Elliot Ritzema

Category: Book Reviews

  • Book Review: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union

    Last week I finished reading a novel by Michael Chabon called The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. I’d never read anything by him before, but I remember my old roommate Neal recommending his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay when I lived in Hungary. I first was drawn to this book last year when I saw its brightly colored jacket and read about its intriguing premise in an airport bookstore. Since the author was recommended by a friend with good taste, and it is set in southeast Alaska, where I have spent some time, I decided to give it a try.

    The southeast Alaska of this book is nothing like the southeast Alaska I know, however. Chabon’s is a completely fictional world in which the state of Israel never got off the ground in 1948, and Jews were settled in the District of Sitka with a 60-year lease from the United States. The novel is set just a few months before Reversion, when the lease will be up and the Jews of Sitka will be wanderers once more. It is also a detective novel strongly influenced by noir – an appropriate choice since it is so dark during the Alaskan winter. This book is Raymond Chandler meets Chaim Potok meets James Michener’s Alaska. Some of the best books I have read mash up aspects of the world in creative and unexpected ways, and so I was looking forward to this one.

    What I liked about the book is that Chabon certainly does have a way with words, but in a way that doesn’t necessarily scream, “I’m a literary novelist!” It’s a tough thing to write creative prose and not call attention to the fact that you are writing creative prose. Chabon showed more restraint than many other writers of so-called literary fiction I have read, and I appreciated that. I also appreciated that the book had more of a plot than much literary fiction, which often seems to coast along for pages on turns of phrase alone. Chabon was not above writing a detective novel with an interesting plot. And while the plot was not as fast-paced as your typical popular paperback mystery, it was much better written, which ought to count for something.

    In the end, though, the plot was where I found fault with the novel (and if you’re planning on reading it, don’t read any further, because I’m going to disclose some things). It starts out with a body found in a hotel, with detective Meyer Landsman and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, trying to find out whodunit against the wishes of their superiors. The story leads into the depths of Hasidic organized crime, and the identity of the corpse is revealed as a chess-playing, heroin-addicted man who was once hailed as a potential Messiah, but who faded into the shadows because he couldn’t handle the pressure. He was later found by a group who wanted to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and who needed him to lead them. This group was in cahoots with the U.S. government, which is run by Christian dispensational premillennialists who think it is necessary for the Temple to be rebuilt so Jesus will return.

    I won’t get into how the man died, because that is less important to me than who the “bad guys” are revealed to be. First, I found this coalition of Orthodox Jews and Left Behind -reading Christians a little too far-fetched to be true. It’s not that there aren’t such Christians out there; there are lots of Christians, particularly in North America, who have that kind of eschatology. You could even say (and you would probably be right) that dispensationalists have had an influence on U.S. foreign policy. However, those who would seriously espouse violence to bring about a supposed Second Coming have never been more than a lunatic fringe. The idea that, even in an alternative universe, they would control the government and destroy the Dome of the Rock lacks plausibility. It also comes across to me as a thinly veiled satirical snipe at said Christians.

    But more than that, this plot twist reveals that we Christians in the United States have a PR problem. If we are known more for theories about the End Times than for, say, love for one another, then it seems we’re not getting the right message across. Michael Chabon may be just one person, but he had to get his ideas from somewhere, and he certainly has a lot of influence through his books. I’m not mad that he turns wacky Christians into a contrived plot device; I’m just sad that enough Christians have that wacky theology to give Chabon a target. I would recommend this book for its fine writing and better-than-average plot. However, even in a richly textured and plausible alternative world, the deus ex machina of Christians who run the government and use explosives to hasten Jesus’ return was a little too unbelievable.

  • June/July 2008: Books Read

    Last month I didn’t post my monthly brief reviews of books I read. The reason for this is that I didn’t read any books during the month of June. I took Herodotus’ The Histories with me on the cruise that I was on from June 3 to June 19, and read a bit of it after I got back, but didn’t finish it by the end of the month. Here it is, along with the other things I had my nose buried in during July:

    1. Herodotus, The Histories. (The 1954 Aubrey de Selincourt translation) Herodotus is known as the “Father of History” largely because of this book, which is regarded as the first work of what we would today call “history.” It is ostensibly a history of the Greco-Persian wars that took place in the early fifth century B.C. However, it is sometimes difficult to follow the narrative because Herodotus interrupts himself so often. He doesn’t begin talking about the wars until well over halfway through the book. Instead, he sets the stage by giving histories of the Persians, the Greeks, the Scythians, and the Egyptians, among others, and passing along every story he has ever heard, whether true or not, about everyone and everything in the ancient world. As a source for information about the ancient world, it is invaluable. This is how we know almost all of what we know about, for example, the famous battles of Marathon and Thermopylae. As a narrative, though, it drags.

