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Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic by Matthew Lickona

Feb15

My Protestant sensibilities are put off and, yes, somewhat offended by what Mr. Lickona and the Catholic Church call “sacramentals”. A scapular is a sacramental (sacred object or action) worn by lay Catholics to remind them of their devotion to the church and to the Lord:

“The devotional scapular typically consists of two small (usually rectangular) pieces of cloth, wood or laminated paper, a few inches in size, which may bear religious images or text. These are joined by two bands of cloth and the wearer places one square on the chest, rests the bands one on each shoulder and lets the second square drop down the back. In many cases . . . the scapular come(s) with a set of promises for the faithful who wear them. Some of the promises are rooted in tradition, and others have been formally approved by religious leaders. For instance, for Roman Catholics, as for some other sacramentals, over the centuries several popes have approved specific indulgences for scapulars.” ~Wikipedia

It feels superstitious to me, and Mr. Lickona admits in his book that the idea of sacramentals and indulgences sometimes bothers him a bit, too. Nevertheless, as I read about Matthew Lickona’s spiritual journey from cradle Catholic to mature and devout defender of the faith, I was impressed with the centrality of the things that I believe really matter: devotion to Christ and commitment to trust in His grace to carry us through the things that we don’t always understand.

“I am a Roman Catholic, baptized as an infant and raised in the faith, a faith which holds the exemplary and redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ at its core.”

“My faith is weak. I am anxious when I think about the future. I have trouble considering the lilies of the field. I ought to trust in the Lord, I know; it’s His will I’m trying to obey. But He has been known to give crosses as gifts, so I often look elsewhere for comfort.”

“I think about God and the faith, and I hope my thinking has some spiritual worth. But knowing a great deal about God is not knowing God. Faith in Him is bound up with knowing Him, and woe to me if my faith is borrowed from the true faith of others. Because if I do not know Him, I fear He will not know me, and the door will be shut.”

“Just as I don’t base my faith on a personal experience of God, I don’t imagine that any particular personal suffering would make me doubt his existence, any more than it would make me doubt that water is wet. I do not tie up God’s existence, or even His love, with the sufferings of the world. My God is the God of Job.”

My God, too is the God of Job and of Peter, (Mr. Lickona would call him Saint Peter) who said to Jesus, “”Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.”

As long as we’re both following Jesus for those words that give eternal life, I can ignore the scapulars and the statues of the saints and the other Catholic trappings that Mr. Lickona says draw him to Christ and that I see as distractions at best. I think Matthew Lickona and I would disagree about many things, but it seems to me after reading his spiritual memoir that he and I would agree about Jesus.

I’ll be content to let Him sort out the rest of it at the Judgement, and if Mr. Lickona wants to go swimming with his scapular firmly in place to remind him of the grace and mercy of Our Lord Jesus, who am I to argue?

“Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” Romans 14:4

Matthew Lickona’s blog, Korrektiv: bad Catholics blogging at a time near the end of the world

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

Jan30

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.

One of my children used to be particularly interested in naming and researching the four U.S. presidents who were assassinated: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. This book about the life, presidency, and assassination of President James Garfield would have been above her reading level since she was only 10 or 11 years old when she had the fascination with assassinated presidents, but it definitely is full of information about Garfield and would be absorbing for anyone with a similar interest.

Like Lincoln, Garfield grew up in poverty. He became an educated man by dint of hard work and his widowed mother’s sacrifice. He married a woman with whom he shared at best friendship, and only many years later, after Garfield had an affair and then re-committed to his marriage, did the two of them become partners in love in the truest sense. This part of the story alone is fascinating, a good example for our age of love’em and leave’em. (This breach of trust and reconciliation is documented in letters that Lucretia, his wife, kept and later left to his presidential library.)

But there are several other fascinating stories in this book:
the story of Vice President Chester Arthur and his conversion from party hack to presidential promoter of honesty and civil service reform.

the saga of Alexander Graham Bell’s desperate attempt to invent a medical device that would locate the bullet lodged inside President Garfield’s body before Garfield died.

the history of medical sterilization techniques that had not yet been accepted as standard practice in the U.S., contributing to the infection that eventually killed the president.

the sad (and currently relevant in light of the attention that is being focused on random shootings after Sandy Hook) story of the assassin, Charles Guiteau, who was obviously as mad as March hare but nevertheless cunning enough to plan a successful presidential assassination all by himself.

