Vince Darcangelo's Blog, page 7

Review: The Fold

The Fold

Peter Clines

Peter Clines is my new favorite author in the horror universe. His previous novel, 14, was a page-burner that flipped the haunted house tale inside-out (quite literally). For his new book, he makes origami of the space-time continuum.

The Fold begins on the last day before summer vacation. Mike Erikson is a high-school English teacher with a special talent: he never forgets anything. This is both a blessing and a curse. He’s intellectually gifted, but suffers the burden of remembering everything that has ever happened to him. At the prodding of an old friend, he audits a secretive research project in San Diego known as the Albuquerque Door.

At first, the Door — which facilitates trans-dimensional travel via a shortcut through the multiverse — is considered a breakthrough. By a simple bend in space-time (and with the help of some Victorian-era equations), the research team is able to transport objects, animals and people from one place to another.

Erikson soon detects something off with the project, though. Despite the personal rewards and social benefit that would accompany the announcement of their world-changing discovery, the scientists (who are suspicious of his investigation) keep the Door in development for years.

Oh, and there is also that seldom-discussed matter of the researcher who went through the Door, suffered a mental breakdown upon return and has been institutionalized since.

As Erikson digs deeper, he uncovers the shady history of the project and its shortcut through the multiverse. It all comes apart when a transport goes badly. The Door opens a pathway through a nightmare dimension that could destroy all others if they can’t get it shut.

That’s when this dice-roll with the universe becomes a Frankensteinian fable.

Clines is a master at developing quirky heroes in slanted realities. He doesn’t rely on gore, violence or trauma to create a sense of unease. He terrorizes with subtlety, pointing out the off-kilter among the mundane and letting it gnaw at the reader’s mind.

There is horror that sucks you down the rabbit hole through a trap door. Not Clines. He takes you there via quicksand. The dude is merciless.

The Fold incorporates many genres, from detective fiction and literary horror, to science fiction and Lovecraftian terror. Clines’ prose sweeps you through the chapters, breathing in and out of the tension without ever losing the narrative pace. I could have easily read this in one sitting, and just may have if my plane hadn’t landed in Reykjavik before I reached the end.

Though easily one of my favorite books of the year so far, The Fold does have some flaws. Erikson, on the whole, is an engaging and likeable protagonist, and for the first 200 pages or so is entirely believable. However, as we approach the climax he becomes too powerful and loses his vulnerability. It’s easy to root for the humble, nerdy English instructor. Not as much when he’s able to score women outside his area code and fend off other-worldly monsters more skillfully than the Marines.

Despite these stretches of the imagination, The Fold, is a smart thriller that uses quantum physics as a launchpad for terror. Like Lovecraft, Clines knows that the greatest threat is not the one that seeks you, but the one you stumble upon, that stares back at you when you gaze too long into the abyss.

In any dimension, the greatest threat to mankind is, well, mankind. The greatest horrors are those of our own making.

Understanding this is what makes Clines one of the best horror writers of the moment — and makes The Fold a must-read summer thriller.

Review: The Euthanist

The Euthanist

Alex Dolan

In one of the most promising debuts since Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects and Alice Blanchard’s Darkness Peering, The Euthanist strikes like a suckerpunch and never lets up. Seriously, this book is freakin’ relentless.

On most days, Pamela Wonnacott is a kind-hearted firefighter and EMT with a troubled past, but as Kali, she provides a different kind of public service as an end-of-life caregiver. She is attending to Leland, a terminal patient who has requested assisted euthanasia, but in the first of many twists, Leland turns out to be an undercover agent.

The opening chapter of The Euthanist left me breathless, only to be one-upped by chapter two. The pacing is spry and the narration is delightfully disorienting in the manner unique to first-person POV. There is nobody Kali can trust, and even her allies turn on her when she unwittingly brings the FBI to their door.

Dolan manages all of this well, avoiding the usual traps of first-person narration (he keeps Kali disoriented, but not clueless) and managing his twists and reveals organically. Most impressively, he doesn’t manufacture a ridiculous romantic angle or give us a cavity with overwrought sentimentality.

On the whole, this is masterful storytelling that lets the characters, and not convention, dictate their actions. There is only one scene that feels over the top, in which Kali’s costume serves a theatrical purpose rather than a practical one. Beyond that, the characters and their motivations are authentic, and the tension in this novel is intoxicating.

As Kali says, “Fear isn’t pain, but it is the expectation of it.” Except with Kali, Chekhov’s gun is replaced with a syringe.

The Euthanist is particularly relevant as right-to-die issues have gone from hushed whispers to appropriate dinner conversation. Dolan doesn’t beat us over the head with social commentary, but allows the conversation to play out between Kali and Leland.

This is an exciting debut, and I look forward to more of Alex Dolan’s writing.

