As we equally enjoy a good story and good shvitz, G and I frequently combine the two--taking turns reading aloud to the other while they bathe. Such was the case two nights ago; me in the tub, he positioned on the posh dais that is the toilet with the lid closed.
We had trouble scaring up something bath-length to read. All our lit magazines were old, tired. News related periodicals were nixed since the whole point of a nice relaxing soak is to temporarily divorce yourself from the horrors of the world. And we'd worked our way through all of our short story collections during baths past, with the exception of one--The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain--which is how it came to be our selection for the evening.
I was disappointed. Not that I dislike Twain. Can you dislike Twain? Not your bag, okay, but...I guess that's my point. Twain just doesn't do it for me. I don't know if it's the trauma I suffered because of him in high school*, or that I have an aversion to folksy American yarn-spinning in general. The former I guess, considering the hours I've clocked listening to A Prairie Home Companion.
Anyway, the prospect of Twain left me sulking in my bubbles; pissed that we so carelessly whipped through all our other bath-time short-story favorites (and didn't acquire new ones). Oh for a little David Sedaris or Cintra Wilson or Lethem; the good old fashioned bath-time fun... shit, don't we have some old New Yorker's laying around at least?
G opened the book and read the titles for me to choose from. I suggested he should pick.
"Okay, let's read this one." he said, and added casually "...it's the story that made my father lose his faith."
Wha?!!
I was blown away. You have to understand the weight of those words. G's dad was no ordinary believer, he was a missionary the first half of his life, dedicated to spreading the word of God in foreign lands. An uber Christian, who, legend has it, mysteriously lost his faith and left the ministry shortly before G's conception. It took him over twenty years to reconcile with God--G's entire child and young adulthood--which is how G came to be a minister's son who has never spent a day of his life in church.
A twenty year separation from God because of a short story? Needless to say, my interest was pretty flipping piqued. I had no idea Twain was so dangerous. So punk rock. I would have paid attention had I known he was a holy muckraker! Hell yeah we're going to read that one.
We poured through the story. And although it was out of the realm of possibility for it to cause non-Christians to lose their faith, we could see how it might cause one who is grappling with their faith to question it. I'm going to send a copy to a nameless friend's mother. And every single member of the Christian Coalition. Just in case.
*trauma = having to read Huckleberry Finn aloud in a predominately African-American 10th grade English class, and having the word 'nigger' feature prominently, without fail if I recall--as if a diabolically designed sociological experiment--in whatever chapter *I* was asked to read.
i hate taking baths but i like reading to certain people while they take baths. then they bathe longer and some of the dirt actually soaks off.
i can't believe you had to read huckleberry finn aloud in school - that's a hard one to do justice to. it wouldn't have put me off mark twain; it would have put me off reading aloud altogether.
Posted by: anne at September 28, 2005 01:35 AMOkay in my book is anyone who said the following:
"Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."
wow. thanks for that - i just read the entire short story (found here: http://www.mtwain.com/The_Mysterious_Stranger/0.html)
my favorite passage - and so very current:
"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one - on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war. The pulpit will - warily and cautiously - object - at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and here is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you willsee this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers - as earlier - but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation - pulpit and all - will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
susannah:
the passage that made *my* hair stand on end. However I must admit at that point I had replaced "God" with "Christian fundamentalists" in my head. But aloud? Wow.
...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell - mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! . . .
Posted by: antigeist at September 29, 2005 06:02 PMActually that is the passage I assumed was the one that took G's pop on his little journey. How could you blindly worship that God? If you take the passage at face value and agree that those things are true, it should certainly give you cause to question your faith.
Interesting in its own other way: I'm currently reading "Wicked" - about how the witches of Oz came to be - and there is some similar rhetoric about God (or in Wicked: the Unnamed God) and good and evil. I recommend it - its vivid and fun in its own right as a good read, but has some of the same themes as the short story.
Posted by: susannah at September 30, 2005 10:48 AMGreat parallel, Susannah -- the first Iraq war was a big influence on Maguire when he wrote that book.
Twain is the best. His memoirs and letters are hilarious and he just got darker and more cynical the older he got. A Pen Warmed Up in Hell knocks my socks off every time. (Which is useful in the bath.) Back when I used to read writers as projects, I read most everything he wrote, including his sort of out of character last novel (I think) about Joan of Arc, with whom he became obsessed.
Posted by: Gwenda at September 30, 2005 11:18 AM