I read six books this month--one theological text, one literary novel, one historical memoir, and, for a palate cleanser, three goofy collections of superhero comics. Enjoy the reviews and let me know what you've been reading!
ETHICS by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
One of my favorite books from seminary, which I've since reread, was The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was then and remains now a formative text for my understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ in the world, and is a book I immediately go to anytime I'm studying the Sermon on the Mount. So at the beginning of February, I decided I'd give Bonhoeffer's more academic, unfinished opus, Ethics, a try. It took me all month, but I walked away with a new understanding and appreciation for the great theologian--and a few things to chew on.
The central premise Bonhoeffer makes is that Christian ethics cannot be decided on a purely philosophical, academic basis, they must be based in the world, because Christian ethics are fundamentally about how the disciple follows God in the world. Christian ethics, in other words, are not about determining what is theoretically right and wrong, good and evil, but about determining how to obey God, since the Christian conception of good fundamentally comes from God, not from vague and shifting universal principles. I suspect that definition of Christian ethics may frustrate some of my more academically inclined friends looking for grand unifying ethical theories, but this practical pastor ate it up.
With that as the framework, Bonhoeffer draws virtually any question of right and wrong back to the incarnation, cross, and resurrection of Christ. Any moral quandary must, in Bonhoeffer's view, be seen through the lens of the gospel--seems simple, sure, but numerous examples show how difficult that proves to be. Ultimately, Bonhoeffer argues that the only indisputable, universal ethical rule is to do what glorifies God the most...beyond that, the situation of the real world must be taken into account for an answer to be given about what is right.
Ethics was not nearly as readable as The Cost of Discipleship, nor as readily applicable, but it gave me deeper insight into his theology and, especially regarding church-state issues, offered a perspective that challenged my Baptist understandings of religious liberty and the separation of church and state. For someone looking for an academic but not completely overwhelming ethics text, this is a good place to turn.
One of my favorite books from seminary, which I've since reread, was The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was then and remains now a formative text for my understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ in the world, and is a book I immediately go to anytime I'm studying the Sermon on the Mount. So at the beginning of February, I decided I'd give Bonhoeffer's more academic, unfinished opus, Ethics, a try. It took me all month, but I walked away with a new understanding and appreciation for the great theologian--and a few things to chew on.
The central premise Bonhoeffer makes is that Christian ethics cannot be decided on a purely philosophical, academic basis, they must be based in the world, because Christian ethics are fundamentally about how the disciple follows God in the world. Christian ethics, in other words, are not about determining what is theoretically right and wrong, good and evil, but about determining how to obey God, since the Christian conception of good fundamentally comes from God, not from vague and shifting universal principles. I suspect that definition of Christian ethics may frustrate some of my more academically inclined friends looking for grand unifying ethical theories, but this practical pastor ate it up.
With that as the framework, Bonhoeffer draws virtually any question of right and wrong back to the incarnation, cross, and resurrection of Christ. Any moral quandary must, in Bonhoeffer's view, be seen through the lens of the gospel--seems simple, sure, but numerous examples show how difficult that proves to be. Ultimately, Bonhoeffer argues that the only indisputable, universal ethical rule is to do what glorifies God the most...beyond that, the situation of the real world must be taken into account for an answer to be given about what is right.
Ethics was not nearly as readable as The Cost of Discipleship, nor as readily applicable, but it gave me deeper insight into his theology and, especially regarding church-state issues, offered a perspective that challenged my Baptist understandings of religious liberty and the separation of church and state. For someone looking for an academic but not completely overwhelming ethics text, this is a good place to turn.
THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy
I can't decide if no new father should read this novel or if it should be required reading for all new fathers. Definitely one of the two.
In what has been labelled Cormac McCarthy's most popular and most readable work (and, having read All the Pretty Horses, I suspect the latter is true), the world has been reduced to a post-apocalyptic hellscape, presumably after a nuclear holocaust, though no explanation is given or needed. The story follows a father and his young son, both of whom go unnamed throughout the entire story, as they try to survive a world in which food is scarce, no one is to be trusted, and they are utterly alone in their quest to survive.
Having read two McCarthy books now, I am a huge admirer, if not necessarily a fan, of his writing. I have never read an author as capable as he is of creating a setting and a mood with so few words--when he describes a desert, you feel like you're in the desert, when he describes a creepy abandoned house, you can practically hear the floorboards creak. It's a remarkable talent that is better experienced than explained.