Candice Millard also wrote the book I read a couple of years ago about Theodore Roosevelt’s trip into the Amazon rainforest, River of Doubt, and my plan is to read anything she writes in the future. Ms. Millard, by the way, got her master’s degree in literature from Baylor University. Destiny of the Republic won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

Christmas in Kobe, Japan, 1912

Dec8

Lottie Moon was born into a comfortable life on an antebellum plantation in Virginia. She died on Christmas Eve, 1912, on board a ship off the coast of Japan, some say of sickness due to malnutrition, after a life of ministering to and suffering with the Chinese people she loved. Between her birth and death, she met the power and love of Jesus Christ who forgave her, redeemed her, and sent her to teach the people of China about Jesus and the “great tidings of great joy.”

From her letters:

“Here I am working alone in a city of many thousand inhabitants. It is grievous to think of these human souls going down to death without even one opportunity of hearing the name of Jesus. How many can I reach? The needs of these people press upon my soul, and I cannot be silent.”

“Our hearts were made glad last Sabbath by the baptism of an individual who has interested us by his firm stand under the persecutions of his … family. They fastened him in a room without food or water, and endeavored to starve him into submission. Providentially, they did not take away his Christian books. He studied these more closely than ever. The pangs of hunger he satisfied by eating some raw beans he found in the room, and when he wanted water he commenced to dig a well in the room in which he was confined. Chinese houses are built on the ground and do not have plank floors as with us. When the family discovered the well-digging they yielded. They had no wish to ruin their dwelling. The man has shown that he is made of stern stuff, and we hope he will be very useful as a Christian.”

“Recently, on a Sunday which I was spending in a village near Pingtu city, two men came to me with the request that I would conduct the general services. They wished me to read and explain, to a mixed audience of men and women, the parable of the prodigal son. I replied that no one should undertake to speak without preparation, and that I had made none. (I had been busy all the morning teaching the women and girls.) After awhile they came again to know my decision. I said, “It is not the custom of the Ancient church that women preach to men.” I could not, however, hinder their calling upon me to lead in prayer. Need I say that, as I tried to lead their devotions, it was hard to keep back the tears of pity for those sheep not having a shepherd. Men asking to be taught and no one to teach them.” February 9, 1889.

“How many there are … who imagine that because Jesus paid it all, they need pay nothing, forgetting that the prime object of their salvation was that they should follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ in bringing back a lost world to God.” September 15, 1887.

“Is not the festive season when families and friends exchange gifts in memory of The Gift laid on the altar of the world for the redemption of the human race, the most appropriate time to consecrate a portion from abounding riches and scant poverty to send forth the good tidings of great joy into all the earth?” September 15, 1887.

You’ll find these quotes and many more from Lottie Moon’s letters in Send the Light: Lottie Moon’s Letters and Other Writings, edited by Keith Harper, published by Mercer University Press.

“When Moon returned from her second furlough in 1904, she was deeply struck by the suffering of the people who were literally starving to death all around her. She pleaded for more money and more resources, but the mission board was heavily in debt and could send nothing. Mission salaries were voluntarily cut. Unknown to her fellow missionaries, Moon shared her personal finances and food with anyone in need around her, severely affecting both her physical and mental health. In 1912, she only weighed 50 pounds. Alarmed, fellow missionaries arranged for her to be sent back home to the United States with a missionary companion. However, Moon died on route, at the age of 72, on December 24, 1912, in the harbor of Kobe, Japan.” Wikipedia, Lottie Moon

Me, Myself and Bob by Phil Vischer

Oct21

“If God gives you a dream, and the dream comes to life and God shows up in it, and then the dream dies, it may be that God wants to see what is more important to you –the dream or him. And once he’s seen that, you may get your dream back. Or you may not, and you may live the rest of your life without it. But that will be O.K., because you’ll have God.” ~Richard Porter in Me, Myself and Bob by Phil Vischer.

