Paying Taxes To The Pale King

Tax Day marks the release of Mockingbird icon David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel, The Pale King. Quotes forthcoming, but from the few reviews that have appeared already, it sounds predictably ripe... Italics mine.

Michiko Kakutani in The NY Times: [DFW's] posthumous unfinished novel, “The Pale King” — which is set largely in an I.R.S. office in the Midwest — depicts an America so plagued by tedium, monotony and meaningless bureaucratic rules and regulations that its citizens are in danger of dying of boredom.

Just as this lumpy but often stirring new novel emerges as a kind of bookend to “Infinite Jest,” so it demonstrates that being amused to death and bored to death are, in Wallace’s view, flip sides of the same coin. Perhaps, he writes, “dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there,” namely the existential knowledge “that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back.” 

Happiness, Wallace suggests in a Kierkegaardian note at the end of this deeply sad, deeply philosophical book, is the ability to pay attention, to live in the present moment, to find “second-by-second joy + gratitude at the gift of being alive.”
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Garth Risk Hallberg in NY Magazine: The Pale King is, for great swaths, an astonishment, unfinished not in the way of splintery furniture but in the way of Kafka’s Castle or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. And it reduces chatter about the provenance of its author’s late renown to background noise. The book demands our attention precisely because while we’re reading it, David Foster Wallace is again the most alive prose writer of our time—and the one who speaks most directly to our condition.
[CONTINUE READING]

Book Review: "Good News for Anxious Christians" by Phillip Cary

In the ever-shifting landscape of American Evangelicalism, it seems that many people are attempting to correct what they perceive to be failures in the system. Everyone thinks something is wrong and whatever it is, it needs to be fixed now.

Within this debate, Phillip Cary's book "Good News for Anxious Christians", provides an unique diagnostic of both ourselves and the state of modern evangelicalism. As a professor of philosophy at a leading evangelical university, Cary hears from his students how the "new Evangelical theology" has translated into the core beliefs and practices of our youth. What he finds are people who worry all the time about the inadequacy of their Christian life. His students are dogged by the never ending questions of: "Am I doing it right?" or, "What's wrong with me?". Cary suggests that this anxiety is propagated by the very beliefs modern evangelicalism. His students demonstrate the end result of all those sermons, bible studies, and mission trips. Cary seeks to both repudiate this harmful theology and articulate his own comforting alternative.

Consequently, Cary has organized his book around "ten practical things your don't have to do." This list includes such common clichés as: giving God control, finding God's will, hearing God speak, letting God work, or applying it to your life. The goal in each chapter is to release anxious Christians from that which harms and inhibits true faith and maturity while also promoting a life of true discipleship. If evangelicalism and its me-centered subjectivism has led to a paralyzing anxiety, then a steady diet of the sufficiency of Christ alone will lead to genuinely Christian faith, hope and love.

Cary writes cogently without either dense technical jargon or patronizing condescension. If I find fault with Cary's otherwise welcome book, it is that he has written a book for anxious Christians. Restricting the intended audience has sharpened the overall argument of the book, but it also has the shortcoming of addressing Evangelical Christian problems without reference to the underlying, more universal, issues. Consequently, one could quickly become lost without a familiarity with the current American Evangelical landscape.

Despite these mild criticisms, "Good News for Anxious Christians" covers many relevant themes and issues in a way that is very sympathetic to the theological vision here at Mockingbird. If you're an anxious Christian in need of relief, a burnt-out Evangelical leader who has run out of tricks, or more importantly, a former Evangelical (still practicing Christian or otherwise), then this book is written for you as a way to better understand the problems of modern Evangelicalism while offering a way to move forward. It is a needed restatement of the Christian gospel as the medicine to save us from ourselves and our misguided anxiety.

Another Week Ends: Japan, Facebook & Divorce, Preschool Litigation, more Galli on B(h)ell, The Beach Boys' Smile, Community

1. Two very moving additions to the coverage of the disasters in Japan. First, if you can decipher the google-translation, there's the story of a woman who sacrificed her life to warn a village of the impending destruction here. And two, the footage that made this all very real to yours truly. If it doesn't get you on your knees, nothing will (be sure to stick with it to the end):



2. An amusing report in the Guardian about Facebook and divorce. If ever there was an excuse to take a potshot at lawyers for having a shallow view of human nature...:

A 2010 survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) found that four out of five lawyers reported an increasing number of divorce cases citing evidence derived from social networking sites in the past five years, with Facebook being the market leader. Two-thirds of the lawyers surveyed said that Facebook was the "primary source" of evidence in divorce proceedings, while MySpace with 15% and Twitter with 5% lagged far behind.

A spokesperson for Facebook said: "It's ridiculous to suggest that Facebook leads to divorce. Whether you're breaking up or just getting together, Facebook is just a way to communicate, like letters, phone calls and emails. Facebook doesn't cause divorces, people do."

The NY Times Magazine had a similarly Zeitgeisty take on divorce this past week too, which is worth it for the candid quotes on depravity/original sin.

3. Speaking of the Zeitgeist, there's the outrageous but evidently very real "Mother Sues Preschool For Damaging Her Daughter's Shot at the Ivy League." ht JD. 

