The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1985 and has been considered a classic of Western Literature since its publication, and it is one of the most enjoyable novels I've read in a long while. My grandfather has loved the miniseries adapted from the novel since it first aired on broadcast television (he still watches it once a year on VHS), and he has never once failed to rave about what a great movie it is (I'm currently halfway through the four-part miniseries). I think he was pretty proud when I told him I was reading the book. Lonesome Dove was the first book published in the four book Lonesome Dove series, though it is chronologically third in the series.

The first 50 or 60 pages were kind of slow, but they weren't uninteresting either--that's my only complaint for the book.

The story centers on Woodrow Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae, two retired Texas Rangers (the most famous of the Texas Rangers), and their cattle drive of roughly 3000 head from the Rio Grande in south Texas to just north of the Yellowstone river in Montana. Along the way, they experience adventure and tragic loss as they contemplate what it means to live. While Lonesome Dove offers the classic tropes of Western Literature--gun fights, hangings, glamorization of the cowboy lifestyle, prostitutes with hearts of gold, minorities so in-tune with the earth they can accurately predict the behavior of weather and wildlife--this in no way diminishes the force of storytelling McMurty has created. In fact, he holds a healthy reliance upon the cliches and tropes in order to tell the story he wants and not only does it work splendidly well, it is even refreshing. McMurty still includes the realities of the cattle drive. For example, when the cattle drive first begins, it is not the hope for new prosperity that overwhelms the cowboys (the men never sing out in four-part harmony!) but the dust and dirt kicked up from the earth by the cattle. Dirt, incidentally, is a theme throughout the novel as well as the desire to feel clean. While Lonesome Dove still carries with it a romanticism, the realities of life are never far away. (In fact, I wonder if the romanticism is there at all and the Oklahoma boy in me just reads romanticism into the narrative.)

I recommend this book to anyone, not just those who enjoy the Western genre. In fact, I feel much more comfortable categorizing Lonesome Dove as literary fiction that happens to use the traditional Western settings and characters. It is not overwrought with graduate school language, which means anyone can enjoy this book, but it nonetheless offers a great speculation into what it means to live life, to have a full life. I'm looking forward to reading other books in the Lonesome Dove series as soon as I can.

On the Road is one of my all-time favorite novels. I have read it at least three times, not including the one time I've read On the Road: The Original Scroll. I've been excited for a long while to see the film adaptation because Walter Salles (the director) and Francis Ford Coppola (the producer) have respectively created some great movies; they seemed like the perfect team to create this adaptation. Unfortunately, the movie disappoints from the beginning and never fails to flounder throughout its 120 minutes. The plot is weak (if not altogether absent), the acting is anemic (although Garret Hudland and Viggo Mortensen are quiet good), and the life and vibrancy of the novel is missing.

There is too much in the novel to fit into a movie, and this is always the case with an adaptation. Determining what to adapt is no doubt tricky. The script cared more about getting in the big names rather than developing a consistent story. Therefore, Carlo Marx (aka, Allen Ginsberg) plays a prominent early part, but his role seems disjointed and forced. Similarly, the Dunkel subplot only appears in the film in order to make a spot for Old Bull Lee (aka, William Burroughs--played by the always impeccable Viggo Mortensen). The Dunkels could have been left out of the film altogether (as well as Old Bull Lee) and the plot would have been stronger, freeing up space to further develop the actual road trips, which are a rather minuscule part of the movie. In the novel, Kerouac takes great care to give the initial segment's of Sal's life on the road the attention it deserves. Sal's trip on the back of a flatbed pickup with Montana Slim and Mississippi Gene is one of the most exciting moments of the novel and the wildness--the freedom and the possibilities--of the road is captured and presented in contrast to the tight systems of conformity present in civilization. It would have been better to omit the Dunkels and Old Bull Lee (even though it means parting with Viggo) and expand the road trip sections because in the film they come off as schoolboy hi-jinks rather than pursuits of meaning, fulfillment, and enlightenment.

Garret Hudland and Viggo Mortensen are very good as Dean Moriarty and Old Bull Lee (respectively), but the script doesn't allow Hudland to really shine the way in which he should. It's just too disjointed and intent on "getting everything in" rather than building a single, good story. Mortensen's appearance (as well as that of Amy Adams) is a mere cameo, though it does provide a much needed punch after watching the headed-in-the-right-direction-but-not-quite-there acting of Sam Riley (as Sal Paradise) and Kristen Stewart (as Mary Lou), not to mention the bland, forced performances of Kirsten Stewart and Tom Sturridge.

