By Mary Wiltenburg | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the August 13, 2007 edition
WÜRZBURG, GERMANY - No one looked comfortable at the sentencing hearing. Not family and friends who packed the US military courtroom's straight-backed benches. Not the rookie Army prosecutor in stiff dress greens who flushed with every "Your Honor." Not Judge R. Peter Masterton, whose usually animated face was now grave.
And not the convicted deserter – Army medic Agustín Aguayo – on the stand in a US military court in central Germany last March, pleading for understanding.
"I'm sorry for the trouble my conscience has caused my unit," Private 1st Class Aguayo said, his voice thick with emotion. "I tried to obey the rules, but in the end [the problem] was at the very core of my being."
Read the rest of the article
Friday, August 17, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
What I'm Reading: Achtung Schweinhund
What I'm Reading: Harry Pearson, Achtung Schweinhund! A Boy's Own Story of Imaginary Combat (London: Little, Brown, 2007).
If you grew up in a family with a grandfather, father, or uncle who served in World War Two or Korea, then you are probably well on your way to appreciating this book. The World War Two bit is important because the cultural and historical background is important. It means you, like Pearson, likely heard war stories, and, if you grew up in Europe like my friend Pete, you saw war debris and old garden air raid shelters in your neighbourhood. Even if you grew up in North America, like me, you likely watched Rat Patrol, Combat, Hogan's Heroes, etc on TV, you likely read comics like Sgt. Rock and Haunted Tank, and you likely remember the smell of plastic glue melting polystyrene as you struggled with Airfix models. That is, if you were a boy, as this book is unabashedly about the masculine world. I don't recall girls of my generation reading Sgt. Rock or playing Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg, which probably explains why my friends' wives don't do much more than lovingly (if we're lucky) tolerate their husband's wargaming obsessions. I suppose I could say more about this aspect if I had a degree in gender studies, but I think the dichotomy is pretty obvious.
If you didn't grow up in the 1950s or 60s, then the world Pearson describes is likely foreign to you. My fifteen year old daughter's cultural map does not include any of the TV shows mentioned above - she told me recently that she had never even heard of Hogan's Heroes. My thirteen year old son knows a Schmeisser machine pistol from a bazooka, which makes me proud, but he's learned that invaluable information from playing games like Medal of Valour on computer gaming consoles. He's more likely to want to play with Space Marines and Space Orks then he is to want to play with WW2 "army men" and as Pearson (and I) did at that age, shout things like "take that, Hun" or "for you ze var is over, Englander". For my son and daughter's generation, history seems to be a generic place called "the past" where the historical eras depicted in Orlando Bloom films (antiquity, the Crusades, pirate times) are all jumbled up and happened more or less at the same time.
So all of that to say that the likely readers of Harry Pearson are likely to be people like me - male, middle aged or getting there, and obsessed with war because we grew up under its shadow, and unlike our parents' generation, who had their fill of it, we still want to play it. The word "play" is one of Pearson's themes, for he is understandably self-conscious about being a middle aged man with a wife and a family and a mortgage who spends valuable hours of his remaining years of life painting and playing with miniature soldiers or "little men" as my own wife calls them. Reviewers readily jump on this theme; Britain's Guardian called the book a tribute to "the fine art of time wasting".
Pearson tells a hilarious story of being cornered on a commuter train by a corpulent "extrovert geek" who recognizes a kindred spirit when he spots the copy of Wargames Illustrated magazine that Pearson is reading. "I should have said, 'This is for my son. He's just turned eleven so I'm hoping he'll soon drop this foolish toy soldier lark in favour of solvent abuse and masturbation'. But these thngs never come to you until after the event, do they?" (p. 234). As the fellow bellows at him from several seats away, Pearson describes how "Whatever was left of my self-esteem shrivelled to the size of a walnut and attempted to throw itself out of the window" (p. 234).