Review: The Jefferson Rule

The Jefferson Rule: Why We Think the Founding Fathers Have all the Answers

David Sehat

Cue the broken record. From now until November of next year, we’re going to hear a lot about the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and its authors’ intentions. You can be sure that Thomas Jefferson will be cited a time or two million. But be they coming from the right or the left, the middle or the fringe, all appeals to Revolutionary politics will have two things in common: they will be accurate and they will contradict each other.

The notion of the Founding Fathers as a single intellectual entity is post hoc myth-making, according to historian David Sehat. Though we have attached a unified set of principles onto the architects of our government, Sehat writes, “The founding era was, in reality, one of the most partisan periods of American history.”

In fact, it would be quite recognizable to the cable news generation. The Constitution was not a consensus of guiding principles, but rather a compromise, much like today’s Congress in which legislation that does manage to get passed is mutilated beyond recognition.

Likewise, there was dispute over the intention of the Constitution before the ink had dried on Rufus King’s signature.

“The Founders had agreed on the wording but did not necessarily agree on what it meant or even its purpose,” Sehat writes.

This was evidenced by the feud between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, the former believing its intent was to limit federal power, the latter believing it emboldened a national government.

Jefferson won that battle, and with his presidential victory, “he rhetorically turned the founding era into one of political purity that he himself had channeled.” (Ironically, Jefferson eventually incorporated many of Hamilton’s ideas, and his Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the country, was viewed by many at the time as unconstitutional.)

Though the myth was complete, the debate was not. The struggle between states’ rights and federal power festered until it went septic in the antebellum era.

The slavery issue was the litmus test for the Constitution. The Dred Scott ruling confirmed that the protections of the Constitution did not extend to slaves, who were considered property. A constructionist reading of the document would render the federal government powerless to intervene on slavery, and in addition to advocating for states’ rights, Jefferson himself had owned slaves, creating a challenge for Lincoln in his debates with Stephen Douglas.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Sehat writes, the litmus test was failed. “Constitutions are supposed to keep citizens from killing one another,” he writes. “But Americans killed Americans on a spectacular scale in the Civil War. And the Founders had left little guidance on what to do about it.”

The framers lost relevance for a time after the war, but like a pop group that invents a revolutionary sound, then falls out of favor, the Founding Fathers made a comeback in the 20th century. They have since become sacred cows — they are referenced on the campaign trail and their words wielded as weapons, but they are never questioned.

That’s an issue worth raising, Sehat writes. “Because the Founders do not offer a stable reference to make sense of the present, their presence in American political debate has long been problematic.”

The Jefferson Rule is a stellar work of historical research and narrative storytelling. Sehat’s prose flows with an uncommon ease, at times reminiscent of Nathaniel Philbrick. But he also digs into the philosophical ramifications of his subject. It’s not simply a revisitation of historical events, but a work that drops us into the Revolutionary era to see that the Founding Fathers were not a like-minded council of sages with all the answers.

The words of the Constitution were not etched on stone tablets from on high, but rather drafted by a group of headstrong men who clashed with one another, varied greatly in their viewpoints and were capable of the same grandstanding, short-sightedness and pettiness as today’s politicians.

This book brought to mind the timeless essay by Stephen Jay Gould, “The Creation Myths of Cooperstown,” which studies the psychological need for origin stories. It’s an issue worth exploring, both in Gould’s classic essay and in Sehat’s book.

If you’re at all interested in political debate or American history, The Jefferson Rule is required reading.

Review: American Hysteria

American Hysteria: The Untold Story of Mass Political Extremism in the United States

Andrew Burt

For most, Jade Helm 15 may sound like the newest MMORPG, but for Chuck Norris, recipient of many kicks to the head, the upcoming military training exercise is something straight out of Gray State (in other words, B-grade survivalist porn).

“It is neither over-reactionary nor conspiratorial to call into question or ask for transparency about Jade Helm 15 or any other government activity,” Norris wrote in an op-ed for WND.

Sadly, it’s not just over-the-hill actors. Some politicians have been swept up in the paranoia as well. It’s disappointing, but not surprising. As Andrew Burt writes in his new book, American Hysteria: The Untold Story of Mass Political Extremism in the United States:

“Every few decades, a striking political phenomenon emerges, based upon the fear that a secret network has infiltrated American society and threatens destruction from the inside. Even more fascinating is the fact that this type of movement is not relegated to the fringes of the political arena — it routinely takes center stage.”

While there are plenty of examples to choose from, Burt focuses on five less-than-dignified instances of American witch hunts: the anti-illuminati and anti-mason movements from the country’s earliest days to 20th century’s Red Scare and its bastard sequel, McCarthyism, and finishing with the anti-Islam sentiment of the modern day (specifically, the anti-Sharia movement).

In this excellent study, Burt seeks the common ground between these manias. What he finds, not surprisingly, is that “hysteria arises at times of profound change in America’s national identity,” predictably when a fading social group is losing its leverage. They perceive an outside threat that has penetrated the establishment.

