Book Reviews

Thursday March 24, 2005

On Paradise Drive—How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense David Brooks, Simon & Schuser, New York, 2004

David Brooks appears with Mark Shields on the PBS Jim Lehrer Evening Report. It’s my favorite news program, shall I state, the best of all the rest – Fox News, which is anything but ‘fair and balanced,’ MSNBC that caters to the sensational and of course the major commercial networks that ‘sell’ the news.

I didn’t know that Brooks is billed as a political journalist and “comic sociologist” who authors a bi-weekly Op-Ed column for the New York Times. I assume he is also a decreed sociologist, though at this writing, I’m not certain of that.

His most recent book, On Paradise Drive – How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense is really a quick but enjoyable read. (His other books are, Bobos in Paradise, The New Upper Class and How They Got There. I haven’t read any of them but I might now that I have been introduced to his wit and wisdom.

David’s basic ‘thesis’ is that our American ‘reality’ is in many respects culturally bizarre but does not deserve the censure of its severest critics.

In two hundred eighty-five pages, he scans the American sociological landscape with descriptions that range from subtle satire to hilarious lampoon. I found myself laughing out loud as I read his ‘analysis’ of the American drive for success. Rich or poor, every American strives for nobility in a global ‘village,’ which he/she deems unworthy of the American dream.

“What unites Americans? Are we as shallow as we look? What force impels us to behave as energetically as we do, to head out in pursuit as we do, to play such an active and controversial role in the world? And how does this force—how does being American —shape us?” [Introduction: The Great Dispersal]

Make no mistake about it; David is a full-blooded American who is sold on the American dream. He’s a realist but he is an American with a sense of humor who is able to appreciate the absurd even in the midst of a culture in which he has invested his life and his learning. It’s a culture he believes in and trusts.

Here’s a little taste of David’s satire from Chapter Six, “Learning.”

“In his memoir My Early Life, Winston Church wrote that ‘where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or could not learn.” But that’s not the case with today’s successful students, for they can learn – or at least get good grades – in all circumstances. They must become masters of the subtle suck-up, exhibiting sycophantic skills just this side of nauseating, without ever quite going over the line. They must apply themselves to their homework, their career-building summer jobs, and their after-school activities without ever letting their raging hormones suck them into the fits of distracting passion and madness that Mother Nature intended for these adolescent years.

“By the time they apply to college, the best of them have, to judge by their applications, founded a few companies, cured at least three formerly fatal diseases, mastered a half-dozen languages, and monitored human-rights abuses in Tibet while tutoring the locals on conflict-resolution skills and environmental awareness. Their resumes are so impressive, and the competitive standard they set is so high, that no American adult could get into the college he or she attended as a youth.”

And now for just plain good humor from Chapter Eight, “Working.”

“You see the modern workaholics coming down the airplane aisles during boarding. They’ve got hands-free wires clipped t o their shirt; they’re trying to shimmy out of their suit coat and get their carry-on bag into the overhead rack without interrupting their cell-phone conversation…. As the plane fills up, and the order to turn off the phones approaches, you can hear the tone of rising panic, like drowning people trying to get those last few gulps of life. What is it they’ll miss so much? It can’t be the substance of their conversations, because when you overhear them you realize this is not exactly dialogue on the order of Plato’s Republic. Much of the time they are just narrating their own lives: ‘Yeah, I’m boarding a plane to Atlanta. Hold on. I’m just putting my stuff in the overhead rack…’ You imagine that the person on the other end of the conversation is doing the same thing: ‘Uh-huh. I’m driving by the hardware store. I’m turning left onto Maple.” And on and on.

Well, you get the point. It’s not all fun and games. David gets serious and it’s not always easy to know when he is transitioning from satire to the serious.

David is a Republican, true blue or is it red, I can’t remember.

This is a bit of a melodrama. Guess what? America comes out the winner in the end but he does give more than a nod and some interesting fodder for those who think that the ‘empire’ has some weak points.

You’ll enjoy it. It’s a nice diversion in the midst of all the madness in the news.

When Jesus Came to Harvard—Making Moral Choices Today, Harvey Cox, Houghton Mifflin Co, Boston/New York, 2004

Harvey Cox is a prolific author whose first and most prominent book is “The Secular City” written forty years ago. He was then and remains now a ‘man of the times’ (Some people think that ‘time’ is just a magazine and the ‘times’ only a newspaper. Not so.)

His latest book, “When Jesus Came to Harvard – Making Moral Choices Today,” is a subtle but very ‘timely’ tome and for people young and old who are grappling with the mysteries of life and death but even more so, with the tragedies that face all of us in the interim between birth and death. No one escapes reality. Despite our aspirations and our sacred cows and precious plans, life is what happens when we’re planning something else.

I suppose that’s why so many people tune in to reality TV or survival shows as they are called. I don’t care for them but many people do and I can’t believe it’s just symptomatic of the not-so-subtle voyeurism that lurks beneath the surface of all ‘honest’ people. Is it possible that these shows have replaced outdated ‘hero’ stories? Hmmm. Interesting.

This book is a redaction of the rich and sometimes humorous exchanges between Harvey Cox and Harvard students extending over the twenty years that he lectured on Rabbi Jesus, the man of history whose wisdom has impacted on many people of every age and nation. Harvey engaged his students in what I would call a ‘progressive’ dialogue about the issues of the day in the light of Jesus’ teachings or rather what the Gospels have recorded about Jesus’ teachings.

But this is more than a ‘What would Jesus do?” type of dialogue. It’s not that this question is irrelevant. Rather it is a dialogue that moves beyond this question to what do we, indeed what ‘should’ we do in our time and place.

I liked the book. It’s a good read and basically, an easy read. Harvey Cox is a good man and I believe a man of deep faith. He appears to be quite secure in his faith but far from complacent. He is secure enough to confess his own doubts and honest enough to confess that he doesn’t have all the answers.

Over my twenty or so years as a pastor, I have met many ‘young’ Catholics fifty and over who have finally moved away from what I would call “Santa Claus” religion in which God is the one who blesses us with warm fuzzies when we are good and who dumps coal in our stocking when we are bad. If they need any reassurance that growing up is a good thing, this book among others will provide that reassurance.

I think Harvey states it best at the conclusion of the introduction, “The premise of this book is that despite all the sacred formulas and pious bumper stickers, and behind all the doctrines and dogmas about him, rightly understood, that Galilean still has a powerful, even imperative, moral significance for our times.”

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