I've recognized the same challenge to my self-esteem on many occasions. At the last wargames convention I visited, the hotel was thronged with men, mostly from age 30-50+, many quite overweight, many calling their parent's basement home, and many apparently quite unfamiliar with the rudiments of personal hygeine judging from the pungent aroma hanging over the hall. To see so many chaps in appalling T Shirts (eg, "Hitler's European Tour, 1939 - 1945: Poland, Holland, Denmark, France, etc" - hilarious!), debating the merits of which rules system best captures morale tests for cavalry charges, and fondling ziplocked bags of lead figures, leads to the inescapable question, "am I one of these?" But look beyond the unwashed bodies to the fruits of their imagination and passion - tables with scenery that often would rival the best of a model railroad group, figures painted with loving attention to detail, and a shared interest in the past, and you see something quite extraordinary. You see boys (and the occasional girl) who were given a bag of crudely molded army men as children, and who immediately longed for the day when as adults they could do so much more - build armies with the money they would earn as adults, make life-sized buildings instead of using lego or wooden blocks, and meet in like-minded fraternities free of the bullying and fashion-ruled mindlessness that reigned in their school corridors. Here they are now, mostly jovial and good natured, often quite self-mocking, mostly loving if slightly eccentric parents and spouses, and here is a world that they have created, a world of tongue-in-cheek heroism, creativity, and wonder. As Pearson concludes, "Every man needs a place to go, Montaigne had said, and for better or worse, this was mine".
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Army Picture Caption Contest
From various 4RCR members:
Carl began to question the wisdom of being the first to volunteer once he was actually in the butts.
A cam and concealment lecture about to go tragically wrong.
The Chinese are prepared should the Americans give the command "Don't fire until you can see the white of their eyes"
Finally, the explanation for the persistent 50 % fail rate for Phase III.
Good thinking, RSM. This should teach them to fail their Weapon Tests.
Offer your own caption in the comments section.
US Army struggles with soldier who won't pull the trigger
By Mary Wiltenburg | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Schweinfurt, Germany
The US Army sergeants waited on the couch, studying the floor. Family dogs skirted the sofa, growling. From time to time, one of the soldiers extended a conciliatory hand to them.
On the floor, sixth-grader Rebecca Aguayo played a video game; her twin rollerbladed outside. Just one voice fed the tension in the living room: Their mother, Helga, sat in an armchair, bawling. "It was the ugly crying, with the snot and everything," Mrs. Aguayo recalls, "I wanted them to see how much they were hurting us."
Read the rest of the article
Schweinfurt, Germany
The US Army sergeants waited on the couch, studying the floor. Family dogs skirted the sofa, growling. From time to time, one of the soldiers extended a conciliatory hand to them.
On the floor, sixth-grader Rebecca Aguayo played a video game; her twin rollerbladed outside. Just one voice fed the tension in the living room: Their mother, Helga, sat in an armchair, bawling. "It was the ugly crying, with the snot and everything," Mrs. Aguayo recalls, "I wanted them to see how much they were hurting us."
Read the rest of the article
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
A Sermon for Sunday, August 12th
A Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
Grace and St. George’s, 12 August, 2007
Isaiah 1:1,10-20; Psalm 50; Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16; Luke 12:32-40
Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. (Luke 12:37)
In these difficult times that the church finds itself in, isn’t it interesting how we seem to spend so much time talking about sex, when Jesus seems to be more interested in what we do with our money? Today, for the second time in two Sundays, we have heard from chapter twelve of Luke’s gospel, in which Jesus continues his “less is more” message. “Sell your possessions, and give alms” (Luke 12:33), and last week we heard our Lord say “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (Lk 12:15). These are challenging messages, and it’s tempting for a preacher to back away from them, lest people start to complain that “my church is always asking the same people to give more and more”. But the fact remains, that God makes demands on his people, and God expects us to be accountable for how we use our time, our talent, and our treasure.
Faced with these demands, our first response tends to be “how much do I have to give?”, as if God’s approval and our salvation was something that we could buy, provided it’s affordable. However, I don’t think this is the question God wants us to answer. Here in Luke’s twelfth chapter and in many other places, Jesus confronts us with a different question: “how much do I really need?” In her sermon last week, which I read with great interest, Patsy helped us to understand this question in terms of things temporal and things eternal. “Things temporal” means all the transitory stuff that gets us through life – food, clothing, shelter – our necessities. Things eternal are what makes our life worthwhile, the things that really count.
You may have seen the bumper sticker, “Whoever dies with the most toys wins”. It’s a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek kind of message, but it makes a shrewd comment on our society’s relentless desire to consume and acquire. As we saw in the parable in last week’s gospel, the rich fool is not a winner, despite his abundance of possessions. The things he gained in life did give him security and did not give his life value. In other words, Jesus asked us last week if we want quantity in life, or do we want quality of life? Quantity or quality?