Phil Vischer had a dream, to build the biggest and the best Christian media company ever, to be the next (Christian) Walt Disney. And God blessed that dream and grew Big Idea Productions into a corporation worth millions of dollars, producing videos that encouraged and entertained millions of kids and adults. Then, God took it away.

This story was powerful. I understand what it is to have a dream, a Godly dream, and have it taken away or deferred. I understand what it is to ask God, “Why? Why have You not given me this good thing? This thing that is the desire of my heart and that will honor and glorify You?” It’s really hard. I don’t know real physical suffering, and maybe I would be a wimp when it came to actual suffering. But I know emotional and spiritual suffering and despair because I’ve been there. Sometimes I’m still there. And all know is that I hang on to two verses in the Bible. These are my life verses:

Job 13:15. God might kill me, but I have no other hope. I am going to argue my case with him. (New Living Translation)

John 6:67-68. So Jesus asked the twelve disciples, “You don’t want to leave, too, do you?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

I stand with Peter and Job and Phil Vischer.

“The Christian life wasn’t about running like a maniac; it was about walking with God. It wasn’t about impact; it was about obedience. It wasn’t about making stuff up; it was about listening. . . . God doesn’t love me because of what I can do for Him. He just loves me—even when I’ve done nothing at all.”

If you know who Phil Vischer is and you’re a fan, I highly recommend this memoir. If you’re not familiar with the creator of Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber and Big Idea Productions, I still think you might find Mr. Vischer to be an inspirational guy, in an upside-down kind of way. He tells us in Me, Myself and Bob what God showed him when the Dream, the God-given dream, died in a horribly messy and hurtful way. If you don’t have the book, you can read the short version of What Happened to Big Idea here at Phil Vischer’s blog.

Texas Tuesday: Goodbye to a River by John Graves

Jul24

Published in 1959, this nonfiction narrative tells the story of a November 1957 trip down a piece of the Brazos River in central Texas, just before several dams were built along the river to change its course and character forever. Hence, the title: Goodbye to a River.

Mr. Graves grew up along the Brazos, in Granbury, Texas or nearby as best I can tell, and his writing reflects his love for Texas, the Brazos, country living, and history. It’s also a nature-lover’s book and a chronicle of a lost way of life, the Texas of the 1800’s and early twentieth century. I enjoyed the book immensely, even though it wasn’t exactly about MY part of Texas, too far east for that. It was, nevertheless, about the kind of people that I knew when I was a kid of a girl growing up in West Texas among the fishermen and ranchers and hunters and wannabes. My daddy hunted deer during deer season and fed them out of season (I never really understood that). He also went fishin’, but he never paddled a canoe down the river.

The book and the journey it tells of are a taste of Texas and solitude and reminiscence and homely encounters with classic Texan characters, alive and dead.

“We don’t know much about solitude these days, nor do we want to. A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness, and that to seek it is perversion. Maybe so. Man is a colonial creature and owes most of his good fortune to his ability to stand his fellows’ feet on his corns and the musk of their armpits in his nostrils. Company comforts him; those around him share his dreams and bear the slings and arrows with him.” (p.83-84)

“Mankind is one thing; a man’s self is another. What that self is tangles itself knottily with what his people were, and what they came out of. Mine came out of Texas, as did I. If those were louts they were my own louts.” (p.144)

'Texas sunset' photo (c) 2004, Mike Oliver - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/“I used to be suspicious of the kind of writing where characters are smitten by correct quotations at appropriate moments. I still am, but not as much. Things do pop out clearly in your head, alone, when the upper layers of your mind are unmisted by talk with other men. Odd bits and scraps and thoughts and phrases from all your life and all your reading keep boiling up to view like grains of rice in a pot on the fire. Sometimes they even make sense . . .” (p.151)

“If it hadn’t been for Mexicans, the South Texas Anglos would never have learned how to cope right with longhorn cattle. If it hadn’t been for Texans, nobody else on the Great Plains would have learned how either.” (p.199)

