I finished “Underworld” by Don Delillo yesterday on our 80’s style exercise bike.  It probably took me 6 months to finish, and 3 years to pick up.  My older brother Russell gave it to me with a strong recommendation – which means a lot.

A few months ago a friend invited me to hear Delillo speak – then the friend didn’t come 🙂  So, I was in the room with a bunch of students who had to be there, a bunch of professors, and a few non-university-types who clearly love his books.  At the time I had only read White Noise, and was just getting into Underworld.  It is a long book – centered around the Cold War through the lens of a young man named Nick Shay.  The breadth of this book is amazing.  The Thomson/Branca baseball plays an important role – and eventually ends up in Shay’s hands.

I need a year to process this book.  There is significant time spent with J. Edgar Hoover, a fictional famous artist, a spray-painter in NYC, and Lenny Bruce.  I will say this – my 3 evaluation lenses for media all call this an outstanding piece of art.  1.  Is it a good Story?  Absolutely, we never lose sight of the Cold War and we never lose sight of this man trying to come to grips with his father wounds.  2.  Morals?  I think Underworld faithfully represents man’s potential for glory and for violence towards neighbor.  3.  Do people change?/How do they change?  Yes, but slowly, and a lot is necessary!

I am glad I read it.  I don’t know if I recommend it – it is very violent, occasionally very sexual, and incredibly long.  But, if none of that puts you off it is very worth the read.

Here is what I wrote down from Delillo’s lecture at SLU.

“Underworld just had to be a monster, and I followed it.”  Many great authors describe their stories as things already in existence that they simply wrote down because they had to.  Tolkien is like this.  Part of me is cynical, but I found Delillo neither proud nor humble – he is simply a writer.

“I’m not trying to be dark and pessimistic (described that way by the mediocre interviewer), I’m just writing the world as I see it.”

“I don’t worry about my audience because I cannot control what they will think.”  Said plainly, not annoyed or excited to be saying this…

Describing a novel I cannot remember, “I just put a guy in a supermarket and the rest is inexplicable.”

Asked about his characters, “What can I say?  I made them up.  Libra (about Lee Harvey Oswald – still fiction) and Underworld are about conflict.  Nick’s conflict (with his father’s image) in light of the threat of Nuclear War.”

“There is something about a historical event and its mark on a human soul that fiction can talk about and historians/journalists can’t.”  In addition to Libra and underworld, Delillo has written about 9/11 in his book “Falling Man”.

About Falling Man, “I had a picture of a man in a suit and tie, carrying a brief case, covered in dust.  This image didn’t make sense to me, it couldn’t have been his brief case.  I had another image/novel in mind and the man in dust essentially walked through that image.”

“I wanted to write a tactless novel”.  I think this way about Libra…

Thanks to Brian Janous for helping me to read White Noise (through our now defunct Book Club), and thanks to my brother for buying me Underworld.

I am becoming a regular blogger again.  Mentoring Series is over…

Sometimes I go see a movie on my day off.  Maybe once/month.  On Friday I saw Tron Legacy because I thought it looked amazing – old story, Father/Son Dynamics, amazing alternate world, Ducati motorcycles.  It was not a good movie.  I appreciated the fighting.  But, there wasn’t enough if the story and characterization are going to be that poor.

This past month one of our Sunday School classes was on Media, and while I would not attend I thought about how I was have worked through it.  Story, morals, and characterization are the things I would highlight.  They overlap, and including morals would have been humoring “Sunday School” expectations.  Said differently: is it a good story (good conflict, good redemption – or lack thereof), and how does the media deal with the question of people changing.  I would have liked more from Tron in those departments.  There is a lot of dialogue explaining things, but I didn’t get the sense that I understood what had happened in the past 28 years.  Oh well.

In the Spirit of the discussion I believe I will no longer see (in the theaters) a movie that Rotten Tomatoes scores less than 60-65.  Thoughts?  Discuss…

#19: Tom Ricks.

Tom is the lead pastor of Greentree Community Church.  GTC planted Riverside in November of 2001.  I came to work for Riverside (then Greentree Webster Groves) in December of 2002, and as the only full time staff member Tom was my supervisor.  In September of 2003 Scott Sauls was hired to lead Riverside.  The 3 of us had a conversation, and Tom encouraged me in that meeting.  He said when I feel pressured I go maverick (not Tom Cruise, but ‘alone’…  maybe he meant Tom Cruise, but I think he meant I go alone sometimes) and that that isn’t healthy.

Today I caught myself going maverick.  I thought of Tom and was thankful for his careful but incisive words.

A few years later I was really struggling with something and asked Tom’s advice.  In the midst of the conversation he said that a pastor’s role is to first care for the spiritual well being of the person in front of him – if that is not his first concern then he has a real problem.  This could easily be applied to anyone professing to know Jesus 🙂  but that is another blog post.

His advice encourages me on some days and haunts me on others.  I am excited to grow; I assume I will continue to blow it some days and not on others.  Thanks Tom.