Book Review: A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

Several of the blurbs for this book say it is as close as we will get to a memoir from Vonnegut.  Honestly, if you have read Cat’s Cradle, Slaughter-House Five, and his collections of lectures, speeches, etc. you have read everything in this book before.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth reading. It is full of Vonnegut wit and misanthropy.   It is fragmented, like his novels.  It is funny, like his novels.  The humor is to deal with the fear and hopelessness.  He states that he has given up on mankind, and in particular, America.  He strongly disliked the Bush administration, and he strongly believed that humans have destroyed the Earth.  In typical Vonnegut fashion, he doesn’t have any hope for us. To some degree it reads like a really depressed Al Gore- if Al Gore had a personality and was funny.  I like Vonnegut’s fiction.  I liked it even more in my twenties when I was just as negative as he is, but now I have a family and the unabandoned gloom with no solutions or alternatives is starting to seem a little immature and emo.  Don’t get me wrong.  He’s a great American writer.  Cat’s Cradle is still one of my all-time favorite books.  

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Brooks won the Pulitzer in 2006 for her book March, so I felt obligated to try People of the Book when I saw it on display at the mega-bookstore that shall remain unnamed. I feel guilty that I didn’t spend my money at the local independent bookstore.  I had a gift card.  What could I do.

The book is about the Sarajevo Haggadah, a Jewish religious text that tells the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt.  It’s believed that this Haggadah originated some time in the 14th century in Spain and made it’s way to Sarajevo, surviving Jewish expulsion, the Spanish Inquisition, World War II, and the Bosnian War.  The Haggadah contains some beautiful illustrations similar to Christian prayer books, and one of them includes a Moorish woman.  This raises several historical questions about why this Jewish text has Christian influenced artwork and a Moorish woman. Brooks’ fictional protagonist is a conservationist of ancient texts.  She finds several clues as to the Haggadah’s origins and history while restoring it for the museum in Sarajevo.  The chapters take the reader back in time to tell the fictional story behind each clue, which is pretty interesting, but several times Brooks uses corny plot twists along the lines of something from a Dan Brown novel. Most are in the present and involve the protagonist and her own little storyline. Overall, the book is about how multiculturalism is great and created this wonderful work of art, but I have to say I felt the Christians in this book took a beating.  I know, the Inquisition. I can’t argue with that.  I don’t want to give any spoilers, but there are several times Brooks could have gone in a different direction with certain characters. Again, the Dan Brown nonsense really turns me off.  It wasn’t a lot, but that’s my pet peeve, especially coming from a writer who won the Pulitzer.

People of the Book is good, and it kept my interest, but it’s not as good as I thought it would be. I guess that’s what I get for not buying March, but I figured her follow up to the Pulitzer could only be better…right?

Crazy Love by Francis Chan

Crazy Love is the most challenging book on Christianity I have read.  Now, I’m no religious scholar, so I’m sure there is a more challenging book out there somewhere.  And it’s not challenging as in “These are really deep and difficult to understand theological discussions. I need a PhD to get this.”  It’s actually a very easy read intellectually.

It’s challenging because it presses that “uncomfortable button.”  You know the one.  It’s the you-profess-that-you-believe-this-but-you-don’t-live-it button.  It hurts your feelings a little at first because the preacher is talking specifically about things you have said and things you have done.  You can’t deny it, even to yourself.  And then you get angry and defensive, and you don’t like the preacher at that moment.  Then you say, “That message really spoke to me,” and you feel good, and you tell yourself you’re going to “be better” and change.  But you go home and watch football and go to work on Monday and forget all about it before next Sunday, because… well, we like to be comfortable.

Francis Chan mashes that button over and over and over hoping that it sticks.  In that discomfort and uneasiness, we know we are saved by grace, but we realize we are not doing what God has called us to do.  We are not taking up our cross. Our fruits are not a testament to our beliefs.  We are lukewarm.

We go to church.  We try to be nice, polite people, but Chan writes, “When we face the Holy God, nice isn’t what we will be concerned with, and it definitely isn’t what He will be thinking about.” He quotes 1 Corinthians 3:13-15- Each person’s works will be tested in the fire.  If it burns up, he will lose everything but himself, like a person barely escaping through the flames.  Chan says, “Perhaps that sounds harsh, but harsh words and the loving truth often go hand and hand.”

Chan emphasizes that our relationship with God has to be everything in our lives.  We have to literally depend on him for everything.  Not say we do, and do our own thing anyway just in case He doesn’t come through.  He also heavily emphasizes sacrificial giving and Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:40- “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brother’s of mine, you did for me.”  Chan challenges us to literally treat everyone we come in contact with as though they were Jesus.

When you get to the last chapter, Chan realizes you are at that point of saying “That message really spoke to me,” and you feel good, and you tell yourself you’re going to “be better” and change, but then you’re paralyzed because you’re not really sure what it means in terms of your life. You put the book down and go back to being comfortable.  Chan quotes Annie Dillard: “How we live our days is… how we live our lives.” He writes, “We each need to discover for ourselves how to live this day [Chan's italics] in faithful surrender to God as we ‘continue to work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling’” (Phil. 2:12).  Chan says we have to learn to listen to and obey God day to day “…in a society where it’s easy and expected to do what is most comfortable.”