This book is oppressively dark--the two biggest enemies are starvation and roving bands of cannibals--but the innocence of the son shines a light that keeps you reading and caring about the protagonists. The relationship between the father and son is at various turns empowering, terrifying, and heartbreaking, and it is ultimately the foundation of the story. I defy anyone to read this all the way through without your eyes welling up at some point.
The Road won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, and I can see why. Highly recommended.
I can't decide if no new father should read this novel or if it should be required reading for all new fathers. Definitely one of the two.
In what has been labelled Cormac McCarthy's most popular and most readable work (and, having read All the Pretty Horses, I suspect the latter is true), the world has been reduced to a post-apocalyptic hellscape, presumably after a nuclear holocaust, though no explanation is given or needed. The story follows a father and his young son, both of whom go unnamed throughout the entire story, as they try to survive a world in which food is scarce, no one is to be trusted, and they are utterly alone in their quest to survive.
Having read two McCarthy books now, I am a huge admirer, if not necessarily a fan, of his writing. I have never read an author as capable as he is of creating a setting and a mood with so few words--when he describes a desert, you feel like you're in the desert, when he describes a creepy abandoned house, you can practically hear the floorboards creak. It's a remarkable talent that is better experienced than explained.
This book is oppressively dark--the two biggest enemies are starvation and roving bands of cannibals--but the innocence of the son shines a light that keeps you reading and caring about the protagonists. The relationship between the father and son is at various turns empowering, terrifying, and heartbreaking, and it is ultimately the foundation of the story. I defy anyone to read this all the way through without your eyes welling up at some point.
The Road won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, and I can see why. Highly recommended.
COUNSELOR by Ted Sorensen
For the 3 years of the John F. Kennedy administration (not to mention the seven years prior to that), no adviser but Robert Kennedy was as close to JFK as Ted Sorensen. As an aide, speechwriter, and special counsel, Sorensen shaped American history behind the scenes, most famously as the writer of Kennedy's greatest speeches, including the inaugural address that demanded of Americans, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do or your country." So when his memoir caught my eye at a used bookstore recently, I had to give it a try.
Strangely enough, the stuff about Sorensen's time in the White House (which understandably makes up the majority of the book) may have been my least favorite part of the book, though obviously the most significant. I've read my fair share of books about the Kennedy presidency (including 1965's Kennedy, Sorensen's historical account of those three years), so my disinterest in Sorensen's personal account may have been due to my familiarity with the typical beats of a Kennedy book: campaign, inaugural address, Bay of Pigs, Peace Corps, Alliance for Progress, Cuban Missile Crisis (always the longest chapter in any Kennedy book), civil rights, Vietnam, assassination. Sorensen's take on the events themselves is neither particularly enlightening nor objective, which he freely admits--he's the Thomas Malory of JFK's Camelot, and proud of it. However, I did enjoy reading about Sorensen's personal contributions to those events, including an anecdote about Sorensen finishing Kennedy's 1963 televised speech on civil rights 5 minutes before airtime. It may be the West Wing fan in me, but I always enjoy learning about the contributions of the behind-the-scenes players.
The parts of the memoir I found most fascinating though were about Sorensen's life after the abrupt end of the Kennedy presidency, from his contributions to the ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kenned to Sorensen's ill-fated 1970 run for the U.S. Senate to his ill-fated 1977 nomination to be Director of Central Intelligence (do you detect a theme?) Eventually settling in at a law firm where he could still engage in matters of public policy, Sorensen found himself in the uncomfortable position of knowing the pinnacle of his professional career had come at age 32, yet still believing he had contributions to make. All of Sorensen's achievements and associations post-1963 were brand new information for me, and I was fascinated to learn more.
As befits arguably the best and most famous speechwriter in American history (excepting Lincoln, who wrote his own speeches), this book was an easy and interesting read, full of insights about the past and hopes for the future. While not an objective history of the Kennedy years (something, in fairness, it never claims to be), this was a fascinating look into the life and work of one the 20th century's most famous and influential presidential advisers, and I'd definitely recommend it for the history buffs out there, especially those with a soft spot for Kennedy lore.
For the 3 years of the John F. Kennedy administration (not to mention the seven years prior to that), no adviser but Robert Kennedy was as close to JFK as Ted Sorensen. As an aide, speechwriter, and special counsel, Sorensen shaped American history behind the scenes, most famously as the writer of Kennedy's greatest speeches, including the inaugural address that demanded of Americans, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do or your country." So when his memoir caught my eye at a used bookstore recently, I had to give it a try.
