I had intended to do a lot of reading in March, then....well, you know what happened. Things are settling now into a new normal and I'm finding time to get some reading done, but this reading log is a short one. We'll see how April goes.
3 Articles I Like This Month
"Forgive Us Our Debts" by Anne Helen Petersen, BuzzFeed News. 34 minutes.
In Chapel Hill, NC, Jubilee Baptist Church is preaching an unapologetically leftist gospel, one that welcomes LGBTQ members, quotes Karl Marx during Bible studies, and regularly decries the evils of capitalism. In that spirit, they also regularly pay off the debts of people in the surrounding community. You will undoubtedly disagree with some of the ways Jubilee operates—I'm right there with you—but if you'll read the whole article, I suspect you'll also find your imagination racing, looking for ways, as Jubilee has, to better serve the world around us.
"A Brutally Honest Accounting of Writing, Money, and Motherhood" by Karen Russell, Wealthsimple. 19 minutes.
In one of the best essays I've read in a long time, writer and mother Karen Russell wrestles with what it means to be both of those things at the same time—how she spends her time, how she expends her energy, and what it's like to financially support a family on the fruits of your imagination.
"God Doesn't Want Us to Sacrifice the Old" by Russell Moore, The New York Times. 3 minutes.
As COVID-19 continues to reshape our daily lives, there has been an unfathomably ugly question that some pundits and even political leaders have started asking: should we just accept the deaths of high-risk populations so that the young and healthy can go back to normal life? In this short op-ed, Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore prophetically explains how such a sacrifice would not only be immoral, but antichrist.
JESUS AND THE VICTORY OF GOD by N.T. Wright
Who was Jesus? Who did he believe himself to be? And why did he die? These are questions that people, believers and nonbelievers alike, have been asking since the first century. In Jesus and the Victory of God, theologian N.T. Wright provides his answers based upon the available historical research found in Scripture, the Apocrypha, and the extrabiblical texts.
Much like the first tome in his "Christian Origins and the Question of God" series, the first 150 pages or so of this book is an academic slog, as Wright details the various "quests" undertaken by the academy to uncover who the "real Jesus" or the "historical Jesus" is. While perhaps fascinating to scholars (and at times mildly interesting to me), I would recommend all but Wright completists to simply skip this section and get to the rest of the book, in which Wright makes a compelling and orthodox case that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah who fulfilled and redefined God's promises to Israel and humankind through his life and death (his resurrection must wait until the third volume in the series.)
Wright's primary task is to understand Jesus through the lens of his first century context, rather than bending Jesus to the needs of our contemporary moment. This approach does a brilliant job of explaining many of the more puzzling aspects of the gospels' portrayal of Jesus, and lends new power to some parables whose explanations had previously felt watery. For Wright, Jesus is not just the fulfillment of a few scattered Jewish prophecies, but the fulfillment of the entire promise of Israel. Jesus is the return from exile. Jesus is the new temple. And as the title indicates, Jesus is the victory of God.
For readers familiar with Wright's theology, this book is the foundation of much of what he has spent a lifetime teaching. For those unfamiliar with his work, it is not a quick read, but it is certainly a worthwhile one.
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of those books whose reputation precedes itself. Before I ever started reading it, I knew it was on the short list of books that could qualify as The Great American Novel. I knew its history as a frequently banned book due to extensive use of the n-word. I knew, in other words, that it was an important book. I just didn't know whether or not I would like it.
The answer: sorta? I have to admit, while I recognize the book's aspirations and impact are higher than The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I enjoyed reading that kids' book more than this adult novel. For all the cultural value that TAOHF undoubtedly has, it had a harder time holding my attention than Tom Sawyer did.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn picks up where its prequel left off, with Huck Finn having been adopted and "civilized." However, his new situation is soon disturbed when his abusive father returns to the picture, kidnapping him in the hopes of laying claim to the fortune Huck and Tom acquired at the end of the previous book. Eventually, Huck fakes his own death and takes off on a raft down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave named Jim. From there, three things happen: 1) adventures ensue, courtesy of the various lowlifes found on the river in that day and age 2) Huck learns to see Jim not as a slave, but a friend, and 3) Huck grows from a boy to a man.