“Neither a land nor a people ever starts over clean. Country is compact of all its past disasters and strokes of luck–of flood and drouth, of the caprices of glaciers and sea winds, of misuse and disuse and greed and ignorance and wisdom–and though you may doze away at the cedar and coax back the bluestem and mesquite grass and side-oats grama you’re not going to manhandle into anything entirely new. It’s limited by what it has been, by what’s happened to it. And a people . . is much the same in this as land. It inherits. Its progenitors stand behind its elbow.” (p.237)

The moral of the story, and I think it’s true, is that I carry Texas and Texans and the Texas landscape in my bones. Even though I’ve never once paddled a canoe down a Texas river or lived rough in a campsite beside the river or caught or shot my own dinner and cooked it up, I am still somehow the inheritor of something that my ancestors, many of whom did all those things and more besides, passed down to me. I’m a city girl, but the Texas wildness and independence and what sometimes turns into a lack of respect for authority and a heedless devil-may-care attitude–all that lives in me, and more besides. I am a daughter of Texas, and Goodbye to a River was a wonderful tribute to some of the places and stories that make Texas great.

For more books about rivers, see last week’s edition of Book Tag with the theme of rivers.

For more books about Texas, see my list of 55 Texas Tales or past editions of Texas Tuesday.

If you love the essays and the localism of Wendell Berry, and especially if you have some connection to Texas, I think you would enjoy Goodbye to a River.

More History and Heroes: 55 Biographies and Memoirs I Want To Read

Jul18

Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. Florence Harding: The First Lady, The Jazz Age, And The Death Of America’s Most Scandalous President
Berg, A. Scott. Lindbergh.
Brookiser, Richard. James Madison.
Buechner, Frederick. The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days.
Byrne, Paula. Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead.
Carter, Jimmy. An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood.
Chang, Jung. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China.
Chesnut, Mary Boykin. A Diary from Dixie.
Colledge, Gary. God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author. Recommended by Gina Dalfonzo at NRO’s Summer Reading List.
Conroy, Pat. My Reading Life. I just got this one from the library, and Eldest Daughter is reading it. I’ll see if I can get her to post a review when she’s finished.
DeMuth, Mary. Thin Places: A Memoir.
Dineson, Isak. Out of Africa.
Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.
Freeman-Keel, Tom. The Disappearing Duke: The Improbable Tale of an Eccentric English Family.
Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.
Hall, Ron. Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together. I just borrowed this book from the library, too.
Harrer, Heinrich. Seven Years in Tibet.
Harrison, Rosina. Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast.
Hirsi, Ayaan. Infidel.
Hitchcock, Susan Tyler. Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London.
James, Marquis. The Raven.
James, P.D. Time To Be In Earnest: A Fragment Of Autobiography.
Junger, Sebastian. The Perfect Storm A True Story of Men Against the Sea.
Kamara-Ummuna, Agnes and Emily Holland. And Still Peace Did Not Come: A Memoir of Reconciliation.
Kendall, Joshua. The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus.
Kirkby, Mary-Ann. I Am Hutterite: The Fascinating True Story of a Young Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Heritage.
Korda, Michael. Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia.
Korda, Michael. Ike: An American Hero. Recommended by Patrick Lee at NRO’s Summer Reading List.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild.
Kullberg, Kelly Monroe. Finding God at Harvard.
Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom.
Markham, Beryl. West With the Night.
Massie, Robert. Peter the Great: His Life and World.
Massie Robert. Catherine the Great. Recommended by Samuel Gregg in NRO’s Summer Reading List.
Matteson, John. Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father.
McCullough, David. Truman. I got a copy of this book for Christmas, but I still haven’t read it. Before next Christmas?
Millard, Candice. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President.
Morris, Roy. Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876.
Naidi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Nevin, Allan. Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage.
O’Brien, Michael. Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon.
Orwell, George. Down and Out in Paris and London.
Panter-Downes, Mollie. London War Notes 1939 to 1945.
Roe, Dianah. The Rossettis in Wonderland: A Victorian Family History.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Steinmeyer, Jim. The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards.
Taylor, Hudson. The Autobiography of Hudson Taylor: Missionary to China. I have this one on my Kindle.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
Ung, Loung. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.
White, William Allen. A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge.
Wilbur, Gregory. Glory and Honor: The Music and Artistic Legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life.
Wrong, Michaela. It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower.

