Space Enough, and Time

2016 has been a good year for reading.  These days I’m wrapping up N. D. Wilson’s Outlaws of Time and Hauerwas’s The Work of the Theology.  I’m also making good progress through Merton’s No Man is an Island (which I’ll blog about soon).  And it looks to get even better as we get closer to the mid-year mark.  Here are some books on the way that have my attention.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I picked up Justin Cronin’s The Passage a few years ago.  It quickly became one of my favorite reading experiences (back when Aloha Tower and McDonald’s were part of my summer routine).  The Passage is one of those “first books in a trilogy” that could totally stand on its own.  While I enjoyed the sequel, The Twelve, it didn’t hold together quite as well as the original.  Now, after three years, the final book in the series is ready to drop.  I’m curious to see what happens in this world of vampires (not the kind of sentence that I often write) as it comes to a (hopeful) end in The City of Mirrors.  Blurbs for the book mention a final battle between Amy and Zero amidst a world trying to rebuild itself.  Should make for some great early summer reading.

Turns out that Dave Eggers has another “out of nowhere” book dropping in late July.  The book doesn’t have a cover yet, but it’s titled Heroes of the Frontier, which sounds both hopeful and challenging.  From the preview blurb:

Josie and her children’s father have split up, she’s been sued by a former patient and lost her dental practice, and she’s grieving the death of a young man senselessly killed. When her ex asks to take the children to meet his new fiancée’s family, Josie makes a run for it, figuring Alaska is about as far as she can get without a passport. Josie and her kids, Paul and Ana, rent a rattling old RV named the Chateau, and at first their trip feels like a vacation: They see bears and bison, they eat hot dogs cooked on a bonfire, and they spend nights parked along icy cold rivers in dark forests. But as they drive, pushed north by the ubiquitous wildfires, Josie is chased by enemies both real and imagined, past mistakes pursuing her tiny family, even to the very edge of civilization.

Jonathan Lethem has a new novel coming out in October.  While I’m a fan more of his non-fiction, I’ll probably give A Gambler’s Anatomy a shot.  As with The Fortress of Solitude, it seems to be a down-to-earth story with a (super-powered) twist.  It’s a slim 300 pages compared to what looks to be a 400-page Eggers tome.

There for a while it seemed like Michael Chabon was everywhere (maybe it’s because I saw him in person twice in one week a few years ago).  Lately, though, he’s been silent.  That silence breaks with November’s Moonglow.  I really like the cover of the book, which is all about matches.  The book sounds like an odd mix of history and speculation rooted in Chabon’s family experience.  From the blurb:

Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather” . . . A gripping, poignant, tragicomic, scrupulously researched and wholly imaginary transcript of a life that spanned the dark heart of the twentieth century, Moonglow is also a tour de force of speculative history in which Chabon attempts to reconstruct the mysterious origins and fate of Chabon Scientific, Co., an authentic mail-order novelty company whose ads for scale models of human skeletons, combustion engines and space rockets were once a fixture in the back pages of Esquire, Popular Mechanics and Boy’s Life. Along the way Chabon devises and reveals, in bits and pieces whose hallucinatory intensity is matched only by their comic vigor and the radiant moonglow of his prose, a secret history of his own imagination.

In between Lethem and Chabon, though, there’s an opportunity for some good theological reflection in N. T. Wright’s latest work on Jesus and the church in context.  Titled The Day the Revolution Began, the book copy blurb lays out the general argument:

In The Day the Revolution Began, N. T. Wright once again challenges commonly held Christian beliefs as he did in his acclaimed Surprised by Hope. Demonstrating the rigorous intellect and breathtaking knowledge that have long defined his work, Wright argues that Jesus’ death on the cross was not only to absolve us of our sins; it was actually the beginning of a revolution commissioning the Christian faithful to a new vocation—a royal priesthood responsible for restoring and reconciling all of God’s creation.

Wright argues that Jesus’ crucifixion must be understood within the much larger story of God’s purposes to bring heaven and earth together. The Day the Revolution Began offers a grand picture of Jesus’ sacrifice and its full significance for the Christian faith, inspiring believers with a renewed sense of mission, purpose, and hope, and reminding them of the crucial role the Christian faith must play in protecting and shaping the future of the world.