Jade Helm 15 is a perfect example. Since the Civil Rights movement, a culture war has been festering, particularly among aging white men threatened by new demographics and the embrace of multiculturalism.

This war went nuclear when Americans elected a black president who was acquainted with Islam. The enemy wasn’t at the gates — it was inside the White House!

So, despite the fact that routine military exercises have been occurring in Texas for years, under the direction of a black commander-in-chief, ostensibly sane politicians are buying into Norris’ nonsense.

This, Burt writes, is what separates hysteria from extremism. Extremism is always present, but generally marginalized. Political and cultural battles can be contentious, but they typically occur within an agreed-upon scope of reality.

The time to get nervous is when legitimate mainstream figures get caught up in the crazy (e.g. a viable presidential candidate believing that Obama and the CIA are plotting a takeover of Texas and Utah).

In other words: It’s time to get nervous.

But back to Burt. There is no knocking his narrative and reporting skills. American Hysteria is well-researched and -written, and I hope to see more from him in the future. He has written for such outlets as U.S. News & World Report, the Atlantic, Slate and Politico, but this is his first book-length work. My only knock on this book is the overlap between some of the episodes (e.g. the Illuminati and the Masons, the Red Scare and McCarthyism). I would love to see Burt take on other manias, such as the Satanic Panic, perhaps in later books.

After giving us the history of hysteria, Burt goes one further and offers us tips in handling the manias that haven’t happened yet. “The first rule of hand in approaching movements of hysteria is thus to accept them for what they are, rather than dismissing them outright, as is so often the temptation.”

As much as I am amused by Norris’ rants, it would be wrong to dismiss his views out of hand — not because there is any substance to his op-ed, but because there is something important to be learned from the subtext.

“Hysteria, after all, is about exclusion — it is the story of groups of men and women, like McCarthy and his supporters, confronting profound changes within American society and then excluding other groups as a result.”

To prevent the next Red Scare, we’ve got to recognize it in its infancy, understand the true interests of its followers and confront the unreasonable with reason.

It may work, it may not. The upshot of those times when it doesn’t work is that it makes for colorful history — a history skillfully explored by Burt in this must-read book. I can’t think of anything more patriotic than reading this book in time for July 4, to learn from our missteps to avoid repeating them again and again.

Review: “No One Helped”

“No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy

Marcia M. Gallo

From an early age, I longed for the big city life. Growing up in a sleepy township that didn’t even have sidewalks will do that to a kid. To dissuade me from fleeing the Rust Belt for bright lights and tall buildings, my parents served up the tale of Kitty Genovese, the New York woman who, in 1964, was famously murdered on a Long Island street while everyone just stood back and watched her die.

It terrified me. In my mind, I envisioned a crowded street, broad daylight, pedestrians having to sidestep this dying stranger as she pleaded with them for help.

It wasn’t difficult to imagine. Though not the best time for New York City, the 1970s and early ’80s was a fruitful period for dystopian cinema set in the metropolis. My impression of the city was shaped entirely by Escape from New York and Fort Apache, the Bronx.

Though the story of a woman left to die on the sidewalk stayed with me, I never actually learned her name until college, when we studied the case in psychology class. Many psychology classes, actually. At the time, the prevailing narrative was still treated as gospel: 38 neighbors watched and did nothing as Winston Moseley assaulted Genovese, left, assaulted her a second time, left, and came back a third time to finish the job.

It’s hard to fathom how this could happen, and of course, it didn’t. At least, not the way it was reported in 1964, and certainly not the way it had been mythologized by the time it reached my ears as a cautionary tale. A more accurate telling was done by Kevin Cook in 2014’s Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime that Changed America.

The focus of Marcia M. Gallo’s “No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy is not so much on the murder as the social incubator in which the narrative of urban apathy was spawned and evolved — and how, by focusing on the witnesses rather than the victim or perpetrator, Genovese “had been flattened out, whitewashed, re-created as an ideal victim in service to the construction of a powerful parable of apathy.”

The biggest omission from Genovese’s story, writes Gallo, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is that she was a lesbian. Being young, pretty and white made her the perfect media martyr, so details of her romantic preference would have been inconvenient to the “ideal victim” narrative in 1964. As the story of her murder took on a life of its own, she became a nameless victim of urban decay — more of a plot device than a character in her own horror show.

“No One Helped” is on the shorter side, but Gallo deftly packs in a lot of information — and unpacks five decades of history. The chapters are like linked short stories, exploring in turn the history of Kew Gardens and the racial tensions of the time, the changing media landscape and the marketability of an erroneous New York Times article that fumbled the facts but resonated with “white flight” suburbanites.

As for Genovese, Gallo writes, the article “rhetorically reduced her to the chalk outline left on the sidewalk at a crime scene after a body has been removed.”

About those 38 witnesses? Only four were actually called to testify at the trial, and even fewer were aware that Genovese had been stabbed. The Times failed to mention the fact that Moseley’s initial assault was interrupted by a neighbor’s intervention, and his second assault took place in a darkened back hallway beyond the vantage point of any neighbors.