Told with Huck as the narrator (as opposed to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which used a third-person narrator), the book is replete with humor and was a relatively easy read once you got used to Huck's dialect (not to mention Jim's.) However, the plot moves slower than I'd expected for a book its size, and at times I wanted Twain to just get on with it. Furthermore, the themes which have caused the novel to endure were, frankly, more subtle than I expected—I have to wonder if this isn't an example of a book that's more fun to talk about than to read.
Overall, I appreciated The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but I didn't like it as much as I wanted to. Nevertheless, it's good to be able to check it off my list of 'classics I'm embarrassed not to have read.'
If you ask any Baby Boomer who the greatest pitcher of all time is, they'll respond with lightning speed: Sandy Koufax. In a brief career cut short by injury, highlighted by 5 years of dominance the likes of which the game had never seen, Koufax made his imprint not only on the national pastime, but the national psyche. In this acclaimed biography by Jane Leavy, readers get to see why the lefty has endured as such a legend over the last 5 decades.
It should be said first that Koufax was more than his numbers; he was a symbol of 1960s America in so many ways. Brooklyn-born, his career didn't blossom until the Dodgers moved west to Los Angeles. Jewish, he put his convictions above his career refused to start a World Series game because it fell on Yom Kippur. Cool and confident, he thrived in the spotlight even as he conspicuously avoided it. Koufax was, in the eyes of so many baseball fans, the kind of man you strived to imitate.
Yet, as Leavy points out, there was a beating heart behind the cool exterior. Throughout the book, she is quick to highlight the ways that Koufax's public image is deserved, but also perceptive enough to show the human being behind the legend and to dispel the myths that have emerged about him. Proud of his Jewish heritage though he is, Koufax is not devout. Shy, he is nevertheless not the unfriendly hermit he is made out to be. Intellectual though he may be, he is not some bespectacled professor, but a ballplayer's ballplayer.
The one myth Leavy refuses to bust, however—because it is not just legend, but truth—is the one surrounding Koufax's dominance on the mound, which is largely told via her inning by inning account of Koufax's 1965 perfect game. Alternating between these chapters and biographical chapters proves to be a brilliant structure for the book, one that reminds us why we already cared about Koufax with the baseball chapters even as she gives us new reasons to care with the chapters about his life.
For baseball fans, this is a must-read, one of the finest sports biographies I've ever read. Highly recommended.
ESSENTIAL HULK VOL. 5 by Len Wein, Roy Thomas, Herb Trimpe, Sal Buscema et al.
Sometimes comic books function as literature, presenting big ideas and deep themes with pathos and creativity. Maus, Watchmen, Mister Miracle—these kinds of comics are worthy of careful reading; they speak to your soul in a powerful way. Despite their reputation as being for kids, sometimes comics rise above.
Then again, sometimes you just want to see Hulk smash. And in Essential Hulk Vol. 5, which collects 28 issues of the Incredible Hulk from 1974-1976, that's exactly what you get—not a ton of deep thinking, but some fun action and enjoyable, if forgettable, stories.
The 1970s, a.k.a. the Bronze Age, was a period in comics' history when neither Marvel nor D.C. did much innovating, but largely rested on their laurels after the creative boom of the 1960s (the Silver Age). Writers were content to pit their heroes against familiar villains and recycle stale romantic melodrama. It was fun, but not especially memorable, and that's pretty much what you get from this volume of Hulk stories. Hulk just wants to be left alone, but is hounded by Thunderbolt Ross. Hulk gets the opportunity to redeem himself, but is foiled my a mixture of his own anger and others' misunderstanding. Betty Ross pines for Bruce Banner, but is terrified by the Hulk. It's all pretty familiar stuff.
The most memorable moment, ironically, stars another character, as issues #180-182 introduce Wolverine to the Marvel Universe. Having never read that story, it was nice to cross it off my list of Important Comics to Read Someday. As for the art, it's good but not great, led by longtime Hulk artist Herb Trimpe and Marvel's prolific chronicler of the Bronze Age, Sal Buscema.
Overall, Essential Hulk Vol. 5 made for a good way to start the day each morning, whether I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed or bleary-eyed and struggling to stay awake. Will the stories stick with me? Nah. But they were fun while they lasted.
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