The “Not So” Great Gatsby

May 11, 2013

gatsby-original-cover-artEither late in high school or early in college, I was ordered to read The Great Gatsby. I regarded it as the most boring thing I had ever picked up. However, roughly 20 years later, I decided that it may have been me who was boring, so I decided – through the recommendation of others – that I should read it again because I, as an adult, would now be in a better frame of mind to appreciate the literary genius of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Nope.

Why is it that so many writers, and especially so many writing teachers, are quick to proclaim The Great Gatsby as one of the greatest novels ever written? Shortly after its publication, H.L. Mencken – a rather significant writer and journalist – referred to The Great Gatsby as just a “glorified anecdote,” and I completely agree. It’s a worthless and boring piece of work that does nothing more than allow a handful of shallow-minded society folk to show off their ability to do nothing other than uselessly and wastefully spend money and pursue extra-marital affairs with people more dull than themselves. And without the convenience of coincidence, not even that could happen.

I must apologize however, because it is wrong to refer to this story as “fiction” since there is no driving plot and no likable characters. If Moby Dick could swallow the entire cast, the world would improve. Usually, good fiction can be summarized with the following statement: “Somebody wants something, but someone or something else is in the way.” So tell me, who in this story wants something? Or, to ask a better question, who in this story has a want or need that is so compelling that I actually want to read the book? Maybe Gatsby wants Daisy? Why should I care? Daisy seems to want Nick and kisses him several times, even though they’re cousins but while still proclaiming her love for both Gatsby and her husband Tom, who is having his own affair with Myrtle, the wife of George Wilson. Whew. Affairs can be interesting, especially when there is a great deal of tension between the cheating parties and their legitimate better-half is in the same room. However, it doesn’t take long for Gatsby to pop right up to say that Daisy never loved Tom at all. Tom’s reaction? Basically, “Yes she does.” Wow, that’s drama.

Or maybe what Gatsby wants is to be liked? People seem to enjoy his parties, but nobody really seems to like or respect him. They tell stories about him, but they don’t really care about him. Why should they? He never answers a question with a straight answer and basically bullies people while smiling and sending a butler to refill their drinks, possibly to keep them drunk so they can’t remember what a dullard he is.

The only time there was interesting tension or drama was when Tom realized that he was simultaneously losing both his wife Daisy and his lover Myrtle. However, I could not feel sympathy for Tom because he was a brut who broke Myrtle’s nose after she mentioned his wife’s name. That drama lasted about half a page, and before we could really get into a conflict between husbands, wives, and lovers, Fitzgerald did a very convenient thing: he killed Myrtle and made it seem Gatsby’s fault so that Myrtle’s husband would kill Gatsby. This was way too convenient and could only lead me to one conclusion: Fitzgerald was done. He had nothing else interesting he could say or do with those characters, so he killed them. And he started a pretty good trend. Did you see the film Love Story? How about Terms of Endearment? Those two highly regarded films are cleaned up the same way, and it shows only one thing of the writer. He or she had absolutely no ideas left, so they had to kill someone to end the story. It’s very hard to end a story in a way that makes sense and ties the whole plot together. Just ask Stephen King.

There are other ways that convenience rules here. Without the narrator, Nick Caraway, there is no story. However, there are times in the story where Nick tells of scenes that he cannot possibly know about. Yes, I need to back that up, but I’ll have to find it later. For the attempt of drama to begin, we had to know that Tom was messing around with Myrtle. We learn this because Tom needed to mention it to Nick, his wife’s cousin. Why would a man tell his wife’s cousin that he’s cheating? Because either he’s plain stupid – leading me to not care about him – or the writer is plain stupid if he or she expects me to accept that.

So, let’s review. There is no driving conflict. There is no clear protagonist for me to follow and wait to see if that character achieves success. There is no clear antagonist to hinder the unclear protagonist. There are no likeable characters. Nobody wants or needs anything that I care enough about to see what happens.
Someone please tell me why this book is often called one of the greatest works of American fiction?

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Posted by brainsnorts

Stay out of – “The Shack”

July 3, 2012

(re-posted from about a year ago – because you never read it.