The question, do we want quantity of life or do we want quality of life may seem innocent, but it’s actually a difficult one to answer because it makes us fearful. Our society encourages us to think that security comes from quantity. Words in today’s gospel like “possessions” and “purses” and “treasure” have enormous power in our lives. We put our faith in these things because of our fear – fear of dependency on others, fear of poverty in our retirement, fear of being considered a failure in the eyes of the more successful. Now these things show signs of failing us. How many people this week are nervously watching the stock markets and wondering where things are going? I’m not an economist, but I understand that things are so shaky at present because a lot of people who didn’t really have money were leant money to buy homes and were then encouraged to borrow more money against the value of their homes so they could go shop at places like Wal-Mart. This system worked as long as the value of homes was grossly over-inflated, but now that the house of cards is collapsing. People talk about a correction in the markets, as if the market was a God who passes judgment on us when we make mistakes, punishing us for our financial sins and errors. As the preacher Will Willmon says, people today fear the judgments of the market more than we fear the judgments of a righteous God.
So what if we took fear out of the mix? What if we put the question another way, not quantity vs. quality, but true abundance vs. false abundance? What if we stopped thinking about the things that God wants to take away from us, and started thinking about the things that God wants to give us? Notice the first thing Jesus says in today’s gospel lesson – “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12:32). Jesus tells us to stop worrying about what God wants to take from us, and invites us to open ourselves up to God’s generosity.
Notice how the parable in today’s gospel works. It is late at night, and a group of servants are ready for their master’s return from a wedding banquet. As soon as they hear him at the door they are ready to spring into action. You might be expecting the servants to come running with water so he can wash away the dust of the road, or perhaps a clean soft road and refreshments after his journey. But then, in a way that’s so typical of his proverbs, Jesus takes an unexpected direction: “truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them” Wait a minute, you might have said as you listened, I didn’t see that coming, but that’s how Jesus works. In Mark’s gospel we hear Jesus say In the Incarnation, "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45), and in John’s gospel we see this idea enacted in the story of Maundy Thursday, when Jesus kneels and washes his disciples’ feet. Again and again we need to be reminded that Christ came to serve us, so that we may have new and better life.
As I understand today’s gospel, Jesus is telling us to stop worrying, to stop trying to serve ourselves by buying into the world’s security, and to start letting God serve us the good things of his kingdom. Trade the false abundance of the world for the rich and real abundance of God. Allow God’s generosity to touch us in this way, and we will be changed. “Sell your possessions and give alms”, we heard Jesus say. The word “alms” comes from a Greek word which can mean "to be gracious" or "to show mercy" or "to feel sympathy". How could the world be changed if more of us were filled with mercy and sympathy? Did you know that North Americans spend $33 billion in weight loss products and services each year and $12 billion yearly on video rentals. Did you know that it’s been estimated that for an additional $13 billion each year, a fraction of what the world spends on weapons, basic nutrition and health care needs could be met around the world.
How could this happen, we ask? I think God is constantly showing us how this could happen. World Vision Canada, for example, can often triple its donors’ dollars to maximise their impact. In one small part of Zimbabwe in Africa, one World Vision project has managed to provide 1 furnished classroom, textbooks for thirteen schools, vocational training for 7 high school dropouts, two houses for refugee families, 74 toilets, medical assistance for 126 orphans and vulnerable children, training for 71 church workers to help reduce the stigma of AIDS/HIV, and 6 community talks on issues affecting girl children and the rights of children. One, seven, seventy-four, one hundred twenty-six – these are numbers that we can get our heads around. These things are doable, and they start with us. I don’t intend this to be an advertisement for World Vision, but I’m pleased that my few sponsorship dollars can help make a difference in one place.
“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit”, Jesus tells his followers. Some Christians have taken this to be a warning to expect the Second Coming at any time. A more helpful way of understanding, I think, is to take this as a reminder for us to be alert and ready to do God’s work. In the first lesson, the prophet Isaiah warned Israel not to be smug and complacent in its religious services, but to do God’s will in the word: “learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow”. God has blessed us in so many ways – how can we share those blessings? How can we get ready to do God’s work? We expect our firefighters and police to be ready at a moment’s notice to come and help us. Are we as Christians ready and willing to do God’s work in the world? Are we as a parish alert for opportunities to be God’s people, ready to answer God’s call at an unexpected hour? In the book of Hebrews we heard that God’s people “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one”. We all want to live in a “better country”, but today’s scriptures remind us that our hope is for more than a heavenly reward. Our hope is also a better country of God’s abundance here on earth, and it starts with us. As an old African spiritual says, “I wanna be ready”. Today is an opportunity for us to say, like the servants in our Lord’s parable, “we wanna be ready”.
