Rules of Civility

 

Rules of Civility – by Amor Towles

My guess is there were several thousand people who read this book for the same reason that I did.  They read this author’s second novel, the brilliant “A Gentleman in Moscow” and thought: “Wow! That was so awesome, I should read his FIRST (and to date, only other) book as well!” Well, this book was no “Moscow”.  It was good.  Very good.  But no “Moscow”.

The story starts in an art gallery in 1966. A couple in their 50s are viewing an exhibit of random photographs taken on trains of passengers in New York City in the late 1930s. Apparently the camera was hidden so the subjects didn’t know they were being “watched”.  The woman sees a familiar face in not one, but two of these photographs.  The man looks remarkably different in the two photos.  She reminisces.  Our real story begins.

So we’re transported to New York City in the year 1938.  We now read about the life of the woman we met in the art gallery who is now a single woman in her 20s.  This book is essentially a journal of her life over the span of a year.  Although the decade of the 1930s is remembered by history as being in the thick of the Great Depression, you wouldn’t really know that while reading about a year in the life of Katey Kontent.  She’s a far cry from wealthy, but she’s not starving either.  She has a decent job, somewhat decent living quarters, and meets a ton of very interesting people over the span of one year. Some of these new friends are definitely more well-off than she is, and some she becomes more intimate with than others. Although she has a humble background and is somewhat frugal, some of her new acquaintances allow her to taste a bit more of the exquisite culture and surroundings of the big city.

In many ways, this book is more about New York City in the late 1930s than it is about Katey. Author Amor Towles does a wonderful job describing the sights, sounds, smells and personalities of the specific time and place.  We almost feel as though we’re magically transported to a different era, and get a first-hand look at what makes the finer parts of the big city tick.

Although I enjoyed a virtual tour of the time and the place, it was the author’s handling of Katey that left me a bit cold.  I never felt like I really knew her. Even though she’s center-stage throughout the whole story and we saw first-hand everything she did, we’re never really told WHY she does anything.  I never knew what she was really thinking or feeling.  When she does things like take a particular job, or fall for a potential beau, I could never decipher exactly why she felt the way she did, and I confess I was always a bit surprised and even baffled when I observed many of her actions when we followed her around.  Perhaps this was the author’s intention? Perhaps I was supposed to connect some dots about her aloofness, yet I never really could put two and two together. In fact, the whole “a-ha” moment of this book didn’t really jar me as much as it seemingly was supposed to do.

Overall I was satisfied, though, by the end of the book.  It was an enjoyable story that always kept me interested.  I enjoyed “seeing” Manhattan during the few years before World War II happened, which I suppose changed everything forever.  I didn’t really feel, though, like I really understood the majority of the characters.  This book was big on places, but not so much on people.  Enjoyable overall, but not a “must read” either.

His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope

 

His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham

“Just love the hell out of everybody, it’s the better way. It’s the best way.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

I should first confess that this book was not what I thought it would be, and in that aspect I was disappointed.  I was wanting a biography of John Lewis.  I was also slightly disappointed because Jon Meacham is one of my favorite biographical authors, which meant that my hopes were high that, had this been a biography, it would be somewhat better than average.  This is not, however, a biography.  Instead, this book mainly serves as a memoir of the Civil Rights movement during the early 1960s, where future congressman John Lewis would be a major part of all the major events.

Had I known that this book would have focused more on the movement as opposed to the man, I’m not sure I would have read it. It’s not that I don’t value the history of such important events, it’s simply that I’ve read a lot about them already, and I don’t like to revisit them.  They’re simply horribly depressing.  I can’t understand how human beings can be so brutal and hateful towards other humans simply because of the color of their skin.  What makes this reading even more depressing is that much of the behavior we see distributed by these illiterate white morons seems to becoming more normal amongst the rabid followers of Donald Trump in our present day.  Anyone who stormed the capitol on January 6^th might be insulted by my comparison, but ask yourself this: Did you see ANY faces in that mob of imbeciles who weren’t white? I didn’t think so.

So back to the book.  The book does start out as somewhat of a biography.  We meet John Lewis during his youth in segregated Troy, Alabama in the early 1940s. Life was never fair for those without white skin, especially in the Jim Crow south. Yet you get the feeling that Lewis and his family were never bitter, and never let such prejudices disturb them too much.  They were solid Christians, and they believed that you don’t fight fire with fire, and the best way to be Christian was to keep the anger inside, and continuously forgive those who know not what they do.

We read about Lewis’s entrance into seminary where he eventually becomes a Baptist preacher. By the time the late 1950s arrive however, the times were definitely a-changin’.  Lewis soon meets many of the prolific black leaders of the young civil rights movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King.  Not everyone around Lewis agrees with his propensity to consistently turn the other cheek, but Lewis is better than most, and manages to keep so much of his anger on the inside.