Item G of a 5-part series

Of course you can’t judge a book by its cover, but it’s okay to pick one because of it. When I saw the cover for The Shack, by William P. Young, I thought three things. First, I said, “That cover would look great for a book that I’m writing.” Second, I said, “That title is the same title as the book that I’m writing.” Third, I said, “Oh, crap. I better read this before I make the effort to finish my book.” Fortunately, there’s nothing at all similar. “Mac” is a very religious middle-aged man with a wife and two daughters. They’re just a very average middle-American family, go to church on Sundays, occasionally take weekend camping trips, and are about as “apple pie” as apple pie. They are so religious that they even have their own nickname for God in order to feel closer to him. “Papa” they call him, making him one of the family.

On one of their camping trips, something goes horribly wrong. There’s a calling card-leaving serial killer in the area who abducts children and does unspeakable things to children. When Mac’s older daughter struggles with a canoe in a lake, all attention is on her. Only the murderer’s attention is on the 7-year old as she draws in a coloring book at a picnic table nearby. In a relatively short time, the police are on the scene, combing the mountain, and producing an abandoned pickup truck that the killer had stolen to bring the innocent girl to a remote shack in the woods. What is found is reason enough for the police and Mac to believe she will never be found alive.

Mac retreats from the world, as does his older daughter who blames herself for what happened. Mac falls further into despair until he finds a note in his mailbox on a very snowy day. The note tells Mac that it’s time to talk again and to meet at the shack in the woods where his daughter disappeared. The note is signed “Papa,” which leads Mac to believe that the murderer knows of his religious past and is playing a game with him. Mac borrows a gun from a neighbor and treks to the shack amid the heavy snowstorm.

When he arrives at the shack, there’s nothing but an old bloodstain, the same one that had been there at the conclusion of the police investigation but oddly was never cleaned up. He isn’t sure at this point who really called him there. He gets angry, reliving the events of the murder, re-boiling the pain and hate that pulled him away from his faith, and thus getting his back up against God. He challenges God to face him and explain why his life was ripped to pieces, much like the Book of Job, one of many Bible passages that Mac used to discuss with his family.

Eventually, Mac’s draining catharsis leads to a slumber of unknown duration from which he wakes, straightens up, and leaves the shack. Outside, things have changed. Spring flowers and a blue sky have replaced many inches of snow, and then Mac is called back to the shack.

The premise of The Shackis truly frightening, especially to anyone with children. I have two girls, and when I glanced at the blurb on the book cover, I did not think I would have been able to read it without a painful, sympathetic cry. I almost cried, but only because halfway in I realized I still had another half to suffer through. “Mac” is as trite a nickname as possible, and I wouldn’t want neighbors who call God “Papa” as if they’re having him over for Thanksgiving.

When I scanned the cover, I didn’t get the impression that the story would have such a heavy religious presence. If I had, I likely would not have read it because, as I would have feared, the story read like a very long sermon. Mac meets God in the form of a very friendly, large, African woman who is an excellent cook. Jesus appears as an olive-skinned, athletic man in jeans and a flannel shirt to fit the image of a carpenter. The Holy Spirit is a quiet, philosophical Asian woman. Mac spends a long weekend with them, learning many quirky details about each but nothing at all as enlightening as you’d hope for when one stumbles upon the Holy Trinity.

I’m sure that anyone who has ever lost someone, especially a child, would have two very painful questions to ask whichever Supreme Being he or she believes in. The first is obviously, “Could you have saved my child?” In The Shack, God said “Yes.” The second question then must be, “Why didn’tyou save her?” To that, God gives one of the worst answers possible. “You wouldn’t understand.” Hey, God. Try me. Give it a shot. Just tell me, and let ME decide if I understand. Am I really so stupid that I can’t understand? If so, how about you educate me? Explain why you think I won’t understand, and then make an effort to help me understand. At least let me know that my child’s death contributed to something good.

