best Books Are Hard to Read

Here's a line from Thomas Merton's No Man Is an Island that I'm going to be chewing on for a while:

We too easily assume that we are our real selves, and that our choices are really the ones we want to make when, in fact, our acts of free choice are (though morally imputable, no doubt) largely dictated by psychological compulsions, flowing from our inordinate ideas of our own importance. Our choices are too often dictated by our false selves.

I'm reading this book by Merton alongside a book that might best be described as propaganda--a digest of several people's arguments against a predictable set of contrarian beliefs, presented with a high level of authoritarian conceit and adversarial derision. I read this other book and feel like I'm watching Fox News.

Both books are provocative, but only one strikes me as particularly conducive to constructive conversation and fruitful meditation. That's the Merton book; I'm not going to name the other one.

I've drawn a tentative conclusion about what makes a book good. It's tentative, so I could be convinced otherwise, and I should also say that I have in mind principally nonfiction books, although I suspect a similar principle applies to fiction as well. Here goes: The best books are hard to read.

By "hard" I don't mean unintelligible; I think part of the craft of writing is clear and compelling prose, rich and evocative poetry. More and more, however, I think that a book should be hard enough to read that we can't be by ourselves with it. The best books leave us unsettled, uncomfortable, moved in such a way that we feel a need to share it, to borrow wisdom from people we love and trust in order to better wrestle with it, to lay it open in front of other people and say, "What must I do with this?" The best books compel us toward something we may not even be able to yet identify, while humbling us enough to turn to others for support. The best books don't send us to our friends to wag our fingers at them but to ask them to read with us, guide us, pray for us.

If that's true, then perhaps the best reader ever was King Josiah, who when read the books of Moses by his royal secretary, "ripped his robes in dismay" and ordered his court to "pray to GOD for me and what's left of Israel and Judah. Find out what we must do in response to what is written in this book" (2 Chronicles 34:19-20). I guess even audio books can be good.

It Takes a Village

Last night was my book release party, a reading and signing event at a local Barnes & Noble. It was a fun time; my friend Ken from Carpe Diem Video Productions crafted an intricate video archive of the event; check back here over the next couple of weeks for the first look. I was reunited with friends from various eras and spheres of my life, and I spoke for three hours straight in an outdoor voice. My apologies to the non-Me-Ville bookbuyers last night.

I once heard a conservative humorist say he wanted to write a book called "It takes a village to raise an idiot." He was critiquing the Clinton administration--Hillary Clinton had recently released her book It Takes a Village to Raise a Child--but I nearly spit out my coffee over the title alone. It does strike me, however, that some things are best pursued not in solitude but in community, such that even something so self-indulgent as a book signing is made richer and more enjoyable by the participation of many people:

* friends who lent me their talents, such as my friend Ken the filmmaker or my friend Elaina, who got the best photo of me with my wife in recent memory
* friends such as the Arnotts, who bought me a special pen to use in signing the books
* friends such as the Cotes and the Bigelows, who already had copies of the book but who bought more just for kicks
* friends such as the Hsus and my brother Steve, who kept their kids up late or who deferred going home for the night so that they could be a part of the evening
* friends such as Myron, who didn't come to the signing, choosing instead to take care of my other responsibilities so I could be free to play
* friends such as Kristie and Mark, who patiently endured being put on the spot for the sake of the theatricality of the night
* friends such as Dave and Eric and Rachel, who scrambled from one event to the other in support of multiple friends with overlapping special occasions
* friends such as Emily, who showed up early, knowing nearly nobody

It can truly be said that a book signing without people would be incredibly sad. But last night I came home happy, because for a few hours last night I was surrounded by friends.

Sniff, sniff. I handed out a quiz last night: the first person to correctly determine which of the following fourteen quotations are from Deliver Us from Me-Ville, and which are from random crazy bloggers (emphasis on "random," I confess I took quotes out of context to make them sound crazy), gets a free copy of the book.