So many books. So little time. Have you read any of these books? Do you recommend that I move any one or more of them to the top of the TBR list?

History and Heroes: 55 Recommended Books of Biography, Autobiography, Memoir,and History

Jul16

Ambrose, Stephen. Band of Brothers.
Bowen, Carolyn Drinker. Miracle at Philadelphia.
Catton, Bruce. Civil War Trilogy: The Coming Fury, Terrible Swift Sword, Never Call Retreat.
Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life.
Chesterton, G.K. The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton.
Colson, Chuck. Born Again.
Costain, Thomas. The Conquering Family, The Last Plantaganets, The Magnificent Century, The Three Edwards. A fantastic series of four books telling all the history of medieval England from
Doss, Helen. The Family Nobody Wanted. This story of international adoption made a huge impression on me when I was a teenager.
Eliot, Elisabeth. Through Gates of Splendor.
Forbes, Esther. Paul Revere and the World He Lived In.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Bronte.
Hastings Max. Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945.
Hautzig, Esther. The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia.
Hayden, Torey. One Child.
Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit: An American Legend. Semicolon review here.
Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Semicolon thoughts here.
Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains. Thoughts on the book and on parallels between slavery and abortion.
Jenkins, Peter. A Walk Across America.
Jordan, River. Praying for Strangers. Prayer adventures after reading this book.
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald. Profiles in Courage. I need to re-read this book. I remember it as inspiring and revealing in its stories of political courage.
Kidder, Tracy. The Soul of a New Machine.
Kililea, Marie. Karen. Another book that captured my attention and my heart when I was a kid of a girl.
L’Amour, Lois. Education of a Wandering Man. Semicolon thoughts on education and Louis L’Amour.
L’Engle, Madeleine. Crosswicks Journals: A Circle of Quiet, Summer of the Great-Grandmother, The Irrational Season, A Two-Part Invention. Madeleine L’Engle favorites.
Lewis,C.S. Surprised by Joy.
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow. Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928 and the other volumes of Mrs. Lindbergh’s diaries.
Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia. Reading about the Romanovs.
McCullough, David. 1776. 

McCullough, David. John Adams. Semicolon thoughts here and here.
McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt.
Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy. My thoughts on Bonhoeffer and his classic, The Cost of Discipleship.
Millard, Candice. River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey. Books about Teddy.
Muller, George. Autobiography of George Muller.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War.
Richardson, Don. Peace Child. Semicolon thoughts about this exciting, classic missionary story.
Saint Exupery, Antoine de. Wind, Sand and Stars.
Shapiro, James. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. Semicolon thoughts here.
Sobel, Dava. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. The Gulag Archipelago. A Solzhenitsyn Celebration.
Stone, Irving. Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West, 1840-1900.
Tada, Joni Eareckson. Joni: An Unforgettable Story.
Ten Boom, Corrie. The Hiding Place. Semicolon thoughts here.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, or Life in the Woods. Thoughts on Thoreau and clothing.
Tuchman, Barbara. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. Good companion piece to the Costain books listed above on the same time period.
Turkel, Studs. Hard Times. Oral history recorded in this book of memories of the Great Depression.
Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi.
van der Bijl, Andrew. With John and Elizabeth Sherrill. God’s Smuggler. Another book that made a deep impression on me when I was a teen.
Vanauken, Sheldon. A Severe Mercy.
Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery.
Wilkerson, David. The Cross and the Switchblade. Semicolon thoughts about Pastor David Wilkerson and his book about gangs and Jesus in NYC here.
Williams, T. Harry. Huey Long. I read this twenty years ago when Engineer Husband was in college and brought it home for a class he was taking. I still remember scenes and details from the life of this larger-than-life politician.
Winner, Lauren. Girl Meets God. Semicolon review here.
Yutang, Lin. The Importance of Living. A Chinese American man writes about Chinese philosophy and life.
Zacharias, Ravi. Walking from East to West.