From a writing perspective, God’s inability to answer was just plain wrong. If a writer is going to pose the possibility of God inviting Mac to the shack to deal with issues about his daughter’s death, then a real discussion must take place. There is a worldwide struggle and debate almost daily with similar topics such as divine intervention, intelligent design, creationism versus evolution, destiny versus free will, fact versus faith, and so on. If you’re going to place that box in front of me, you must open it. It is unfair to tell me that something is in there, but you’re not going to show me because you think I won’t understand it. I’d say that when Young wrote the story, he just didn’t know what God’s answer should be, and that’s okay because absolutely nobody knows what, if anything, God would or should say. Anyone who writes such a meeting must either address that question head on or completely avoid it. The last thing to do to a reader is to say, “I’m God, I know all the answers, but I’m not telling.”

Although the book is far from a comedy, one particular scene was unintentionally hilarious. Mac tells Jesus that he expected him to be more handsome. Jesus says, “It’s my nose, isn’t it?” Then he adds, “Well, I am Jewish, you know.” That’s a line I’d expect on Saturday Night Live but not in a suspense story.

I don’t like stories that present a fantastic situation before taking it all away. After Mac spends a weekend talking to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, he wakes up in a hospital bed where facts show that the entire experience could not have happened. That’s cheap. If you’re going to write a book about a conversation with The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then write it and stand behind it. Don’t pull an ending like the television show Dallas back in the 80′s in which an entire season of the show was just someone’s dream. If you can’t finish this story the right way and let it stand on its own merit, then it doesn’t have any merit. If all you’re going to give me is that it was all a dream, then where is yourfaith?

I bought the CD’s, not the actual book, and the last CD is an interview in which the author preaches about his personal religious journey. If you want me to believe all about your faith and religious journey, then you better be ready to demonstrate that faith. Staging an accident with a head injury in such a way that reduces the whole spiritual weekend to just a comatose hallucination is not standing proudly next to the faith that you’re demanding from the readers. You’re the one without faith. I’ve heard from three or four people who claim this book changed their lives, but I don’t understand why. It’s only a piece of fiction in which someone talked to God, but then they didn’t. The Shack should be no more life changing than The Cat in the Hat. Mac learned nothing from God except that man should just shut up and blindly follow him.

Be it a person or a book, to blindly follow anything presents danger. The potential of that danger is then magnified by the potential power claimed by that person or book. There’s nothing wrong with reading The Shack as entertainment. However, there is plenty wrong with reading it for purpose and direction in one’s life.

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Posted by brainsnorts

“Angels & Demons” by Dan Brown

June 30, 2012

I’m on vacation, so I wrote up a few reposts and saved them as drafts, thus allowing me to publish something each day through my phone. Gotta live technology.

(re-posted, because you haven’t seen it)

Item triangle of a geometric-part series

 

In the beginning of Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown of The Da Vinci Code, super-duper “code breaker” (because symbologist just doesn’t sufficiently cover his mad skills) Robert Langdon’s phone rings in the middle of the night. A voice introducing itself as Maximilian Kohler tells Langdon to come to his lab immediately. Langdon hangs up and goes back to sleep. Then an image comes through Langdon’s fax machine that shows a dead body with what appears to be the word “Illuminati” branded across the chest. Illuminati is a historically clandestine organization that has a particular belief about religion v. science and evolution v. Creationism. Legendarily and violently, the Illuminati has promoted the conflict between science and religion. Langdon, recognizing the name, immediately hops on a plane and does what the voice tells him. Two things are certain: fax machines do not have the greatest picture quality, and only an idiot would accept that image as a fact without considering that the photograph might not be genuine. (see: Photoshop, Miss California)

Kohler is confined to a motorized wheelchair with more gadgets than a Rolls Royce and runs a lab called CERN, an actual research facility in Geneva, Switzerland that contains probably the world’s most advanced “super collider.”  If you’re not sure what that is, watch The Big Bang Theory and Sheldon will explain it. Within CERN is a private laboratory to which only two people have access: the recently murdered Leonardo Vetra and his daughter Vittoria. When Leonardo is found not just dead but missing an eye in his suite at CERN, Kohler calls not the police but Langdon and Vittoria instead. What follows is over 400 pages of setups and prefab-coincidences that happen so regularly that any competent reader will quickly get annoyed. Only the father and daughter Vetra team have access to their private lab, thanks to a retina scanner for identification and entry. When Kohler leads Langdon and Miss Vetra to their lab door following the murder, Langdon sees an eyeball on the floor near the door. Kohler tells Miss Vetra that he has already searched their lab. She quietly opens the lab and without noticing either the eye on the floor nor the statement by Kohler that he has been in the Vetra’s private lab. Did she forget that only she and her father had access to the lab? Shouldn’t she have said, “Yo, buddy, how’d you manage to get in? Perhaps you pulled out my father’s eyeball for the retina scan, the very eyeball that happens to be here on the floor.” Go, Sherlock, go.

