June Reading Log

        

Well, it's a short one this month, folks. There were about 10 days in the middle of June in which I got virtually no reading done (it was an overwhelming, busy, stressful month), plus I tackled a 600+ page collection of short stories that I'm not quite finished with. So take a look at what did get read this month...it won't take long this time around!

2 Articles I Like This Month

"Getting the Best of Yu: Can Padres' Darvish find what he's searching for?" by Andy McCullough, The Athletic. 12 minutes.

I am an unabashed Yu Darvish fan, who is undoubtedly the greatest Rangers pitcher I've ever seen. However, his has been a frustrating career for many who think he has failed to live up to both his pre-MLB billing and his gifts. What makes Yu Darvish tick? This excellent profile seeks to answer that question.

"How America Fractured into Four Parts" by George Packer, The Atlantic. 46 minutes.

Our country's division along party lines is a well-diagnosed problem. In this article, George Packer goes deeper, saying that our national division actually occurs along four lines, that there are "Four Americas" which speak to how people understand the country. A compelling if not particularly optimistic take on the state of our union.

Reading Through the Fantastic Four- #94-119

This month's daily reading of Fantastic Four saw the book truly enter the Bronze Age, as the Lee-Kirby partnership gave way to Roy Thomas's scripting and the art first of John Romita and then John Buscema, both of whom epitomized 1970s Marvel's "house style" (so much so, in fact, that How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, a popular 1984 how-to book, was illustrated by Buscema.) What I read this month was very indicative of Bronze Age superhero comics in general: a book that, like a sitcom, entertained more by hitting familiar beats than by reaching  new imaginative heights.

The stories are fun, make no mistake. The longest arc in these issues sees the Thing, his brain having been altered by a cure gone awry, go on a rampage throughout New York City, one finally ended not by his teammates on the FF but by the Incredible Hulk. Another notable story involves the Overmind, an extraterrestrial clearly but unconvincingly meant to be a Galactus-level threat, invading Earth, forcing the villainous Doctor Doom to actually team up with the FF. Also worth mentioning is Crystal's departure from the team and Sue's return, a decision clearly prompted by fan backlash (based on my reading of the letters columns) more than creative decision making.

I'm at a loss to say that any of these issues are classics, but they're good representations of Bronze Age Marvel comics—entertaining, professionally produced, and ultimately disposable. More Bronze Age fun to come next month!

THE MAKING OF BIBLICAL WOMANHOOD: HOW THE SUBJUGATION OF WOMEN BECAME GOSPEL TRUTH by Beth Allison Barr

In evangelicalism generally and the Southern Baptist Convention specifically, complementarianism is largely unquestioned. This doctrine, derived primarily from 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 14, and Ephesians 4, argues that men and women, while equal spiritually, are created for different purposes which complement one another. As such, men are created to lead sacrificially and women to submit graciously, both in the home and in the church. In most evangelical churches, particularly in the Bible Belt, you'll find that the average church member not only agrees with these sentiments, but sees them as biblical and historical. It's been this way, they assume, since the days of the early church.

In The Making of Biblical Womanhood, historian and Baylor professor Beth Allison Barr systematically dismantles this assumption, arguing from both Scripture and history that complementarianism and all of its results (such as the prohibition against women preachers) are reflective of sinful patriarchy rather than divine intention, and that a full understanding of the gospel and a wider reading of church history proves this to be true. A former complementarian herself (and wife of a pastor), Barr incorporates both her personal experience in evangelical life and her academic research to argue that "biblical womanhood" is not a revelation from God, but an invention of man.

From Scripture, Barr talks about the passages mentioned above, in which Paul said that women should "keep silent" in the church and that he did "not permit a woman to teach." These statements, Barr says, are contextual rather than universal, and she draws upon other Pauline passages to prove her point. Furthermore, she points to women in the early church who not only served, but led, such as Phoebe, a deacon; Mary Magdalene, the first to proclaim the Good News of the resurrection; and Priscilla, among many others.