Gallo writes, “In all of the accounts that have followed in the story’s wake, what has rarely been noted is that there is only one actual eyewitness to Genovese’s death. That person is her killer, Winston Moseley.”

In reclaiming Genovese’s identity, Gallo reveals her personal connection to the case. She does so in a tasteful, informative manner, steering clear of navel gazing and drawing attention instead to the resonating significance of the story.

For all the horror of the Genovese murder, and its aftermath, it also gave birth to the 911 emergency response system and community policing efforts. It furthered the movement to reexamine our societal acceptance of intimate partner violence (some witnesses had dismissed the assault as a “lover’s quarrel”).

And it exposed racial bias in crime reporting. Just two weeks earlier, Moseley had assaulted another woman, murdered her and set her on fire. “Significantly, no photographs of Moseley’s earlier victim, Anna Mae Johnson, a young black woman, ever appeared. Within weeks she would fade from most popular versions of the story, as would her killer,” the author writes.

Most of all, for Gallo, the legacy of the Genovese murder still matters “because it raises the central question of how we engage with those around us, individually and collectively, when they need our help.”

Digging beyond the murder and the myth, Gallo has penned a remarkable portrait of Genovese and her enduring legacy a half-century later. Her murder inspired an entire branch of psychology, but perhaps her lasting impact on social science will be the study of media myth-making. No matter the fables and fallacies that have emerged, the impact of Genovese has endured.

I’ve been on the Long Island Railroad, and at the Kew Gardens stop, it’s impossible not to look down at the nondescript parking lot and the neighboring houses, all crammed together, and wonder how this could have happened.

After 50 years, we know it happened differently than we’ve believed, but the true story of the assault is still as brutal and horrifying, if different, than we imagined. Gallo succeeds in redirecting our attention from the “witnesses” to the victim, who became a footnote to the fable. “No One Helped” restores the individual who existed before the chalk outline.

Recommended Reads: Rich People’s Movements

Isaac William Martin

Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent

Though originally published in 2013, tax season is the perfect time to reissue this compelling look at the anti-tax movement in America, as documented by a sociologist specializing in public policy and social protest. Rich People’s Movements begins with the Tea Party protests of 2010 and traces the history of anti-tax sentiment back to the Sixteenth Amendment. More than mere history, this book examines the ways the affluent borrowed the tactics of the poor and powerless, who, without the ability to confront power with money and influence, took to the streets to make their voices heard.

Why would those with power and influence rely on a protest movement? Martin answers this question and many more, such as why the working poor will sometimes rally to the defense of the 1 percent and their economic policies.

Also available is Martin’s new book, Foreclosed America, co-authored with Christopher Niedt. This is a collection of portraits of Americans who have lost their homes to foreclosure since 2007 — and a look at the housing crisis that still affects our economy and way of life.

Review: Get in Trouble

Kelly Link

Get in Trouble

Ordering the TOC of a short story collection is as much an art as creating the perfect mix tape. A well-crafted opener not only immerses the reader in its singular world and characters, but sets the tone for the remainder of the book and (please forgive the MFA speak) instructs the reader how to manage the text.

One of the finest examples I’ve read is “The Summer People,” which opens this new collection from the brilliant Kelly Link.

In this darkly beautiful fable a troubled teenager, Fran, is abandoned by her derelict, single father. Despite having the flu, Fran is tasked with caring for “The Summer People” on her own. Let’s just say that these are not the usual demanding bnb folks, and their manner of expressing their displeasure is far more sinister than writing a negative review on TripAdvisor.

What makes Fran so compelling is the way she calmly navigates between the grim earthly realm and the fantastical one that is equally familiar to her. Like many teenagers, she is suffocated by her small-town bubble and difficult home life, yet also has the mental elasticity to take the magical in stride.

In short, she is overwhelmed by her father’s alcoholism and religious fugues, yet unfazed by houseguests from the spiritual realm.

And so it goes through all the tales in Get in Trouble. All is possible and plausible in Link’s slipstream world, in which awkward teenagers are thrown to the wolves. These stories are reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, not necessarily in style, but in tone. It’s a celebration of youth, imagination and nostalgia for an age when anything was possible.

“The Summer People” reminds me why I love short stories in the first place.

Next up is “I Can See Right Through You,” a weird and hilarious romp through fame, celebrity and heartbreak. Two past-their-prime actors, who were formerly on- and off-screen lovers, have descended to the depths of shameless quasi-fame: she a television “ghost hunter” and he the star of a leaked sex tape. They cross paths at a “haunted” nudist camp (which sounds like Heart of Darkness reimagined by Chuck Palahniuk), and despite the bizarre premise, the ending is absolutely beautiful.

As are all the stories in this collection, a world of lonely, precocious youth and unlikely superheroes (and the occasional dentist) that blurs the magical with the mundane.

