Into the Green

Today I took a long hike around Killarney Lake and back. It was so good. It was like being on Dagobah, without the annoying green guy. Much needed time to be alone and to think. It was a bonus to be active at the same time.

Taekwondo News

While this looks like the flag of Jamaica, it's actually a code that's telling you Thayne, Analena and Matthias have advanced another belt in Taekwondo. They are now green, yellow and green belts respectively. We are proud of them and glad to see them progressing in a sport that they enjoy.

Thayne has also joined the leadership team which means that he helps out in the Little Ninjas (Matthias') class. Congratulations to all the kids who advanced this last week.

Five Favorite Novels - UPDATED

If you are like me you not only read books, but you sometimes re-read the books that you've found the most satisfying or enjoyable. As I think on what novels have been the most satisfying and enjoyable to me, a couple titles immediately spring to mind, others arise more slowly, quietly emerging from the shadows only after I've thought for a while. Each title conjures up a cast of memorable characters who seem as real as flesh, though unlike real people, their thoughts and fears are not a mystery - I am privileged to know their minds as their views of themselves, God and the world are tested in extraordinary trials.

It was a joy to remember the stories in detail and to be mindful of the effect they had on me - sometimes a great book describes a fictional world so truly that we are able to see our own world looking back and find ourselves called to a more adventurous, more considered, more ... important life. I endeavored that it might be valuable, at least to me, perhaps also to you, if I put together something of a list.

Five seems a small enough number to demand a thoughtful discernment process. With each title I'll list the reasons why it makes my top five. I will also chose some runners up, and with these titles, I'll also give reasons why, despite their excellence, they did not. There are no plays allowed so Shakespeare is out of the running.

I'm still working on the list but it'll be up soon. In the meanwhile think about your favorite five - I'd love to hear what they are.

UPDATE: Here's my list.

1. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy.

I'm not trying to be sexy by choosing a "Russian author" but War and Peace is the book that I knew would be at the top. I was completely engrossed in each of the dozen or so plots in this novel. The characters are drawn with such familiarity and accuracy that each one seems real, despite the diversity of their personal concerns. I came to love many of them and found myself in tune with their emotions as they tried to find their places in the tumultuous era. I particularly loved Pierre, Andrei, and the whole Rostov family. And Denisov too, in a different way. In addition to the masterful characterization, the result of Tolstoy's work is such that you finish the book with a revolutionized perception of the Napoleonic era. The Russian identity is less of a mystery, the broad essence of humanity has been illustrated, even the mechanics of war have been theorized over. It's vast and it's as close to perfect as a novel can get.

2. VALIS, by Philip K. Dick

VALIS is a novelized auto-biographical story wherein the author tries to make sense of a miraculous experience. Dick claims that he was hit by a beam of light and was told that his son needed emergency surgery. He rushed his child to the hospital, they found a problem and emergency surgery saved his son's life. Dick, who was always half-crazy and knew it, spent the rest of his life convinced that a benevolent God had intervened. In Valis, the miracle happens to Horselover Fat and the book chronicles his obsessive investigation of the god who touched him. One one hand it's a story of great faith, humility and honesty. On the other it's an expose of the weakness of reason and the fragility of the human mind.

I was a huge C.S. Lewis fan before reading VALIS - after Valis I felt that Lewis was the last prophet of an earlier generation and that the world had evolved into something quite different after his death. Dick, in VALIS, seemed like a new prophet to our times.

3. Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco.

If the DaVinci Code died and went to heaven (implausible, I know) it would wake up and discover it had been transformed into Foucault's Pendulum.

Eco is the most intelligent, well read author, that I've ever encountered. It really comes through in his work, but he's also an excellent novelist and his particular brilliance is to lace his novels with history and philosophy while taking wonderful liberties with both. This story is about a small time publisher who, out of a sense of mockery, creates an uber-conspiracy theory that interweaves many of the smaller conspiracy theories that come through their little publishing company (ie. The DaVinci Code and/or Holy Blood Holy Grail). When his uber-theory is dispersed, he becomes the target of many who want to know his "secret", and of course none of the conspiracists will believe that there is no "real" secret. It's a thriller that is also a fabulous exploration of the gnostic mindset (there's a hidden knowledge out there that explains everything), which really feels alive and well in our guru-culture. Despite the lack of "secret" Eco leads us to an incredible, revelation about the nature of belief and the Christian gospel.

4. The Iliad, by Homer & The Three Musketeers, by Alexander Dumas

I've tried to read the Odyssey a few times and so far its failed to pull me in. Not so, The Iliad and not so , The Three Musketeers. I was hooked immediately by these stories of extraordinary men at war - and waiting to wage war. I've tied them at four because I've often said that Three Musketeers is my favorite novel, partly because it's so recommendable - I think everyone should love it - but others on this list are not as appreciable by everyone.