Strangely enough, the stuff about Sorensen's time in the White House (which understandably makes up the majority of the book) may have been my least favorite part of the book, though obviously the most significant. I've read my fair share of books about the Kennedy presidency (including 1965's Kennedy, Sorensen's historical account of those three years), so my disinterest in Sorensen's personal account may have been due to my familiarity with the typical beats of a Kennedy book: campaign, inaugural address, Bay of Pigs, Peace Corps, Alliance for Progress, Cuban Missile Crisis (always the longest chapter in any Kennedy book), civil rights, Vietnam, assassination. Sorensen's take on the events themselves is neither particularly enlightening nor objective, which he freely admits--he's the Thomas Malory of JFK's Camelot, and proud of it. However, I did enjoy reading about Sorensen's personal contributions to those events, including an anecdote about Sorensen finishing Kennedy's 1963 televised speech on civil rights 5 minutes before airtime. It may be the West Wing fan in me, but I always enjoy learning about the contributions of the behind-the-scenes players.
The parts of the memoir I found most fascinating though were about Sorensen's life after the abrupt end of the Kennedy presidency, from his contributions to the ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kenned to Sorensen's ill-fated 1970 run for the U.S. Senate to his ill-fated 1977 nomination to be Director of Central Intelligence (do you detect a theme?) Eventually settling in at a law firm where he could still engage in matters of public policy, Sorensen found himself in the uncomfortable position of knowing the pinnacle of his professional career had come at age 32, yet still believing he had contributions to make. All of Sorensen's achievements and associations post-1963 were brand new information for me, and I was fascinated to learn more.
As befits arguably the best and most famous speechwriter in American history (excepting Lincoln, who wrote his own speeches), this book was an easy and interesting read, full of insights about the past and hopes for the future. While not an objective history of the Kennedy years (something, in fairness, it never claims to be), this was a fascinating look into the life and work of one the 20th century's most famous and influential presidential advisers, and I'd definitely recommend it for the history buffs out there, especially those with a soft spot for Kennedy lore.
FIGHTING AMERICAN by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
In 1954, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were feeling a little peeved. Timely Comics (later to be known as Marvel, maybe you've heard of it) had relaunched their classic character, Captain America, with a series of Cold War adventures that, in their opinion, didn't do the character justice. So they promptly ripped themselves off and made 2 new, creator-owned patriotic characters, Fighting American and his sidekick Speedboy to fight those rotten Commies.
Look, these stories are not Simon and Kirby's finest--there's a reason the series only lasted 7 issues. But boy are they dumb fun, featuring villains like Rhode Island Red, Invisible Irving, and, my personal favorite, Super-Khakhalovitch, a superpowered and super-smelly Russian who was basically Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip with superpowers. Fair warning, there are some ugly stereotypes within--it was 1954, after all--so any time a Chinese character is featured, prepare to cringe. But overall, Fighting American is the kind of goofy propaganda you can simultaneously roll your eyes at and chuckle at.
One thing that I found interesting was observing Kirby's art style as it transitioned from its sparse look from the 1940s to the more dynamic and polished work that would make him an icon in the 1960s. You can definitely see elements of both in these stories, and it's fascinating to compare them to Kirby's more famous work from the Golden and Silver Ages.
Would I recommend this to anyone? Probably not. It's very dated, both in style and substance, and is substandard work for two masters of the medium. Nevertheless, it makes for a fun artifact. If you like comics history, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than skimming through these stories and taking in all the corny Commie bashing you can handle.
X-MEN VS. AVENGERS/FANTASTIC FOUR by Roger Stern, Marc Silvestri, Chris Claremont, and Jon Bogdanove
When it comes to comic books, my heart belongs to the Fantastic Four. Despite their repeated failures to achieve big screen success and their lack of a current series, there's no team's adventures I'd rather read. In fact, I have read--whether in comic form, trade paperback, reprint issue, or PDF file--every single issue ever published of their main title. So when a friend of mine alerted me to a used $5 trade collecting the 1987 miniseries Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men, I jumped on it. There aren't many new (to me) FF stories left; I was excited to dive in.
I guess they can't all be winners.