We then essentially read about the key movements of the time.  The “forced” integration of schools, the Freedom Riders of 1961, the lunch counter protests, the Alabama church bombings, and the famous March on Washington culminating in King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.  Lewis seems to be right in the middle of every one of these events.  Sadly, also in the middle is a plethora of Southern white ignorance. From Mayors to Governors, Police Chiefs to Congressmen, the stench is everywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Again, the parallels of these idiots to modern day movements such as Qanon and the “Proud” Boys are scarily similar.  It’s so sad how many of these modern-day dolts are so ignorant of history and can’t foretell how history will remember them fifty years in the future.

So, yes, this book made me angry. And very sad as well.  Once we get a Civil Rights bill in 1964, our narrative, sadly, basically stops.  We briefly read about the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, yet the rest of Lewis’s life is essentially a brief epilogue in this book.  I really wanted more than what I got, and less than what I was given.

So if you’re aware of these things that I’m mentioning before choosing to read this book, maybe you won’t come away disappointed as I did to some extent.  Jon Meacham is a great author and he does keep the narrative flowing at a very digestible and easy to understand pace.  It was just such a sad sad time in history.  Speaking of history, one wishes that more people actually read and studied history a bit more instead of binge-watching idiot “reality” t.v. shows and viewing conspiracy videos on YouTube.  Maybe, just maybe, we would be less likely to repeat so many of our tragic hateful mistakes of the past.

St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate

 

St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate by Karen Armstrong

So a couple of things right away: After finishing this book, I never understood the title.  Who exactly “hates” the Apostle Paul?  The author never really tells us. Maybe we’re supposed to come to our own conclusions, but I still never got it.  Next thing: Karen Armstrong is not a Christian. Wikipedia says she is a “Christian Mystic” (whatever that is). I only mention this because whenever you have a non-Christian writing books about the Bible, Jesus, or the Christian church, you’re bound to ruffle some feathers.  I’m not trying to dissuade Christians from reading this, but you need to be o.k. with the fact that some of your core beliefs will not be in alignment with the author’s.

In many ways, this book is essentially the story of Paul after his Damascus conversion when he was formerly known as ‘Saul’.  Most of what we know about Paul comes explicitly from his epistles as well as what Luke tells us in the book of Acts.  Careful reading of many of Paul’s epistles is that he often begins and/or ends them by referencing key people in his ministry or that he knows well.  I’m guessing most of us really don’t know much about these individuals, and when we study these books of the Bible, we tend to barely glance at these sections before we get to the meat of the teachings.  So Dr. Armstrong is, in a way, filling in these gaps for many of us.  She’s telling her readers everything they might not know about Paul outside of his writings, and in this area she succeeds.

A lot of reoccurring themes are included here.  We read quite often that Paul was expecting that Jesus would return to Earth very soon, and to ‘prepare for the kingdom’, he wasn’t necessarily preaching repentance, but rather instructing the people how they were to live Christ-like lives.  Time and time again we read about how Paul stressed egalitarianism amongst the followers.  We also read about how he was in conflict with many of the “rival” Jewish sects who weren’t necessarily in agreement with many of his messages.  We must remember that the term “Christian” had not yet been coined. These were people who still identified as Jewish, yet they were clinging to Jesus as their messiah.

It needs to also be noted that Dr. Armstrong claims that many of the epistles that are credited as being authored by Paul, were not in fact written by him.  She states that Ephesians, Colossians, and the pastoral epistles were “added a century or so later” to add harmony with what was commonly accepted by the culture at the time.  This, Armstrong maintains, is where we get some of the more controversial writings of Paul, such as “Wives submit to your husbands….” etc.  Maybe this is why some “hate” Paul?  Not sure.

In fact, the last chapter of this book (there are only about five) talks about the effects of Paul’s ministry after he died (Armstrong claims we really don’t know HOW he died), and this chapter seemed to warrant its own book.  This is mainly where she talks about how many of the modern-day Christian beliefs about Paul, might not be 100% accurate.   I’m not sure some of the devout would be converted by these assertions, but I do wish she would have expanded more.

She also touches on styles of writing and oration of the times. One thing she maintains is that we must always take what the Bible authors tell us in context.  Just because Paul might be saying something to the Philippians in Philippi, doesn’t necessarily mean that readers thousands of years later are expected to follow the same explicit instructions.  She also talks about how speakers were expected to add a very dramatic flair to their teachings.  They simply weren’t expected to get behind a pulpit and preach.  They were expected to “put on a show” so to speak, with a lot of emotions thrown into the words.  This, she alleges, means that some of the most passionate/angry sayings that we come across weren’t necessarily intended to be quite so extraordinary when we actually read the written text.

For Christians who believe the Bible is the infallible word of God, I don’t think they should look at this book as a threat to their core beliefs.  One can walk away after reading this book without feeling that their views have been shaken or even challenged.  Again, the author is not an atheist who believes all of this was “made up”, she just tends to disagree with some of the widely held conclusions.  I really enjoyed the book as it gave me a much better perspective of who Paul was, where he came from, and what is motivations for spreading the gospel were.

I never have, nor do now, “hate” Paul.  In fact, I would love to sit next to him on a cross-country flight if such a thing were actually possible. I’m sure I would learn an awful lot.