Missing from the private Vetra lab is a canister that contains antimatter, a theoretical nuclear material that is suspended in a vacuum container, similar to the canisters that you send through the pneumatic system of a drive-thru bank. In order to keep the material suspended, Father and Daughter Vetra created a electro-magnetic field inside the canister. It has a little clock to indicate the time that the power will run out after it has been removed from the charging system. If the battery dies and the antimatter collides with the container, it will wipe out life within a mile radius.

Meanwhile, the recent pope has died, and the Vatican is in “conclave,” their process of selecting a new pope. Roman Catholic bigshots from far and wide gather at the Vatican to vote for a new pope, kind of like Miss Universe but without the swimsuit competition. Unfortunately, something else is also at the Vatican. The antimatter thief has managed to smuggle and hide the canister in the Vatican with the intent to wipe out the global leaders of the Catholic Church, now that they’re all conveniently behind the walls of Vatican City. What a merry coincidence. The guts of the movie involves Langdon and Vittoria following a trail of clues not left behind by the villain but assumed by Langdon after gaining access to the Vatican top super secret super library, which he has unsuccessfully attempted to visit numerous times in recent years.

Angels and Demons has too many contrivances and conveniences, which disallows the acceptance of the dramatic attempt. After only the first three pages, it is already clear that would not be enough to just suspend belief. You would have to sell it on E-bay. Dan Brown has created too many incidents in which the reader must look the other way and pretend not to see the obvious flaws that exist only as a convenience for a plot to continue. For example, the nuclear antimatter canister can only be a threat if someone knows that it’s hidden in the Vatican. The Illuminati didn’t make a YouTube video, so how does Langdon even know to look for it? It just so happens that the Vatican police, also known as the Swiss Guard, spotted someone walking into the Vatican with a canister that had a little digital clock on it. Naturally, that means the Illuminati smuggled antimatter inside. How could anyone possibly draw any other conclusion? Nobody in the world other than Father and Daughter Vetra even knows that these canisters exist, yet somehow the Swiss Guard knew to call Max Kohler at the CERN laboratory because an amazingly high-powered surveillance camera caught an image of a digital clock. That leads to another question. When one smuggles an explosive device into the Vatican, would one allow it to appear on a surveillance tape? Wouldn’t one hide it in a camera bag or maybe a Sponge Bob lunch box? Wouldn’t one draw a little attention carrying a canister with a clock in the midst of a countdown?

Brown also spends a lot of time setting up a situation but holding back one piece of the puzzle, leading you to an “obvious” conclusion that is clearly not possible with only semi-careful reading. Such situations make you feel either like a genius for having figured something out or insulted that Brown would think he’s fooled you. Max Kohler immediately seems like the bad guy for having broken into the Vetra lab and not calling the police. Commander Olivetti of the Swiss Guard seems to have rogue tendencies, such as locking Langdon and Miss Vetra in his office and preventing them from talking to the Camerlengo, a fancy title for the Pope’s right-hand man. A cardinal is found dead where there should have been guards, but there weren’t any. Of course Olivetti must be responsible for pulling guards from their post. But don’t turn your back on the Camerlengo. They’re all bad guys, which means they aren’t all bad guys. In one scene, Kohler, in his motorized wheelchair, gets the Camerlengo behind a locked door. Then the Camerlengo screams as he is hit in the chest with a red-hot brandiron. Of course Kohler couldn’t have done it, and it’s insulting that Brown expects anyone to believe so. The red herring is way too red but not very herring.

