Thursday, July 23, 2009
The Shack
I have been reading The Shack, which has been on The New York Times bestseller list for 60 weeks. It was privately published and its initial success was based on internet word of mouth. This has sent shivers through publishing houses. They have glimpsed a possible future in which they are entirely unnecessary. It's a better novel than I expected. William P. Young organises his material well, a bit too well in fact. Reading it is such an effortless experience that, after a few pages, I was barely paying attention to passing detail. The hero loses his daughter to a kidnapper and then gets a note from God asking for a meeting. This takes places in the shack where his daughter's bloody dress was found. God is in the form of the Trinity - a black woman as father, a Jewish carpenter as son and an Asian girl as Holy Ghost. In the midst of their discussions - about half way through the book - I stalled, feeling I really ought to be reading something a little more substantial. Americans like the idea of chatting to God - see Bruce Almighty etc - or some equivalent - see the encounter with the Oracle in The Matrix. Or, at the top end of the scale, there's Frank O'Hara's marvellous A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island. The common theme is that the supreme being isn't what you expect him/her to be and doesn't say what you expect him/her to say. In The Shack she's a laid back mama with a nice line in happy banter and relaxed theology. This, I suppose, underwrites American down home individualism - she is emphatically not like the grand figures of mainstream churches - and the urge to believe that ultimate truth is straightforward, straight-talking and friendly. The novel is a fine example of consolation literature, a distinct American genre. We have no such genre - unless you count chick or mis lit, which, I suppose, you could. But the big point is that The Shack works as popular theology, as a story that reconciles its readers to life's vicissitudes. Reading it, one wonders what on earth the boneheaded atheist militants think they are doing. Trying to ban stories? No, boneheadedness is its own consolation.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Oh dear, I really really hope God isn't a laid back mama with a nice line in happy banter and relaxed theology. What was wrong with a grumpy old git with a white beard who gave you a proper telling off?
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Brit, but what wouldn't you give to see the look on Dawkins's face when he showed up at the Oxford Union for the debate of his dreams?
ReplyDeleteHe said he had suffered sexual abuse in New Guinea as the child of Canadian missionaries.
If that doesn't entitle a man to a little theological license, I don't know what would.
There really is only one question to ask God. Grayson Ellis asked it in 1979: The Smallest Poem.
ReplyDeleteSounds good. But I'm struggling to maintain enthusiasm now I've realised it's almost certain that Whoopi Goldberg would be called upon to play God in the film version.
ReplyDeleteI thought Eric Clapton was God. Now this fellow comes along and says, no, He is an old dear in a shed. What a comedown! I'm sticking with Eric. No guitar? Not God.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure Grayson is entirely correct there, Janice. "Yes" is an affirmation. I would say the smallest poem is "Yes, but ...", and in that small conjunction there lies Adam, Eve, shacks and the whole catastrophe.
Reading it, one wonders what on earth the boneheaded atheist militants think they are doing.
ReplyDeleteStrikes a chord with me.
Wow -- you are reading this. Well, my closest friend from childhood, who has become very religious in recent years, gave me a copy and asked me to read it. I've been putting it off b/c of course I know it's pop theology, pro-Christian, and I figured I would hate it in the way I hate Mitch Albom's tomes (and he can actually turn copy because he's a journalist). Now I guess I'll pick it up again and TRY.
ReplyDeleteIs Janice Moor one of Grayson Ellis' alters?
Also, Gaw you crack me up because you are SOOO right!
I've got a smaller one:
ReplyDeleteNo.
While reading this post, I just noticed that an ad for Scientology appeared at the side of the blog. I know that's not Bryan's fault (unless there's a very big surprise revelation in the wings!), but I would expect that it may still give him some discomfort to think that his blog might direct some reader to that sham of a religion.
ReplyDeleteMy dad met God, at least the bloke in a naval uniform acted like God and then gave the impression he was, then my old man twigged, it was that arsehole Mountbatten, come to pick up his little destroyer. He returned it a while later, sort of shagged out and missing a large number of it's crew so my dad thought, well maybe he is God after all, ordering the deaths of so many well stood there resplendent in his tailored uniform, then he thought, no, your's still that areshole Mountbatten.
ReplyDeleteMy dad met God, at least the bloke in a naval uniform acted like God and then gave the impression he was, then my old man twigged, it was just that arsehole Mountbatten, come to pick up his little destroyer. He returned it a while later, sort of shagged out and missing a large number of it's crew so my dad thought, well maybe he is God after all, ordering the deaths of so many, stood there resplendent in his tailored uniform, then he thought, no, your's still that areshole Mountbatten.
ReplyDeleteIf there has to be a supreme being, can it look & dress & give pleasure like Kylie Minogue?
ReplyDeleteThis whole black God thing is us just working through our own neuroses. I'm pretty sure that George Burns was the last God of pallor.
ReplyDeleteWe are an inscrutable people.
Sir, Read Kent Johnson's series on the O'Hara poem in the Chicago Review.
ReplyDelete...I feel it important to mention that the reason The Father was a "Laid back mama" was to make Him acceptable to 'Mack' (the more traditional God abandoned because of Macks dysfunctional relationship with his own father).
ReplyDeleteI have just finished reading "The Shack" myself and was left breathing differently with a heart that feels full having emptied my thoughts into an invisible jar...
This book is from Papa, Jesus and Sarayu - It is for all of us. Thank you William P. Young, for your obedience in witing it.
If you have not read it yet, I implore you to do so; publishers are not always right.
Love Freya xxxx