This trade actually collects two different miniseries, both designed to pit the then-extremely-popular X-Men vs. another Marvel team they weren't used to encountering often. In the first miniseries, the X-Men and the FF feud when Mister Fantastic, leader of the FF, refuses to use his scientific genius to help the X-Man Shadowcat, whose phasing powers have left her permanently intangible. Why does he refuse, you ask? His confidence is shattered by a journal of his that turns up out of the blue, a journal that reveals to himself and his teammates that he may have actually known about the cosmic rays that forever changed himself and his teammates before he sent them all into space. If that sounds ridiculous to you (why wouldn't he remember knowing that? why would he have forgotten his journal? why did the journal suddenly turn up now?), well, that makes two of us.
Anyway, with the FF on edge and Reed Richards too scared of himself to be a scientist, the X-Men turn to Doctor Doom, the archenemy of the FF and the only man in the Marvel Universe who can reasonably argue to be as smart as Reed. The X-Men know there will be strings attached to asking Doom for help, but they figure, hey, what do we have to lose? At that point, Reed gets his mojo back, the team flies to Latveria to confront Doom, there's a big fight, and Shadowcat is saved. Oh, and throughout this whole story, Franklin Richards, the mutant son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, is having premonitions of the FF and the X-Men dying at Doctor Doom's hands, premonitions that have nothing resembling a payoff and seem to basically be forgotten by the end.
If the story seems like a mess, well, it is.
The second (X-Men vs. the Avengers) is a little better, but it's not great either. This time the plot revolves around the recently reformed Magneto, who has gone from being the X-Men's greatest enemy to their mentor, replacing the late Professor X. When he finds the remnants of his old base, Asteroid M, he thinks it may hold technology that can help bridge the gap between mutantkind and humanity. But being Magneto, he doesn't tell anybody that and just enigmatically takes off without an explanation. The Avengers encounter him and try to bring him in (he is, after all, a mass murderer), but the X-Men stand in the breach to defend their new ally. As the story progresses, the Soviet Super Soldiers make an appearance (I could explain, but honestly, they're exactly what they sound like), Magneto goes to trial before the World Court, and he secretly saves his life by using his Asteroid M technology to mentally influence the judges to exonerate him. This story was pretty crazy and had its own plot holes, but overall was a lot more cohesive than Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men.
Overall, this book reminded me of something I learned as a middle schooler buying cheap back issues: 1987 was not exactly a golden age for superhero comics. If you find this book for $5 like I did, knock yourself out, but there are literally hundreds of stories you should read before pulling this from the pile.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: BICENTENNIAL BATTLES by Jack Kirby
In 1954, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were feeling a little peeved. Timely Comics (later to be known as Marvel, maybe you've heard of it) had relaunched their classic character, Captain America, with a series of Cold War adventures that, in their opinion, didn't do the character justice. So they promptly ripped themselves off and made 2 new, creator-owned patriotic characters, Fighting American and his sidekick Speedboy to fight those rotten Commies.
Look, these stories are not Simon and Kirby's finest--there's a reason the series only lasted 7 issues. But boy are they dumb fun, featuring villains like Rhode Island Red, Invisible Irving, and, my personal favorite, Super-Khakhalovitch, a superpowered and super-smelly Russian who was basically Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip with superpowers. Fair warning, there are some ugly stereotypes within--it was 1954, after all--so any time a Chinese character is featured, prepare to cringe. But overall, Fighting American is the kind of goofy propaganda you can simultaneously roll your eyes at and chuckle at.
One thing that I found interesting was observing Kirby's art style as it transitioned from its sparse look from the 1940s to the more dynamic and polished work that would make him an icon in the 1960s. You can definitely see elements of both in these stories, and it's fascinating to compare them to Kirby's more famous work from the Golden and Silver Ages.
Would I recommend this to anyone? Probably not. It's very dated, both in style and substance, and is substandard work for two masters of the medium. Nevertheless, it makes for a fun artifact. If you like comics history, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than skimming through these stories and taking in all the corny Commie bashing you can handle.
X-MEN VS. AVENGERS/FANTASTIC FOUR by Roger Stern, Marc Silvestri, Chris Claremont, and Jon Bogdanove
When it comes to comic books, my heart belongs to the Fantastic Four. Despite their repeated failures to achieve big screen success and their lack of a current series, there's no team's adventures I'd rather read. In fact, I have read--whether in comic form, trade paperback, reprint issue, or PDF file--every single issue ever published of their main title. So when a friend of mine alerted me to a used $5 trade collecting the 1987 miniseries Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men, I jumped on it. There aren't many new (to me) FF stories left; I was excited to dive in.
I guess they can't all be winners.
