Revival, by Stephen King

Involves an aging rock-and-roll guitar player and his longtime relationship with an ex-preacher who has lost his faith in God and has turned to experimenting with "secret electricity."  It's not the best book I've read by King, but it was nonetheless captivating. The hocus-pocus is mostly crap, and of a predictable type, but the underlying philosophy is rather disturbing. I won't reveal more in case you want to read the book some day.

King uses some elements of carnival culture in this novel, which reminds me of Joyland,  which I read not too long ago. It seems that he didn't waste any leftover research from that effort.

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

An audio book.

Unintelligible beginning; stuck with it a while to see what all the fuss was about some years ago when Rushdie's life was threatened by some fanatics. This book is what some people like to call "less than accessible." In the end, I came to love it.

Found online: a complete pdf of the book at https://archive.org/details/TheSatanicVerses

Also, this very informative "Notes on Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses (1988)" by Paul Brians, Emeritus Professor of English at Washington State University, from which I'll quote a bit:

To a secularized European, his critique of Islam in the novel
seems very mild and tentative; but there has never been anything
like it in the Muslim world. Scoffers and libertines there have
been; but they were fundamentally unserious. Rushdie seems to
have been trying to become the Muslim Voltaire; but Islam has
never undergone an equivalent to the European Enlightenment,
let alone the development of a “higher criticism” such as the West has subjected the Bible to for the past two centuries. ...
...In the secularized West his critique seems routine; in much of
the Islamic East, it is unspeakable. The modernist assumptions
it springs from are irrelevant, hardly understood. Many Muslim
critics have asserted that equivalent blasphemy against Christian
beliefs would never be tolerated, whereas in fact a wildly anti-
Catholic comedy like “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for
You” can have a long, profi table run without any encountering
any physical or even legal threat. Obscenity is taken much more
seriously in the West than blasphemy. Rushdie tried to bridge the
gulf between East and West and instead fell into the void. No one
can reconcile these two views with each other because they are
rooted in basically incompatible, even hostile world views.

And here is a quote attributed to Rushdie himself, from Professor Brians's "Notes:"

When criticism is placed off-limits as “disrepectful,” and therefore offensive, something strange is happening to the concept of respect.

I'm glad to have listened to this excellent reading. Sam Dastor, the narrator did a superb job. He managed to jump between appropriate accents and voice approximations without it being obtrusive or annoying, which often happens in audio books.

One day I hope to get a copy of this in print and read through it that way. I have referred to the pdf copy of it that I mentioned above several times during the audio sessions, just to see how things are spelled, and to remind myself of what I've been listening to. In spite of its difficult beginning -- and overall difficulty-- the book is quite entertaining, thoughtful, and inspiring, in an unusual way.

Survivor, by Chuck Pahlaniuk

This book by the author of Fight Club has a very similar tone to its better-known cousin. I suppose that's what they call "voice."

Tender Branson begins this book by explaining that he's hijacked an airplane, let all the passengers and crew go, and is now heading for a crash in the Australian Outback. This is the ending, right at the beginning of the book. The pages are numbered backwards. Yep. The last page is page 1.

But I can forgive all this cleverness. I read every word, and thoroughly enjoyed this book, the story of an innocent, raised in a strange religious cult and released to the outside world to work as a type of slave for the enrichment of the Creedish elders. (I think that's a clever name for a cult.)

The details of the cult's beliefs and organization come out in the story, but this begins to be overshadowed by a high-powered sendup of the "real" world's fixation with celebrity, hyped by and pumped out through the "media." When Tender Branson becomes famous as the last (save one, actually, as we discover) surviving member of the Creedish, who have committed mass suicide (or are being serially murdered), he suddenly acquires an agent, becomes famous, and begins changing into a super-celebrity, preaching and praying to multitudes, and rapidly turning into something completely manufactured and unreal.

Since we already know the ending, we are entertained by the suspense of knowing that all of this must fail, and watch carefully to see how it is done.

I look forward to reading some more of Mr. Palahniuk's work.

The Cult, the official Chuck Palahniuk website.

The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins

Houghton-Mifflin, New York, 2006. ISBN-13: 978-0-618-68000-9. 374 pages.

