Twice Freed - Excellent Biblical Fiction

Twice Freed, by Patricia St. John, was a recent school assignment for my nine-year-old daughter. She was having a tough time getting into the book because of the tough vocabulary (it's recommended for 12 and up), so I decided to read it aloud with her.

I'm so glad I did. This book follows the life of Onesimus, a slave who is the topic of the book of Philemon in the Bible. My daughter and I enjoyed the story line and the struggles between and within the well-developed characters. I appreciated the accurate portrayal of society in the Roman empire including the institution of slavery, gladiators in training and in the arena, pagan festivals, guilds, shipping and dock work, and family relationships. The traits of the cities that Onesimus finds himself in--Colossae, Laodicea, Ephasus, Athens, Corinth, and Rome--are described without caricature (except maybe for Athens).

Twice Freed made me want to go back to the Bible and read Acts, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and the parts of Revelation that deal with the people and places mentioned in the book.

I highly recommend this book for adults and children 11 and up, and as a read-aloud for kids as young as about eight.

A Confederacy of Dunces

I read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole on the recommendation of Russell Moore, and must say that I've never met a more despicable protagonist. You would never want to cross paths with Ignatius J. Reilly. He's an over-educated, underachieving, extremely judgmental, scheming, neurotic, physically disgusting, ungrateful mama's boy who billows through life leaving chaos in his wake. The book is funny, laugh-out-loud funny in many parts, and the disparate threads of the zany plot all wind together in a surprising yet oddly fitting way at the end.

Statue of Ignatius J. Reilly in New Orleans

A Confederacy of Dunces has been reviewed all over the place, so I won't spend much time on the story here. I'll just touch on one recurring motiff that made me think--the well-meaning, yet out-of-touch helper who only makes things worse. Myrna Minkoff, Reilly's girlfriend/nemesis is a socially conscious New Yorker who

had stopped throughout the rural South to teach Negroes folk songs she had learned at the Library of Congress. The Negroes, it seems, preferred more contemporary music and turned up their transistor radios loudly and defiantly whenever Myrna began one of her lugubrious dirges.

Mrs. Levy, wife of the owner of Levy Pants, refuses to allow Miss Trixie, an aged senile employee, to retire because she worries that Miss Trixie will fall into despair if she is not contributing to society. Really though, Miss Trixie wants nothing more than to retire, and spends her days at work napping, making bitter remarks, and hoarding bits of paper and foil.

Ignatius engages in this kind of activity more than once. He stages a "Crusade for Moorish Dignity" at the pants factory where he works, and he tries to organize New Orleans's gay community to infiltrate global government and military power structures in movement to "Save the World through Degeneracy."

Potential readers, be warned. A Confederacy of Dunces contains foul language including multiple f-bombs, and treats various sexual topics, though not lasciviously. In my opinion Toole, describes immorality without reveling in it, and the good in the book outweighs the bad. Christians sometimes jump in to "help" too quickly, and this book demonstrates the danger of that behavior with humor and compassion.

You can find A Confederacy of Fools on Amazon. As of this writing, the kindle edition is $3.99, the new paperback edition is $10.20 and you can buy it used for as little as a penny plus shipping. If you've read it, let me know what you think in the comments.

The Divine Comedy

A Medieval Journey Through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven

Loved the poetry.
Could have done with less
medieval astronomy.

This was my first reading of The Divine Comedy. I was blown away by some fragments of poetry. The amalgamation of classical and biblical references with modern (for Dante) political and religious intrigue was interesting. On the other hand, I kept losing the flow of the poem because I didn't recognize Dante's contemporary references--I had to either stop and check the notes or continue without understanding

The Divine Comedy takes a lot of its structure from Ptolemaic astronomy which I have very little familiarity with, so again, I depended heavily on the notes. It's kind of hard to know the constellations when you live in Tokyo and can usually see only a few stars at night.

After being totally engrossed by The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid, I found The Divine Comedy tough going. If it weren't for some insightful bits of beautiful poetry (like the one below on the inability for humans to fathom God's justice), I might have put the book down. A second reading will surely help, but I'm not interested enough in teh book to tackle it again right away.

"therefore, the vision that your world receives
can penetrate into Eternal Justice
no more than eye can penetrate the sea;
for though, near shore, sight reaches the sea floor,
you cannot reach it in the open sea;
yet it is there, but hidden by the deep."
Divine Comedy, Paradiso XIX, 58-63

Reason for Difficulties

"Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces, checks some tendency to abandon the straight path, leaving open only the way ahead. But there is a reality of being in which all things are easy and plain--oneness, that is, with the Lord of Life; to pray for this is the first thing; and to the point of this prayer every difficulty hedges and directs us." -George MacDonald

Edited by C. S. Lewis, this book contains 365 short excerpts from George MacDonald's writings. The above quote is one I've been rereading and pondering for a couple weeks.

George MacDonald's work is in the public domain. You can learn all about him and get links to his writings on the George MacDonald Informational Web.