September Reading Log

Not as many reviews as usual this month, both because of less time to read than the average month and because the books I did get to were pretty hefty. Nevertheless, enjoy what's here and look forward to a presumably larger load next month!

JOHN WESLEY'S SERMONS: AN ANTHOLOGY by John Wesley, edited by Albert C. Outler and Richard P. Heitzenrater

In my ongoing quest to read through all the books I bought for seminary, I spent the last month and a half reading one John Wesley sermon per day from this anthology (each was roughly 10 pages) at the end of my morning devotional. My experience with Wesley's work was limited even in seminary--as I recall, we were only required to read 5 or 6 of the 50 sermons this volume collects. So I knew only the basics about John Wesley: founder of Methodism, brother to Charles (who wrote thousands of hymns, many of which are still beloved today across all denominations), and titan of evangelical Christianity (the theological movement, not the political apparatus.) After reading 50 of his sermons, I, as you might expect, have a much better grasp on his beliefs, style, and priorities--and am the better for it.

The theme that appears time and time again in these sermons, the belief that defined Wesley's life and ministry, is that man is saved by grace through faith alone. That may sound like pretty standard fare for a Protestant preacher, but coming out of the 18th century Anglican church, his insistence on personal faith in Christ set him apart from many of his contemporaries. Wesley came to this conviction not only through study and prayer, but personal experience, having felt his heart "strangely warmed" at a church meeting on Aldersgate Street. It was in that moment that he experienced what he would later call his true conversion, when (as an already ordained minister!) he placed his full trust in Christ for salvation. Wesley would spend the rest of his life preaching that all men and women must come to that same realization he had at Aldersgate.

While salvation by grace through faith is certainly the predominant theme in Wesley's sermon (I'd be hard-pressed to find even one where the doctrine is not proclaimed), Wesley had a few particular issues that he returned to on numerous occasions. One was the doctrine of Christian perfection, the idea that the saved believer who placed his or her life in Christ's hands, could therefore cease sinning--though impossible apart from Christ, Wesley believed and preached that it was possible for the Christian. Another frequent topic of his was the separation of justification and sanctification in the salvation process. Where justification (being cleansed of sin) happened in one moment in time (as with his Aldersgate experience), sanctification (being made righteous) was a gradual, progressive experience according to Wesley. Both, he stressed, were necessary elements of salvation. Finally, a topic that he returned to on numerous occasions was how Christians should handle their money, which he summarized simply: earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. You can guess, the editors of this volume note, which of the three points his audiences tended to ignore.

Speaking of the editors, they have put together a fine anthology here, a work that feels comprehensive but not overwhelming, making clear that this is only a sampling of Wesley's voluminous works, but a representative sampling. Before every sermon is a half page essay providing the context, summary, and distinguishing features of the sermon, which I consistently found helpful in understanding both the sermons themselves and Wesley as a preacher. Overall, I would recommend this anthology to preachers, students, and anyone else interested in one of the greatest figures in the history of evangelicalism. 

THE PALE KING by David Foster Wallace

Boredom shouldn't be this fun.

The Pale King, the unfinished novel David Foster Wallace was working on when he committed suicide in 2008, manages to illustrate, analyze, and interpret tedium in ways that reveal important truths about the human condition. Combating and working through boredom, Wallace shows, is the great battle of the information age. After all, in an age of endless distraction and entertainment, true boredom--having nothing to entertain you at a given moment--is uncharted territory, a frontier that few are willing to navigate.

Wallace shows this mostly through characters working at a regional IRS office in Peoria, Illinois. With painstaking detail, these characters' lives show how mind-numbing bureaucracy can be, but also how there is a certain nobility, even courage, to the people able to invest themselves in it, doing the same boring job day in and day out and even finding fulfillment in it. In a lesser writer's hands, this book would be a chore, but Wallace makes it sing.

In fact (hot take), I enjoyed this unfinished novel more than Infinite Jest, his opus and universally acclaimed Very Important Book. While IJ sometimes seemed like the prose equivalent of a Jackson Pollack painting, delightful but all over the place, The Pale King was more restrained in style and scope--less ambitious, but also easier to read. The tighter focus and smaller cast made it easier to follow the plot's progression and keep track of the characters, which I appreciated and which made it easier to comprehend and think about the book's big ideas, since I wasn't using all my mental energy just to keep up.

Various critics and scholars have debated how much Wallace still had left to write in order to finish this book, and it definitely leaves you wanting more, but his writing style (each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, and the characters are only loosely related to one another) makes it worth reading even if you don't get the satisfaction of a real ending. Come for Wallace's prose, stay for his typically kooky characters, and leave with his insightful perspectives rattling around in your brain.

  

  

EAST OF WEST VOL. 1-7 by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta

There are some stories that only comics can get away with telling, and East of West, a sci-fi dystopian western about the coming of the apocalypse, is probably one of them. There's so much going on in this book, and it's all so bonkers, that I can't imagine another medium pulling it off...but pull it off it does, and with style.

It would take a while to fully explain the plot, which is Game of Thrones-level intricate, but it boils down to two sides, one trying to bring about the biblical end of the world prophesied in Revelation (or at least a fictionalized version that borrows from it), and the other trying to prevent that apocalypse. In the group trying to bring on the end of the world are Famine, Conquest, and War, three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the Chosen, seven true believers from the six nations now occupying what was once the United States (I know you're curious, so here they are: the Union, the Confederacy, the Republic of Texas, the PRA (a Maoist kingdom of Chinese exiles), the Endless Nation (Native Americans), and the Kingdom of New Orleans. Trying to prevent the oncoming apocalypse is Death, the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, who fell in love with a human woman who bore his son, a child now believed by the Chosen to be the Beast of the Apocalypse. Both sides are also seeking Death's son after he escapes the custody of the Chosen, convinced he is the key to ushering in the end of the world.

Confused yet? Intrigued yet?

If the answer to both questions is yes, then you'd probably like this book--or, for that matter, anything by Jonathan Hickman, because that combination is his bread and butter. Hickman is a master of the craft that Lost made so popular on TV: building a world so mysterious and insane that every answered question yields ten more questions. He gives you just enough to tantalize and entertain without you ever feeling like you have total grasp of what's happening, a tendency that is infuriating but effective. Especially for the comic book medium of monthly serialized storytelling, it's a good fit--by definition this story will have to end sometime, but when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to imagine that day ever coming.

The art serves the story well, and Nick Dragotta does a particularly good job at evoking a world with a spaghetti western aesthetic but 22nd century technology. It doesn't sound like it should work, but it does, and most of the credit for that must go to the art. Dragotta isn't the kind of artist that anyone will be studying in 50 years, but his work is more than serviceable.

Should you read this? If you like palace intrigue, Clint Eastwood movies, religious symbolism, gore, and never knowing the whole story, then yes. Heck, as long as you like two or three of those things, you'll probably like this. Particularly for sci-fi fans who haven't ever gotten into comics, I'd recommend East of West as a good entry point.