There were also occasions of silliness. Miss Vetra was restrained, beaten, semi-conscious, and unable to open her eyes. However, just as the villain is about to knock Langdon off a balcony, Vetra somehow musters the strength to escape her bonds and save Langdon from certain death. The villain also possesses a legendary box of six brands used in torture by the Illuminati. As the villain chases him around a table in his secret lair, Langdon, who should be in fear of his life, notices there are only five brands in the box and demands that the villain tell him where the sixth brand is. Langdon at that point should only care about inhaling, exhaling, and having a heartbeat, not demanding the location of a chunk of metal. After Langdon and Vetra escape from that villian, they take a secret tunnel into the Vatican but run into a locked door, as it has been for, oh, maybe a century. Oh good fortune abounds as the keys are waiting in the lock on the other side, thus allowing a curious guard to wonder why there are keys in the lock, open it, and permit access to Langdon and Vetra. Don’t even ask about the camera woman and reporter who are able to stroll anywhere within the Vatican to film dead bodies without being stopped. Worse is when Langdon leaps from a helicopter more than a mile in the air by making a hanglider from one of those windshield screens that keeps the sun out of your car.

It’s possible to have a poor story but great narration, like some of Stephen King’s work, but that doesn’t exist either. The word “instinct” was scattered like dandelions to describe almost any physical movement by Langdon. Apparently he doesn’t know much of anything but can still do everything by instinct. Hearing the phrase “the hunter became the hunted” was cringe-worthy. An occasional mixed metaphor can be entertaining, such as “taking a back burner,” a hybrid of “taking a back seat” and being “put on the back burner.” A “pyre of flame” seemed redundant. The ending was worse than a soap opera because Langdon and Vetra have known each other for less than a full day, but that doesn’t stop them from passionately enjoying each other for breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, Angels and Demons lays an egg, but it doesn’t go over easy.  Ho now!  Look at me go!

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“Bleachers” by John Grisham. Scalp the ticket while you can.

June 29, 2012

Item 7 of a 3-part series

Bleachers by John Grisham

(re-posted, because you never read it before)
There’s a commonly known formula, or at least it’s commonly known to me, that lies in almost every John Grisham novel. Either the government, a nationally feared law firm, or a conglomerate of a company is doing something wrong, usually doing it to regular people. Nobody can stop them, nobody except either a rookie lawyer or even “rookier” law student. The Pelican Brief, The Firm, The Associate, The Client, etc.  Maybe I got one or two of those wrong, but there are others that can easily fill in.  I look for Grisham novels that avoid this formula, but they’re not easy to find. The first book I ever read of his was A Time to Kill, a fabulous book. Also avoiding the formula that I have read are A Painted House ( pretty good), The Last Juror (also fabulous), The Broker (not fabulous), and Bleachers (far from fabulous).
Bleachers centers on Eddie Rake, a dying high school football coach. He was a tough, no-nonsense field general who commanded his players to give more than everything to the team. Various players, some collegiate stars and some just stars in their own home, have gathered to pay respects, catch up on “who’s done what” since way back when, and relive the glory days that have faded along with their personal pride. Former players include a convict, a car thief, a Heisman hopeful, a bank executive, a sheriff, and a homosexual. These ex-players are about as stereotypical as you can expect. It’s the history of the Heisman hopeful that occupies most of the story, but it’s not really a story. There’s nothing hanging in the balance, nothing that drives us to wonder of the results or predict the outcome. There’s nobody I care about enough to want to know what he or she is going to do.  It’s just a pile of reminiscences. Stress on pile. I’ve spent a lot of time on football fields, especially high school ones, and I’ve yet to see a movie or story of any kind get it right.
There are hints about an incident that happened between the coach and his star quarterback Neely Crenshaw, the Heisman hopeful but has been. Crenshaw hasn’t spoken to the coach since his last game senior year in which something erupted at halftime when the Messina Spartans were uncharacteristically having their heads handed to them. After the halftime explosion in the locker room, the team took the field with no coaches. They stood away from the field and watched as Crenshaw guided the team to one of its greatest victories ever.
And really, that’s about it. We eventually learn what happened at halftime, but it’s rather anticlimactic compared to everything else that has happened. There’s a reuniting of Crenshaw and Cameron, a former girlfriend, that is built up to be a long-lost lover reunion, but it fizzles into nothing and is rather poorly written to the point that I wanted them to just tell each other to get lost. Crenshaw tries to apologize for having cruelly dumped the girl during their junior year of school. She keeps telling him that it’s not a big deal, they were only kids. Yet, she punctuates the conversation with the fact that it took her ten years to forget about it. That’s not very consistent. Hey, Sister, make up your mind. If it was really not a big deal, then why did it take you ten years to get over him?
Another problem was with the dialogue. Most of these characters are muscle heads, or they used to be, without much of an education. However, they toss a lot of big words around, phrasing sentences like a textbook instead of like someone who rarely brought home a textbook. Unfortunately, I listened to the book on CD, and I wasn’t able to play all the CD’s again in order to find examples of the poor dialogue. However, if you’d like an example of a writer paying a misguided, random homage to his hometown sports program, this is probably what you’re looking for.