All of this serves to suck the life out of the narrative. There's no vibrancy to this film, no sense of search, no sense of urgency. Nothing works. Good story is left out in order to force in scenes. The film is just a series of scenes, scenes, scenes. And, none of these scenes are burning like yellow Roman candles in the night. The madness is missing; these characters are just silly and entitled--none of them are that interesting (except for Viggo, of course).

The one redeeming factor of this movie is the cinematography. Walter Salles captures the beauty of North America as well as he does the beauty of South America in The Motorcycle Diaries (a splendid film, by the way). Omit the sound and the On the Road would make a great live desktop, but sadly that's the only reason I'd ever want to see it again. Maybe someone will try this movie in the future and learn from the mistakes of this adaptation. But, then again, it may be that On the Road just can't exist as a film.

The trailer was awesome, though. Definitely a great trailer.

Last December I started reading Gone with the Wind. I intended to read it over the course of two weeks while visiting family for the holiday season. The pinnacle of this endeavor was to be a Saturday in which I was by myself except for Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. (The fact that Absalom, Absalom! did not receive the Pulitzer for fiction is a complaint for another blog post.) Things did not work out as planned, and I did not read a single page on that day in which I had planned to read for seven or more hours. (The most I've ever read in a single sitting is six hours, in which time I knocked down 216 pages of East of Eden.) 

Of course, I got distracted with other things in the spring--I read nearly the entire corpus of Flannery O'Connor's short fiction, along with her novel The Violent Bear it Away, and a significant portion of Eudora Welty's short fiction--and was unable to give Gone with the Wind much focus until this summer.

I finished the novel a few weeks ago, and I still don't know how to feel about it. It's a long novel, but an easy read. It lacks the complex plot develop of the aforementioned Absalom, Absalom! and, while it is a well-told narrative, it lacks the bite--the vicious reality of life--possessed by fellow Southern women writers Welty and O'Connor, not to mention Bobbie Ann Mason. 

The criticisms of GWTW are justified, I think. This is, in many regards, an offensive novel. It is not just the use of racial slurs, which I suppose is historically accurate (for what it's worth); it depicts slaves/freed persons in a racist fashion, and at times it does seem that Mitchell herself is a racist, thinking African Americans as an inferior people. I'm not sure if this was the case, but I suspect that by today's standards she would certainly be considered a racist.

Clearly, though, Mitchell is not attempting to convict us of anything, except that perhaps Southern whites were grossly mistreated during the years of Reconstruction. I can't say that I would disagree with this assessment, however GWTW is a story told only from the white perspective and that bothers me. It bothers me that the novel concludes that African Americans were better off under slavery and that Northern notions of slave mistreatment were grossly exaggerated. HELLO! YOU WERE HOLDING PEOPLE IN BONDAGE! YOU DON'T GET TO ENSLAVE PEOPLE AND THEN CLAIM THEY ARE BETTER OFF! I can only hold so much sympathy for your loss

Despite this, I think GWTW is an important novel for our country culturally and people should read it for the questions it raises, as it presents the point of view that a segment of our country's population holds. I actually hope to read it again sometime (maybe this Christmas!) because I'm interested in the narration of the novel. It seems as though there are times when the narrator is obviously Mitchell herself, preaching to anyone who will listen. 

I want to reread it to see if I can identify when it is that Mitchell is inserting herself into the narration of the novel and then articulate what significance that holds for storytelling. There is also a bit of agrarian romanticism that I think certain people will connect with and enjoy.

Scene--The Queen Bee and the Gypsy-father are planning out their afternoon after a morning of cleaning the bathrooms.

The Gypsy-father: OK, Queenie, we're going to eat lunch, then read a book, then watch a Seinfeld, then take a nap. How does that sound?

Queen Bee: That's a pretty good idea, but maybe we should just watch a lot of Seinfelds. You know, like a Seinfeld movie night.

Credit: Prem Sichanugrist http://www.flickr.com/photos/sikachu/ CC BY-SA 2.0

I walked up next her and stopped. Sure enough, there on the ground was a small bird, not a baby but not big enough to fly either.

"Yeah," I said solemnly. "That bird is dead, Queenie."

"Who killed it?" she asked.

"Well, no one killed it. It must have fallen out of its next during the storm last night." She looked confused, so I continued. "Just because something dies doesn't mean that it's been killed by another thing or person...." I listed a few ways a person can die without being killed, and I remember the last one I listed was old age, but then I faded off, not really knowing what to, not knowing what I should say. I felt like my little girl needed some type of understanding about what she was seeing, but I wasn't providing her anything of value.

"Let's go home and get a snack," I said.

