DSL September Read: John's Pick
The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene
Just a little pre-read information:
Graham Greene was commissioned by The Vatican to write an account of The Mexican Revolution in the 1930's. He traveled there, through the states where the greatest fighting had and was occuring, and wrote The Lawless Roads. The Power and The Glory is his fictional account of this period in Mexican history (it's much more than historical fiction, though, I promise). The Lawless Roads was well received by The Vatican. The Power and The Glory, however, was not. It was placed on The Vatican's Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1953. Later in his life when he met Pope Paul VI he told Greene to "forget about those troubles" and that he himself had been immensely effected by the book.
A note on reading it: It takes at least thirty pages to get into. What you think is going to be the plot line is not. Give it a little time. That's why I'm posting it early (also because Lori, Evie and I are going to the beach until the end of August, so I can't post from Alabama). It's the best book I've read in many years. Faulkner, after all, said Greene was one of the only living writers he felt influenced by. It's worth it, I promise.
(find in a library)
posted by Johprah™ @ 9:40 AM
16 Comments:
Oddly, my university's library has one copy of this book...and two copies of the Cliff's notes to it.
Ha! That's hilarious, Gwen. Apparently more papers have been written about it by students than students who have actually read it.
I'm gonna read the actual book, I promise.
I'm reading it right now. (Well, not like *right* now at this very moment, obviously.) It's good. Although, as John says, it does take a bit to get going, but when it does, it really starts chooglin'.
That said, now my mission in life is to find a way to work the phrase "whisky priest" into a song.
My favorite passage from the book so far, from the last couple of pages of Part II, Chapter 1:
"The wall of the burial-ground had fallen in: one or two crosses had been smashed by enthusiasts...It was odd--this fury to deface, because, of course, you could never deface enough. If God had been like a toad, you could have rid the globe of toads, but when God was like yourself, it was no good being content with stone figures--you had to kill yourself among the graves."
I think that is beautiful.
Ok, all this religious-themed reading is getting me thinking about all kinds of kooky stuff I don't normally think about. I'm beginning to think my grandma paid Mary to start this book club to try to re-religionize me. I was thinking of picking a book in which religion is a major them for November, but now I might not, just to spite Grandma, in case that was actually her plan.
John, your reading advice was spot on. It took me a couple tries to get into it, but now I can't put it down. Great choice!
And Gwen, aside from the time I tried to convince your mother not to buy you a poncho for Christmas, I have had no contact with anyone who wants to save your soul. :)
I'm glad y'all are reading it and liking it. It's weird how you just realize all of the sudden how good and dynamic it is. Like the passage Gwen quoted, I think is prose is gorgeous yet rooted and living. No writing for it's own sake. I really do adore Graham Greene and his borderline heretical stuff. Dustin should come in and post the weird stuff he told me about Greene's writing habits. Very OCD. John
I finished the book today on our bus ride home from Tijuana. It just kept getting better and better. The scene that really got me thinking was when he seeks refuge with Padre Jose, who tells him, "Go and die quickly. That's your job."
Because in a way, he's right. The whiskey priest's attempt to stay alive and continue serving the faithful is, strangely enough, at odds with his job description. Instead of martyring himself, he martyrs at least four innocent people. For the most part, I found him to be a sympathetic character, but during the scene when the police are on their way to the village and he just won't cut mass a little short to give folks a chance to hide him, I half-hoped the villagers would hit him over the head with a crowbar. I mean, how self-righteous is that?
Still, I guess the fact that his position tends to make him prideful is sort of the point.
I'm curious whether people thought he was correct when he called himself a bad priest. And yes, Mr. Whales, please do not hold out on the fun facts.
You know, obsessiveness aside, the whole 200 words a day plan isn't a bad one.
Writing a book always seems daunting and impossible to me, and I feel like I can only write something longer than a book review or a blog post if I devote many hours a day to it.
But anyhow, maybe I'll experiment with the Graham Greene school of control freak writing. Will let y'all know how that works out.
On another note, this may be a little off topic, but I'm curious about Dusty's comment (and thanks again for the GG trivia!).