The God Delusion is well-written, and well-reasoned. It deals with a difficult and complicated subject in a manner that kept my interest without being condescending or simplistic, in spite of the need for detailed explanations throughout. Dawkins comes across as a likable, optimistic teacher with a strong desire to see clear thinking take root and grow in the world.

Dawkins uses science and logic to illustrate how irrational religious beliefs have evolved and developed over the history of mankind, and how they have plagued civilization.

There will be, of course, objections to this book. Atheists run into this all the time. Apparently some religious people feel threatened by atheism; perhaps they don't like to have to think carefully about exactly what they believe. Dawkins' analysis of the origins of religion, and the actual substance of which it is formed, is daunting to say the least. He challenges the circular logic of faith, which says that one must believe in spite of evidence to the contrary. It is this anti-logical trump card that defeats all rational discussion. If one argues that God cannot be seen, heard, or felt, the response will be that God wants it this way: God wants us to have faith in him without any evidence of his existence. Religion says that belief in the improbable is the key to understanding God and pleasing him.

This book provides welcome relief from the background guilt that I experience when discussions of religion erupt. While I regard most of this stuff as nonsense on a rational, adult level there is always the "inner child" that was taught early on to fear the omniscient bearded man in the sky. There is the confusing story of Jesus and his inscrutable sacrifice, which somehow relieves me of original sin, or something like that. Talk about a guilt trip! Here's this man who, 2000 years ago, suffered a horrible death at the hands of merciless sadists because he knew that you were coming along, and he loves you, even now. Aren't you ashamed of yourself for not believing this.

It is not hard to debunk the myths that come from religion, whether it's the story of Jesus or the promise of a heaven full of virgins to the suicide bomber (Dawkins, by the way, rightly asks: what about the fate of these virgins? How do they feel about it? And why would a man want virgins, anyway?) it's pretty easy to simply say: this is not possible, not probable, it cannot be proven and so it is not true. What is difficult is to free people from the innate feeling that they are supposed to believe in this claptrap, and that if they don't, they are evil, ungrateful heretics and that God (who loves them) will punish them with nothing less than merciless eternal torture. This predisposition to adopt such illogical nonsense as one's "beliefs" is, as Dawkins points out, most likely a sort of side-effect of natural selection.

I found this concept immensely attractive. Parents impart much useful knowledge to their children, e.g. don't eat spoiled food, wash your hands, get enough sleep, the good fish are in this part of the river, etc. At the same time, parents may tell their children things which are inaccurate or untrue, such as the idea that you can "catch" a cold from getting wet and chilly, that people of another race are inherently inferior, or that there is an invisible omniscient omnipotent being who requires certain bizarre behavior and will punish you if you fail to display it. While the bad ideas may be quite useless or even harmful, the basic good information is often required for survival. Offspring with a penchant for hearing and adopting the instructions of their parents are probably more likely to survive, hence natural selection will favor this trait. The bad ideas, such as religion, are as fervently adopted as the good. Dawkins' own explanation of this concept is much more skillful than mine, and includes good examples and illustrations.

The message of The God Delusion is that too much evil is done in the name of religion for it to occupy the exalted place that it enjoys in human society. Why should we continue to grant special privileges (tax exemption) and overlook behavior which, if not excused under the explanation of religious belief, would be considered illegal and destructive (e.g. taking children out of school)? Religion is responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Religion fuels the never-ending wars of the Middle East, and the conflict in Ireland. Many representatives of one of the major religions of the world have been exposed as pedophiles, and that church itself has been found to be complicit in covering up or impeding prosecution of crimes committed by these people. How is it that rational people continue to tolerate this monstrosity in our midst?

This topic cannot be broached without inspiring controversy. I am sure that many people will find me heretical, insensitive, and evil for expressing these ideas. Fortunately for me, very few people read what I write here, so I will not have to put up with too much abuse. But to anyone who does object, I invite you to borrow this book from your public library (or buy it, if you don't mind putting money in the hands of the infidel) and read it. Give it an honest chance and ask yourself if it doesn't make a lot of sense. Some will, of course, reject it out of hand. But a few may just be relieved to find that they are not alone: many of us are unwilling to ignore logic, to eschew science, and adopt dangerous and destructive myths foisted upon us by previous generations. Many, I imagine, will be very pleased to read this book, and to enjoy its clear and reasonable arguments and Dawkins' fine writing.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

Electronic text, available from Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4217

I have read Portrait at least a couple of times before. Joyce tried publishing it under the name Stephen Hero, rewrote it, and finally succeeded in publishing it in 1916.