    2. F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture. I’ve been talking with the pastors of my church about teaching an adult Sunday School class in September on how we got the Bible. As part of my background research on this topic, I read this book. Even though it came out almost 20 years ago, I think that it holds up well. First he writes about the Old Testament, and gives details about why some books were included by everyone, other books (the Apocrypha) were included by some, and still others were left out by everyone. He then does the same for the New Testament. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is curious about how the canon of Christian scripture was formed. Don’t read this book if you’re looking to have your ears tickled with titillating conspiracy theories about how the church “silenced” its enemies.

    3. David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. I first heard of David Sedaris from his 2001 book Me Talk Pretty One Day. His comic, autobiographical essays are hilarious, though I’d only recommend them for adults (some of the essays have foul language or mature subject matter). One thing I particularly appreciate about Sedaris is the essays about his childhood, growing up in Raleigh, NC. Even though he is older than I am, I resonate with many of his observations about southern culture from my own North Carolina childhood. One of my favorite essays in this collection is “Rooster at the Hitchin’ Post,” about his brother Paul’s wedding. Here is a sampling:

    My brother had chosen the [hotel] not for its sentimental value but because it allowed the various family dogs. Paul’s friends, a group the rest of us referred to as simply “the Dudes,” had also brought their pets, which howled and whined and clawed at the sliding glass doors. This was what happened to people who didn’t have children, who didn’t even know people who had children. The flower girl was in heat. The rehearsal dinner included both canned and dry food, and when my brother proposed a toast to his “beautiful bitch,” everyone assumed he was talking about the pug.

    4. Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship. This book is a short one (104 pages), but an excellent one. It is one of the best books on religious epistemology I’ve ever read, and I think that it is sorely needed as many churches are struggling with how to be missionaries in our “postmodern” world. Newbigin relies a great deal on Michael Polanyi’s idea of “personal knowledge,” and applies it to Christian discipleship and missions.

    5. Paul Wegner, A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible. I’ve had this book for over a year now, and finally got around to it because of the aforementioned Sunday School class I plan on teaching soon. This book has a different subject matter from the Bruce book above. Instead of asking how we got the canon, this book introduces the science and art of textual criticism, which is dedicated to determining as closely as possible what the original biblical texts said. The book can be a little technical (it is a “student’s guide,” after all), but I think that it will be a great resource. It has many charts and illustrations to help the reader get a sense of what the author is talking about, and the end of each chapter has a reading list for further study. It is also organized thoroughly, so you can find what you’re looking for easily. This is a worthwhile addition to my library of biblical reference books.

  • May 2008: Books Read

    Aight my peeps, it is that time of the month once again where I tell you what my nose has been buried in for the past 30-31 days. The end of last month saw me graduate from my master’s program, so there has been a change in my reading habits. Not much of one, though. Here they are:

    The Reformed Pastor1. The Reformed Pastor, by Richard Baxter. Like After Virtue last month, this was a book that I started reading earlier this year, but had to put down because of other pressing obligations. It was written by a 17th-century English Puritan, who wrote it in response to a request by a ministerial association for a little talk on the nature and task of pastoral ministry. He was ill on the day that he was supposed to give this lecture/sermon, so he stayed home and wrote this tome instead (they didn’t call him “Scribbling Dick” for nothing). Despite having been written over 300 years ago, this book is still in print because Baxter has some sound advice for those in pastoral roles in any age. Two things that he stressed which will stick with me were his call for ministers to minister out of living, genuine faith, and his call for ministers to visit each family in their parish annually and take interest in each person’s spiritual state. Not everything Baxter said can be translated directly to our own day and age, but his is a serious call to an energetic pursuit of pastoral work which shouldn’t be ignored in any age.

    2. Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter’s by R.A. Scotti. This is an entertaining look at the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, 1506-1626. I read it in preparation for the trip I’m taking which starts next week. It was particularly interesting to read, for perhaps the first time, a book about this time period in which the focus was not on the theological (or even historical) implications of what was going on. It’s just a good yarn about the building of a cathedral, and the lives of the popes and the artists who labored over it for so many years.

