Adam Shields

Takeaway: Only similar to the movie in the very broadest outlines.

It has been a while, but I really liked the 2006 movie version of The Children of Men with Clive Owen. I picked up the audiobook of Children of Men recently because I had read two of PD James’ mysteries and wanted to see her approach to a dystopian scifi thriller might be different. Other than the broadest outlines, the book and the movie are very different. I am not really going to compare them (because it has been too long since I have watched the movie), but I will note a few things.

The main character, Theo Faron in the book is a 50 something academic. He is the cousin of the dictator and a former informal advisor. The book is set in a dystopian UK. For an unknown reason, there have not been any children born for nearly 20 years anywhere in the world. The UK, because of its governmental system and relative wealth is broadly comfortable, but the population is aging and there is a broad hopelessness. Foreigners are uses as servants that are little better than slaves. The shrinking population (both because of natural aging and large numbers of suicides) is being moved toward population centers.

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Summary: How we tell stories matters to how we see the world.

Just a little over a year ago Dick Gregory passed away. Defining Moments in Black History was his last book. Dick Gregory was most well known as a comedian. His comedy albums in the 1960s and 1970s as well as his comedy tours and TV appearances made him nationally known. But Gregory was also a political activist. He ran for Chicago mayor against Richard J Daley in 1967. He was signficantly involved in the Civil Rights movement.

And as you hear throughout this book, he was at or participated in or knew personally many of the people or events that he is talking about.

I have no idea how to really talk about this book. Much of it is just standard recounting of the parts of history that are routinely ignored or white washed. But other parts are just crazy town conspiracy theories. I think that is part of what Gregory is known for. What is hard to talk about is that not all of the conspiracy theories he is talking about are simply theories. Plots against MLK by the FBI are not conspiracy theories. Cointelpro and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment are not conspiracy theories.

And then there are the parts that may have some validity, but are unlikely. Coretta Scott King and many others believe that there was a broader conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King Jr. From what I can tell, there is circumstantial evidence, but not definitive proof that the FBI, the Memphis Police or other government agencies played a role in MLK’s assassination. But there is enough evidence for the discussion.

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Takeaway: Well-crafted stories are a joy!

The Scroll is the fifth book in the series. Discussing the book without giving away some spoilers from earlier books is impossible. So, if you have not read the earlier books, you may want to stop and read my reviews (in order) of The Six, The Oracle, The White Thread, and The Enchanted.

Part of what I like about good fiction, and this series is a great example of good fiction, is that there is more than surface-level meaning. Real ideas are being discussed. Hoyle is a Christian, but this is not being written as “Christian fiction” in the sense of pat answers and veiled presentations of the gospel. However, Tolkien wrote Christian fiction, with well-written, complex stories that present the world well but are influenced by the Christianity of the author.

The most obvious top-level idea in the book, which is likely influenced by Christianity, is the prophecy. The Six were called Alitheia. Almost as soon as they arrived, they learned of the prophecy that they were thought to be the fulfillment of. That prophecy included the marriage of Darcy (from our world) to Tellius (then Prince, now King Alitheia). As young teens, neither Tellius nor Darcy were interested in marriage or being told who they had to marry. The Christian concept of election and God’s action in the world through prophecy has a long and complicated history. But as Darcy and Tellius are around one another over a couple of books, they realize they actually love one another. They do want to get married. And even if it was foretold, they have made the choice on their own as part of who they are.

In the first book, Darcy is tricked and captured by Tselloch, the bad guy of the series. Tselloch is from a third world, not Earth or Alitheia. He is trying to control Earth and Alitheia by building gateways between the world and gaining control. Humans can give themselves over to Tselloch and become Tsellochim. After months of torture, Darcy had decided to give herself over and touch Tselloch, but was rescued at the last second. However, in the immediate seconds before rescue, she did touch Tscelloch, and that touch, normally enough for her to have become a Tsellochim instantly, has haunted her since. Most people become Tsellochim immediately, but Darcy has spent the next four books feeling effects as the touch crawls up her arm, but not fully being given over to the change.

