I am afraid I am going to offer one of my truisms again. What you think of it will have a lot to do with what you expect and the attitudes you bring to it.

Here is Publishers Weekly:

In this entertaining gem of religious satire, Breen, an AP journalist, skewers American Christianity from every imaginable angle. Calling himself the ‘Internet Theologian,’ Breen romps through the Bible, religious history, denominational differences. Halloween, contemporary Christian music and spectator sports, among other topics. Some of the book is pure silliness, but other sections achieve that elusive ‘perfect storm’ where humor is sharpened by raw intelligence and a keen knowledge of history and theology. Even Breen’s glossary of terms is hilarious. Heck, even his endnotes are funny and not to be missed. (One says merely, ‘Seriously. Wasn’t Calvin a nut?’) Readers seeking irreverent, laugh-out-loud musings on the sometimes ludicrous intersections between faith and pop culture will want to read this insouciant guide.

If you want satire, there is plenty of satire. And there is lot of humor that I found quite funny – from laugh out loud to quiet chuckle. But the larger question is whether the satire and humor adds up to something more than entertaining reading.

My take after the jump …

Dictionary.com defines satire as follows:

–noun

1. the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

2. a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.

3. a literary genre comprising such compositions.

But let’s turn to the Wikipedia entry on satire as well:

Although satire is usually meant to be funny, the purpose of satire is not primarily humour in itself so much as an attack on something of which the author strongly disapproves, using the weapon of wit.

The problem is that it is not always clear what Breen is skewering because he strongly disapproves of it and what he is simply using as a comedy foil.

The introduction notes that while pop culture may seem like oil and water they are actually deeply intertwined today:

Americans, in other words, have take to Christianity the way we’ve taken to everything else – with an orgy of scatter-brained, well-meaning-but-crazy exertions that ultimately leave everyone feeling exhausted and slightly queasy.  And when these exertions find a public expression, that expression is what Americans do better than anyone in the world: pop culture.

As a result, today’s Christianity is first and foremost dynamic. It is not merely something people are guilted into doing on Sundays by their nagging, churchy spouses.  While that may have been true for our boring parents and their irrelevant forms of worship, today the varieties of religious expression include not just church, but rock concerts, skateboarding competitions, wrestling matches, video games, bestselling novels, major motion pictures, and tiny comic books telling you the Devil invented trick-or-treating as a way to lure unsuspecting children into eternal damnation.

And a chunk of the book makes fun of – and criticizes by extension – the extremes of this “everything must be relevant” obsession of too many churches.

But another theme of the book seems to be that popular culture and Christianity have always intersected in both positive and negative ways. And for a long period in Europe and the West Christianity was the dominant culture. The two ideas sometimes seem to clash depending on the issue being satirized.

Sometimes Breen seems to be making fun of things simply because they are funny.  For example, the sections dealing with Christians and holidays are hillarious to anyone who grew up hearing the debates about Christmas , Halloween, etc. Breen notes that an increasing number of Christians are shunning October 31 because of its pagan roots:

This may come as a surprise to those Americans who, as children, associated it with primarily the Hershey corporation and, as adults, thinkof it almost soley as an opportunity to see young women dressed as naughty nurses. But, ironically, it’s a conviction shared by many Christians and pagans, and one backed up by a great deal of poor scholarship. Exactly the kind of scholoarship most appropriate for the Internet Theologian, in other words.

But some are more effective at using humor to make a more serious point.  The chapter on A Field Guide to the Major North American Jesuses also successfully skewers the various cultural attempts to rub all the rough edges off of Jesus; to make a Jesus of one’s own. The next chapter notes the hippie mindset that underlys so much of the seeker culture in the modern church.

Which brings me to central question with the book.  The best form of satire, in my opinion, offers not just biting humor but insight into the thing being mocked. And Breen’s shtick – even if over-the-top at times – is funny, and he successfully highlights some of the absurd cultural traits of what might be called the evangelical subculture, in the end you aren’t left with much besides jokes. He doesn’t help the reader understand the conflicts and tensions very much.

The “Dispatches” of the subtitle is important here. The book has the feel of essays and blog posts combined into book form. While the jokes – including footnotes – build on each other (the mock anti-intellectualism, etc.) the sections don’t really add up to more than the disparate parts.

As I read I enjoyed the humor and chuckled at the asides and silliness but after I finished I couldn’t really offer any particular insights or deeper points made by Breen. It has an empty calorie quality to it.

And in the end I think, as noted above, what you are looking for determines your enjoyment. If you just want to read some funny satire of the Christian subculture you will enjoy this book. And in many cases, the more you are familiar with the issues and attributes the funnier you will find it.

But if you are looking for more than skewering – if you are looking for a more serious underpinning to the satire – I think you will be slight disappointed.  To my mind Breen simply doesn’t offer anything coherent in terms of a response.

Christians can be funny, and anti-intellectual and ahistorical and even un-Biblical in their pursuit of smorgasborad faith that is relevant and integrated into pop culture (or in building a separate culture). But why this is dangerous and to be avoided is not exactly spelled out in any clear way. And how the various problems inter-connect is also left unclear.  Readers are instead mostly left to come to their own conclusions about what it all means.

Perhaps I am just expecting too much out of humor book but I think many readers will be looking for more than just laughs – particularly those who take these issues seriously. Of course Breen might just call them eggheads …

Cover via Amazon

Instead of repeating myself, allow me to quote from my earlier review of Gideon Defoe’s The Pirates! series:

Last week I described the Eddie Dickens Trilogy as “over-the-top farcical romps” for children; a mix of Dickens, Monty Python, and Lemony Snicket.  Gideon Defoe’s The Pirates! adventure series is in many ways an adult version without the Dickens and with pirates instead.

I stumbled upon The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists at Half Price books.  As I am always on the lookout for short, well packaged, and humorous reading material I picked it up.

It wasn’t very long before I was laughing out loud as I read it.  And when I laugh out loud while reading my wife always makes me read the passage out loud to her (she hates to be left out).  Soon I was practically reading the book to her.  Luckily, the book was short.

The plot is rather hard to describe, but it involves The Pirate Captain and his band of merry men sailing the high seas arguing about shanties and looking for adventure.

Not surprisingly then, when I heard a new The Pirates! adventure was out I knew I needed to read it.  Luckily, I had a coupon and I bought myself a birthday present.

And The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon sparked the same kind of laugh out loud process described above.

This particular adventure involved the Pirate Captain giving up the life of a pirate!  That’s right.  Despondent after losing the Pirate of the Year contest yet again, the Pirate Captain decides to give up adventures on high seas for the quiet contemplative life of a bee keeper.  Luckily, his nemesis Black Bellamy feels sorry for him and sells him the perfect place for such a life: the island of St. Helena.

Those of you who did well in history in school will recall that St. Helena was the island where Napoleon was exiled.  And that it isn’t the tropical locale perfect for bee keeping nor was it Bellamy’s to sell.  Shockingly, it seems Black Bellamy has tricked the Pirate Captain again.

The Pirate Captain is intent on sticking to his new life, however, and soon finds himself in a battle of egos and wills with the famous general as both figures want to be the star of St, Helena.  The problem is the Pirate Captain lacks the tools to battle the man who nearly conquered all of Europe; except his luxuriant beard and stentorian nose.

As in previous adventures, this involves a lot of silliness and slapstick humor including a variety of semi-educational – but still silly – footnotes.  Or as Kirkus calls it: “Relentlessly, aggressively, inventively and often hilariously silly.”

Looking for some light hearted entertainment this summer? What could make better “beach reading” than a book whose exciting climax involves the Pirate Captain and Napoleon wrestling on the beach at St. Helena and in danger of getting swept out to sea?!

Be careful, however, it could lead to frequent laughing out loud.  So be prepared to share what was so funny …

–> Cheryl Miller has an interview/review mix over at Culture11:

But what’s fiction and what’s not isn’t really the million-dollar question, anyway. Buckley’s books are more about how fiction and reality have melded into each other, how, in the case of Supreme Courtship, politics and TV programming have become all but interchangeable.