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Posted by brainsnorts

psst – wanna know “the secret”?

June 8, 2012

Part 13 of a 6-part series of testing what I think might be stupid self-help books:

Listen up, idiots.  You’ve been going about everything the wrong way, and I – with the help of Rhonda Byrne and her book The Secret – will now help you have everything you’ve ever wanted or dreamed up, no limits, no matter what.  There are three simple steps:

  1. Ask
  2. Believe
  3. Receive

I’ve just saved you about $15.

I’m not sure what I’ve been reading for the past five and a half years, but clearly it was all the wrong books because this one book is the key to just plain everything, without exception.  Health?  Money?  Happiness?  World issues?  Everything is solved through The Secret.  You want a new car?  Bing.  You want a million bucks?  Done.  With four million copies sold of a book that has “swept the world,” Ms. Byrne can’t possibly be wrong.  Shakespeare, Lincoln, Plato, Edison, Henry Ford, and a host of others all knew about “The Secret,” and that’s why they were all so successful.  It was depicted in cave drawings and can be found in the music of Beethoven, so it cannot be denied that this is The Secret to having everything.  How Ms. Byrne proves those claims is apparently another secret.

Of all the laws of the universe, the strongest and most pure is the “law of attraction.”  Hey, stop it.  She’s serious.  Anyway, according to Byrne, if you don’t have what you want, it’s your own fault.  You’re thinking bad thoughts, and that’s all there is too it.  The law of attraction says that we attract what we think about.  If we’re thinking about negatives, we’re going to attract negatives.  If you want good things to happen, then you must think good thoughts and create good feelings within yourself because “like attracts like.”  I think that’s also how you can fly, but I’ll double check with J.M. Barrie.

For example, a quote in the book is a story of a man who was gay and worried all day that his co-workers would harass and make fun of him.  When all of those things happened, that is what happened, and it was his own fault.  Once he learned to think positively, to think that his co-workers would treat him nicely, the bad ones either transferred or quit, and the new ones hired were nice people.  Other cases refer to people who were greatly in debt and could not get out of it.  Their problem was that they were focusing on “not having debt.”  The catch there is the “not,” because The Secret doesn’t recognize negatives.  Examples from the book explain that if you say you “don’t want debt,” you’re going to get debt.  If you “don’t want a bad haircut,” you’re going to get a bad haircut.  If you “don’t want your shoes to hurt,” they’re going to hurt.  That doesn’t seem to coincide with a later case in the book in which a boy went to Disneyworld with his family and experience long lines and waits on their first day in the park.  That night he kept telling himself that he “doesn’t want to wait in long lines tomorrow.”  Not sure about Ms. Byrne, but I see a negative in there.  Regardless of the contradiction, the next day they were miraculously greeted by a Disney representative who gave them VIP passes to move to the front of every line all day.  Hmmm.

Perhaps I’m simplifying it too much.  Let me be more specific, according to the text.  See, everything in the universe is energy.  All energy emits a frequency signal.  All you have to do is think positively and you’ll change your frequency.  Then your frequency will match the good things that you want.  Once that’s done, the universe has “no choice” but to bring you those positive things that you’re not attracting.  Think positively about money, and in about 30 days or less there will be checks in your mailbox.  Literally, it’s that simple, according to the book.  She also says that once you’ve spent enough time believing that you actually have what you want, you really won’t need it because you’ll be happy anyway, so it’s a win-win situation whether you get what you want or not.  You want to know how the universe does it?  Byrne says it’s not your concern, so don’t worry about it.  One of her experts on The Secret, Dr. Ben Johnson, puts it like this:

 We are entering an era of energy.  Medicines, everything in the universe is on an energy frequency.  All you have to do to change the frequency is to create an opposite frequency.  That’s how easy it is to change anything in the world.

