Juvenile Nonfiction

A slim volume (free ebook), developed from a sermon. Driscoll is a polarizing figure, garnering both acclaim and scorn for his blend of extreme conservatism with the emergent church model. Most of the way, this reads like the barest gloss on Proverbs (“…14:26 says, ‘In the fear of the LORD one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge.’ … [So,] the safest place for children is with a man who fears the Lord.”), which isn’t bad. But Driscoll drifts into behaviorism and a shocking lack of grace, admonishing a failing father for his lack of wisdom by (obliquely) recommending he shoot his daughter’s boyfriend and summarily excommunicating Christians-who-sin from the Church. I don’t mind separating the wheat from the chaff. Really, I don’t. But I bet I could find a follower of Jesus to give me sound scriptural advice on fatherhood without demanding that I sift through this deadly legalism to find it.

(Update: I neglected to point out Driscoll’s conviction that it’s a Biblical mandate that a Godly father make a lot of money, which he emphatically asserts but takes little time to flesh out. It follows from the mandate to provide for his family, which, I’m not sure, but I think our role in provision is at the very most as a team member and probably more likely as a charity case.)

A colleague loaned this to me. It’s of a piece with writing of the time — squarely avant-garde, almost poetry, Sixties San Francisco. The phrase “Trout fishing in America” becomes a synecdoche, both for a number of representative people, places, thoughts, actions relating to America and for America itself. There’s something elegiac about it: Brautigan may feel that Trout fishing represents something both fundamental about and increasingly missing in his America, as especially represented by a late chapter in which he visits a scrapyard where they’re selling lengths of Trout fishing creeks and various waterfalls. His voice is relentlessly fun, and he’s willing to follow his pen to almost any absurdity it intends. A unique, quirky little book — one that’ll probably get stuck in my synapses long after it should reasonably have faded.

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The story goes like this: my wife brought this home from book club. It’s Michigan’s The Big Read, see, and one of her fellow bookclubbers works at the Ferndale Public Library and had a raft of copies. Zena’s not interested, though — all she can think of is Garrison Keillor’s Guy Noir. But she picks it up, and when I needle her about it a few days later, she’s done a 180, she loves it, she can’t get enough of it, see? Which is enough to pique my interest, and here we are.

It’s a page turner, that’s for sure, with a great lead character, Sam Spade, a hard-boiled Detective who doesn’t trust anyone, listens when money talks and treats women like he owns them. He’s got an ethic, but it’s not a moral ethic — if your partner gets iced, you find and capture his killer, and you don’t chase a rabbit just to let him go.

It was amusing, reading the genesis of decades of Tough Dick Cliché. I’ve never seen the movie, so I came to it fresh — didn’t know a thing about the plot. Lots of descriptions of yellow or glowing eyes, set jaws, weak knees, etc. Very of its time. Women were dames and men were Men, a certain decorum reigned even among the riff raff, untrustworthy elements were “swarthy” or “Levantine,” on and on. Can you see why it would be enchanting?

If you can, I recommend it.

…takes incredible photos. Patronize this guy.

Juvenile Nonfiction is Joshua Neds-Fox’s blog v.3, internetted lovingly to you from Detroit, Michigan.

I’m worth $1MM in prizes. I am without excuse.

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