Link is an author who has long teetered on the brink of superstardom, cultivating a diehard following with her first three story collections. Get in Trouble, her fourth offering, should bring her the widespread literary acclaim she deserves.

Review: Words Onscreen

Words Onscreen

Naomi S. Baron

On Feb. 6, I waited in the cold for 7.5 hours to meet author Neil Gaiman at Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins, Colo. An estimated 2,000 fans braved the elements to have the author of The Sandman graphic novels, Coraline and American Gods autograph his new hardcover collection, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances.

Despite the wait (and the fact that I was terribly under-dressed), everyone was jovial, and it felt more like a bibliophile block party than a reception line. Any weariness I may have felt was quickly (and repeatedly) dismissed with an idealistic sentiment voiced by many in attendance, “Isn’t it great to see this many people waiting in line for a book?”

Indeed, it was this very love of books that compelled me to read Naomi S. Baron’s Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World, an impressive work of scholarship and social commentary by this professor of linguistics at American University.

One of Baron’s professed interests is “electronically mediated communication,” and Words Onscreen combines research, anecdote and history to explore the differences between the printed and digitized word. This isn’t a trend piece, but a wide-reaching study on reading, beginning with the inquiry that “if eReading is less well suited for many longer works or even for short ones requiring serious thought, what happens to reading if we shift from print to screens?”

Baron takes us to some expected places (studies on digital vs. print reading habits; the effect technology has on our brains; the digital democratization of information; emerging social norms for electronic devices) and some unexpected ones (the history of anthologies and abridged editions; the slow reading movement; the impact of the scroll bar on reading habits).

Scrolling and reading, if you’re curious, leads to “worse comprehension” of content.

Though Baron’s scope is wide, she never loses sight of her target. She successfully threads each narrative sojourn into the conversation of how we engage with text. One of her deeper philosophical meanderings concerns the definition of reading itself. Is the act of reading simply scanning our eyes across the page? What about those passages whose complexity or sheer beauty cause the reader to set down the book and meditate on those words? What about re-reading? Studies show that pausing while reading and re-reading leads to better comprehension of the material (not surprisingly).

Research is important, as it informs best practices for teaching and learning, but Baron admits the difficulties with measuring reading comprehension. Mere content recall provides only plot summary, and deep understanding takes both time and contemplation. Take, for instance, Gogol’s classic novel, Dead Souls.

“Some of the benefits of literature come from discussions with others or personal reflection at quiet moments. Payoffs may not surface until years later when, having lived and experienced more, we discover the relevance of Gogol’s world to ours. Try measuring that.”

Indeed.

Like many academic books (as opposed to general nonfiction), Baron tends to over-support some of her conclusions, citing studies with overlapping information, but that’s to be expected. The author has many insightful things to say throughout the book, but there’s not much in the conclusion that would be news to an academic audience.

For this, I don’t blame the author, but reality. There’s no closing the barn door on the Kindle or Nook (on which I read my digital galley of Words Onscreen), and it’s hard to predict the direction of accelerated technology. Also, there are many positives to digital reading to weigh against the negative, from minor conveniences (not having to carry five books on an international flight) to those of great importance (the facilitation of increased global literacy).

Baron instead advises instructors and avid readers on how to navigate the digital-print hybrid. Her criticisms of e-reading are fair and supported by research, and her tone is never melancholic or luddite. The ultimate takeaway from Words Onscreen is that the content matters more than the container, although Baron also makes a compelling argument for the container as totem.

For the roughly 2,000 bibliophiles in line with me at the Neil Gaiman signing, the container was still something of value: a beautifully printed and bound edition with a personalized signature in permanent ink.

As Baron points out, it’s not just the text on the pages that matter. We fall in love with the smell of books, the crispness of the paper, unique typefaces that digital readers can’t reproduce. We can underline, highlight, write in the margins. Some keep their books in pristine condition, while others dog-ear, fold and break-in a book like they would a new baseball glove. Their utility extends beyond the reading. Bookshelves provide memories for the reader, a conversation spark for guests and ready access to favorite works.

There is something lost in the translation from print to digital.

For me, it calls to mind Harlow’s monkeys. If all they needed was food, then the monkeys wouldn’t object to curling up with a wire mother. Except, they needed the nurturing touch of the cloth mother. For the same reason, meal replacement shakes or futuristic food pills will never take the place of an actual dinner, because eating is not just about the absorption of nutrients.

With technology advancing at a bullet’s pace, who knows what will come of books in the future. It’s clear from Baron’s research that the format of what we read affects how we read, but it’s hard to predict where that will take us.

Wherever we end up, Words Onscreen should serve as an important guidebook. It’s a wonderful and important book, no matter how you read it.

Review: The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

Irvine Welsh

Longtime fans will not instantly recognize the author in this new work. Rather than the gray-skied schemes of Scotland, the drama unfolds in sun-kissed Miami, and missing is the phonetic text and colorful British slang.