1. “Life is passing by so fast. Where have I been? What have I been doing?”
2. “We’re a meandering step on an evolutionary journey dictated by random events and mathematical possibilities.”
3. “The annals of power are reduced in our minds to an abstraction.”
4. “I offer all my salutations to the Guru.”
5. “A single, solitary human being couldn’t possibly embody such complexity of feeling in one life, right?”
6. “When you buy any informational product or downloadable software, do you feel better about it when it has an image of a book cover or a software box, even though you know it’s just a download?”
7. “Countless men and women are dehumanized by new technologies that render them incompetent or, at worse, inconsequential.”
8. “Don’t think too much. It's not good for my health.”
9. “The world is alternately enticed and threatened by watching us.”
10. “I simply want to retaliate.”
11. “I'm not in the sand because I was seeking the shade.”
12. “This was my first move and extremely difficult for me as I was leaving all my friends behind and starting new. Wow. I am getting way off topic.”
13. “Self-denial isn’t a willful act.”
14. “May the simple act of nourishing . . . bring you thankfulness.”

Oak is to Brook as Barnes is to Noble

In case you're among the handful of people I haven't already pestered about this . . .

Ahem.

Wednesday night, July 9 (that's real soon), I'll be at the Barnes & Noble in Oak Brook, Illinois, to read from, answer questions about and sign copies of my book Deliver Us from Me-Ville. I'll be getting there at 7pm and reading at 8pm. The store will kick me out at 9pm. I'd love to have you join me before they do.

I fully recognize that a two-hour book signing is not worth traveling across country for, but if you're in the Chicago area, please do consider coming out. A friend of mine will be videotaping the whole thing, so if you aren't able to come, check back here or on Facebook for a video archive. Sure to be exciting; I tend to spit when I talk.

North Carolina

I'm fighting sleep in Macomb, Illinois, as I wait for a midnight concert by Over the Rhine to cap off my first day at the Cornerstone Christian Music Festival. I spoke here this morning to a tent full of high school students, and since then I've been realizing that North Carolina is quickly becoming my favorite state.

I've reconnected with one person here and met fifteen to twenty others, nearly all of whom live in North Carolina, all of whom are remarkably thoughtful, wildly creative and wonderfully hospitable. I've been to North Carolina only once, for a conference in Charlotte, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and now I'm wondering if there's something in the water that makes people there cool. It's just a theory, of course . . .

I spoke on the challenge of abandoning our wrong ideas about God without being abandoned by God. It went fine, I suppose, although I could have benefited from one more cup of coffee before I went up. The general idea was that our ideas about God aren't necessarily transferable from vicissitude to vicissitude, but that they become comfortable and so we cling to them when we should be clinging to God. So the challenge is to lean into the discomfort of living without failed ideas of God, in the hope that God himself will sustain us. Or something like that. I feel sorry for the poor folks who drove all the way in from my favorite state just to hear that, although at least they have a long, long road trip to decipher it.

Meme Weaver

I got memed some time ago by Al Hsu. Here are the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Just to mix it up, I'll add three lies about myself. The first person to get all three lies right gets a free copy of Deliver Us from Me-Ville.

Seven Facts and Three Lies
1. I'm left-handed.
2. I'm right-handed.
3. I once met music legend Little Richard.
4. I once met music legend Grace Slick.
5. I own every season of 24 currently available on DVD.
6. I own every season of the U.S. version of The Office currently available on DVD.
7. I own four saxophones.
8. I own two guitars.
9. I own one piano.
10. I drive a Hyundai.

I'll meme Heather, Dan, Daphne, Jenn, Tony, Becky and Kami.

Reunited and It Feels So Weird

There will come a day when I will be forty. I accept this. What I'm finding harder to accept is the sheer span of time I've been an adult. That reality came into stark relief this past weekend, when I attended my twenty-year high school reunion. The last time I was a child I was in high school, and I've now been an adult for longer than I was a child. I cannot seem to accept this.

Anyway, at my reunion I was, not surprisingly, reunited with lots of childhood friends of varying degrees of intensity. The first few people I encountered, as a matter of fact, I had no memory of whatsoever. I then helped my friend check people in to the evening event; he knew everyone while I knew nearly no one.

That meant that this weekend was largely a blank slate. The folks I remembered I rediscovered; the folks I couldn't remember I got to know. All of the insecurities I carried with me throughout high school were still there--I'm not going to lie to you--but they were mitigated by this freeing notion that I am not the person I once was, and these others are not the people they once were.

I suppose, then, that "reunion" is a bit of a misnomer. "Reacquaintance" is closer to the truth. And I can honestly say, it was nice to make my childhood friends' reacquaintance.

Spam of the Day: We Deliver!