As The Iliad crept into the top five I realized that both books effected me in the same way. They were tales of extraordinary men, able to work wonders when their swords were pointed to the same point. At the same time these extraordinary men (be they Atlas or Athos, Paris or Porthos, Achilles or Aramis) suffered from vices that were common to man, and their failures effected their friends. Though both stories were peopled with heroic individuals, it was not about individuals - it was about loyalty and friendship and the team effort.

5. Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Who knew? This is an awesome book. Technically it appears to be found material, which means the entire narrative is cut together from a collection of journal entries, newspaper articles, letters, etc. This really works to lend the fantastic elements of the book an aura of authenticity and it lets us discover the story from the intimate viewpoint of the characters. When Jonathan Harker, our beginning narrator, discovers Dracula's secret his journal entries suddenly break off and we pick up in England. The main body of the story is then told from viewpoint of those still innocent to Dracula's plans and powers.

I experienced the book as a celebration of times when innocence was prized. This came through in the ways that the male characters prized and protected Lucy and Mina; but also in how they prized the fine qualities in each other. All of these people knew that being "good" was hard work and they were up to the challenge - what an extraordinary idea in our value neutral times. The great Van Helsing is immediately suspicious of Dracula, yet refuses to share the details of his concern with his friends, lest he needlessly destroy their innocence.

And yet, while a celebration of chivalric ideals, it is also a celebration of feminist reality. Mina Harker is a wonderful character, whose innocence is tarnished by Dracula, and yet maintains her goodness and becomes a full partner in the gentleman's pact to hunt and destroy Dracula. After a century of less than Christianly inspired vampire tales, it was great to go back and see heroes motivated by their faith and the "oughtness" of creation, the only motivation which makes sense against the full vampire mythos.

RUNNER UPS:

In no particular order

1. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

- an excellent exploration of despair, pride, guilt, humility and compromise. It fell from the top five because Valis explores so many of these same issues.

2. Blankets, by Craig Thompson

- the story of an evangelical Christian's childhood and first love, focusing on the difficulty of reconciling his faith with his experiences of unpleasant and cruel Christians and the way that physical love and acceptance offer a seemingly better way than the restrictive faith he has grown up in. It was deeply effecting in it's honesty and warmth, and also in it's tragedy, for there may be no plainer illustration of how fundamental Christianity destroys Christians. It's a graphic novel and is not in the top five because I'm not sure how appealing the alternate media will be in terms of recommending it.

3. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.

- very simple book about an old man no one believes in who proves he still has what it takes. His battle with the sea is really a battle with himself and it's an excellent example of layering internal and external conflict . Also proves a great book can be short.

4. 1984, George Orwell

- Prescient and horrifying this is something that everybody should read. Abuse can turn human being into animals - widespread, authorized abuse can dehumanize an entire state. What was so penetrating about the book is that it describes many strategies that have since become a part of our own post 9/11 society. In the past we may have thought the book described totalitarian societies like North Korea, but at the time it was written, it was meant to describe Stalin's Russia AND England. In the same way, one sees North Korea today, and one also sees America - which is really important to note.

5. Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe

- If you haven't read a Tom Wolfe book, you should. The Right Stuff was the first book of his that I'd read, and it was a fascinating account of the Mercury astronauts, but Bonfire of the Vanities was even better. This story is about an amoral bond broker in New York City and how his circumstances and character change dramatically when he inadvertently kills a stranger. Wolfe write in a unique, bombastic style which increases the authenticity of the story because it seems the author can barely believe it himself - and yet is nonetheless forced to tell us the story because it's how it happened.

Church Picnic - RUI

So when we woke up it was raining hard and the forecast is for all day rain with thundershowers in the afternoon. We are all but certain that the church picnic will be cancelled, but nonetheless, we prepare our potluck dishes and take them along.

In as little as an hour the rain stops and clears off so we come out of church into a bright and glorious day, enjoy some burgers, etc. But this has taken about half an hour and by this time the sky is a grey sheet and it's begun to spit. This persists for about an hour.

Then it starts to pour rain, no thundershowers, but it pours for about an hour. Then an hour later it's bright blue sky, warm and Michelle's taking the kids down the pool.

Weird.

But it beats the trees being uprooted at my parents place in Manitoba. The didn't get hit with a tornado, thankfully (there was one right nearby last year) but the storms of the last couple days have done a number on the yard, and my sister and nieces were holed up in the basement of their home because the wind sounded like a "lawnmower." And lawnmower wind is kind of creepy.

The RUI reference in the title is from the church picnic. One of our community is a cop and he has several "drunk goggles" which distort your vision in such a way that you see the world as if through different levels of drunkeness. Running under the influence was a relay game we played where you put on the goggles, run an egg in a spoon to a can, run around a newspaper on the grass, and then climb over a picnic table. It was generally hilarious, but it was also a bit disturbing, because one of the goggles only replicated a 0.08% alcohol level (the legal limit), but still resulted in obviously impaired judgment. I had assumed that our country had set a legal limit that assured legal drivers would be unimpaired, but this is plainly not the case, and a lower limit would certainly be prudent.