Not absent, however, are the troubled characters, existential peril and sharp-tongued satire expected from the author of Trainspotting.

In his brilliant new book, Welsh entangles the lives of a body-obsessed fitness instructor, an overweight artist and a child-abuse victim bent on his pound of flesh. The three meet on a bridge, when Lucy, seeing a gunman chasing after two homeless men, intercedes to stop the attack. All of this is caught on tape by Lena, who becomes obsessed with the feisty trainer.

Lucy, of course, becomes an instant celebrity, and entertains visions of her own television show and fitness empire. Until it is learned that the men she saved were sexual predators.

Though functioning as satire of social networking, media voyeurism and the fickleness of fame, Sex Lives becomes the story of Lucy and Lena’s budding and devolving codependent and abusive relationship. We are taken for more than a few dark turns by an author famous for dark turns.

I’m a longtime fan of Welsh’s work, but I have to admit that I’ve found his newer books hit and miss. Recent novels have entertained, but lacked the gut-punch of Marabou Stork Nightmares, Filth and Glue. The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins is different from his other novels, but reveals a skilled author straining the old vinegar and aiming it at fresh targets.

Flawed Apologies

Questioning the Bible: 11 Major Challenges to the Bible’s Authority, Jonathan Morrow

Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God, Paul Copan and Matt Flanagan

Every theological discussion between believers and nonbelievers eventually comes to the same impasse: The point at which all arguments and evidence have been exhausted and one must render a verdict. Here, the believers appeal to faith, while the nonbelievers draw conclusions based on the empirical evidence.

If there’s a bridge between these banks, I’ve yet to find it.

But I’m hopeful, and I recently read two apologetics in pursuit of fresh insights and new perspectives. This is what I found.

Jonathan Morrow—a Christian author and founder of the nonprofit Think Christianly—functions as something of a biblical ombudsman in his new book, Questioning the Bible. This is an admittedly ambitious task, and at the top, I’d like to commend Morrow on the effort. His narrative is earnest and thoughtful, even if his arguments are flawed, and whatever your preconceived notions, you will find something challenging in this book.

In particular, I appreciate the spirit of open-mindedness in the early-going.

“Real Christians aren’t supposed to doubt, are they? Unfortunately this is a common misunderstanding in many churches, and tragically many young Christians are growing up without a safe place to ask the tough questions and wrestle with their doubts.”

Morrow’s plan is to meet doubt on its own terms, and defend the Bible through logic rather than faith. It’s a bold plan.

Unfortunately, the execution is weak.

The first flaw is that Morrow uses the Bible as source material to confirm the legitimacy of, well, the Bible. This is circular logic, despite the author’s denials.

“In summary, if you can get Moses, Jesus, and Paul saying essentially the same thing, then I think you can consider this question settled: biblical faith is not opposed to reason and evidence.”

Well, it was already understood that Moses, Jesus and Paul were pretty much playing for the same team. The corroboration of their testimony is to be expected.

Morrow undermines his arguments with glaring contradictions. One of the biggest concerns the writing of the Gospels. Scholars date their writing to somewhere between the 60s and the 90s—three decades or more following the crucifixion of Jesus—and Christian scholars generally assign a timeline beginning in the 50s. Either way, why the delay? The significance of this time gap is that, considering the unreliability of memory and eyewitness accounts, it calls into question whether we can treat the Gospels as historical fact.

Morrow handles this fairly well at first: “Remember that this was an oral culture and most people in the ancient world could not read.”

OK, that makes sense. For emphasis, Morrow writes, “We have established what the earliest Christians believed about Jesus. But why think any of this should be written down and collected in a predominantly oral culture and have the title ‘scripture’ attached to it?”

In the very next chapter, only 10 pages later, in fact, this changes. Morrow argues that we can trust the validity of biblical documents because (emphasis in the original text) “the earliest Christians understood that covenants in the ancient world were written documents and believed Jesus the Messiah had inaugurated the New Covenant.”

(Insert sound of needle scratching across record.)

Wait, what?

Morrow writes, “…it would be only natural and even expected that the apostles write down the New Covenant teachings from God through Jesus the Messiah. The Hebrew Scriptures reveal many examples of God’s revealed redemptive activity needing to be written down for future generations to learn from or be reminded of.”

One would think a question or two about the savior’s murder and resurrection might be on the test, and per Jewish tradition, it was expected that Christ’s followers would have etched it in papyrus.

So why didn’t the apostles take notes? Why was it left to others to write the New Testament? Morrow fails to acknowledge these obvious questions and doesn’t seem to recognize (or think his target audience will notice) the contradiction.

To summarize: In response to challenges that the Gospels are unreliable because they were written years after the events they describe and were not written by the people who were there, Morrow’s defense is that it was an oral culture: “…why think any of this should be written down… and have the title ‘scripture’ attached to it?”

