Freedom, Beauty and Justice

Over the last several months I’ve read several good books. The one for which I had the highest expectations was Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Freedom. The New York Times called it a masterpiece (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/books/review/Tanenhaus-t.html). I enjoyed it. One of the things Franzen does is use characters in modern circumstances to analyze our culture and show us how hollow our lives are. And the thing I like most about his writing is that he can beautifully express nuances of life—those odd sensations and feelings that arise in small moments of intimacy, awkwardness, pleasure, etc. He is an artist of a dark sort and I’ve been thrilled by his work in the past. But I must say that this novel did not knock my socks off. His earlier, very famous novel, The Corrections, was groundbreaking. I had never read anything like it. In that book, Franzen wrote something like an expose on an era and on what it must be like to go a little insane.  I was captivated by that book and the masterful way he examined what it was like to be, well, an American idiot, as Green Day would say. The new novel works toward that. And maybe in the end he accomplishes it. In the end, (without spoiling it) there’s a resolution of sorts but it’s an uneasy resolution—very much like many of the resolutions we experience in real life. But, again, this book wasn't great. It was not nearly what the critics hailed it as. It was, like the movie The Social Network, really good but not worthy of all the critical commotion. 

The book that, in my opinion, is worthy of praise is Steve Martin’s The Object of Beauty. (The Times also gave a good review to this book http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/books/29book.html, albeit without kneeling before it like they did with Franzen’s.) Now, I admit, I've been a crazed fan of Steve Martin since he was touring college campuses in the 70’s with an arrow through his head while getting happy feet. I love the wild and crazy guy. He was a god to me during my high school years. So, I’m a bit prejudiced here. But his latest book is a perfect picture of the art world in 1990’s New York. He knows New York. He brought back the exact feelings I had when I used to live just a few blocks from many of the galleries and museums he mentioned. He captured the awful, insidiousness of greed and the way ambition can flatten you as a person. He expressed the feelings of the upper middle class who stood and watched far, far greater wealth sweep into the city as the century turned. And while the book wasn’t exactly a morality tale it did hold up a mirror to our culture and spoke more about real (and unreal) life in America than Franzen’s overreaching attempt in Freedom. And, oh yeah, it was freaking hilarious in places. To me, this is eloquence. Steve is the man. After reading these two books, I’d rather have some beauty in my life than freedom.  

But I must say that the book that has captivated me entirely is a small unassuming book by my pastor, Tim Keller, (you can get New York Magazine’s take on him here http://nymag.com/news/features/62374/) called Generous Justice. I’m sure it’s unfair of me (if I were a critic) to line up three such very different books (a work of ‘serious’ fiction, a somewhat lighthearted novel and a work of inspirational nonfiction) and make a judgment about which was best. So, I’ll not exactly say that Keller’s book is better. I’ll say that his book seems much more important and has deeper resonance.

Generous Justice challenges the reader to do good—to do the right thing. It takes a look at our world and how we really aren’t doing our job when it comes to helping people in need. It reaches down deep into our cultural mindset and into the Christian faith, the most prevalent religion in the US, and uncovers real reasons to take serious, sustained and even self-sacrificing action to help people. This is an incredibly unsexy concept and who wants to read some sort of scolding treatise? But Keller is such a compelling writer (as he is a speaker) that it doesn’t come off as scolding. It feels like inspiration. That word of course is its own cliché since it is a category in toward the back shelves of every bookstore. But this is the real thing. Of course, I am a Christian so it speaks very strongly to me. It challenges me to ask questions like what am I really about, what is the real purpose of Christianity, what is redemption and what is my role in it.

One of the most interesting and brief moments in the book is when Keller makes the case that we should not only actively help people financially and socially but we must be mindful in daily transactions that we are dealing with something of utmost importance: eternity. He quotes C.S. Lewis who essentially said that nations and cultures will all fade away but the person is something that will not—the person, the soul, is eternal. “You have never spoken to a mere mortal,” said Lewis. This quote has stayed with me. Each day I now wake up with a somewhat altered view on this life. I must allow the spirit of Christ to reign in my daily life so that instead of taking offense by every little bump and bruise I get from people, I look deeper and realize that we are all treasured, immensely valuable entities made in the image of God and each one is due great respect as such. Those bumps and bruises fade away very quickly when you come to this realization.

So, I am grateful that I came across these three books. But above Freedom I would choose Beauty and above Beauty, to my amazement, I would choose Justice.