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Summary: “A lot of people want to skip ahead to the finish line of racial harmony. Past all this unpleasantness to a place where all wounds are healed and the past is laid to rest.” (Page 140)

Race can be difficult to talk about clearly. Many Whites are reluctant to talk about race because they do not want to accidentally say something offensive. Many minorities are reluctant to talk about race because they are tired of the conversations that do not seem to actually get anywhere. In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo steps into the gap with a primer on race discussions.

With each new book I read, I have a tendency to say, ‘this is the best so far’. This is in part a bias toward newness. But I think it is also my tendency to see where each new book I read brings something slightly different and unique to the discussion.

So You Want to Talk About Race is very straight forward. The first chapter defines race. The second chapter talks about what racism is. The third chapter talks about why we should talk about race and the fear of doing it wrong (short version, if you want a real relationship, you have to talk about real issues.) Each of the chapters cover a fairly narrow topic and build on the previous topic. Privilege, intersectionality, police brutality, affirmative action, school to prison pipeline, the ‘N’ word, cultural appropriation, hair, microaggressions, anger, the myth of the model minority, I got called a racist, etc round out the book.

There are a lot of books on race. And very few of them would not be helpful to at least someone. One of the benefits of a wide variety of books from a wide variety of authors is that they can target particular audiences and bring different perspectives to show that there is not a single perspective on race and racism.

So You Want to Talk About Race has one of the better treatments on intersectionality. There is a lot of misunderstanding about what intersectionality is. A recent blog post I read suggested that intersectionality is a competition to see who is most oppressed, the winner gets to tell everyone else that their opinions do not matter. That, of course, is a ridiculous misunderstanding of the concept.

In an overly short form, intersectionality is the concept that different types of discrimination impact people differently and they cannot be all handled the same. For instance, a woman that experiences sexism is discriminated differently from someone that is in a wheel chair. It would do no good to tell the woman that is discriminated against because of her gender that the way to solve her problem is to have more accessible workspace with more ramps and bathrooms and a good health plan. But in addition to recognizing that there are different types of discrimination, one person may be discriminated against in multiple different ways at the same time.

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Summary: Fred Rogers was the person the person you saw on tv. 

It is surprising that it has taken 15 years since his death for an actual biography of Fred Rogers to be written. At the end of the book, the author Max King, says that the family took a good bit of convincing to participate in the biography because Mr Rogers had been resistant to a biography when he was alive. Max King convinced the family of the need for a biography, not because he wanted to be the one to write it, but because he understood the importance of a good biography to legacy of Mister Rogers. Once the family was convinced of the need, they wanted King to be the author.

The Good Neighbor is Max King’s first book. he was a journalist for 30 years culminating in being the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1990 to 1998. Then he became the President of the Heinz Endowments, which helped to fund of the Mr Rogers programming. When he retired from the Heinz Endowments in 2008 he was asked to lead The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at St Vincent College where he is still a fellow. From his position at the Fred Rogers Center he was able to see the importance of Mister Rogers legacy and be in a position to write with access to both documentary evidence and people that were around Fred Rogers.

The Good Neighbor was released on the same day that the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor was released to DVD/Blu-ray home sales. I did not see the documentary in the theater, but I have now watched it three times since the digital release. Max King is one of the figures that was interviewed on the documentary. These two projects, along with the Tom Hanks feature film on Mister Rogers that is scheduled for release in 2019, coincide with the 50th anniversary of the start of Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

The Good Neighbor is traditional in biographical form. It traces Fred Rogers’ family history, his childhood, teen and college years and early TV career in a fairly straight line. Once the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood starts its main production the straight line narrative breaks down and never really fully comes back together. As I was reading I kept thinking about Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. In a somewhat similar way to Steve Jobs, Fred Rogers was so completely identified with his work that it is virtually impossible for a biographer to write without long discussions of that work. The Steve Jobs biography discussed the company and the products, the Good Neighbor discusses not just the production of the show and the structure of what became his non-profit production company, but also his work in childhood development, puppetry, the rise of PBS and many other topics that were informed by Fred Rogers but were more than just biography.

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