New stories and Old Stories

Hi, readers. Although the semester is ended, I am still swamped, but luckily now I have the time to Recommend some things to you. I know you need it. I know I do too.

Today's recommendation is Susan Campbell's provocative memoir Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl. (n.b.: that's an Amazon link; good thing the FTC is persecuting bloggers instead of those poor victimized bankers).

The book describes Campbell's childhood and "relationship" with Jesus (get the title?), set against her theological interpretations of the Bible and Christianity. I found the book while waiting around for something in the campus union (where there is conveniently located a corporate-owned store that sells books and every kind of cluttery crap imaginable that can be painted with the university logo). Anyway, so I was in there and picked this up, intrigued by the title. The first chapter - a confessional account of a childhood baptism - so entranced and charmed me that I bought the book (whereas usually I spend weeks waffling and finally decide on a cheap copy online, which inevitably ends up smelling funny).

I have complicated feelings about this book, especially considering that I was not raised in any specific religious tradition, am not religious, and have no real insider knowledge of American Fundamentalism. Because of that, I find the book fascinating: it's a totally foreign world to me. Especially when Campbell describes her childhood, this is a funny, provocative read. When Campbell is telling childhood stories, she's really at her best because the description of this sub/culture is unforced and told without condescension.

However, the latter half of the book is a bit dull unless you are seriously interested in theology, in which case it's merely polemical, and, I suspect, unlikely to change hearts or minds. This is not inherently a problem - I just wish she had stuck with the trope of the Jesus "relationship" as it pertained to her childhood within a very specific culture.

Despite this, Dating Jesus is a fascinating look into a world that most of us sinful heathen book-readers will never access, and it manages to present this world in a compassionate way (more than I can do, I guess). If you're into the theology even the last part will be useful and interesting.

if life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten!

Today's recommendation is Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
. I believe this is the thinking person's book of the year.

My whole life, people have derided me for being "negative" and "pessimistic." Things that happened were dismissed as products of my "negative attitude." This ipso facto logic didn't run my life, but other people's explanation of it dominated it in a fairly upsetting way. Setbacks and tragedies were dismissed by others as mere results of my "negativity." Therefore, I was really interested in Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Bright Sided.

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America is a brilliant exploration of this new Calvinism, the entrenched and uniquely American ideology that explains bad things - like, say, cancer and job loss- away as the results of negative thinking. Ehrenreich, who holds a doctorate in cell biology, turned away from science to work in a career that helps the public; her work, in my opinion, serves this purpose.


I think this is one of the most important books you can read this year, to be honest. I'm not saying this because I'm a pessimist, I'm saying this because this is a well-researched, well-written, intelligent book that explores a unique cultural phenomenon and rationally argues about why it's so dangerous.

Ehrenreich examines several instances wherein the positive thinking fascism has caused dangerous, magical thinking. These examples range from the ridiculous and fairly tangential, like life coaches, to disturbing and upsetting, like the cancer patient online communities that ostracized Ehrenreich for her statement that she felt angry and helpless. While some of the examples seem cherry-picked and I wish she had gone into more detail with some of her more salient observations - such as the infantilizing of breast cancer patients - this book is one of the most important you can read. It expands what has become a useless dichotomy (positive vs. negative thinking) into a disturbing gradient of grays and asks not for despair, but for rational evaluation, and makes the compelling case that the culture of positive thinking has, ironically, extremely negative repercussions that affect all of us.


Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book. Obviously, this blog is becoming very popular. Also! If you want me to review and possibly recommend other things, why, I would be delighted! Email me!