Old Friends

This weekend we got to host friends of ours who we knew from Winnipeg, Cory and Sheri, and their kids. They actually moved to Langley about six months after we moved to Bowen and we've been able to get together as families on several occasions.

I used to work with Cory at a church in Winnipeg and we collaborated on a number of artistic projects (he's an excellent composer and musician) the best and biggest of which was a family musical called Mouse House. We also got pretty far on a rock opera based on the biblical book of Job, but it was difficult to finance the incredible amount of hours that such an endeavor demands. But I loved working with Cory - and just hanging out - we share a drastic sense of humor and the wit really hits the fan when get together. Hopefully the future will hold more opportunities to work together. I think it will.

What I'm Working On

I'm working on a few projects right now:

1. I'm developing a story about aid and investment in Africa. This has required a lot of reading. It's misleading to say "Africa" because Africa is a huge continent with an incredibly diverse people and geography. While we may think of it as 53 countries, it's helpful to remember that those national borders represent European conquest and not indigenous make up. Each of those countries may have 100 to 250 very different tribes living in the country.

2. Disney's Beauty and the Beast. I'll be directing a production of this in July in Moose Jaw and am putting together some notes on the play.

3. I've finished a first draft of a Christmas musical for my alma matter, Briercrest College. This is the sixth production I've written for them. I am continuing to look at new music at it is written and will do final revisions for the script either in July or, more likely, August.

4. The Adventures of Woolliam Dorset. I began this interactive novel about an ovine archealogist a couple years ago, and after much encouragement, have determined to get back into it. I will endeavor to write some sections every day.

The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

This was a very interesting read. All I knew of the book was that it took place in Africa and offered some perspective on the social situation there. Vassanji grew up in Kenya (he now lives in Toronto) and his story spans close to a hundred years of history in that country. The book is the memoir of Vikram Lall, who, we discover in the second sentence, is known as the most corrupt man in Kenya. Having fled persecution, he lives anonymously in a small community outside Toronto, where he feels the loneliness of his decisions and sets out to write a memoir - not to deny or even explain the charges of corruption - but to help him connect again to the experiences that made him who he is.

The In-Between world is a reference to race. Vikram Lall is neither African nor European. He is Asian, a Punjabi who has lived three generations in Kenya, ever since his grandfather was brought over as cheap labour to help build the East African Railway. He has never been to India. Vikram's memoir is a story of enduring friendship, a reflection on the mild propensity humanity has toward racism and an exploration of how gradually power corrupts. It also serves as a road map to the social and political upheaval in Kenya from the 1950's of rebel besieged Commonwealth rule, to the independent Kenya of the 1980's. As an Asian in-betweener, Lall is neither African nor European, neither ruler nor reviled. He offers an interesting perspective and as engaging story about the persistence of childhood love and friendship.

Best Boy

Winner of the 1980 Oscar for best documentary, this intimate film by Ira Wohl chronicles three years in the life of his cousin Philly, a 52 year old retarded man, who lives with his 75 year old mother, Pearl, and his 78 year old father, Max. The start of the film presents a question: What will become of Philly when his aging parents die? In an act of proactive concern, Ira and others convince Philly's family to let him begin to step out and pursue a life of his own. Ira documents the journey.

It's not just a story about Philly - Wohl captures the story of a family that knows sharp joy and deep sorrow. Philly is a joy to watch, from the start, and it's a viewing pleasure to see him making new friends and learning new activities as he takes his first day trip, attends a school, and ultimately, after the death of his father, considers permanent housing outside the home. It's amazing to see the development and change in Philly that comes from his new excitement about life and its possibilities. Equally effecting is the emotional turmoil that rises out of Pearl's slow realization that Philly's new life is not going to be spent with her.

Definitely worth seeing.

Capote

Michelle and I watched Capote this evening. Interesting film, made more so by the fact that it was shot in Winnipeg and in our home town of Stony Mountain. I've never read any of Capote's work.

There was a lot of buzz around this Oscar winning film so there were few surprises in watching it. I had heard it was about Truman Capote traveling to Kansas to write a novel, In Cold Blood, about the real life killing of a farm family. The action really begins when the two killers are caught and Capote initiates a relationship with one of them. He seemed to find some level of connection with the killer, claiming to his friend, Harper Lee that "I feel we were raised in the same house. Then one day he went out the back door as I went out the front."

While we learn little about the killers, we are allowed many glimpses into Truman's life, and it seems that we are supposed to note certain commonalities with the killers, the foremost being a total lack of sincerity. It's well done, though subtle. I was left with the vague sense that little I saw could be trusted as "the facts", since it was all filtered through Capote, who clearly could not be trusted.