From history, she shows how women have consistently served as evangelists, missionaries, teachers, and preachers as recently as the turn of the 20th century, and how the presumed prohibition against women preaching has most often reared its head when male teachers were threatened by the popularity of the women in the pulpit. The sheer number of prominent women we have ignored from church history is staggering.

The end result is a compelling case for egalitarianism, a doctrine which says both men and women are created in God's image and that in Christ there is no longer [differentiation between] male and female, for we are all one in Christ. Women, Barr argues, can not only serve, but lead, because God calls and empowers both men and women, and has been doing so from the beginning.

If you are an egalitarian, you will find this to be a good sourcebook for what you already believe, and a readable text to put in the hands of those who need convincing. If you are a complementarian, you will find a lot of discomfort in this book, but hopefully a lot to think about as well. Wherever you fall, I hope you'll read this, and I hope you'll do so with an open mind. The church has pushed women to the sidelines for too long—this book demands that we do so no longer. And to that I say a hearty amen.

WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett

....what was this? I read all 110 pages, every line of this 2-act play, and I'm still not entirely sure.

It tells the "story" of Vladimir and Estragon, two vagrants waiting by a willow tree for a man named Godot, who they are certain will appear at any moment, but who never arrives. As they wait, they talk about nothing in particular and, when met by a man named Pozzo and his slave Lucky, have a similarly nonsensical conversation with the two of them. The play ends where it begins, with Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot.

After reading a few reviews and the play's Wikipedia entry, I've learned that Waiting for Godot is considered a masterclass in minimalism—there are only four characters, virtually no set, and no scene changes; it's hard to imagine a play more stripped down. I also read that the play is quite philosophical, a treatise on meaning and the human quest to find it (and ultimately, in Beckett's eyes, the uselessness of doing so.) The point of the play, the reviewers say, is that there is no point—like life itself, the play is what you make of it.

I'd be interested to see if that translates better when seen onstage as opposed to reading it. I found it to be a frustrating literary experience: plotless, devoid of character growth, and generally little more than random sentences bouncing off one another. Perhaps that was the point. But like Estragon and Vladimir, I wanted something to happen. I too was waiting for Godot. I wish he'd come.

ESSENTIAL CONAN VOL. 1 by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith

Yep, more Conan the Barbarian. This time in comics form!

In 1970, writer Roy Thomas talked editor-in-chief Stan Lee into letting him turn Robert E. Howard's pulp hero, Conan the Barbarian, into a Marvel comic. Thomas wouldn't let go of the title for a decade, and despite his many other successes at Marvel, Conan the Barbarian always had a special place in his heart. This Essential volume contains the first 25 issues of that series, which ran for 275 issues total until its cancellation in 1993 and spawned multiple spin-off titles before then, from King Conan to the magazine-size Savage Sword of Conan.

The book begins unambitiously, merely adapting some of Howard's stories visually as Thomas and budding artist Barry Windsor-Smith get their sea legs. But after a dozen issues or so, the book begins to flourish when Thomas takes his hero places that Howard never did, and Smith begins to stray from Marvel's house style of art and veer into visual storytelling more suited for the sword-and-sorcery genre. By the end of this volume, Smith is in top-notch form, and the art is at a level that makes it seem criminal that kids were only have to pay a quarter to get it.

Unfortunately for me, my passion for the character and his world seems to be in the inverse of Roy Thomas's—after hundreds of pages of Howard's stories and 25 issues of the comic, I am now certain that sword-and-sorcery in general and Conan in particular are just not my bag. While the character has a certain roguish charm to him, the world around him is one I just never latched onto despite Thomas's and Smith's best efforts. This comic may have helped launch the 1970s sword-and-sorcery craze, and there's no denying the storytellers' skills, but by the time I was done with Essential Conan, I was done. No more Conan next month, or the month after that, or the month after that. Like a rare steak, I know that Conan is beloved by many and I'm glad I tried it...but it's just not for me.