Then, in arguing for the Gospels’ authority, he writes that Christ’s followers would have “expected” the apostles to write it all down, as was standard operating procedure with covenants.

Yet the apostles didn’t do this.

Morrow’s argument is limping at this point, and he stumbles into the standard pitfalls of the Cosmological Argument and Intelligent Design. Morrow claims there is “significant scientific evidence that undermines the plausibility of Darwinian evolution and points toward Intelligent Design”—yet doesn’t cite any of this “significant scientific evidence.”

Up to this point, Morrow has given us an interesting book—flawed, certainly, but interesting—and in the grand scheme is harmless. I would have given Questioning the Bible a more positive review had he maintained this tone.

Then in a chapter titled “Is the Bible Sexist, Racist, Homophobic, and Genocidal?”, Morrow takes the offensive—emphasis on offensive—in defense of the Bible’s most indefensible passages.

First up: the Bible’s approval of slave-keeping. In a shocking bit of spin-doctoring, Morrow states that “Christianity did not invent slavery,” and, well, everybody else was doing it. Then he attempts to qualify the different varieties of bondage: “The two biggest causes of slavery in the ancient world were war and poverty, not skin color.”

I did a spit-take when I read that. Slavery comes in many forms (race-based slave trading, sex trafficking, exploitation of migrant workers, etc.), but the end result is the same: It’s forcing another person to labor against their will for your benefit. Whatever the motivation of the oppressor (racial or not), Morrow can’t sugar-coat the Bible’s endorsement of the ownership and forced labor of another human being.

Unless Christianity had a good reason to tolerate slavery? “The immediate abolition of slavery would have created serious cultural problems,” Morrow writes. Sure, but then he audaciously quotes John Mark Reynolds—an academic officer at Houston Baptist University—that abolishing slavery “could have been a worse evil” than slavery itself.

Uh, anyone else getting uncomfortable?

So twisted is Morrow’s utilitarian logic that slavery becomes a vehicle of economic and social benefit, in which the most impoverished of God’s creations “typically became slaves to provide sustenance,” much like the poor in modern America: “If we haven’t solved poverty in the most prosperous country the world has ever seen, then how much more challenging would war and poverty be in a severely under-resourced community.”

True, but we’re not talking about the existence of poverty or the relationship of poverty and exploitation. We’re discussing the Bible’s green light on slavery.

“Jesus came to set captives free, restore, heal and transform—that is the good news of the kingdom of God,” Morrow writes.

Yet, slavery continued.

If that’s the good news, I’ve got some better news: The Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

That sentence accomplished what apparently Jesus couldn’t or wouldn’t do.

For biblical contrast, try Ephesians 6:5: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”

Back to the Constitution. Morrow claims that “Atheism did not lay the groundwork for inherent human dignity and equality; it borrows that from a Judeo-Christian worldview. If you remove God from the equation, you also remove inherent human dignity and equality.”

Yet, it was a secular document that actually freed American slaves—and their liberation didn’t result in the “evil” societal collapse Reynolds warned us of. (I do, however, want to be clear in separating Reynolds’ comments from Morrow’s beliefs. I certainly don’t think Morrow prefers slavery to abolition, but rather that he’s made a poor choice in selecting sources to make his point.)

Next, Morrow takes on genocide, particularly Deuteronomy 20:16-18 (in which God advises his followers to “save alive nothing that breathes” and completely destroy the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites).

Once again, Morrow utilizes semantic chicanery. First, he gives God a pass, since it was an isolated event that was “unique, geographically and temporally limited, and not to be repeated.” He argues that Canaanites, practitioners of idolatry, had it coming, since “God had given them 430 years to change their ways.”

Then, Morrow, as he tried with slavery, attempts to change the definition of genocide: “While Israel carried out this judgment against a specific people… their actions were not motivated by racial superiority or hatred. Therefore the language of ethnic cleansing and genocide is inaccurate. Idolatry, not ethnicity, is the issue here.”

Dude, that’s still genocide, which Merriam-Webster defines as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” How exactly does killing all the Canaanites not qualify? By blaming it on idolatry?

Finally, in an act of desperation, Morrow attempts to rationalize or reinterpret God’s instructions by claiming that “rather than the total destruction of everything that breathes, the main targets were the key military centers.” He theorizes that most of the women and children in the city probably escaped unharmed.

This rose-colored revisionism—suggesting that God’s commandment to “save alive nothing that breathes” didn’t include women and children—undermines Morrow’s claims elsewhere in the book that the Bible is inerrant.

Or is it only inerrant when it’s convenient?

For some reason, biblical literalism does apply when it comes to homosexuality. Morrow takes the view that being gay isn’t the worst sin—it’s just a sin, and hey, we’re all sinners. (How generous of the author to grant that gay people aren’t as bad as suicide bombers.) Better yet, “there are plenty of people who have struggled with and overcome same-sex attraction. And as long as at least one has ‘changed’ then change is at least possible for those who struggle with same-sex attraction.”