"Yeah!" She said and took off running once again. I was relieved that she so easily moved away from death and on to snacks, seemingly having forgotten the former. But, then roughly two steps passed the dead bird, we both stopped because there was another bird. This one was not dead, but it was obviously damaged in an irreparable way. It twitched on the ground, unable to control itself. I really don't know if the Queen Bee understood what she was seeing. I know that she has encountered death in Disney movie's like Tangled and Up, but seeing these birds, she seem to reach some sort of comprehension that death separates the deceased from the living--it's not simply some plot device in a fairy tale.

I looked up into the tree and say the crude remnants of a nest. A limb higher up the tree had broken off in the storm and collapsed onto the nest below.

"Let's go inside, Queenie."

After she was settled down with a snack and watching an episode of Word Girl, I went back outside to euthanize the the barely-living bird. I've never done anything like that before. I've never had to put down an animal. It impacted me--the whole situation--in a deep way. Not just having to kill a terminally maimed bird, but my failure to talk to the Queen Bee about death in a meaningful way.

She brought up the birds a day or two later with a neighbor who was visiting. I haven't heard her bring it up since then. 

What a strange encounter. What a strange experience.

A tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma yesterday. Moore is roughly a twenty minute drive from my house, so while we were in no proximity to danger, the extremem loss is so close that it hurts in a special, initmate way. I feel a numbness today. It's as if my emotions are so constant and intense that my body offsets this with a physical apathy. Only sitting and staring feels good.

People are praying for the victims, the survivors, and their families. Why? The same god who allowed a tornado to kill their loved ones is now going to provide comfort to the hurting. The same god who created a world with tornados is now to provide comfort to those who have experienced the worst type of loss that the world offers? That sounds like a classic Vito Corleone-type of racket to me. I feel anger.

Why don't schools in Oklahoma have storm shelters? Schools need storm shelters. They're absence is nothing but irresponsible. 

Thirty-one years ago this month, my great grandfather passed away after a battle with cancer. I was very young, and it was my first encounter with death. I guess I was close to my great grandparents; I attached to them in a special way because my great granfather was a woodworker and he made me toys. I still have one of the toys: a car. Like a lot of couples, my parents didn't have much money during the early years of their marriage, and while I can't really remember only having a few toys, I've been told that this was the case. Throughout my childhood, though, I'd receive a significant number of toys: Castle Grayskull, The Slime Pit, and the Carrom Board were favorites. But all of those toys passed their point of interest with me and were ultimately thrown into the trash. Not the car. I always kept it. I still keep it.

The car my great grandfather made for me.

I wanted to go to my great grandfather's funeral, but I wasn't allowed. I was so young and confused by all that had happened. I didn't understand death. I asked my dad and he tried to explain it. He said something about heaven, but I didn't understand heaven either.

For years, I asked my parents to take me to the cemetery so I could see his marker but it never happened. (Well, one time, they actually did take me out to the cemetery, but then they couldn't locate the gravestone.) It was 1989 before I saw his burial plot--seven years after his death. It was a strange feeling finally being able to see it. It felt good because I finally had an idea--an image I could store to memory, along with a precise geographic location--of where in the world my great grandfather was located. 

Death impacts us in such a total fashion; even when we are very young and incapable of really comprehending it, we still have some concept of its lasting impact and the brokenness and separation it creates. Every now and again, I find myself thinking about my first encounter with death and the last impact it made on me. Last week, the Queen Bee had an encounter the enemy that made me reflect upon these things.

Scene--the Queen Bee is following the Sharkdog around the living room, attempting to place a sheet of paper in front of his face upon which a long-haired princess is drawn. The Sharkdog, unsure of what is happening, keeps turning his face and walking away.

Gypsy-father: Queenie, what are you doing?

Queen Bee: I'm trying to show my picture to Sharkdog.

Gypsy-father: I think he sees it; I think he likes it.

Queen Bee: Well, he's not smiling.

Credit: Jonathon Camp http://www.flickr.com/photos/viknanda/ CC BY-SA 2.0

I think church does not change because we always ask the same questions. The questions remain the same even though different churches might provide different answers. But, because the question is always the same, and the answers must be rooted in the arena of the question, all the answers ultimately end up with a great resemblance to each other.

So, for example, our understanding of church is rooted in the New Testament--appropriately enough, even though I think Christians disregard the Old Testament to a great detriment. We Christians are always looking back into the past. What's in the Bible? What did the Christians in the First Century do or not do? This practice isn't bad, except that, by itself, it is limiting the arena of thought. The Bible, as it is, points us to the future; it gives us an image of what the future looks like. With that in mind, it is not simply that past that shapes our present, but it is the future that shapes our present. Or, at least, it should shape our present.

Why do we give alms? Why do we take communion? Why do we sing and pray? Because it's in the New Testament. It's commanded. Or, we see an example of the first Christians doing this. Our answers are rooted in the arena of the past. But, what if our arena is the future? We give because in doing so we reverse the sin problem rampant throughout creation. The future is made manifest in the present. In the act of communion, we see the social realities of the future--all races and ethnicities eating together--made manifest in the present. 