Today's spam of the day comes from a source I supposedly once signed up for; I think some Christian bought an e-mail list from some other Christian, and so on, and so on, and so on. Which leads me to the following subject line:

Want to eat pizza with LIVING SACRIFICE?

Eeeewww.

Eeeewww.

Which leads me to the question of the day: What toppings would you never want added to your pizza--even if they were on special?

Back Hair

We're taking care of our pastor's two cats while his family is away. We have two of our own, so we're accustomed to feline peculiarities, but one of these two cats does something I'd never seen before. When you bend at the waist--to pick something up off the floor, to pet the other cat, to see whether you can touch your toes yet--the cat walks on to your back.

It's freaky at first, having a cat on your back. Four paws with claws, each carrying the cat's full weight in turn, circumnavigate your spine. Loud purrs surround your head. The chin of a cat pushes against your head and shoulders, marking territory. I couldn't move, because if I did the cat might fall to the floor or dig in its claws out of self-preservation. But I couldn't stay still either, because quite frankly, I still can't touch my toes yet.

I was reminded of a cartoon I saw as a kid. A guard dog adopts an abandoned kitten. The guard dog is worldly wise and sees all the ways a kitten could get itself into trouble, and so the guard dog does what it does best: it guards the kitten.

The kitten, by contrast, is hopelessly naive, freely exploring the construction site it now inhabits, happily embracing the mortal enemy that has adopted it. But naive as the kitten is, it's totally safe, because that dog has fallen hopelessly in love with it.

The moment I'm reminded of takes place twice in the cartoon: the kitten climbs onto the back of the guard dog and nestles in, kneading the dog's back with its paws and claws. The dog cringes and weeps throughout the process. Cat scratches aren't pleasant regardless of how adorable one finds the kitten. But the nestling in eventually ends; the kitten falls asleep and the dog falls in love with its adopted child.

I'm like that dog. I fell in love with that cat while it took possession of my back. So if you run into me today and are shocked by the sheer volume of cat hair collected on the back of my shirt, here's my request: just deal with it.

Get into Me-Ville Free

Quick update on my new book:

My publisher has posted the introduction and first chapter of Deliver Us from Me-Ville on its website. There you can read about the scandal of the spilled coffee on the church carpet, my prideful portrayal of the apostle Peter, my celebrity-studded wedding to my niece, and oh yeah, begin the journey from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God.

If you've read the book, I'd love to hear what you have to say about it. Feel free to post comments here, or join the Deliver Us from Me-Ville Facebook group and post comments or questions on the wall or in the discussion forums.

Stupid Political Analysis Tricks

I have a new working theory, which came to me in an epiphany while, as is usually the case, I was watching TV. Here goes:

Ahem.

Barack Obama's success is owed in part to David Letterman.

Letterman's regular pillorying of President Bush in the segment "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" evoked in the American cultural memory a longing for a great orator, someone whose words could capture the significance of a moment, add meaning to it and rally people around a vision for the way forward. Phrases such as "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," even Reagan moments such as "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!" reminded us that great moments call for great presidential speeches, and that it's been at least twenty years (and I would argue that it's been at least forty years) since a president has provided that for us.

There have been important speeches, of course, from the aftermath of 9/11 to the concession of Al Gore in December 2000 to some of Bill Clinton's state of the union addresses. Some of those speeches have been pretty good even; I remember watching Chris Matthews, himself a former presidential speechwriter, fight back tears during the Gore concession speech. But the days of momentous American oration ended, so far as I'm concerned, in 1968 with the deaths of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, which incidentally was before I was born, and I'm no spring chicken. So for millions of us, great speeches have been effectively prehistoric.

Until now. Obama is talked about for a few key things: his ethnicity, his experience, his associations, his oration. Talk of his ethnicity is always equivocal; it shouldn't matter in America. Talk of his experience has been handily countered with talk of the need for change. Talk of his associations is tricky for any of Obama's critics, since they likely have more and less savory associations by virtue of being in the business longer. That leaves his speaking skills, which leaves everyone in awe. I think he leaves everyone in awe in part because he's so dang good at it, but in part because we've been reminded for eight years by David Letterman that once upon a time presidential speeches--really, speeches of any kind whatsoever--could be worth memorizing, studying, discussing, living into.

I'm sure that David Letterman will find ways to mock and tease an Obama presidency, but he will surely have to retire the segment "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches." It won't be funny anymore, it'll only be great.