–> And Buckley’s long time friend Peter Robinson – Buckley helped Robinson get a job as a speechwriter for VP George H.W. Bush which led to his work with Ronald Reagan – has an multi-part video interview at Uncommon Knowledge.  Episode one and two are up so far.

Book cover via Amazon

I have been trying to put my finger on why I didn’t like the first installment of the Thrusday Next series by Jasper Fforde.  I mean I like satire and books that blend or bend genres.  But I have now finished another book in the series, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, and althoug I liked it better I can’t say I am a fan.

So what happened?  Well, I think it has to do with the style and the lead character.  You either like them of you don’t.  And for whatever reason, I got off on the wrong foot and never really enjoyed either.

For those of you unfamiliar with things, allow me crib the plot from Kirkus Reviews:

Thursday Next returns in another postmodern literary detective fantasy from Fforde (The Big Over Easy, 2005, etc.). Once again, the author creates a world in which only permeable boundaries separate truth from fiction, the living from the dead (or extinct: Thursday knits a sweater for her pet dodo, Pickwick). Our heroine revisits places and people from earlier Fforde novels, as well as from an immoderate number of English and American classics-one memorable page contains allusions to The Woman in White, Robert Ludlum, Jason Bourne, Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House and The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Although the Special Operations Network has nominally been shut down, in reality Thursday works undercover with Acme Carpets and on the side runs an underground cheese market, featuring such tempting morsels as Mynachlog-ddu Old Contemptible, “kept in a glass jar because it will eat through cardboard or steel.” Thursday embarks on a dizzying set of adventures through fictive territory. Untoward things have been happening in the literary world. For example, the natural comedy in Thomas Hardy novels has mysteriously been removed-Jude the Obscure originally began as one of the most “rip-roaringly funny novels in the English Language”-and Thursday travels through space and time to rectify this situation. Her contemporaries are not as interested in reading as they are in watching reality TV shows like England’s Funniest Chainsaw Mishaps or Samaritan Kidney Swap. Meanwhile, Thursday has to deal with Friday, her teenaged lump of a son, whose main goals in life are sleeping and forming a band called The Gobshites.

In case you are wondering, yes there is a lot going on in this novel.

My take on the character and style issues noted above below the fold.

As alluded to above, there is a lot going on in these books.  A ton of references and adventures/plots happening and often not connecting in any real clear way.  Because of this I think the series is one you will either dive into and enjoy or find off putting and not continue.

Personally, I don”t find Thursday Next a strong central character, but haughty, self-righteous, and not particularly funny.  I could neither sympathize with her nor cheer her on.  Perhaps this is not a sophisticated way to approach it, but I just never bought into her as a character.  And since she is focus of the entire series it didn’t really work for me.

The style and structure didn’t help.  There is a great deal of activity but I didn’t find that it was cleverly all brought together in the end.  Instead, various subplots just seem to swirl around at various points without contributing to the overall focus of the story.  And that was one of my problems with the books: they don’t seem to have a clear plot that drives the story.

Let me steal from Kirkus again:

While Fforde’s humor can be affecting, it can also grate with its self-consciousness, as the author nudges readers to admire his verbal dexterity. Vertiginous cleverness here proves to be almost too much of a good thing.

Exactly.  It is as if Fforde feel the need to cram as much fun in as he can, but too often this fun gets the plot off track, destroys the pacing, and leaves the reader wondering what that was all about.

All of this is starting to sound a little harsh.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t despise these books.  I will admit they are clever and include a lot of imagination.  But overall I was disappointed that they didn’t live up to what I thought was the potential.

I guess it comes down to expectations again.  I was expecting a creative and popular series like this to grab my attention and hold it; to make me want to read the next book as soon as I finished the previous one.  But I just didn’t have that experience.

If I had to say it in one word it would be underwhelmed.  But as always, your mileage may vary.