Brenda at Coffee, Tea, Books and Me names some of her favorite biographies and autobiographies.
Ben House recommends Pulitzer prize-winning biographies.

Letters of Charles Hamilton Sorley

Jun25

Charles Hamilton Sorley was a British soldier in the first part of World War I. He had been a student in Germany before the war and had some admiration for the German spirit and Kultur. He was killed in action at the battle of Loos on October 13, 1915. His father gathered and published Sorley’s collected letters after the war. I read excerpts from that collection in The Penguin Book of First World War Prose.

“Germany must be crushed for her wicked and selfish aspiration to be mistress of the world but the country that, when mistress of the world, failed to set her an example of unworldliness and renunciation should take to herself half the blame of the blood expended in the crushing.”

The country that failed is Britain, of course.

“I have had a conventional education: Oxford would have corked it. But this has freed the spirit, glory be. Give me The Odyssey, and I return the New Testament to store. Physically as well as spiritually, give me the road.”

“I shall march hotly to the firing line, by turns critic, actor, hero, coward, and soldier of fortune: perhaps even for a moment Christian, humble, with ‘Thy will be done’. Then shock, combustion, the emergence of one of these: death or life: and then return to the old rigamarole.”

The Germany Mr. Sorley writes about, confident in her moral and cultural superiority, sounds a lot like the United States in the twenty-first century. The German intent was to export the strength and courage and efficiency of the Germans (Prussians) to the rest of the benighted and deprived world. And if this mission must be done militarily, then so be it. Are we caught up in the same error? Or have we learned from the First and Second World War that cultures and mores, no matter how superior, can only be exported by persuasion and propaganda, never by force?

What Is the What by Dave Eggers

Apr17

The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. Fictionalized biography—or autobiography or memoir brings up the question of whether any memoir or autobiography is strictly nonfiction. Our memories, as other books I’ve read lately have pointed out, are notoriously unreliable. Any attempt at memoir is liable to be “filled in” with a little fiction. Author Dave Eggers and the subject of this book, Valentino Achak Deng, chose to call What Is the What a work of fiction, since Mr. Deng could not vouch for the exact accuracy of all of his memories of specific conversations and incidents, some of which happened when he was quite young. However, Mr. Deng says that the major events in the story are true and historically accurate.

That said, I learned quite a lot about the civil war in Sudan and the “Lost Boys” from reading this book. Valentino is a real person, and he asked Mr. Eggers to help him tell his story.

What Is the What is the soulful account of my life: from the time I was separated from my family in Marial Bai to the thirteen years I spent in Ethiopian and Kenyan refugee camps, to my encounter with vibrant Western cultures beginning in Atlanta, to the generosity and the challenges that I encountered elsewhere.

As you read this book, you will learn about me and my beloved people of Sudan. I was just a young boy when the twenty-two-year civil war began that pitted Sudan’s government against the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. As a helpless human, I survived by trekking across many punishing landscapes while being bombed by Sudanese air forces, while dodging land mines, while being preyed upon by wild beasts and human killers. I fed on unknown fruits, vegetables, leaves and sometimes went with nothing for days. At many points, the difficulty was unbearable. I thought the whole world had turned blind eyes on the fate that was befalling me and the people of southern Sudan. Many of my friends, and thousands of my fellow countrymen, did not make it. May God give them eternal peace.

“Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. … I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. … I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

The story of Valentino Achak Deng’s adventures and misadventures in Sudan, Kenya, and the U.S.A. is “soulful” and insistent and absorbing. Mr. Deng speaks in the book quite honestly about the temptation to embellish and exaggerate the already harrowing experiences he and the other “Lost Boys” went through for the sake of a Western audience, about the jealousies and immature behaviors that some of the Lost Boys exhibit, and the difficulties that they have in making a new life for themselves in the United States. The book is as much about survival and what it takes to endure such trauma as it is about Valentino Achak Deng’s specific experience. As such, it is valuable reading for anyone who is suffering, or who expects to suffer, injustice, categories that include all of us.

The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation.