The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 11:20 AM

Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has always intrigued me - if nothing else, just for the title alone. I am now disappointed that I checked it out of the library - because I want to keep it. I have this thing with books that I want to have my own copy and borrowing from the library or from a friend feels less like the love affair a good book should be and more like an illicit get together with someone else's partner.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter centers not only the lack of partnership, but the cutting isolation of the five main characters in the Depression - era south. Biff, Jake, Mick, Dr. Copeland all look to Mr. Singer for something that goes deeper than companionship and acceptance to affirmation and love, even while Mr. Singer, a deaf-mute, literally withholds himself from all but the object of his affection - who is a louse.

Perhaps most importantly, each of the main characters ascribe nothing short of godhood on Mr. Singer - which each of the four very different characters projecting themselves and their desires onto the deaf-mute. To Mick, Mr. Singer is one who understands the music like her, while Jake, a labor agitator, knows that Mr. Singer has communist and socialist sympathies just like him. Comically, Mr. Singer informs his friend that he simply cannot understand why these different people continue to seek him out as he does not understand what they say to him. Tellingly, each of the characters have dreams in which they are presenting nothing short of themselves to Mr. Singer (as God) for approval.

Ultimately, (needless) isolation results in tragedy.

I wonder how I have isolated myself. I wonder what I have projected onto God that is not really of Him - just what would make me more comfortable with him.

I am thankful for the gift of Christian community and for the witness of scripture to correct me when I am wrong.

Confessions of a Bibliophile 11:01 PM

There are things that are better than books. These things include, but are not limited to, having an incredible wife, being overwhelmed by the presence of an amazing God, belly laughs with best buds, a buzzer-beating three-pointer to send your team to the NBA Finals, and those heart-to-heart conversations that change everything after them.

Books are still good too.

There are three days that I go bonkers for each year. Christmas - you can't beat Jesus' birthday - my birthday - whatever I say goes! - and the day we get new books for class. I nearly wet my paints when I picked up Lasor, Hubbard, and Bush's Old Testament Survey and tripped over myself getting back to the apartment to read Ben Witherington's New Testament Theology.

All the wetness aside, my first love was literature. I wanted to teach literature to high school students. There is nothing like a book, and the genius of great writing - words that peel away the layers of life and get to what everyone else's brain is trying to get around. My favorites are on the right, here are some more (nonfiction) that I like.

the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (not sure that I'm sold on the 7th one though)
the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Don't hold out on me now - give me some good ones that you enjoy.