A Generous Orthodoxy, by Brian McLaren

What compels clergy to write? Is it to reach their congregations beyond Sundays? Are they peeved that their carefully crafted sermons are are only given one airing, and then forgotten forever-more? To have a resource that they can sell to raise funds? Or maybe it’s pride in thinking that one’s theology is somehow unique, or that they possess the skill to explain it better than any previous works in the vast realm of existing Christian literature? Whatever the reason, there sure are a lot of published pastors, because there’s enough printed material to sustain multiple franchises (e.g. Koorong, Word). Do other religions even have bookstore franchises?

At least Brian McLaren is more qualified than most – not in the sense of any religious accomplishment – but for the fact that he holds a Bachelor degree “with highest honour” (summa cum laud), as well as a Masters degree, in English. He also holds a controversially liberal view of his religion, which is the crux of A Generous Orthodoxy – to encourage Christians toward an idealised form of the faith that he describes as being both “neo-liberalist” and “neo-conservative”. Each chapter of the book provides a brief historical context of a particular denomination or orthodoxy, followed by the merits that warrant inclusion in his generous orthodoxy*.

I’d be punching above my weight to pretend that I know my left from my right, and all that religious and political speak other commentators take for granted, but what I can tell you is that I share much of McLaren’s views, except McLaren’s insistence on God. For example, the chapter on “Charismatic/contemplative” speaks out against rampant consumerism:

One acquires more and more things without taking the time to ever see and know them, and thus one never truly enjoys them. One has without truly having.

… which is quite agreeable. It should be enough just to stop here and encourage one to stop consuming beyond one’s means to appreciate that which is being consumed, but he goes on to suggest that the remedy must be in God:

I feel [...] that I am carrying around this hilarious secret: that I actually own all things, that all things are mine-because I am Christ’s, and Christ is God’s, and God allows me to have things in the way that matters most. Not having them in my legal possession [...] but by having them in my spiritual possession.

I despise this kind of forced analogy between the physical and spiritual realms. What does it even mean to spiritually possess a physical object, other than assigning arbitrary moral values to them? It’s this kind of thinking – e.g. disputes about the sacraments – that led to the need to have a generous orthodoxy in the first place!

I feel similarly about the rest of the book – that there are many merits to the existence and efforts of the church: community, co-operation, tolerance, charity, repentance – none of which ultimately requires attribution to God except to use Him as the glue to join all these unrelated parts together in one big liberal ideology.

If you’re predisposed to noticing the faults in religious discourse, you’ll find plenty of fodder in A Generous Orthodoxy. McLaren’s literary background also sadly fails to inoculate him from the usual religious shtick of cheap, meaningless analogies (“Think of the difference between a corpse and a living, breathing body, and you’ll understand the difference between a bunch of words and words vitalized with God’s breath.”) and mangling the language (“What if we were to redefine protestant as “pro-testifying”?)

As usual, my pointed criticism has probably made me sound overly harsh. It’s not entirely intentional. As I alluded to before, the book contains much worth in regards to educating the Christian and secular reader alike about the many and various denominations of Christianity, and what there is to like about each. McLaren is a clear and lucid communicator, and while he’s no C. S. Lewis, this particular work doesn’t bring any discredit to the realm of Christian writing.

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* I strongly recommending skipping past Part One entirely though, as McLaren spends an incredible amount of verbiage apologising for everything from the state of the Christian religion, to his lack of qualifications on the topic, to the very existence of the book itself – towards the end of it he’d almost convinced me not to bother reading the rest.

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This book review is part of the series An Atheist in God’s Kingdom.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

There’s a scene in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that I feel suitably captures the state of the Transformers franchise after the release of this film: where a badly injured Jetfire sacrifices himself so that a recently resurrected, but weakened Optimus Prime can pillage his body parts to thwart the Fallen.

Since the 80′s, several attempts have been made to restore the Transformers concept back to its former glory, with new additions to the franchise such as Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Armada, Energon and most recently, Transformers: Animated. But sadly, none of them were able to capture the imagination of the newer generations of kids who hadn’t grown up knowing the awesomeness of Optimus Prime. Then came the 2007 movie by Michael Bay, a fairly successful resurrection of the franchise. It wasn’t as strong as it could have been, but it was adequate to rally the fans and get them behind the potential of a live action version.

The second movie though, is a big, loud, lumbering beast, cobbled together by using scraps of mythology from the various franchises and attaching them to the freshly resurrected corpse, in the hope of thwarting the great apathy towards transforming robots. Therein lies a great irony: in their attempt to bring back Transformers, the writers have turned the franchise into something that isn’t about transforming robots any more, and there’s no transforming back. The most disappointing part about that is that the writers are Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who came up with the first movie, and were also responsible for the wildly successful Star Trek reboot. How did two such seemingly talented writers get it so very, very wrong?

Still, the Transformers universe is rich with potential, and as a fan I can only hope that the inevitable sequel won’t try to tempt fate by trying to be another successful failure.

I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

As somebody that saw the movie before reading the book, it came as a bit of a shock to find that the two have very little in common with each other – the movie seems to be mostly new material. But in a strange way, it is very much in keeping with the spirit of Asimov’s work, which is a collection of short stories exploring the philosophical implications of The 3 Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The book is a series of short stories, loosely connected by a plot (if you could call it that) involving the character of Dr. Susan Calvin, who does not appear as a character in the short stories until about a third of the way in.