 What about when bad things happen on a mass scale, like the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in 2004?  Byrne says that all those people were thinking negative thoughts, and their collective negativity attracted that tragedy to themselves.  Sure there were some innocent, positive people there, but that just goes to show you another part of The Secret:  staying away from negative people.

If you’re around people who talk about their problems, their problems are going to come to you.  If someone tells you about their illness or disease, you’d better get away, change the subject, or prepare for that same disease.  Guaranteed.  Likewise, if you have a disease, don’t talk about it.  You must pretend you don’t have it because your own foolish negative thoughts are what gave it to you in the first place.  Change your mind, change your situation.  Yeah, it’s that simple.

I’d have to believe that Byrne’s research must have included web searches of articles of famous people who may have uttered or written the words “the secret.”  Too many times she claims apparent testimony in such a way that it seems Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, and others are endorsing The Secret.  The best was from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “The secret is the answer to all that was, all that is, and all that ever will be.”  My search on that quote, however, shows that he was talking about the secret to his faith in God, not exactly the secret to getting checks in your mailbox.

I decided to put The Secret to a test.  I spent a week thinking positive thoughts to bring me a 21-year old Asian willing to be my “personal assistant.”  I set an hourly alarm in my cell phone to make sure I would think about the positives of this mutual arrangement.  After two weeks, The Secret did not deliver – but I realized my mistake.  I didn’t specify gender.

Meet Aiko.

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Posted by brainsnorts

book review – the shack

November 12, 2011

Of course you can’t judge a book by its cover, but it’s okay to pick one because of it. When I saw the cover for The Shack, by William P. Young, I thought three things. First, I said, “That cover would look great for a book that I’m writing.” Second, I said, “That title is the same title as the book that I’m writing.” Third, I said, “Oh, crap. I better read this before I make the effort to finish my book.” Fortunately, there’s nothing at all similar. “Mac,” the main character, is a very religious middle-aged man with a wife and two daughters. They’re just a very average middle-American family, go to church on Sundays, occasionally take weekend camping trips, and are about as “apple pie” as apple pie. They are so religious that they even have their own nickname for God in order to feel closer to him. “Papa” they call him, making him one of the family.

On one of their camping trips, something goes horribly wrong. There’s a calling card-leaving serial killer in the area who abducts children and does unspeakable things to children. When Mac’s older daughter struggles with a canoe in a lake, all attention is on her. Only the murderer’s attention is on the 7-year old as she draws in a coloring book at a picnic table nearby. In a relatively short time, the police are on the scene, combing the mountain, and producing an abandoned pickup truck that the killer had stolen to bring the innocent girl to a remote shack in the woods. What is found is reason enough for the police and Mac to believe she will never be found alive.

Mac retreats from the world, as does his older daughter who blames herself for what happened. Mac falls further into despair until he finds a note in his mailbox on a very snowy day. The note tells Mac that it’s time to talk again and to meet at the shack in the woods where his daughter disappeared. The note is signed “Papa,” which leads Mac to believe that the murderer knows of his religious past and is playing a game with him. Mac borrows a gun from a neighbor and treks to the shack amid the heavy snowstorm.

When he arrives at the shack, there’s nothing but an old bloodstain, the same one that had been there at the conclusion of the police investigation but oddly was never cleaned up. He isn’t sure at this point who really called him there. He gets angry, reliving the events of the murder, re-boiling the pain and hate that pulled him away from his faith, and thus getting his back up against God. He challenges God to face him and explain why his life was ripped to pieces, much like the Book of Job, one of many Bible passages that Mac used to discuss with his family.

Eventually, Mac’s draining catharsis leads to a slumber of unknown duration from which he wakes, straightens up, and leaves the shack. Outside, things have changed. Spring flowers and a blue sky have replaced many inches of snow, and then Mac is called back to the shack.

