The Sound and The Fury

Here’s a great post about Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury, which would be on my top ten favorite books list if I ever took the time to sit down and populate such a list.  It’s one of those books that most people start, but don’t finish.  I admit the first chapter is very difficult and strange, but I liked it.  I don’t have the time to reflect on why that might be, but Jamelah Earle says it’s her favorite and why here: My Favorite Book: The Sound and The Fury.

The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca (1955)

This selection of Lorca’s poetry does a good job of  illustrating his career from beginning to end and his growth as a poet. The poems are arranged chronologically. His immaturity as a poet is evident in the early works. He hones his skills and develops his own style noticeably with the selections from his third book of poems. From then on, the poems sing with a folk lyricism and surrealism. This collection contains translations by many notable writers, including Langston Hughes and W.S. Merwin; however, I don’t think the translations in this collection are the best translations of Lorca’s work.

A Long Obedience In The Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene Peterson

This is one of the best books about Christian faith I have read. Peterson draws his title from Friedrich Nietzsche, a most unlikely place. “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is… that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.” Peterson’s premise is that today’s marketing/tourist mindset has changed religion and how people practice it. He examines Psalms 120-134, the Songs of Ascent, and how they pertain to the “long obedience in the same direction” of Christianity.

Some quotes:

“There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.”

“…I am quite sure that for a pastor in Western culture at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the aspect of the world that makes the work of leading Christians in the way of faith most difficult is what Gore Vidal has analyzed as ‘today’s passion for the immediate and the casual.’ Everyone is in a hurry. The persons whom I lead in worship… want shortcuts. They want me to help them fill out the form that will get them instant credit (in eternity). They are impatient for results.”

On joy- “We try to get it through entertainment. We pay someone to make jokes, tell stories, perform dramatic actions, sing songs. We buy the vitality of another’s imagination to divert and enliven our own poor lives. The enormous entertainment industry in America is a sign of the depletion of joy in our culture. Society is a bored, gluttonous king employing a court jester to divert it after an overindulgent meal. But that kind of joy never penetrates our lives… When we run out of money, the joy trickles away.”

“Western culture takes up where Babel left off and deifies human effort as such. The machine is the symbol of this way of life which attempts to control and manage… Machines become more important than the people who use them. We care more for our possessions with which we hope to make our way in the world than with our thoughts and dreams which tell us who we are in the world.”