Dr. Calvin’s passion is robots, and she cares about them much more than she cares for humans. I wonder if Asimov’s personality was similar to Dr. Calvin’s, because he describes robots with greater attention and more passion than he does his human characters. This could have been a failing, but the strength of the book lies in the sheer inventiveness of the philosophy and the scenarios which Asimov creates to present them, without which he could very easily be just another sci-fi hack who uses lots of techno-babble to confound the reader.

So, back to the movie, it’s a telling sign of the strength of the idea that Asimov came up with, and the brilliance in the way that he communicated it, that the writers for the movie were able to come up with something original and yet so faithful to source material.

One other thing that the book shows is that it’s possible to write a larger work by writing several smaller and loosely related works, then tying them together with a narrative later on.

Verdict: not one of my favourites, but compelling argument that the strength of idea can help an author rise above mediocrity.

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Buy I, Robot, by Isaac Asmov

P.S. You may be wondering why I’m suddenly doing book reviews.

I’m sure that an important part of the writing process is reading, and seeing how other authors write, so my reviews will always have a slightly “authorly” bent to them, with an aim of looking at the writing styles and the motivations of the author. With any luck this will help me, and hopefully you as well, to discover what it takes to be a successful writer.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

I’m fairly unemotional and not easily moved, but Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is one of those rare books that has captured my heart and managed to claim a high spot in my favourites list, alongside The Time Traveler’s Wife*, Les Misérables and Animal Farm.

Susanna Clarke is the best bits of authors such as Tolkien, Pratchett, Austen, Gaiman and Rowling all rolled into one – a kind of book geek’s dream team. Her writing style is amazingly lucid and eclectic in the best possible way. As I was reading the book the images flowed so clearly in my mind that I said to Jenny last night “if they ever make a movie out of this, I’m going to die”. Well sound the bells, because I discovered this morning that the movie is scheduled for release in 2010. Every aspect of her writing, from the use of archaic spelling to the thoroughly well-researched depictions of the Napoleanic Wars, is deeply imbued with style and gravitas.

Set in a version of 19th Century England where magic was once prevalent but has subsided with the disappearance of the Raven King, the story revolves around the two eponymous magicians, Norrell and Strange. Norrell is a bookish control freak, obsessed with trying to revive English magic through academic study, whereas Strange is a talented natural magician driven by Norrell’s monopoly on the library of magic books into learning through doing. Working against them both is a malevolent fairy whom Norrell summons during a spell that he casts in a desperate attempt to win influence from the political sphere.

These characters, plus a wonderful supporting cast, all have a rich humanity about them which complements the plot without resorting to stereotypes, and each is attended by an equal measure of success and failure as befits their personalities. Especially sweet is the relationship between Strange and his wife, Arabella.

There are so many more positive things that I could write about this book, but if there is any one criticism that I could make, it is that I wish Clarke or her editor had exercised greater restraint when it came to the liberal use of footnotes. Quite often one will find themselves reading a long, rambling side story footnote which, while intending to enrich the context of the events that are occurring, ends up distracting the reader by breaking the flow of the narrative. Tolkien at least had the courtesy of putting all of his “additional material” into an appendix, and Rowling didn’t bother publishing any of it at all.

Overall, this is a stunning debut novel, and I couldn’t recommend it any more highly.

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* Co-incidentally, the edition I have includes an introduction by Audrey Niffenegger

Buy Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

Review: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

First things first: don’t buy the hype. The concept behind Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is not original (it’s an idea recycled from one of Director Joss Whedon’s Buffy episodes) and neither is the story (it’s an almost shameless rip-off of Austin Grossman’s “Soon I Will Be Invincible“). It’s also important to keep in mind that its creators cobbled this together while trying to work around the writers’ strike, that the cast and crew worked gratis, and that Whedon funded it from his own pocket to the tune of more than US$200,000. Sounds like a disaster, right? So why is it so bloomin’ popular, and why haven’t you heard of it until now?

I came across this after geek hangouts all over the Internet went ballistic over a surprise guest appearance by Felicia Day, singing “Still Alive” alongside Jonathan Coulton at the Penny Arcade Expo. I had no idea who she was or why she was so popular with the fans (other than that she’s a girl) so I looked her up, and that’s when I came across Horrible. It had an impeccable geek pedigree thanks to Whedon, famous predominantly for his work on the Buffy and Firefly TV series, but it also held great promise because of the incredible kitsch potential of its lead, former Doogie Howser M.D. star, Neil Patrick Harris.

He doesn’t disappoint. Harris delivers a pitch perfect Dr. Horrible, with just the right amount of camp to endear us to the character, and his lovelorn alter-ego, Billy. He carries the whole show, delivering a wide-ranging performance that runs the gamut of musical genres from broadway musical to metal/rock. As for the other characters, I thought Captain Hammer (Firefly’s Nathan Fillion) was a bit too over the top, and Day puts in a reasonably sweet turn as Penny, the love interest.

The dialogue and lyrics are very clever, but it helps if you know a bit of geek. Characters casually drop phrases like “B.T.W.” which would probably go over your head if you haven’t spent the requisite amount of time on Internet chats or discussion forums.

The show is split into three acts, with the first definitely being the strongest of the three especially if like me, you’re not very knowledgeable of the Buffy universe. Apparently the cameos are plenty, with various Buffy writers, and even Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, appearing in the final act. It’s pretty short, with each episode clocking in at under 15 minutes, but forty-five minutes is probably about as much of this style as I could tolerate anyway. So while it’s somewhat disappointing when it ends, I still felt satisfied. It was nothing more than the briefest glimpse into the character; any more and it would be too much of a good thing.

IMDB link | Buy DVD from Amazon |