The premise of The Shackis truly frightening, especially to anyone with children. I have two girls, and when I glanced at the blurb on the book cover, I did not think I would have been able to read it without a painful, sympathetic cry. I almost cried, but only because halfway in I realized I still had another half to suffer through. “Mac” is as trite a nickname as possible, and I wouldn’t want neighbors who call God “Papa” as if they’re having him over for Thanksgiving.

When I scanned the cover, I didn’t get the impression that the story would have such a heavy religious presence. If I had, I likely would not have read it because, as I would have feared, the story read like a very long sermon. Mac meets God in the form of a very friendly, large, African woman who is an excellent cook. Jesus appears as an olive-skinned, athletic man in jeans and a flannel shirt to fit the image of a carpenter. The Holy Spirit is a quiet, philosophical Asian woman. Mac spends a long weekend with them, learning many quirky details about each but nothing at all as enlightening as you’d hope for when one stumbles upon the Holy Trinity.

I’m sure that anyone who has ever lost someone, especially a child, would have two very painful questions to ask whichever Supreme Being he or she believes in. The first is obviously, “Could you have saved my child?” In The Shack, God said “Yes.” The second question then must be, “Why didn’tyou save her?” To that, God gives one of the worst answers possible. “You wouldn’t understand.” Hey, God. Try me. Give it a shot. Just tell me, and let ME decide if I understand. Am I really so stupid that I can’t understand? If so, how about you educate me? Explain why you think I won’t understand, and then make an effort to help me understand. At least let me know that my child’s death contributed to something good.

From a writing perspective, God’s inability to answer was just plain wrong. If a writer is going to pose the possibility of God inviting Mac to the shack to deal with issues about his daughter’s death, then a real discussion must take place. There is a worldwide struggle and debate almost daily with similar topics such as divine intervention, intelligent design, creationism versus evolution, destiny versus free will, fact versus faith, and so on. If you’re going to place that box in front of me, you must open it. It is unfair to tell me that something is in there, but you’re not going to show me because you think I won’t understand it. I’d say that when Young wrote the story, he just didn’t know what God’s answer should be, and that’s okay because absolutely nobody knows what, if anything, God would or should say. Anyone who writes such a meeting must either address that question head on or completely avoid it. The last thing to do to a reader is to say, “I’m God, I know all the answers, but I’m not telling.”

Although the book is far from a comedy, one particular scene was unintentionally hilarious. Mac tells Jesus that he expected him to be more handsome. Jesus says, “It’s my nose, isn’t it?” Then he adds, “Well, I am Jewish, you know.” That’s a line I’d expect on Saturday Night Live but not in a suspense story.

I don’t like stories that present a fantastic situation before taking it all away. After Mac spends a weekend talking to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, he wakes up in a hospital bed where facts show that the entire experience could not have happened. That’s cheap. If you’re going to write a book about a conversation with The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then write it and stand behind it. Don’t pull an ending like the television show Dallas back in the 80′s in which an entire season of the show was just someone’s dream. If you can’t finish this story the right way and let it stand on its own merit, then it doesn’t have any merit. If all you’re going to give me is that it was all a dream, then where is yourfaith?

I bought the CD’s, not the actual book, and the last CD is an interview in which the author preaches about his personal religious journey. If you want me to believe all about your faith and religious journey, then you better be ready to demonstrate that faith. Staging an accident with a head injury in such a way that reduces the whole spiritual weekend to just a comatose hallucination is not standing proudly next to the faith that you’re demanding from the readers. You’re the one without faith. I’ve heard from three or four people who claim this book changed their lives, but I don’t understand why. It’s only a piece of fiction in which someone talked to God, but then they didn’t. The Shack should be no more life changing than The Cat in the Hat. Mac learned nothing from God except that man should just shut up and blindly follow him.

Be it a person or a book, to blindly follow anything presents danger. The potential of that danger is then magnified by the potential power claimed by that person or book. There’s nothing wrong with reading The Shack as entertainment. However, there is plenty wrong with reading it for purpose and direction in one’s life.

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Posted by brainsnorts

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