We do things, but we can't explain what these practices have to do with salvation. That's disturbing to me. We are trapped in an arena of thought, in an understanding of church, that forces us to provide the wrong answers, and this is because we won't allow for different questions. 

Why do we take communion? We have an example of it. Well, how about this one: what does taking communion have to do with salvation? How does that questions expand the arena of thought, the possible answers?

Credit: Vik Nanda http://www.flickr.com/photos/viknanda/ CC BY-SA 2.0

I think I've reached some cathartic, metacritical state of being in regard to church. I'm not at peace, but I am accepting reality. I am in process of reaching catharsis. Unfortunately, there's no verb to describe this. "Cartharticing" sounds like something for which a soldier would be court marshalled. As I recently posted, I've had a little formal training in theology and a lot of informal training in theology. Over the last few years, I've really immersed myself in the literature of theology and church, and I have just spent a lot of time thinking about church, asking questions. Why is it the way it is? What are the boundaries of church? What is it that God wants from church?

Credit: Daniel Horacio Agostini http://www.flickr.com/people/dhammza/ CC BY-SA 2.0

I've had a small amount of formal theological training. Based upon that small bit of training, I've accomplished quite a lot of self-training in theology. I've read many of the major writers, particularly in New Testament studies: Jarvell, Bultmann, Dunn, Wright, Witherington III, Hays, and L.T. Johnson all immediately come to mind. I found the revisionist historians and the form critics who preceded them to be of particular interest. My views of God, Jesus, and the Bible have changed significantly over the last several years. I suppose these studies are a result of my desire to have faith, to reach some understanding and contentedness in life. I think, for the most part, theological study has helped me. I've learned a lot about Christianity, the world, and myself.

Credit: Sean Dreilinger http://www.flickr.com/photos/seandreilinger/ CC BY-SA 2.0

I have no coffee. I need coffee. I went to the store late last night to grab a few things and I didn't remember that I'd used the last of the coffee yesterday morning. Now, I'm trying to get by on a Diet Coke and it's just not working.

Last night was long.


The Queen Bee had a fever last night and went to bed early. She was asleep by 6:45. By 9:45, she'd awoke. Gretchen said that she probably thought she was just down for a nap, not for the night, and in the words of one John Dorian....

The Queen Bee woke up more times than I remember, each time with a new demand: I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, can I get up yet? At one point, she just started coughing really loudly, then making a hacking sound as if she was vomiting.

At that point, my temper flared.

I walked quickly into her room, sat down on her bed, and with our noses very nearly touching, I said in a stern voice, "You need to stop this right now. You cannot keep other people up at night; it's not fair to do that. You lay down in your bed and be quiet!" I didn't yell (I hate yelling), but I was very stern. Also, I think I scared her because I was in her room and in her face so quickly. She cried. Of course, I felt bad. I was also really tired, and I knew there wouldn't be any more problems. I stayed in her room for about five minutes because I didn't want to leave if she was scared (I want her to feel safe in her room). After I was content that she was fine, I went back to bed and don't remember any further problems. That was 4:30 or 5:00.

But, my sleep was really disjointed. I'm really tired this morning. And, I did feel bad about making her cry, about scaring her. It's hard to sleep too terribly well when you feel like you've scared or hurt your daughter.

Around 8:00 this morning, she ran into my room and jumped into my bed, laid her head on my chest and said, "It's time to wake up, daddy." We talked some about last night and I told her that I loved how forgiving she is, that I wanted to be more like her. I'm not sure what she thought about that.

I still need coffee.

Credit: Özgür Mülazimoglu http://www.flickr.com/people/mulazimoglu/ CC BY-SA 2.0

I'm a big fan of Flannery O'Connor; she's definitely one of my favorite writers, and lately I've been revisiting some of her short stories. I don't claim to have any great incite into literature. I read more from the heart than I do the brain, so I suspect that I miss out on a lot of things that an author is doing with a text. I tend to pay attention to what a work of literature invokes in me rather than upon symbols and tropes and the like. But, I'm not oblivious to poetic devices. I still pick up on things, and I tend to read O'Connor over and over so that new things emerge, old ideas pass away and often return to me once again. 

Gypsy-father: Are you a little bit of a punk.

Queen Bee: No.

Gypsy-father: Are you a lot o' bit of a punk?

Queen Bee: No.

Gypsy-father: Well, what are you?

Queen Bee: Jesus.

Gypsy-father: [Expression of intense confusion.]

Queen Bee: Actually, little girls are not Jesus but they are queen bees.