©Michael Peterson+ 2007
Grace and St. George’s, 12 August, 2007
Isaiah 1:1,10-20; Psalm 50; Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16; Luke 12:32-40
Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. (Luke 12:37)
In these difficult times that the church finds itself in, isn’t it interesting how we seem to spend so much time talking about sex, when Jesus seems to be more interested in what we do with our money? Today, for the second time in two Sundays, we have heard from chapter twelve of Luke’s gospel, in which Jesus continues his “less is more” message. “Sell your possessions, and give alms” (Luke 12:33), and last week we heard our Lord say “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (Lk 12:15). These are challenging messages, and it’s tempting for a preacher to back away from them, lest people start to complain that “my church is always asking the same people to give more and more”. But the fact remains, that God makes demands on his people, and God expects us to be accountable for how we use our time, our talent, and our treasure.
Faced with these demands, our first response tends to be “how much do I have to give?”, as if God’s approval and our salvation was something that we could buy, provided it’s affordable. However, I don’t think this is the question God wants us to answer. Here in Luke’s twelfth chapter and in many other places, Jesus confronts us with a different question: “how much do I really need?” In her sermon last week, which I read with great interest, Patsy helped us to understand this question in terms of things temporal and things eternal. “Things temporal” means all the transitory stuff that gets us through life – food, clothing, shelter – our necessities. Things eternal are what makes our life worthwhile, the things that really count.
You may have seen the bumper sticker, “Whoever dies with the most toys wins”. It’s a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek kind of message, but it makes a shrewd comment on our society’s relentless desire to consume and acquire. As we saw in the parable in last week’s gospel, the rich fool is not a winner, despite his abundance of possessions. The things he gained in life did give him security and did not give his life value. In other words, Jesus asked us last week if we want quantity in life, or do we want quality of life? Quantity or quality?
The question, do we want quantity of life or do we want quality of life may seem innocent, but it’s actually a difficult one to answer because it makes us fearful. Our society encourages us to think that security comes from quantity. Words in today’s gospel like “possessions” and “purses” and “treasure” have enormous power in our lives. We put our faith in these things because of our fear – fear of dependency on others, fear of poverty in our retirement, fear of being considered a failure in the eyes of the more successful. Now these things show signs of failing us. How many people this week are nervously watching the stock markets and wondering where things are going? I’m not an economist, but I understand that things are so shaky at present because a lot of people who didn’t really have money were leant money to buy homes and were then encouraged to borrow more money against the value of their homes so they could go shop at places like Wal-Mart. This system worked as long as the value of homes was grossly over-inflated, but now that the house of cards is collapsing. People talk about a correction in the markets, as if the market was a God who passes judgment on us when we make mistakes, punishing us for our financial sins and errors. As the preacher Will Willmon says, people today fear the judgments of the market more than we fear the judgments of a righteous God.
So what if we took fear out of the mix? What if we put the question another way, not quantity vs. quality, but true abundance vs. false abundance? What if we stopped thinking about the things that God wants to take away from us, and started thinking about the things that God wants to give us? Notice the first thing Jesus says in today’s gospel lesson – “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12:32). Jesus tells us to stop worrying about what God wants to take from us, and invites us to open ourselves up to God’s generosity.
Notice how the parable in today’s gospel works. It is late at night, and a group of servants are ready for their master’s return from a wedding banquet. As soon as they hear him at the door they are ready to spring into action. You might be expecting the servants to come running with water so he can wash away the dust of the road, or perhaps a clean soft road and refreshments after his journey. But then, in a way that’s so typical of his proverbs, Jesus takes an unexpected direction: “truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them” Wait a minute, you might have said as you listened, I didn’t see that coming, but that’s how Jesus works. In Mark’s gospel we hear Jesus say In the Incarnation, "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45), and in John’s gospel we see this idea enacted in the story of Maundy Thursday, when Jesus kneels and washes his disciples’ feet. Again and again we need to be reminded that Christ came to serve us, so that we may have new and better life.
As I understand today’s gospel, Jesus is telling us to stop worrying, to stop trying to serve ourselves by buying into the world’s security, and to start letting God serve us the good things of his kingdom. Trade the false abundance of the world for the rich and real abundance of God. Allow God’s generosity to touch us in this way, and we will be changed. “Sell your possessions and give alms”, we heard Jesus say. The word “alms” comes from a Greek word which can mean "to be gracious" or "to show mercy" or "to feel sympathy". How could the world be changed if more of us were filled with mercy and sympathy? Did you know that North Americans spend $33 billion in weight loss products and services each year and $12 billion yearly on video rentals. Did you know that it’s been estimated that for an additional $13 billion each year, a fraction of what the world spends on weapons, basic nutrition and health care needs could be met around the world.
