Open Secrets by Richard Lischer. The basic plot sounds a little cliché: A young, energetic, and politically liberal Lutheran pastor fresh out of grad school and from the city finds himself assigned to a tiny, conservative, Midwestern farming community. Both parties have difficulty adjusting to the change, but in time they grow to understand each other and a bond of unity and love is created. Despite the quaint, Hollywood premise, Lischer downplays the ideological and superficial cultural differences enough to focus on what really presents a challenge to building relationships: pride, envy, and resent. He shows us the many ways in which God is seen powerfully in the farming village, working in and through the stiffling and awkward Germanic-Midwestern social culture.
Lischer is rather hard on his younger self throughout most of the book, emphasizing his mistakes so as to contrast these hurdles with the grace of God working in his relationships. In fact, pastoral errors drive the narrative through most of the work. He expands on the symbolism of ordinary objects a little too much for my taste and can sound awkward at times when describing what these ordinary things mean to his congregation (his account of sacramental gossip, for example, wasn’t terribly compelling). You get the feeling that he sees himself as a kind of poet and muse for the blue-collar farmer, expressing in lyrical prose the deep meaning behind a dissatisfied grunt, or dirty pair of overalls.
Lischer also relies heavily on his reader to make abstract connections that I felt he could have made more clear without sacrificing the quality of his writing. There are times when his stories shift or end without apparent connections, and I wasn’t always able to tell if I had access to the moral of the story or if I needed to meditate further on what it could be.
Poetics by Aristotle. A near-contemporary critique on Athenian poets and play-writes, Poetics struck me as being several things at once. The text is often (a) corrupted beyond the translator’s ability to work with it, (b) obscure in meaning, even for experts, and (c) referencing unknown people or works. I’m sure to read this again, but the section that most impacted me was Aristotle’s definition (and description) of metaphor. One note of interest is that Aristotle’s definitions of tragedy fit quite well with the typical contemporary romantic comedy! (E.g. Better than average people who happen to have a characteristic flaw; reversals of fortune for the better, which usually happen right before the worst result possible (losing a relationship); reversals are often inflicted by a close friend or family member and happen unintentionally; plots generally follow a unified theme — think of a typical title to these films: ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’; ‘Sweet Home Alabama’; etc).
Claudius the God by Robert Graves. See my previous post that discusses Graves’ first book: I, Claudius. This sequel seemed to me about as beautiful, well-written, and powerful as the former, and it even did so while treating a far different subject matter. The first book is Claudius’ account of how he became an Emperor despite being an idiot, professional historian uninterested in political games, a fool and stammerer, and despite the crazed killing sprees of his predecessors. Clausius the God is Claudius’ defense of every act, edict, and murder that he comitted as an Emperor. The two novels together are a wonderful historical-fictional embodiment of Lord Acton’s famous proverb: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I highly recommend both of these novels.