    Ring for Jeeves3. Ring for Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse. I’ve already sung the praises of P.G. Wodehouse once this week, so I don’t need to go into it again. This is your basic book about an English aristocrat who needs extra money so he disguises himself and works as a bookie, and who wants to sell his country estate to a wealthy widow whom he finds out is an old flame, which makes his current fiancee jealous, not to mention the hunter who wants to marry the widow, and who by the way was cheated out of his money at the race track by the aforementioned English aristocrat. But everything works out well in the end.

    Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World4. Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from MacIntyre’s After Virtue, by Jonathan R. Wilson. I read After Virtue earlier this year, and discussed it in a group led by Prof. Wilson, so I thought it would be helpful to read the book he wrote on the subject. And it was. The book is short – just 78 pages – but it has exerted a disproportionate influence on account of its call for a “new monasticism.” This, I think, has resonated with a lot of people in our culture. In the book, Wilson draws out several lessons from MacIntyre:

    1) that the church must learn to live with its history (distinguishing among the church, the kingdom and the world),
    2) that we live in a fragmented rather than a pluralistic world,
    3) that we live in the midst of the failure of the Enlightenment project in the church and the world, and the effects of this failure are often difficult to discern,
    4) that we must revitalize our ability to give a Christian account of “the good life,” to draw on the living Christian tradition, to engage in practices that grow us in our character as disciples, and to live in community,
    5) and this finally leads us to the recovery of a “new monasticism.”

  • April 2008: Books Read

    I graduated last Monday night, and my parents were in town to see it. Up until then, I’d been pretty busy with various things that I had left to the side while in the thick of the semester: going to the doctor, doing my taxes, etc. From now until I leave for the cruise on June 3, I don’t have as much to do. So I’m getting back into blogging regularly. Here are the books I finished during the last month:

    1. A Little Guide to Christian Spirituality: Three Dimensions of Life With God by Glen Scorgie. This book was the second of the two textbooks I was assigned to read for my Christian Spirit class. I actually read it in March, but forgot about it because I’d read it so quickly. Unlike Thirsty for God, the other textbook for the class, this is not a historical survey of Christian spirituality, but is a popular-level introduction to the Christian take on that much-used but little-understood word “spirituality.” The three dimensions referred to in the title are the relational, transformational, and vocational. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is interested in what spirituality means for Christians. The very short answer to that question is that, for Christians, spirituality is life in the Spirit – not just any spirit, but the Holy Spirit.

    2. The Shoes of the Fisherman, by Morris L. West. When I was finished with classes, I felt like reading a novel, and so I picked this one up off my shelf. My mom had given it to me a few years ago, but I never made the time to read it. It is a novel about a pope from Russia, published in 1963. Some say that it foreshadowed the election of John Paul II, who was the first Slavic pope. It’s unclear whether West did this deliberately, but one thing that he definitely did do on purpose is include a character reminiscent of Pierre Tielhard de Chardin. This character, a Jesuit, is called to Rome over the course of the book, wins the love and confidence of the pope, and then has his work on evolutionary biology condemned by the Catholic Church. In all, I found the book thoughtful and thought-provoking, though the plot was very slow-moving. It took me a while to get into it, and to care about some of the characters. By the time that happened, the book (just 288 pages) was over.

    3. After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre. This book I began back in January, when it was discussed by the Ethics Reading Group I was a part of this semester. I made it through all but the last three chapters, then I was overcome by the busyness of the semester. After I finished classes, I went back and finished. I found this an interesting and provocative read. My friend Eric has written over on his blog that After Virtue is “a critique of modernity from the inside.” I think this is a fair assessment. MacIntyre stands back from modernity and criticizes its accounts of ethics, and I think that he is brilliant in his critique. But in the end, MacIntyre is a western liberal who longs for Aristotle, and chooses to go back. He is part of modernity even in his critique of modernity. He argues for teleological ethics in this book, but when the book ends, the reader finds out that MacIntyre has not actually given us a telos. He argues for ethics situated in a community, but in the end his readers are left wondering where to find such a community. This is in part why so many Christians have been attracted to this book. When MacIntyre wrote the book, he was not a Catholic, but in subsequent years he converted to Catholicism. He was on the doorstep of the church when he wrote the book, and he leaves his readers there as well. His work is philosophical rather than theological. But it has left itself open to theological interpretation, and writers like Stanley Hauerwas and Jonathan R. Wilson (who teaches at Carey Theological College and participated in the Ethics Reading Group) have taken up this task in the years since After Virtue was written. One book that I would like to read in the coming month is Wilson’s Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from MacIntyre’s ‘After Virtue.’