This book is considered to be at least semi-autobiographical. No matter, it is an excellent work of what I'll call interior fiction, that is, it is a story that happens mostly within the mind of its central character. This type of fiction is not uncommon from modern writers, but Joyce was one of the first to place the conflict and resolution of a novel within the consciousness or mind of a character, rather than centering upon actions and conflicts between people, places, and things in the visible world. This type of writing is also known as stream of consciousness, and William Faulkner explored the technique extensively in his work.

Portrait is not an easily read, or "accessible" book, but it is far less cryptic or obscure than Joyce's later works, Ulysses, and Finnegan's Wake. It begins with its principal character's babyhood. Stephen Dedalus is hearing his father tell him a children's story:

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...

From inside young Dedalus' mind we grow up with him. He goes away to school at Clongowes, but this is cut short by the financial problems that plague his father, and grow worse throughout the story.

When Dedalus and his family move to Dublin (at the beginning the family lives in Blackrock), they have come far down economically. Politics are constantly in the background, and there are strong hints that Dedalus' father's troubles are at least partly political.

Dedalus next attends a Jesuit school. Here he wins a prize for acting in a school play, and is temporarily rather wealthy. He squanders his money rapidly, buying food and gifts for his family, and begins to sample the prostitutes of Dublin. Catholic religious guilt soon overtakes him: There are thousands of words devoted to the brilliant and horrifying descriptions of Hell provided to the students by priests during a "retreat" at school in honor of St. Francis Xavier.

--We are assembled here today, my dear little brothers in Christ, for one brief moment far away from the busy bustle of the outer world to celebrate and to honour one of the greatest of saints, the apostle of the Indies, the patron saint also of your college, saint Francis Xavier. Year after year, for much longer than any of you, my dear little boys, can remember or than I can remember, the boys of this college have met in this very chapel to make their annual retreat
before the feast day of their patron saint....

...The preacher's voice sank. He paused, joined his palms for an instant, parted them. Then he resumed:--Now let us try for a moment to realize, as far as we can, the nature of that abode of the damned which the justice of an offended God has called into existence for the eternal punishment of sinners. Hell is a strait and dark and foul-smelling prison, an abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke. The straitness of this prison house is expressly designed by God to punish those who refused to be bound by His laws. In earthly prisons the poor captive has at least some liberty of movement, were it only within the four walls of his cell or in the gloomy yard of his prison. Not so in hell. There, by reason of the great number of the damned, the prisoners are heaped together in their awful prison, the walls of which are said to be four thousand miles thick: and the damned are so utterly bound and helpless that, as a blessed saint, saint Anselm, writes in his book on similitudes, they are not even able to remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it.

Nice stuff.

As the story progresses, we see Dedalus become more and more disillusioned with the Catholic religion that controls his country and countrymen. This causes him much conflict with those around him, not the least of whom is his mother.

The story ends with journal entries. Here is one of them:

APRIL 10. Faintly, under the heavy night, through the silence of the city which has turned from dreams to dreamless sleep as a weary lover whom no caresses move, the sound of hoofs upon the road. Not so faintly now as they come near the bridge; and in a moment, as they pass the darkened windows, the silence is cloven by alarm as by an arrow. They are heard now far away, hoofs that shine amid the heavy night as gems, hurrying beyond the sleeping fields to what journey's end--what heart? --bearing what tidings?

Dedalus will be leaving Dublin, leaving Ireland, even as Joyce did, but it will never leave him, as it never left Joyce. In this book Joyce began some of the techniques that he would develop in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, and continued to work on expressing the peculiar relationship with Ireland and Irish culture that characterized his life's work and literary legacy.

Some more information:
Wikipedia Entry for James Joyce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce
Guardian article about Nora, a film about Nora Joyce.