I'm wondering what forms the persecution of Christians takes these days. At my most devout, I always believed that the separation of church and state was very much of the good. However, a) when I was at my most devout, I was living in a town where Christianity was the norm, and you were far more likely to be persecuted for NOT being a Christian and b) as we see in The Power and the Glory, trying to separate people from their faith "for their own good" is wrong and does not go well for anyone. Unless we're talking about Scientology. In that case, I say, it's a public service. :)
That said, at the risk of straying too far from the discussion material, when do freedom of religion and freedom from religion clash?
I think that Mary's question is a really timely one considering the current state of things in the world. When Kierkegaard came up against the Danish Lutheran Church it was because he believed the state had far too much influence over the church and that the church itself was morphing into a political entity. We are seeing the opposite here today. Fundamentalism started off as a political entity (when you're SOOO sure you're going to heaven you gotta find something to do, right?). In many ways I see freedom from religion as being more important than freedom of religion. They generally do collide: as Dustin mentioned, in the Bay Area being a Christian in any form is grounds for attack. In my own coursework here I have repeatedly heard Catholocism and the Roman Catholic Church attacked in class, in the same breath that we discuss the necessity of "tolerance" and "diversity". I have often heard suicide bombers and the like referred to as "freedom fighters" while no one blinks an eye. Now, obviously, I have opinions on the war (bad) and on the varied Israeli conflicts (not really "Jewish" land, gotta work it out w/o blowing Palestinians up). I also have opinions on my liberal classmates, though (so short sighted and misanthropic when overly interested in politics). I consider myself a liberal but Jesus I hope I'm a human being first. Recently the police were called to San Francisco State University to protect a group of four conservative students handing out pamphlets on their organization. They had been surrounded, spit on, and their literature destroyed by diversity loving liberals. Glad to know I live in such a "tolerant" place (believe me, I would have hated those pamphlets but come on...). It's easy to be a terrible human being when you're so fucking sure of yourself.
I actually deal with the whole "tolerance" issue here a lot in Utah. Oddly enough, I haven't ever really had any negative interactions with Mormons, and I'm good friends with a number of them. On the other hand, I've had liberal professors here give me tips on how to drive "problem" (i.e., Mormon) students out of my classes, I know of one professor who wore a shirt with an anti-Mormon slogan on it to class, and I've heard people flat-out say they would never vote to hire a Mormon in our department. I get really, really tired of this crap, particularly the idea that they shouldn't have to teach Mormon students at a public university.
I find myself ending up defending Mormons and especially Mormon students a lot, which isn't exactly what I expected to happen when I moved here. I just get really sick of the idea that, as a liberal, all other liberals can assume they know exactly how I feel about any given issue. Last week I freaked two friends out by announcing I hated the Crocodile Hunter.
I like the way the book investigates different types of pride. When the priest escapes to the village across the border, he immediately falls into his old manners of pridefulness and condescension. But when he's in his home state, there's the pride of thinking he is supremely moral for staying and putting others in danger. And there's the pride of the very pious woman in jail, and the pride of the police officer chasing him, thinking he knows what the people need better than they do.
I also really liked the scene where he has to fight with a dog for scraps of food, and then later when he takes the last bit of food the Indian woman left with her baby, and justifies it by saying that even the Church says you have to put yourself first--so he puts himself first in taking food meant for a corpse, but not in escaping from a government that wants to kill him? I just like the way GG illustrates the ways that sometimes we sacrifice for others, and sometimes we don't, and it's not easy to predict which times will be which.
I think that, through this book, GG makes it clear that pride is the gravest of all the sins in his mind. Like Gwen said it pops up everywhere. He sees himself as damned. This is probably why the church disliked the book so much. GG called the whiskey priest in an interview "A saint who didn't want to be a saint". I like that.
Besides... the saints were an eccentric bunch, and not all that holy. One day, I got a reference question from this person who was looking for the name of a saint who could supposedly fly.
At first, I thought, um... sure. Then I checked up in Butler's Lives of the Saints, and whaddya know?
Does this man sound holy to you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_of_Cupertino
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