How could this happen, we ask? I think God is constantly showing us how this could happen. World Vision Canada, for example, can often triple its donors’ dollars to maximise their impact. In one small part of Zimbabwe in Africa, one World Vision project has managed to provide 1 furnished classroom, textbooks for thirteen schools, vocational training for 7 high school dropouts, two houses for refugee families, 74 toilets, medical assistance for 126 orphans and vulnerable children, training for 71 church workers to help reduce the stigma of AIDS/HIV, and 6 community talks on issues affecting girl children and the rights of children. One, seven, seventy-four, one hundred twenty-six – these are numbers that we can get our heads around. These things are doable, and they start with us. I don’t intend this to be an advertisement for World Vision, but I’m pleased that my few sponsorship dollars can help make a difference in one place.
“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit”, Jesus tells his followers. Some Christians have taken this to be a warning to expect the Second Coming at any time. A more helpful way of understanding, I think, is to take this as a reminder for us to be alert and ready to do God’s work. In the first lesson, the prophet Isaiah warned Israel not to be smug and complacent in its religious services, but to do God’s will in the word: “learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow”. God has blessed us in so many ways – how can we share those blessings? How can we get ready to do God’s work? We expect our firefighters and police to be ready at a moment’s notice to come and help us. Are we as Christians ready and willing to do God’s work in the world? Are we as a parish alert for opportunities to be God’s people, ready to answer God’s call at an unexpected hour? In the book of Hebrews we heard that God’s people “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one”. We all want to live in a “better country”, but today’s scriptures remind us that our hope is for more than a heavenly reward. Our hope is also a better country of God’s abundance here on earth, and it starts with us. As an old African spiritual says, “I wanna be ready”. Today is an opportunity for us to say, like the servants in our Lord’s parable, “we wanna be ready”.
©Michael Peterson+ 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
What I'm Reading: Anne Rice's Christ the Lord Out of Egypt
Anne Rice, Christ the Lord Out of Egypt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).What do Harry Potter (especially in the first HP novel) and Jesus Christ have in common? Other than being the heros of bestselling books, both are (as imagined by J.K. Rowling and Anne Rice respectively) young boys who are growing into miraculous powers, who are destined to fight evil powers, who are trying to unravel the mysteries of their earliest years, and who are surrounded by adults and parent figures who won't tell them everything they want to know.
Northrop Frye once said that there are only so many stories in the world, and they are simply retold with variations. I don't know whether Rice or Rowling had any influence on one another, or whether they are both playing variations on a 2,000 year old tune. I do know that I enjoyed Rice's Christ the Lord (CtheL)far more than I had expected to.
The childhood of Jesus has fascinated Christians throughout the centuries. If you believe in the divinity of Jesus, then you have to wonder, "when did he know what he was and who he was"? The canonical or approved scripture of the church is largely silent on the question, except for St. Luke's account of the young Jesus calmly discussing law and theology with the priests of the temple during his parents' stay in Jerusalem (Luke 2:41-52). However, a number of the non-canonical gospels and accounts of Jesus' life from the earliest days of the church tell many stories about miracles and acts of power that Jesus did as a young boy. These stories include making clay birds fly, causing another boy to drop dead, and then bringing him back to life. One of the most charming of these stories, which was well loved in the Middle Ages, tells of how the young Jesus made an apple tree bend down so his mother Mary could pluck the sweetest fruit from its high branches.
Christ the Lord borrows from this tradition of apocryphal accounts of Jesus' early life. However, Anne Rice has made it clear that her understanding of the story is orthodox, that she believes that Jesus was the son of God. Her book can be understood as an extended meditation on Luke's comment that "The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him (Lk 2:40). As a gifted storyteller, she portrays Jesus growing into his identity, as he tries to comprehend the reluctance of the adults around him to explain the circumstances of his birth, including the flight into Egypt to escape King Herod's massacre of the young boys in Bethlehem. She shows an impressive understanding of life in the ancient world, including cultural clashes between Jews and gentiles, and her characters have an authentic humanity about them, as if she has freed them from their iconic places in our culture.