This trade actually collects two different miniseries, both designed to pit the then-extremely-popular X-Men vs. another Marvel team they weren't used to encountering often. In the first miniseries, the X-Men and the FF feud when Mister Fantastic, leader of the FF, refuses to use his scientific genius to help the X-Man Shadowcat, whose phasing powers have left her permanently intangible. Why does he refuse, you ask? His confidence is shattered by a journal of his that turns up out of the blue, a journal that reveals to himself and his teammates that he may have actually known about the cosmic rays that forever changed himself and his teammates before he sent them all into space. If that sounds ridiculous to you (why wouldn't he remember knowing that? why would he have forgotten his journal? why did the journal suddenly turn up now?), well, that makes two of us.
Anyway, with the FF on edge and Reed Richards too scared of himself to be a scientist, the X-Men turn to Doctor Doom, the archenemy of the FF and the only man in the Marvel Universe who can reasonably argue to be as smart as Reed. The X-Men know there will be strings attached to asking Doom for help, but they figure, hey, what do we have to lose? At that point, Reed gets his mojo back, the team flies to Latveria to confront Doom, there's a big fight, and Shadowcat is saved. Oh, and throughout this whole story, Franklin Richards, the mutant son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, is having premonitions of the FF and the X-Men dying at Doctor Doom's hands, premonitions that have nothing resembling a payoff and seem to basically be forgotten by the end.
If the story seems like a mess, well, it is.
The second (X-Men vs. the Avengers) is a little better, but it's not great either. This time the plot revolves around the recently reformed Magneto, who has gone from being the X-Men's greatest enemy to their mentor, replacing the late Professor X. When he finds the remnants of his old base, Asteroid M, he thinks it may hold technology that can help bridge the gap between mutantkind and humanity. But being Magneto, he doesn't tell anybody that and just enigmatically takes off without an explanation. The Avengers encounter him and try to bring him in (he is, after all, a mass murderer), but the X-Men stand in the breach to defend their new ally. As the story progresses, the Soviet Super Soldiers make an appearance (I could explain, but honestly, they're exactly what they sound like), Magneto goes to trial before the World Court, and he secretly saves his life by using his Asteroid M technology to mentally influence the judges to exonerate him. This story was pretty crazy and had its own plot holes, but overall was a lot more cohesive than Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men.
Overall, this book reminded me of something I learned as a middle schooler buying cheap back issues: 1987 was not exactly a golden age for superhero comics. If you find this book for $5 like I did, knock yourself out, but there are literally hundreds of stories you should read before pulling this from the pile.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: BICENTENNIAL BATTLES by Jack Kirby
In
last month’s review of Essential Doctor Strange Vol. 2, I mentioned
a fun, silly story from that book in which the good doctor goes on a rollicking
adventure through American history. Apparently in 1976, our nation’s
bicentennial, that was a run-of-the-mill concept, because my final comic
collection of the month featured a similar story, this time starring Captain
America.
The
first story makes up half the book and gives the collection its title. With the
bicentennial on everyone’s minds, in 1976 Marvel turned to Jack “the King”
Kirby, one of Cap’s original creators from the 1940s, to write and draw an
80-page standalone issue starring the star-spangled superhero and celebrating
America’s history and ideals. No small task, but Jack Kirby is no small
creator. Anyone who’s ever read a comic written by the King knows that his
dialogue is, um, stilted, and this book is certainly no exception. But the art
is as dynamic and action-packed as ever. Over the course of the story, one in
which a bald, mystical figure named Mister Buda (yeah, I know) sends Cap
hurtling through time to different periods of American history, our hero
encounters everyone from Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross (who design and sew
the original American flag based on Cap’s costume!) to Geronimo to soldiers
fighting in the trenches of WWI. Ultimately, Cap reaches the conclusion that
the meaning, purpose, and hope of America is found in its children. Saccharine?
Yes. But somehow resonant for me nonetheless (I blame my 2-month old baby.)
The
second half of the book is undoubtedly there just to stretch the collection’s
page count and justify a higher price tag. It reprints Captain America
#201-205, all written and drawn by Kirby, issues that have nothing to do with
the bicentennial in general or the preceding special issue in particular.
Nevertheless, the stories are wacky fun, one featuring a cast of asylum inmates
with dimension-hopping powers (“the night people”) and another starring Agron,
a hulking monster. Not much to say about these stories—if you’ve ever read a
Jack Kirby issue of Captain America from the 1970s, you know what you’re
getting here: exciting but not exceptional art, laughable dialogue, veeeery
dated romantic plotlines, and mostly forgettable villains. Fun though!
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