What Else Was In That Box?

Receiving a box of books in the mail makes me giddy, like Pete Lattimer when his ex-wife brought his comic book back. It's a Warehouse 13 reference, from an episode I finally saw last week.

What else was in the Amazon box you ask?

The Gospel According to America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea, by David Dark, which I borrowed from the library several months ago in a short-lived flurry of Christian/political literature reading. The book isn't about politics, rather it is about American culture, and how we need to examine our assumptions in every arena of thought, including the political, not only examine them but talk about them too. Dark engages all manner of American culture. I read his book in a week, fell in love with it, and knew I had to have it for my own.

I didn't fully understand the book, and I didn't take notes on it, which is one of the reasons I wanted it for my own. I want to study it, figure out what Dark did and how. Though I don't think I would agree with Dark politically (if I understood politics well enough to know what I thought), I would like to emulate his methods. I'd like to know what his arguments are so I can engage them more fully. I'd like to do the sort of work that he is doing. David Dark writes a blog, called Peer Pressure is Forever, which he shares with his wife Sarah Masen, whose music I adore. I wrote an imaginary letter to David Dark after reading his book, which you can read if you really want to, by clicking here.

The Gospel According to America is sort of hard to read, not because the language is complex, or because the ideas are too highly specialized. It's hard to read, for some strange reason, because of Dark's highly personalized style. I believe that the difficulty is totally worth it.

Who's Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K.A. Smith. I've written about this book on here before, and now I have at last my very own copy. This makes me very happy. Smith somehow manages to demystify postmodernism, explaining it in a way that I can finally understand, and then shows how postmodern ways of thinking are not entirely antithetical to our Christian faith.  This is a valuable service. Smith also give some pointers on how the church could adapt some of these ideas to become even more itself instead of less, more kergymatic is the word he uses. The church can be more bold in its presentation of the gospel because we get to be more transparent about where we are coming from. I wish I could describe it better. All I can really say tonight is read the book. I look forward to tackling it again once I've completed some of these other projects that are eating up my reading-time. Smith has a blog that can be read here.

The last book in the box was Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent by Wayne Boothe. I don't know much about this one, only what I have read online, and that it was recommended as a book I might read to understand the rhetoric of argumentation better. I've read an essay by Boothe in The Norton Reader, and have read bits and pieces of his book The Rhetoric of Fiction. I know I like his writing style already. I just discovered via Wikipedia that Boothe died in 2005. I look forward to reading as much of his work as possible, and wonder if I can incorporate him into some of these other projects.

Yes, it's true I have a lot of reading to do. And I look forward to it. If you are interested in seeing what titles I am reading now, take a look at the rightmost column on this page. As always I fear I have gone a little overboard with the reading.