Battling in the Deep

One of the really fascinating things that came up for me in reading The Book of J was Bloom's overview of ancient Israelite creation stories. The idea that there was more to the oral tradition of creation than what has come down to us in the Genesis account was eye-opening, and to be quite honest, I was first inclined to disbelief. I assumed I would have heard of this by now, after years of professional anthropological inquiry and amateur theology. And yet, there it was. I felt like I had made some sort of discovery. It underscored for me just how disciplined I had become over the past thirty-or-so years in reading the Bible through a very narrow, normative (to use one of Harold Bloom's favorite words) lens, and how I intuitively disregard or skip over things that don't quite fit the narrative to which I've grown accustomed; like they're literary white noise.

The Character of God

THE BOOK OF J
Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg
352 pp. Grove Press 2004

My pleasure reading this past week was Harold Bloom's not uncontroversial work, The Book of J (1990). I first learned of it while reading the introduction to Donald Harman Akenson's highly recommended Surpassing Wonder (which I'll write about at a later date), and quickly ended up dropping the latter in favor of rapidly consuming the former. "Whenever one immerses oneself in recent scholarship concerning the Bible... the effect is curiously anesthetic, even depressing," Akenson writes. "Hardly anyone seems to be having any fun, and if they are, they do a good job of keeping their pleasure well hidden behind stone faces and dirge-like prose." (5) This had more than a ring of truth in it, so when the author went on to discuss Harold Bloom, a literary critic, as one of the few people who seemed to truly enjoy biblical scholarship, I was intrigued.

Our Big Brother Van

AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Marcel Van
396 pp. Gracewing Publishing 2006

Last week, I finished reading the stirring Autobiography of Marcel Van. Autobiography was the first hard copy book I’d ordered in possibly years, and it was a delight to be able to curl up with a blanket, cup of coffee, and the pleasant weight of a paperback once again. I was immediately intrigued by Van when I first learned of him: Born in Ngam Giáo, Bac Ninh in Vietnam in 1928, he is usually highlighted for his inspiring dialogues with St. Thérèse of Lisieux, which began when he was 14. But although these conversations are remarkable, there is so much more to Van than simply what one can learn about St. Thérèse through his experiences. After discovering the details of his life, I was both amazed and affected by his guileless sincerity, and the maturity with which he accepted and interpreted suffering. So much happened to Van at the hands of the Church, and yet he never ascribed his ordeals to the character of God, always looking to him instead for consolation. As I was reading through his narrative, Van felt instantly familiar and accessible, almost like a comforting fraternal presence accompanying the reader through the book. Though he frequently describes himself as small and fragile, the self-styled "little brother" of St. Thérèse, many people who are familiar with Van affectionately refer to him their "big brother" in heaven.