I picked up this book not knowing what to expect. I knew of Anne Rice from years ago through some of her vampire novels and some of her erotic writing, and so I was not expecting to be sympathetic to her handling of the story. What I didn't know was that during the years of work that she put into this book, reading a massive amount of material from Christian and secular scholars (her bibliography alone is worth the price of the book), Anne Rice became deeply convinced that Jesus was who he said he was, the Son of God. In a moving epilogue, Rice describes how the writing led her back to the Catholic faith of her childhood, but with a new and richer understanding of who Jesus was and who she was. As a person of faith myself, I found Rice's story as moving as her fictional account of the young Jesus. I find it miraculous in itself that Rice, with a fan following of millions, is bringing the Christian story to millions who might not otherwise have time for it.
I would recommend this book to Christians who want to gain a deeper insight into the world of Jesus, and want to enrich their devotional lives - they will find much to meditate on here. I hope non-Christians also read this book; they will find much to ponder here.
MP+
What I'm Reading: Cormac McCarthy's The Road
Cormac McCarthy's The Road (New York: Random House/Vintage, 2006).
Something in us dreams of our own destruction. Perhaps it is the spirit of our age, the pessimism that seeps into us with the news that resources are running out, that the world is dying and we are sickening, that the terrorists will get us. Esquire magazine's review said that it is "exactly what a book about our future should be like" I don't know if The Road is a product of this pessimism. Lesser books I've read, like Max Brook's World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars, actively trade on our media-implanted fears that we are living in an end-time with no saving rapture to hope for. Certainly that's how the publishers view it. I was bemused to find in the bibliographical data that it is cross-referenced with books about 3) Regression (Civilisation) - Fiction and 4. Survival skills - Fiction. Wow - I had no idea that Regression (Civilisation) was a legitimate sub-genre in its own right - lots of cheery reading there, to be sure.
Perhaps this labeling would amuse McCarthy, who I sense is too smart a writer to acknowledge that he is naming the fears of our own day. Like Samuel Beckett, he wants to peel as way as many layers of our lives as possible to find the core things that keep us alive. Maybe McCarthy is more interested in a timeless existentialism than the threats lurking in today's headlines, but one thing is for sure, this book scared the pants off me regardless. Look up reviews for The Road and you'll find words like "harrowing" and "unspeakable" used freely, and aptly, I would say.
I love McCarthy, something I say on the strength of what I've read of him so far, All the Pretty Horses, the first volume of his novels set on the Texas-Mexico border. McCarthy's prose is both sparing and poetic, his landscapes harsh and unforgiving, his characters are tough, alienated, and are driven by moral codes that don't always serve them well in the world they move in.
The backstory of The Road is only hinted at. There was a nuclear war, and the boy was born the night after the bombs fell and as the cities burned. This boy is the key to the novel. He has miraculously survived years of nuclear winter, starvation, and the descent of America into savage tribes of cannibals. There is an innate goodness to the boy, his concern that he and his father are "the good guys", and his desire to help the few unfortunates they meet on the way. The father is convinced that the boy is "the only thing godspoke left in the world (if God didnt speak in the boy he never spoke at all)" and therefore his goal is to save the boy for an unknown future in a dead world. The boy's mother on the other hand lost all faith that life had any purpose, even that they were alive, and took her life.
There is a vortex at the heart of this book, a kind of black hole of nullity that rips away everythign - names of states and months, creeds and debates, memories, identities, hope. The boy's mother speaks of it in a remembered conversation before her suicide: "As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope for it with all my heart". The man resists this vision, but it is as if he can only carry a few scraps of memory and humanity into a hopeless future: "Make a list. Recite a litany. Remember". Within this conflict of nothingness versus tattered hope is a second tension, the boy's innocent goodness, as evidenced by his desire to help the few other unfortunates they encounter, and the man's grim and survival-focused selfishness.
Amidst the horrors and challenges of this book is the sheer pleasure of McCarthy's command of language. Scrabble-players will feast on the richness of language; it is as if McCarthy is deliberately and routinely confronting us with unknown, half-understood words, perplexing the reader and reinforcing the sense of a world turned alien and meaningless. I offer a short list of examples:
"The cold illucid world"
"He descended into a gryke in the stone"
"They were discalced to a man like pilgrims of some common order for their shoes were long since stolen."
It's tempting to ask what sort of hope McCarthy offers in this bleak future. To be sure there is goodness. The boy has learned from his father that they are "the good guys", which makes them a distinct minority in this cannibal-haunted landscape. What future there is for goodness, hope, or the place of God is for the reader to decide. For myself, I'm haunted by the elegiac final paragraph, a look back to a pre-lapsarian time when the earth was rich and beautiful, "Of a thing which could not be put back. Or be made right again", and I can't help but think that this book's future stands perilously close to our present.
MP+
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