I’m sure other books will creep onto the shelf throughout the year, but these are definitely some “tentpole” releases to keep things moving throughout 2016.

I’m almost halfway through N. D. Wilson’s Outlaws of Time: The Legend of Sam Miracle. It’s a great read. On some level, it’s comfortable. On another level, though, it is different and engaging with a great open-ended feel.

Last week, Wilson talked with Publishers Weekly about writing. When asked about why he started writing for children:

I could try to give all sorts of philosophical answers, but the truth is, that’s where my imagination lives. When I sit back and think of adult stories, I think of film. But when the itch shows up to write a novel, inevitably it is for kids. You could say my imagination stopped in the sixth grade. My reading level increased, but not my imagination. Writing for kids has provided me with more than enough scope for the stories I love to tell – magical doors, time-walking priests, snake arms. I think I have too much fun to write for the grown-ups.

It’s an interesting concept, that your imagination “stops” at a particular age. I don’t take it to mean that you stop imagining so much as the kind of stuff you enjoy imagining the most settles down.

One of my favorite moments from the book so far involves Father Tiempo, a priest who travels through time in order to save (and save and save again) Sam Miracle from those who would “steal his heart.” It’s all about Time and Time’s Author:

Father Tiempo laughed, and his voice rattled off the canyon walls. “I’m beginning to understand why the old man liked you. Time is beyond your comprehension. Time is a wind. Time is an animal. Time is choices. Time is light woven into song. Time is the Poet speaking the next word. We are small, and so we hear and live only one works at a time, living in the way that you would read a book. Outside of the book, where only the Author exists, there is no time at all. It is not even a book. It is one endless, ever-growing but already-grown page. Most people live in the lines, but I march in the margins. I am sent to make the edits, the notes, the corrections. You and I and all creatures are ink on the page, but I can lead you through the white space between the words, where time is thin. I can lift you off the page until only your shadow is dragging behind.

Makes you wonder how well he would get along with the Doctor, for sure.

You can read the rest of the Publishers Weekly article here.

(image from christandpopculture.com)

Got my copy of N. D. Wilson’s Outlaws of Time: The Legend of Sam Miracle yesterday, and I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with it this weekend.  Wilson has had at least one article and one interview pop up in the media the last few days.  The article, “Why I Write Scary Stories for Children” is a well-rendered piece.  And while it revisits earlier themes of his work, the article moves things forward well by personalizing the topic of why he writes children’s books with a darker edge.  Consider:

There is absolutely a time and a place for The Pokey Little Puppy and Barnyard Dance, just like there’s a time and a place for footie pajamas. But as children grow, fear and danger and terror grow with them, courtesy of the world in which we live and the very real existence of shadows. The stories on which their imaginations feed should empower a courage and bravery stronger than whatever they are facing. And if what they are facing is truly and horribly awful (as is the case for too many kids), then fearless sacrificial friends walking their own fantastical (or realistic) dark roads to victory can be a very real inspiration and help.

I particularly like the story of how he handled his oldest son’s issue with the White Witch’s minions in the Narnia books.  And then later:

I don’t write horror. But I do write stories about terrified sheltered kids and fatherless kids and kids with the ghosts of abuse in their pasts. Those kids encounter horrors—witches and swamp monsters, black magical doors and undying villains, mad scientists and giant cheese-loving snapping turtles. Those kids feel real pain, described in real ways. They feel real loss. They learn that the truest victory comes from standing in the right place and doing the right thing against all odds, even if doing the right thing means losing everything. Even if doing the right thing means death. My characters live in worlds that are fundamentally beautiful and magical, just like ours, in worlds that are broken and brutal, just like ours. And, when characters live courageously and sacrificially, good will ultimately triumph over evil.

I think the strong, almost tangible, presence of evil in stories like The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books is what grants them such impact.  But it’s also a risky move to make, as you (literally) don’t want to scare readers (or viewers) away.

It’s a great article.  You can read it in its entirety here.

I’ll let you know how the book is after I finish it.

(image from theonering.net)