4. For those of you interested in the ongoing Rob Bell-univeralism saga, conference speaker Mark Galli's review of the Bell's Love Wins book appeared this week, and it is very much worth your time. Galli rightly places Bell in the context of Protestant liberalism, not in order to callously write him off as such, but in an attempt to discuss the heart of the matter, which as always, has to do with atonement/justification:
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What Noel Gallagher Is Not Supposed To Feel

Today brings the release of the first post-Oasis project from a Gallagher brother, the debut album by the Liam-led Beady Eye, Different Gear Still Speeding. And you may be surprised to hear that the record is really pretty good, at least on par with Oasis' 2009 swansong Dig Out Your Soul. So what better week to reappraise Oasis' underrated fourth album, the quintessentially hungover Standing on the Shoulder of Giants? When it was released, the expectations were astronomical - Oasis were still the biggest band in the (rest of the) world, albeit weighed down by/wrestling with the question of how to follow-up the relative "failure" of Be Here Now, a record which has rightly come to symbolize the utter hollowness of 90s Britpop hubris/excess. If you're Noel Gallagher, you toss your brother a few swagger-anthems and spend the rest of the disc getting introspective. There's always been a moral undercurrent to Gallagher's tunes, usually covered up in melancholy, but it's never been as prominent or sincere as his trio of regretful masterpieces on SOTSOG, "Gas Panic," "Where Did It All Go Wrong?," and "Sunday Morning Call" (not to mention the closing prayer, "Roll It Over"). They're all surprisingly thoughtful ruminations on foolishness, mortality and hypocrisy, from a guy known mainly for his incredibly brash self-belief.

The specter of a Roman Catholic upbringing rears its head all over the place, especially in "Sunday Morning Call," in which Noel comes as close as he ever has to a Romans 7 'despair in the flesh' moment: "In your head do you feel/ What you're not supposed to feel?/ And you take what you want/But you won't get it for free/ You need more time/ Cause your thoughts and words/ Won't last forever more/ And I'm not sure if it'll ever work out right." Not exactly the So-Sally-Can-Wait singalong that fans were hoping for. Indeed, instead of glorifying rockstar mythology with slightly obscured platitudes, as he ingeniously did on their first three records, SOTSOG weighs the cost and comes clean about the consequences - and does so with humility. No wonder it didn't sell all that well.

On the next record, Heathen Chemistry, an exhausted Noel retreated from the confessionalism, relegated his more personal statements to Bsides ("Just Getting Older," "Idler's Dream" and "Shout It Out Loud") and handed over the reigns to his bandmates, effectively throwing in the towel. With a few notable exceptions - he is Noel Gallagher after all. But here's to hoping that his forthcoming solo record taps a similarly vulnerable vein:
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Forgiving Don Draper

A laudably contrarian view of Mad Men appeared in the recent issue of The New York Review of Books by Daniel Mendelsohn, "The Mad Men Account," raising a number of important questions before making a remarkable and even rather touching conclusion. Mendelsohn definitely sells the series short: for example, when he claims that he was only genuinely drawn into the drama once in the entire four seasons (as participant rather than observer), it's a little hard to believe. And who's to say the stuff of soap opera isn't also the stuff of life?! His critique of the acting as vacant may have a basis - I'm thinking of Betty - but even there, it's a half-truth. Peggy and Pete go noticeably unmentioned, both played by actors who imbue their roles with undeniable blood and guts. But most of his gripes actually underline the show's peculiar brilliance, especially in light of the conclusion. That is, the Both/And nature of the Mad Men perspective (being simultaneously attracted to and repelled by the era and industry it depicts) is precisely one of the things that makes it so compelling. All this to say that Mendelsohn's take is worth a read - his thoughts on the conflicted and somewhat childish superiority at work behind the scenes may have more validity than we'd care to admit. It's also refreshing to see Friday Night Lights get some love from the high-art establishment. See for yourself:

We are currently living in a new golden age of television, a medium that has been liberated by cable broadcasting to explore both fantasy and reality with greater frankness and originality than ever before: as witness shows as different as the now-iconic crime dramas The Sopranos and The Wire, with their darkly glinting, almost Aeschylean moral textures; the philosophically provocative, unexpectedly moving sci-fi hit Battlestar Galactica, a kind of futuristic retelling of the Aeneid; and the perennially underappreciated small-town drama Friday Night Lights, which offers, among other things, the finest representation of middle-class marriage in popular culture of which I’m aware.

With these standouts (and there are many more), Mad Men shares virtually no significant qualities except its design. The writing is extremely weak, the plotting haphazard and often preposterous, the characterizations shallow and sometimes incoherent; its attitude toward the past is glib and its self-positioning in the present is unattractively smug; the acting is, almost without exception, bland and sometimes amateurish.
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Mad Men keeps telling you what to think instead of letting you think for yourself. As I watched the first season, the characters and their milieu were so unrelentingly repellent that I kept wondering whether the writers had been trying, unsuccessfully, for a kind of camp—for a tartly tongue-in-cheek send-up of Sixties attitudes... But the creators of Mad Men are in deadly earnest. It’s as if these forty- and thirty-somethings can’t quite believe how bad people were back then, and can’t resist the impulse to keep showing you.

This impulse might be worth indulging (briefly), but the problem with Mad Men is that it suffers from a hypocrisy of its own. As the camera glides over Joan’s gigantic bust and hourglass hips, as it languorously follows the swirls of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling, as the clinking of ice in the glass of someone’s midday Canadian Club is lovingly enhanced, you can’t help thinking that the creators of this show are indulging in a kind of dramatic having your cake and eating it, too: even as it invites us to be shocked by what it’s showing us (a scene people love to talk about is one in which a hugely pregnant Betty lights up a cigarette in a car), it keeps eroticizing what it’s showing us, too. For a drama (or book, or whatever) to invite an audience to feel superior to a less enlightened era even as it teases the regressive urges behind the behaviors associated with that era strikes me as the worst possible offense that can be committed in a creative work set in the past: it’s simultaneously contemptuous and pandering. Here, it cripples the show’s ability to tell us anything of real substance about the world it depicts.
[CONTINUE READING]

Michael's Michael

So today marks the release of Michael Jackson's first "real" posthumous record, Michael, and the verdict is predictably mixed. It's certainly not the tour-de-force he was rumored to be working on in the years leading up to his death (high profile collaborations, for example with will.i.am and Ne-Yo, are nowhere to be found), but it is also not without its charms. In fact, if you can overlook the god-awful opening "Hold My Hand" (really an Akon solo track with Michael as guest), you'll find some near-prime MJ. Chief among them, "Behind the Mask," a smoking collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto that apparently dates back to the 70s, and despite the puzzling sax flourishes, serves as a great reminder of Michael's dance-floor dominance. Then there's the terrific single "Breaking the News" which some reviewers have dismissed as one of the ill-considered paranoid anti-tabloid rants that characterized his later output, coming across as a retread Dangerous-style "new jack swing" and ringing false in light of his death. They seem to ignore that 1. paranoia has always been a goldmine of inspiration for him and 2. Dangerous was awesome. Plus, the hook is enormous! "Monster" covers similar thematic ground and is only a few steps behind, quality-wise. "Hollywood Tonight," on the other hand, does have the makings of a bonafide MJ-anthem, but ultimately comes off as too much of a work-in-progress. That said, "(I Like) The Way That You Love Me" is pure melody-Michael, very much in the Invincible vein, proving once again that when he scaled back a little, he could still deliver top-notch RnB.

As far as the ballads are concerned, which were always where his tackier side reared its head, things are a bit dodgier. "Keep Your Head Up" is the "Heal the World" here, as catchy as it is insipid, and "Best of Joy" is almost unlistenable. Yet "Much Too Soon," a Thriller outtake, is Michael at his sweetest and most stripped down.

All in all, it's a fun, if safe release. Despite some solid additions to the catalog, one gets the strong feeling that the studio is holding back, big-time (10 tracks?!). But that's ultimately moot - everything is going to come out eventually, and we can compile our dream records then. The real takeaway here is that the first archival release is out of the way, and it could have been a LOT worse.

Toy Story as a Trilogy of Heroic Repentance, Part Two: Prospectors, Prophets and Bears, Oh My

To kick off "Pixar Day" here on Mockingbird, we proudly present part two of Jeremiah Lawson's AKA Wenatchee the Hatchet's exclusive essay "Toy Story as a Trilogy of Heroic Repentance." The first part dealt with the nature of conflict in the Pixar masterwork (internal, not external) and Woody's role in the first film as a kind of prophet. This time around, WTH covers the central struggles in Toy Story 2&3, looking at identity, love, repentance and the lack thereof [spoiler alert]. As a side-note, since the essay was conceived as a whole, be sure to check in for the stunning conclusion next week, i.e. this one constitutes something of a transition between the intro and the conclusion - the body paragraphs, if you will. To order a copy of Mockingbird's brand-new publication The Gospel According to Pixar, go here.

The central struggle in Toy Story 2 is not that Woody will be replaced (by Buzz), but that Andy will cast him aside if he is broken. Andy is growing up and may no longer want to play with him. So Woody's great temptation in Toy Story 2 is to trade in his identity as Andy's toy (and the friend of Buzz and the other toys) for an alternate one: a rare collector's item. As we will see, the “whoever wants to save his life will lose it and whoever loses it will save it” (cf. Matthew 16:25) theme is once again powerfully present.

This time around Buzz plays the prophet role, reminding Woody of his real identity and who really loves him. Woody, having seen how his fears and envy caused so much harm in the first film, obviously does not take very long to have a change of heart. What tempts him is vanity or envy but his capacity for empathy. His empathy for Jessie's loss makes him want to stay with the Roundup gang. It looks right - like the right decision - but in truth, the path that appears to be right is a life of living behind glass and never being loved again. Buzz says, in so many words, there is a way that appears right but its end is ultimately death. Woody is quickly convinced and realizes that he has chosen a falsely. He repents, offering Jessie and Bullseye the opportunity to join him and return to Andy's house.

Of course, The Prospector won't have this and lays bare his motive: he hated spending decade after decade watching every OTHER toy get played with while he collected dust on a shelf. The envy that nearly destroyed Woody has completely consumed the Prospector and in the end, when the chips are down, his true character is revealed. The Prospector represents who Woody was becoming in the first film and what that it would look like if Woody had not turned from that path. What appears to be a punishment for the Prospector at the end of Toy Story 2 could, in an open-ended story, turn out for his salvation. We are not told what the ultimate fate of the Prospector is, but since the central conflict in a Pixar film is always internal, it is far less important to dispatch the titular villain to his or her death than it was/is in most Disney films.

By the third film, Woody is completely reconciled to Andy's faithfulness and goodness.
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Arcade Fire: The Suburbs

Win Butler, lead singer of Arcade Fire, does not claim to be Christian. Having been raised Mormon, he would later take theology classes at McGill University in Montreal. Today, he is not a churchgoer but still claims to be a very “spiritual” person. In fact, while discussing the band’s previous album, Win said, “Neon Bible is addressing religion in a way that only someone who actually cares about it can. It’s really harsh at times, but from the perspective of someone who thinks it has value.” I think he's closer and more sympathetic to it than he realizes.

While Arcade Fire’s latest concept album, The Suburbs, is quite a departure from their last two, both musically and thematically, religion is still scattered throughout. Two lines of interest occur in the same song, the climax of the record, entitled “City with No Children.” The first is an indication of the band’s maturity since the release of their somewhat smug (although quite good) Neon Bible.

You never trust a millionaire quoting the Sermon on the Mount

I used to think I was not like them but I'm beginning to have my doubts

My doubts about it.

After specializing in (oftentimes warranted) accusation on their last album, Win seems to be in touch with his own baggage. The cries against the Church and Joe Simpson (the pop-singer Jessica Simpson's father), while redirected, have also been injected with a healthy sense of humility. This idea is reiterated as the album comes to a close with part two of the title track, opening with, “If I could have it back/ all the time that we wasted/ I’d only waste it again.” This is not the Arcade Fire we’re used to hearing! Where is the subtle “‘wake up’ let’s change the world” motif found on their previous albums and public appearances?

The answer to this question is found in the second line of interest in “City With No Children,” where Win sounds awfully familiar to St. Paul in the first three chapters of Romans:

When you’re hiding underground

The rain can’t get you wet

But do you think your righteousness can pay the interest on your debt?

I have my doubts about it.

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Toy Story as a Trilogy of Heroic Repentance, Part One

In celebration of putting our new The Gospel According to Pixar mini-book "to bed" (today! - look for an announcement next week) we thought we'd post the first of three installments that make up Mockingbird friend Jeremiah Lawson AKA Wenatchee the Hatchet's exclusive essay, "Toy Story as a Trilogy of Heroic Repentance." We've written about Toy Story on here before, but this really takes it to, you know, infinity and beyond:

One of the most illuminating criticisms of Pixar films over the last fifteen years has been that Pixar has rarely come up with compelling villains. The villain is either not particularly scary or not particularly necessary to the forward movement of the plot. This criticism misunderstands the nature of storytelling in most Pixar films. In Disney tales, villains can take the corporeal form (The Little Mermaid or The Lion King), or the villain can take a more social form, such as in Dumbo where the subtext in the film is racism and ethnocentrism and the effects that bias has on an individual and a family.

Any literature survey course will tell us that there are essentially three kinds of conflicts that drive a story: man vs man, man vs nature, and man vs himself. Include gender-adjusted and nature-adjusted variables as you wish. Pixar films are conspicuously low-key on man vs man as well as man vs nature but from the beginning Pixar films have reveled in man vs himself. The reason Pixar villains seem weak is precisely because the central conflict in a Pixar film is rarely between two primary characters. One might even go so far as to say that the weaker Pixar films are the ones that emphasize this man vs man conflict.

The strongest stories in the Pixar catalog have always been ones in which the central conflict for the central character is internal. Since noticing this tendency with Toy Story, I haven’t been surprised that people who prefer more conventional man vs man or man vs nature stories find Pixar villains disappointing. As a Christian, who sees a massive amount of the scriptural narrative as being one in which God's people are confronted with the reality that God is more for them than they are for themselves, I resonate with Toy Story on many levels. Our hero Woody is heroic not because he beats the bad guys but because he is on a steady path of repenting of his own biases and fears and how these biases and fears lead him to destroy others or diminish others.

Now that we have the third and probably final installment in Toy Story I think it is useful to point out that a full two thirds of the series has focused on internal conflict as the primary engine for storytelling. Woody is against Buzz Lightyear in the first film, to be sure, but the conflict arises because of his loss of faith in Andy's goodness and favor. He doubts that Andy will want to keep him and sees Buzz as the embodiment of his doubt in Andy's character. Buzz therefore must be considered the enemy; his delusions prevent Woody from realizing that he has a potential friend.

But the central conflict of the film has to do with Woody's fear that he has lost his role as Andy's favorite toy.
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Weds Afternoon Rock N Roll: Belle & Sebastian Go To Church

The party line with Belle & Sebastian is that they peaked early with If You're Feeling Sinister ("Go off and see a minister"). That record may be tad monotonous but it's still utterly charming and very much deserving of its stature as a modern classic. Yet I feel that their true masterpiece is 2006's The Life Pursuit - also one of the top-ten albums of the last decade, period. The songwriting is uniformly inspired, the production downright exciting, without jettisoning any of the lyrical bite that we've all come to love so much. More importantly, for our purposes, it is an ultra-rare example of Christianity successfully integrated into indie pop-art.

Stuart Murdoch, the band's primary singer and songwriter, has made no secret of his churchgoing ways (he even teaches Sunday school in a Protestant parish), yet nowhere has he incorporated that fact into his band's music as seamlessly as he does on The Life Pursuit. True, a couple of the early B&S songs prominently feature clergy ("The State That I'm In" etc), and 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress even boasts a slice of proto-Christian pop in "If You Find Yourself Caught in Love." But those references carried an undeniable shock-value component - church imagery reinforcing the whole quaint Scottish twee-thing. On The Life Pursuit, Murdoch treats church almost as a matter of course - yes, he goes to church, doesn't everybody?! The references are simply there; they don't attract attention themselves. Christianity (and church) is portrayed as an almost unspoken factor in the everyday lives of real people, one that is in turns pathetic and profound, but a factor nonetheless. In other words, his references ring true. Take for instance the lead-off track, "Act Of The Apostle":
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Deep Notes Of A Blast From The Past: James Gould Cozzens' Men And Brethren

The reason that the neglected American novelist James Gould Cozzens (1903-1978) finds a resonance with Mockingbird has to do with his observations on human nature -- he believed in Original Sin -- and with his unforgettable, discomfiting descriptions of reality, things as they are, De rerum natura.

Moreover, Cozzens had an archaeological personal link with the Episcopal Church: its outward life, its inward life, its rectors and its wardens, its original constituency and its continuing adaptations, its historic strengths and repeating weaknesses. Cozzens was "P.E." ("Protestant Episcopal", which is old lingo for Low Church but not necessarily Evangelical) and also agnostic on the question of God. If you can believe it, that was a common breed in the Episcopal Church of yore. He had attended Kent School in Connecticut under the celebrated headmastership of Father Sill, a determined High Churchman who was also a wise understander of boys -- basically a remarkable teacher and good priest. Father Sill, together with Cozzens' mother and father's active, sincere churchmanship, made the Episcopal Church figure strongly in Cozzens life and books. No Evangelical and no Anglo-Catholic, no Liberal either, this writer had years and years' opportunity to just see. He looked, with his dark and perceptive, open eyes; and took inner notes, in detail, concerning daily chapel services at Kent; Sunday by Sunday Morning Prayer in his parents' church on Staten Island, a year of living in the vicarage of the downtown mission of the parish of St. Mark's-in-the-Bowerie after he left Harvard (he had already published a novel while he was an undergraduate there), and correspondence with any number of Episcopal clergy and laymen as time passed. Interestingly, when he retired to Florida in the 1970s and he and his wife down-sized their life, he retained his subscriptions to The Anglican Digest and The Living Church.

But Episcopal-Church business aside -- and it is not uninteresting, if only as a chronicle of one aspect of mid-20th Century American cultural and religious history -- he wrote a book published in 1936 entitled Men and Brethren. The title derives from Acts 2:37: "Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?"

Men and Brethren tells the story of an Episcopal minister serving on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He is a good man, an urbane, intellectual, and also completely committed man, who is going full tilt within an active and demanding parish ministry. The Reverend Mr. Cudlipp -- in those days, we are talking the early 1930s, Episcopal clergy were almost always called 'Mister' (like in the Navy -- think Mr. Roberts) -- is Vicar of St. Ambrose Chapel, a 'mission station'' in what is now still sometimes called 'Yorkville' on the Upper East Side, of a more prestigious parish, Holy Innocents, which is four or five blocks over, to the west. Holy Innocents is meant to represent 'a combination of St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue and St. Bartholomew's, Park Avenue'; while St. Ambrose represents a church like Holy Trinity, in its original 'mission' foundation. Mr. Cudlipp, in other words, is pastoring a church for the poor and needy, while Dr. Lamb, Rector of Holy Innocents, is ministering to the wealthier residents of the city.

Cozzens tells the engrossing story of 24 hours in the life of Mr. Cudlipp, as he counsels a woman expecting the child of a man who is not her husband and who, the woman, already has two small children by that husband in their 'happy home', an affluent, loveless apartment on Park Avenue; as he deals with a persistent and unstable homeless person, in whose case he makes a serious error, which is both not his fault and is his fault; as he ministers to an impoverished dying woman, with an impossible alcoholic husband, and a very 'flip' doctor, who detests 'WASPs'; as he shelters a woman who fears her show-business husband's alcoholic abuse; as he fends off political attacks both from the Rector of his sponsoring (i.e., salary paying) parish, Holy Innocents, and from his militantly High-Church bishop uptown, who would use any opportunity he could to get Mr. Cudlipp out of the Diocese. And so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes (Nick Lowe).
[CONTINUE READING]

Neverwhere

I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come upon a blood red cup and the beating of the wings of the Eagle.
--The Napoleon of Notting Hill, G. K. Chesterton

If ever thou gavest hosen or shoon
Then every night and all
Sit thou down and put them on
And Christ receive thy soul

This aye night, this aye night
Every night and all
Fire and fleet and candlelight
And Christ receive thy soul

If ever thou gavest meat or drink
Then every night and all
The fire shall never make thee shrink
And Christ receive thy soul

--The Lyke Wake Dirge (traditional)

These two eerie, disturbingly Christian mini-poems are how NEVERWHERE, one of the great fantasies of the last forty years, begins.

Fantasy, nowadays, has become part of what publishers call genre fiction. When people hear the word they think of Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft; they think of Conan and elf-mages and dwarf warriors and what not.

And that's ok. I mean I really like that stuff. Especially when it's good, like Tolkien.

But that's such a tiny sliver of what fantasy is. Fantasy is anything that takes you into a world different from ours -- and without the extrapolation of some kind of scientific or futuristic premise. The Wind In The Willows, Watership Down, Peter Pan, The Golden Key -- these are GREAT fantasy novels and they don't have anything to do with naked barbarian swordsmen and spellcasting wizards (or teenagers). And they typically have a simple beautiful image or idea at their center -- out of which the whole story unfolds. What if rabbits could talk? What if a little boy never grew up?
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Charcoal and Grace: The National's "High Violet"

Other than Vampire Weekend's "Contra" and maybe Spoon's "Transference" (I have not yet heard The Hold Steady's latest), not much music of the Pitchfork variety has blown my mind in 2010. In fact, for one who dishes out way too much money on music, if you looked at my credit card bill, I’ve actually saved some money this year.

With that said, I’ve been anticipating The National’s latest for some time. Worried that it wouldn't match the brilliance of 2007’s “Boxer,” I came to it with high expectations-usually a recipe for disappointment. Fortunately, this five-piece from Brooklyn has put together their best record yet. Few albums in these digital days deliver the satisfaction of a truly complete album- this is one of them.

If you’re new to The National, understand that it takes three-to-four spins to appreciate Matt Berninger’s distinctive baritone, but once you’re hooked, there are few voices in indie rock that compare.

Most of the album is haunting and dark. Fishing for meaning in indie rock is always dangerous, but suffice it to say, themes of insecurity, fear, depression, and failure are effectively communicated through both the music and lyrics here. I’m also going to advance the argument that the overall progression of “High Violet” reflects a bit of a Law and Gospel paradigm, where death is very real, but so is redemption.
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Balm For the Soul: Sandra McCracken's Feast Or Fallow

This one comes from mockingfriend Ben Dehart:

“We cannot afford to lose these old hymns, they are full of the Gospel…” Basil Manley (1891)

Every December Paste Magazine publishes a list of their top fifty albums of the year. Each year I scan the picks searching for the worthy successors to Led Zeppelin and U2. Needless to say, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

2008 was like any other year. I found myself nodding in agreement with some of their selection, shaking my head in dismay at others, and completely ignorant of most. But as I reached the end of the list I saw a write up for a Sandra McCracken, referred to as the better half of Derek Webb.

Being a fan of the last few Webb albums, I decided to give her album “Red Balloon” a spin. Since then, I’ve been hooked. While by no means Robert Plant’s, her voice has a more transcendent feel, one that Paste reviewer Jason Killingsworth calls “cloud-splitting.”

Her latest release, In Feast or Fallow has been advertised as a collection of ancient and modern hymns. When I first heard this I was skeptical. It reminded me of the eight thousand mediocre-at-best “worship projects” that have been released by every faith-based artist in the past few years.

Fortunately, Sandra has once again proven that she should not be classified along with the other CCM artists. After one listen, my unwarranted fears were laid to rest. In Feast or Fallow is a beautifully written cohesive collection of earthy songs with Cross-centered lyrics. Music one might actually want to sing in church, the car, or the kitchen. As the album progresses the songs only get better as “Give Reviving,” “This is the Christ,” and “In Feast or Fallow” make this album truly great.

Vertical hymns that address real fears are often the best of church music. This fifteen song collection succeeds where many others have failed.

Here is Sandra at her best with an acoustic version of the title track. Enjoy!

P.S. In Feast or Fallow is available (legally) for $3.85 through Amie St.

Tim Keller's "Counterfeit Gods": a book review

I’ve always had apprehension when I hear preachers use the word “idolatry.” It’s not a word used in everyday life. When I hear it, I usually think of a Baptist pastor preaching fire and brimstone to ancient Egyptians. I think of televangelists yelling loudly into the camera- trying to scare me into the kingdom. So when I was given as a gift Tim Keller’s new book, “Counterfeit Gods,” I didn’t know what to expect. Would he be the angry televangelist, or the thoughtful, poignant writer I’ve come to love? I am happy to report that my fears were unwarranted.

Keller defines an idol as “Anything more important to you than God… anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living” (xvii). While idols can take the form of “other gods,” Keller is more interested in gods of money, success, sex, and power. We serve these idols in hopes that they would provide for us true meaning and joy. Keller writes, “We all need assurance of our unique value from some outside source” (158) .Our idols are our fondest dreams, that which makes us feel important, and the means by which we justify our existence.

Keller does not offer a strategy of ten steps to avoid idolatry and live the life of a disciple (the problem, unfortunately, is much worse than that). He says, “[Idols] cannot be remedied only be repenting that you have an idol, or using willpower to try to live differently” (171). Sin cannot be "pruned" off; like a weed it will continue to grow back. Keller does not simply exhort his readers to turn from idolatry to faith in God. God’s law is powerless to change the human heart and cannot remove our false idols.

Instead, the idol must be replaced by God’s grace in Christ. When we know that we are valued by God, we do not find our value in worthless idols. God woos our hearts toward him with his forgiveness in a joy-based repentance. This consistent focus on the Gospel as the impetus to change idolatrous hearts is what sets Keller’s book apart.

All in all, I highly recommend “Counterfeit Gods”. Keller’s even and gracious tone carefully carries the reader through the difficult subject of idolatry without finger pointing or condescension. When he preaches "the law" he does so by pointing out the many ways that idols fail to produce what they promise. Keller also provides insightful illustrations about everything ranging from economics to Madonna. But most of all, Keller adeptly uses several stories in the Bible to talk about a God who gave up everything he had for us miserable idolaters. Don't buy this book for a friend- buy it for yourself.

Oscar Wilde... also bringing you the Gospel

Mockingbird talks a lot about movies and music. Much of the time though we can't do the thing we really want to do -- which is give you the whole song or movie. You know: click here and watch the whole thing now!

But... there's a whole lot of fiction, especially short stories, that are in the Public Domain. Which is to say: pure Gift, no cost, no earn, just click and receive. Which is of course totally what we are about.

So here's my stab today at throwing out some very MB fiction. Hopefully we can do more of this. The title of this post is a tribute to JZ's visual koans which we are lucky enough to see every now and then at MB. And the author of these stories is Oscar Wilde.


The Happy Prince. Very short story, about a statue and the bird who comes to love him. One of Wilde's most famous pieces.

The Selfish Giant. Also short. Funny and touching, lots about law and gift and how loving gets born.

The Nightingale and the Rose. Another very short piece, thematically like HP and SG, but with more explicit imagery about the Blood.

The Canterville Ghost. Quite a bit longer than the other three, and very funny. An aggressively American family encounters a very British ghost. Deceptively funny in fact: because by the end of the piece it has become a serious meditation on suffering, death, forgiveness, need, and release.

The Picture of Dorian Gray. A novella, exploring the nature of sin as incurvatus in se (self curved in upon itself), the desperate need for a substitute to bodily bear our iniquity, the absolute demand of the holy law, the futility of all works at altering our inner life; and so on. Wilde at the height of his powers as an artist: one of his greatest prose achievements.

Toward the end of his life Wilde came in prison to know great suffering; and to learn in a very visceral way pity and helplessness and abandon all interest in a theology of glory. At death he was received into the Church of Rome.

If you are curious about his work after he was released, here is a prose letter he wrote on May 27, 1897 about children in prison. It's an amazing piece, with great insights into the psychology of punishment especially as regards children and the child in us all, and how codified law often leads to cruelty and the actual punishment of kindness. (It begins "Sir, I learn with great regret, through the columns of your paper, that the warder Martin, of Reading Prison, has been dismissed by the Prison Commissioners for having given some sweet biscuits to a little hungry child.")

And here is his famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol. A brief passage from it is below:

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.

This too I know--and wise it were
If each could know the same--
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.

Mockingbird At The Movies: Some Thoughts On Avatar

With so much build-up to this movie, on this blog as well as everywhere else on the planet (the global gross just exceeded $1 billion!), I felt obliged to post a few thoughts on the film itself, some of which appeared in a recent comment.

1. The visuals. They actually were as stunning as they were hyped to be, particularly the use of 3-D, which was nothing short of groundbreaking. Overall, the Na'vi looked pretty real, the few exceptions being some of the walking shots and anything involving Sigourney Weaver's avatar. But they shine in the close-ups and flying scenes. The final aerial battle must be seen (witnessed?) to be believed, standing as the unequivocal masterstroke of the film.

2. The script. Obviously we don't go to movies like Avatar expecting poetry. The most one can ask for is that the script does not distract one from enjoying the action. Unfortunately, it would appear that Cameron has reached a level of success where he no longer feels the need to employ an editor... And at times his lines veer dangerously close to Lucas-esque secondhand embarrassment territory. But the actors do the best they can, and a better-paced three hour action movie would be hard to find.