  • March 2008: Books Read

    March was a very busy reading month, but I didn’t have much to show for it in terms of books actually completed. Most of the time I was doing research for papers, and it’s not typical for me to read whole books for that. But here is the list of books:

    1. Stories of Karol: The Unknown Life of John Paul II, by Gian Franco Svidercoschi. (more…)

  • February 2008: Books Read

    Since much of what I do as a student is read, I thought you might be interested in what I’ve had my nose buried in these last 29 days. Although I read a lot of excerpts and articles, I’ll just list here those books that I read from beginning to end. (not those I read from end to beginning, which was none. This month.)

    1. Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George Marsden

    Mary gave me this one for Christmas, and fortuitously I was able to read it for my class, “The Christian Pastor in Historical Perspective.” I tried to read a different biography of Edwards a few years ago, and I must admit that I got just under halfway through before I was too bored to continue. I thought at the time, “How interesting can reading about a guy’s life possibly be if he spends 13 hours a day in his study?” After reading Marsden’s book, my answer to that question is, “Extremely, if the right person is writing about him.” Marsden does a wonderful job of setting Edwards in his 18th century context: as a Puritan, as an early American, as a revivalist, as a theologian, and as an intellectual with his finger on the pulse of the thinking of his day. While it paints a sympathetic portrait, it is by no means hagiographical. Edwards had faults, but he is worth reading about if for no other reason than to learn about the influence he had on religion in the United States.

    2. The Search for Christian America by Marsden, Mark Noll and Nathan Hatch.
    (more…)

  • The Way of the (Modern) World: Introduction

    Golly!  Apologies!  It’s been a busy last few days in the life of Elliot.  What with grading hermeneutics papers, and reading for class, and drinking lots of egg nog (’tis the season. . .), the days have been plumb full.

    But speaking of reading for class, I’ve just started to read a book by Craig Gay called The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist.  Snappy, eh?  Here is a quote from the Introduction: “We are concerned to discover how and why it is that the practically atheistic outlook has become so uniquely plausible even for Christians in the modern context.  Along this line, our focus will not be on traditions of explicit philosophical secularity as such, but rather on the secularity that is carried out implicitly – one is tempted to say innocently – in institutional arrangements that we probably take largely for granted” (14).

    Basically, Gay is arguing that all people in modern society – Christians, atheists, followers of any religion or none – live in an environment of practical atheism.  Even for those who believe that God exists, he is irrelevant to the business of real life.  The purpose of the book is to examine the roots of that phenomenon.

    Gay is writing from an explicitly Christian standpoint, and he is well aware that Christians are called to be “in but not of the world” (John 17:13ff).  I’ve been a Christian for several years, and just about all the times I’ve heard other Christians use this phrase, they have been referring to resisting temptation of some kind.  Gay, to his credit, defines “worldliness” in a different way: “What if the essence of ‘the world’ – and hence of ‘worldliness’ – is not personal immorality and/or social injustice as such, but is instead an interpretation of reality that essentially excludes the reality of God from the business of life?” (4)  Especially given the New Testament usage of the word “kosmos,” Gay’s proposal makes a lot of sense.

    So why is this practical atheism such a bad thing?  Well, among other things, it leaves us vulnerable to the “terror of history” – the necessity of “having to create our own meanings and purposes in the world,” and having to “make sense of who we are only on the basis of our own accomplishments” (11).  We can never really understand who we are, or why we are here.  There is another problem as well – one that is less existential but more frightening on a societal level: “[W]hen we lose sight of God, we also lose sight of ourselves.  It is the thought of God, after all, that gives substance to words like ‘truth,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘persons’: words which lend substance and meaning to human life.  Without the thought of God such notions are empty or, at best, only convenient fictions.  A completely secular society is, therefore, not simply ‘godless,’ but impersonal and inhumane as well” (2-3).

    I am personally glad that there is such an interest in human rights at this moment in world history, as evidenced by such organizations as Amnesty International.  But I’ve always wondered what sort of basis thoroughly secular people have for an idea like “human rights.”  It’s easy to insist on a right; anybody can do that.  But one person’s rights imply that another person has a duty to them.  I don’t hear a lot of talk about that side of the coin.  One of the tactics of organizations like Amnesty International is to shame people and governments committing human rights abuses into shaping up.  This only works as long as the rest of the world is outraged by what is going on.  I wonder what will happen if that is no longer the case?

    I’ll be reading the rest of this book over the next few weeks, and I’ll post the rest of my reflections on it periodically.

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