The film notes that Capote never completed another novel after writing In Cold Blood and tries to suggest that this inability stemmed from mental anguish he experienced while researching/writing the book. I'm not so sure. A quick look at Capote's biography suggest he wasn't emotionally healthy before writing the novel, and had many reasons for emotional instability (his mother aborted two pregnancies after his birth saying that she "didn't want more children like Truman.") Of course a 2-hour film can't capture a life; and that's how I feel after watching this ... well acted yes, but lots of pieces missing. Which is hardly damning.

Best part of the film: Catherine Keener as Harper Lee. She was excellent.

What to Read?

I was in the used bookstore at Artisan Square this week. It's called Sherlock Tomes. I found two books I wanted and took them to the desk. The clerk asked me if I wanted to buy them and I said, "Brilliant deduction, Sherlock" after which I was kicked out of the store for being rude. Just kidding - but it is the real name of the store and I expect it's just a matter of time until a sarcastic purchaser decides to impress the owner with some witty repartee.

The two books are Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a massive volume by Susanna Clarke that's caught my attention in numerous bookstores. Perhaps it's caught yours? It's an oversize paperback with the title writ large in an antique font and an image of a raven in flight. This time I picked it up found on the back cover a glowing review by Neil Gaiman, an excellent novelist and comic book writer (Marvel 1602). He says it "is unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years. It's funny, moving, scary, otherworldly, practical and magical, a journey through light and shadow ... filled with people it is a delight to meet, and incidents and places one wishes to revisit ... a perfect pleasure." I read the first couple paragraphs of the novel and was immediately sold.

The other book is MG Vassanji's, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, winner of the 2003 Giller Prize. Earlier in the week we were at dinner with friends of ours who are heading to work in Uganda for six weeks. As I'm working on an African story we talked a fair a bit about the various situations in Africa and they made mention of this book. I'm sure it wouldn't have caught my eye otherwise, but I'm glad it did. Obviously this is a modern dramatic work, more on the "acute and bittersweet" side of the reading continuum.

And by fortunate circumstance a third book came into my hands today, a loan from my landlord who popped over today. For some reason we got talking about Australia, and he had read The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding by Robert Hughes and happened to have it in their apt. downstairs. He lent it to me and I'm quite interested in digging into it. Nonetheless I expect it will be third on the To Read list.

I need something more diverting for my next book, in fact what I really want to read is something that just sweeps me right up and enchants me so I don't want to put it down, so Jonathan Strange is most tempting ... but The In-Between World would be research as well ...

And I had recently decided I wanted to read Watership Down (Richard Adams) again; but it's going to have wait a little longer. Or maybe it can be a read aloud for all of us.

The Final Martyrs

A collection of eleven short stories by Japanese author Shusaku Endo. Many have compared Endo to Graham Greene; Greene himself described Endo as one of the twentieth century's most important authors and Endo's writings as, "the perfect guide in the form of fiction to the Japanese experience."

The book is definitely good. The stories cover a diverse period in history but a small number of themes dominate the stories. The similarities in many of the stories echo Endo's own life experience. As a child he moved with his family to Japanese occupied Manchuria, his parents divorced, he eventually returned to Japan with his mother where she converted to Catholicism and raised him to be a devout believer, he attended university in France, and wrote in Japan. As one reads about characters having these very experiences, one is left to wonder how much fact is draped in fiction.

Endo writes about the loneliness of children who avoid their homes to avoid squabbling parents or a depressed mother and the same isolating loneliness in elderly men; one gets the sense that Endo himself is an alien, more emotionally vulnerable with much loved pets than with people. He's equally fascinated with the Japanese experience of Christianity, particularly Jesuit catholicism, from it's inception in Japan by Portugese Jesuits in 16th century, right through to its modern representation, the "amen" priests, most often foreigners.

As the title of the book suggests, Endo is fascinated by martyrdom and the courage present in persecuted Christians who are willing to suffer physical and emotional torture and not renounce their faith. Japan has been alternately free and closed to Christianity and Japanese Christians have been harshly persecuted there even in Endo's lifetime. As we get to know Endo through his stories we find a man who feels regret for deeds done and not done, a man haunted by common weaknesses, specters that could haunt any one of us, were we to pause and be as reflective as Endo. As Endo recounts stories of those martyred for their faith, he is particularly intrigued by those who escaped the persecution only to chose to come back and die in Japan.

Endo's style is spare and precise. He tends to weave a story out of several incidents, reflecting on how they piece together, suggesting all of life's experiences are too complex to reduce to a single event story. While all the stories were interesting throughout, about half of them were quite moving at the end, as a revelation or deeply emotional act suddenly emerged from the events. Ultimately Endo presents an intimate, though somewhat alienated, look at a Japan