3. As for the politics of the film, I felt they were harmless enough, if a bit heavy-handed with the whole 9/11-Iraq-Ferngully connection. The worst one could say is that it felt a little like it was written seven or eight years ago. Again, not that I was looking for it to have anything serious to say...

4. Theologically, although the much-talked-about pantheism is definitely there (in spades), there was a key departure in the final act - where God shifted from a "spirit which protects the natural order of things" to an interventionist, redemptive deity. Not Christian per se, but certainly more in that direction than all the Captain Planet stuff in the first half. A friend of mine summed it up well when he said that Avatar is what you'd expect if you gave a Yoga instructor $300 million and told him to make an action movie.

Overall, I'd call it a very entertaining film with truly eye-popping special effects that make the thin (stock) characters and borderline risible script easy to overlook.

As a side-note, Mbird behind-the-scenes man Jeff Dean had a very interesting take on the film, going so far as to call it an unintentional Evangelical (and Pelagian) myth:

"The lead character is introduced to a body of people who are defined by their communion with God. As he spends time with them and learns their ways, his old life seems less and less real to him. Finally he abandons his old life and becomes one with the new community entirely. As a reward for his striving/recognition of the good that was in him, the God transforms him fully into a new creation. Of course, the correlation is not self-conscious."

The Gypsy and the Hobo: Mad Men Ep. 11

(Warning: Mad Men spoiler alerts ahead—if you aren’t caught up on the last few weeks of Season 3, and don’t want to be, don’t read this post!)

“Don, open the drawer or I will.” ....holy $%@&!

This is 2 weeks late in coming but let’s talk about Episode 11 of Mad Men’s third season; it’s the one we’ve all been waiting for, right? Betty confronts Don about his past, evidence of which was kept in a shoebox in a locked drawer in his desk, and Don comes clean and tells her everything, everything! (Well, not about the school teacher sleeping in his car, but everything else.) Don’s face has never been so stricken and I, for one, thought he was going to bolt for the door. Incredibly, he stays, Betty pours him a drink, and he tells the truth.

Out of their conversation comes some of the best Mockingbird fodder I’ve ever seen on TV. As he starts to explain, Betty asks, “What would you do if you were me? Would you love you?” and Don replies, “I was surprised you ever loved me.” This is something profound that we never knew before, Don Draper feels unlovable. He goes through it all, the prostitute mother, the stepmother, and finally breaks talking about his brother Adam who committed suicide after coming to find Don and being turned away. In tears, he says, “He wanted to be part of my life. I couldn’t risk all this.”

What we have here is the transformation of a man, by the truth about who he really is coming to light and his wife not giving up on him. We see it the next morning, when he sees the old photos lying where he left them the night before, and lets them stay there. When he walks down stairs and kisses his children and puts his hand behind Betty’s head and looks into her eyes. When he calls the school teacher and breaks off the affair. When Carlton asks him during Halloween, “And who are you supposed to be [dressed up as]?” Don has the contented (and scared?) look of a man who is no longer hiding. This is transformation!

Sure, it’s also Mad Men…Betty’s losing it by the day and I’m not holding out for a complete Gospel metaphor all the way through to the finale this weekend. But what made this episode so thrilling was that Mad Men got real: we all feel like Don. We all have that one thing (or many!) that makes us unlovable, that we know if people ever found out about, we’d just die. But what we all long for is for those things to come to light, and to not die. To be free from our past, from things we’ve done, and still be loved.

The Magills And The Kings County Sound

As we all know, contemporary Christian worship music is a very tricky proposition. Forget indie rock with all its cooler-than-thou do’s and don'ts, forget pop with its lowest-common-denominator pressures, etc – there is no genre that is more difficult (impossible?) to do well than contemporary Christian worship. I’m not talking about modern hymnody, which is another matter altogether. I’m talking about worship/praise music.

For starters, writing a worship lyric that is both emotionally and theologically engaging is no easy task. The horizontal “me-centered” stuff tends to put words in the mouths of unsuspecting worshippers, making assertions and promises that in practice border on dishonesty or even absurdity. On the other hand, more vertically, God-oriented songs tend to over-correct, frequently veering into teachy, dry and super abstract territory. In both cases, the melodies are equally difficult to pull off. If it’s too complicated (or fast), no one can sing it. But if it’s too simple, the hokey campfire factor becomes unbearable. And let’s face it – even if a song makes it past those two hurdles, it rarely survives the recording process without the edge getting shaved off. So we are always on the lookout for something good, and we are always delighted when we find it!

The Magills and The Kings County Sound is such a record. By no means a full-on “worship” album, it incorporates that approach more successfully than anything in recent memory (High Street Hymns doesn’t count – a better touchstone might be Thad Cockrell’s excellent To Be Loved EP). The songs strike that rare tone of good testimony, witnessing clearly to God's grace/power while remaining deeply rooted in personal experience and feeling, without ever falling into singer-songwriter exhibitionism or prescriptive can-do back-patting. With their second full-length, Oklahoma-by-way-of-Texas-by-way-of-NYC duo The Magills have delivered a country-rock gospel record that feels both authentic and worshipful.



The songwriting is uniformly pretty top-notch. “The Peace”, an early stunner, is a breathless example of Matt Magill’s effortless melodicism: a first-person verse colliding with a second-Person chorus that will stay in your head for days. The duet “Rescue” is another highlight – smart, earnest lyrics married to a lilting country shuffle (probably the closest they get to traditional country), interrupted by an inspired guitar solo. Of the out-and-out worship songs, “Here Is The Son” is particularly fine, hitting the horizontal-vertical balance perfectly. And the one foray into original hymnody, the gorgeous “What No Man Can Do”, suggests a potentially very fruitful future direction.

The vocals on the record deserve much, um, praise. Megan Magill provides expert bluegrass harmonies to her husband’s leads throughout, getting a breath-taking showcase on “Receiving You”. Together they have the sort of well-worn familiarity that reminds one of the early Jayhawks (or Jack White-Loretta Lynn, if Jack were a bit less nasal). When they cut loose on the soulful “What A Friend”, the results are stunning. And when they branch out, as on the laidback “Used To Be” or the interweaving “Prepared”, the chemistry is remarkable.



The production, courtesy of Aaron Franz Little, avoids pretty much all of the standard CCM clichés – it’s densely arranged and expertly played, full of unexpected flourishes. The drum sound in particular stands out, with no trace of that early 90s processing that plagues so many similar such records. Stylistically, although the impressive breadth works for the most part – are those echoes of Sabbath’s “War Pigs” I hear in the psychedelic “My Love”?! – the Magills are at their best in their country-rock comfort zone.

Theologically, the emphasis is twofold: 1. The reality of human weakness/brokenness and 2. God’s saving grace in Christ. Rescue, assurance, salvation – these are the main themes, with God presented predominantly (and refreshingly) as savior. The subjective elements serve them well, imbuing the overall verticality of the record with real feeling without sacrificing any of its Cross-centeredness. In context, the handful of (what could be heard as) best-life-now moments come off more as the once-was-lost-now-am-found sentiments that have long been hallmarks of the country gospel genre, with Magill always careful to describe personal salvation as a past, present and future concern.

So it is a rare feat The Magills have accomplished here: a musically engaging pseudo-worship record that manages to be genuinely uplifting without ignoring the pain or tragedy of life, explicit without being heavy-handed, sincere but not sappy – in short, a thoroughly infectious blend of hope, hard knocks and sweet, sweet harmonies. Powerful stuff.

To purchase go here. Or to book them to play, go here.

"Broken" - The Season 6 Premiere of House

My wife and I have been big House fans for some time, but the demands of school have been keeping me away from the television these days. However, between my wife's telling me that I had to see the season premiere, "Broken," and DZ's flagging it last week (see #5), I caved. (How could I not with that title?) I'm not going to attempt to analyze it, but rather am just going to give a little background for those who might not be familiar with the series and offer a few choice quotes from the episode to entice you into watching it yourself.

So, for anyone who hasn't seen House (anyone else, just skip to the quotes), the main premise is that of Sherlock Holmes in a hospital setting. The titular character, Gregory House, M.D., is a brilliant but socially challenged diagnostician. The following introduction he gives of himself from an early episode should give you a good idea:

Hello, sick people and their loved ones! In the interest of saving time and avoiding a lot of boring chitchat later, I'm Doctor Gregory House; you can call me "Greg." I'm one of three doctors staffing this clinic this morning. This ray of sunshine is Doctor Lisa Cuddy. Doctor Cuddy runs this whole hospital, so unfortunately she's much too busy to deal with you. I am a Board certified diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology. I am also the only doctor currently employed at this clinic who is forced to be here against his will. That is true, isn't it? But not to worry, because for most of you, this job could be done by amonkey with a bottle of Motrin. Speaking of which, if you're particularly annoying, you may see me reach for this: this is Vicodin. It's mine. You can't have any. And no, I do not have a pain management problem, I have a pain problem. But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm too stoned to tell. So, who wants me? And who would rather wait for one of the other two guys? Okay. Well, I'll be in Exam Room One if you change your mind.

He is also a brilliant diagnostician of fallen human nature, characterized by his oft-repeated line about patients, "everybody lies." To be sure, House has a very Mockingbird understanding of human nature--bad to the bone. What he does not have is a Mockingbird understanding of what saves us from that nature--grace.

So, onto Season 6, which begins in Vicodin detox--not the first time in the series. However, this time is a little different for House. Last season, after the suicide of one of his staff, he began having schizophrenic hallucinations of another character, about whose death he also has lingering guilt. Needing the recommendation of his doctor to get reinstated to practice medicine, he reluctantly allows himself to be committed to long-term inpatient psychiatric care following the detox, hoping to bluff or bully his way into getting what he wants. However, his doctor proves to be his equal in stubbornness and in his understanding of human nature, but unlike House, he actually has an inkling of how grace works.

What follows is a moving (albeit not entirely realistic) picture of what it means to hit rock bottom and to arrive at a point where one has been rendered utterly incapable of doing anything, except realizing one's helplessness and one's need for saving.

I don't want to give away the plot (watch it here), but the following hopefully will whet your appetites:

(I don't think these are spoilers, BUT if you are at all concerned, just go watch the episode and skip these.)

1. House's conversation with his roommate, who has just learned House is actually taking his medication:

ROOMMATE: They broke you?!?

HOUSE: They didn’t break me—I am broken. Stop worshipping me and go worry about your own loser life.


2. House's conversation with his doctor, after he is reminded of the serious hurt he has caused another:

DOCTOR: Why do you value your failures more than your successes?....

HOUSE: Successes only last until someone screws them up. Failures are forever.

DOCTOR: So you accept that fact? You accept that there’s nothing you can do?

HOUSE: Okay, I accept the fact that there is nothing I can do. Now...what can I do?

DOCTOR: You acknowledge failure and you move past it. Apologize.

HOUSE: Wow…powerful things, these apologies....you say two words and move on with your life. Hardly seems fair.

DOCTOR: Is that the issue? You cause him pain; if the world is just, you have to suffer equally? [chuckles] You’re not God, House. You’re just another screwed-up human being, who needs to move on. Apologize to him. Let yourself feel better. Then you can learn to let yourself keep feeling better.

To be sure, the notion of salvation offered in "Broken" is a human one and thus inevitably flawed; however, it's still a portrait of our desperate need to die to ourselves and be raised to a new life. And that's just good stuff.