Morrow writes, “They have hope” in the form of honoring God through celibacy or heterosexual marriage, if not outright change.

Gee, that is good news! I’ll be sure to pass on to all of my sinful gay friends that Morrow has gifted them with a bright future of celibacy and sham marriages!

Next we come to the sexist parts of the Bible. How does Morrow justify these? I won’t waste any ammo on this one. Morrow has enough bullets to shoot himself in the foot once again.

I’ll grant him this: I respect Morrow’s bravery in attempting to defend the Bible’s most unsavory parts. It’s not easy, and he doesn’t shrink from the challenge. But his semantic maneuvering is inadequate to convince any rational reader.

I love philosophy and religious discussion, and at times, Morrow proves himself capable of both. He begins the book with an open, inquisitive and welcoming voice, but as his arguments unravel, his thinking becomes less logical and his tone more troubled and intolerant.

I don’t believe that Morrow is ill-natured or ill-intended, but that he overreaches in his attempt to defend everything in the Bible with logic. It’s an ambitious effort, but one that, not surprisingly, fails in its mission.

Likewise, apologists Paul Copan and Matt Flanagan fail to offer fresh insights on biblical interpretation in Did God Command Genocide?. Their task seems less daunting than Morrow’s, as they are only addressing the passages concerning genocide rather than the entire book.

But where Morrow embarks on an earnest intellectual inquiry, Copan and Flanagan have clearly put their conclusions ahead of their questions. The result is a scriptural shell game attempting to exonerate the almighty from the more unseemly bits of his book.

Again, we’re dealing with God’s directive to “completely destroy” those pesky Canaanites. In their attempt to gloss over this troubling fact, Copan and Flanagan turn to WIlliam Lane Craig’s argument of appropriation, which suggests that God does not necessarily endorse everything that’s in the Bible. “That is, God is not always affirming what the human author affirms.”

Sooo, which parts of the Bible are legit and which are “jk”?

The authors come to curious conclusions, but their flawed arguments reveal it to be wish fulfillment rather than critical thinking. Like Morrow, it can be summarized as the Bible is the word of God when denouncing homosexuality, but human interpretation when ordering the deaths of women and children.

When God’s words are inconvenient, Copan and Flanagan argue that there is a “textual God,” and that his words “have nothing to do with God’s character, who is nonviolent and loving.” But our basis for understanding that God is “nonviolent and loving” is from God’s words, certainly not from his alleged creations. Why is it that we are to believe God’s claims in some places but not others? And how do Copan and Flanagan know which is which?

Of course, they’ll argue that the answer is in this book, but nothing in its pages would stand up to academic scrutiny.

The authors even admit that biblical texts have been misused for ill purposes. My question to the authors: How could a perfect being provide imperfect or incoherent instructions? And if there were misunderstandings resulting in violence and oppression, wouldn’t a “nonviolent and loving” being want to clarify what they meant?

In defending their position, Copan and Flanagan fling about every argument they can think of, hoping something will stick. They argue that God didn’t command us to “slaughter” the Canaanites, only Joshua. And it’s not as if God was writing a blank check: Israel was forbidden from attacking other nations—only the Canaanites.

I’m sorry to have to break it to the authors, but that’s still genocide.

So which is it? Did God not command genocide? Did he only say it was OK for Joshua? Is he cool with mass murder, but only if the victims are Canaanites? Clearly, Copan and Flanagan have some more work to do. You can’t argue that God didn’t command genocide by admitting that God commanded genocide, but putting qualifications on it.

Another sad argument is that the Canaanites were sinners. Israel wasn’t allowed to attack them until they scoffed at the laws of God without repent. Those sins? Just some good old-fashioned incest, bestiality, child sacrifice and, of course, homosexuality.

Ah, there’s the old chestnut of prejudiced wingnuts: homosexuality is on par with incest, bestiality and child sacrifice. And apparently, according to the authors, God meant what he said about homosexuality, but not genocide.

I’d still like to know who their Deepthroat is. Who is the inside source providing them these brilliant insights?

And like Morrow, they fall back on semantic gymnastics: Since the Canaanites were slaughtered for their disobedience, not their ethnicity, it’s not technically genocide.

The authors should be ashamed of themselves for making such a cowardly rationalization. This is the same sort of logic that allows people to gun down cartoonists for perceived blasphemy. Killing people will send you to hell, but killing certain people will get you paradise.

When rationalization fails, the authors turn to qualification. You didn’t take that “totally destroy” command for realsies? Oh, you took that literally? No, what God meant by “totally destroy” was “drive out.” Like, LOL.

Bill Clinton gave more convincing testimony to Kenneth Starr.

And to add insult to inanity, the authors again turn to Craig (for some reason), who argues that if the Canaanites had simply abandoned their city, they wouldn’t have been killed. “There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples.”

So, it’s the fault of the vanquished. All they had to do was surrender their land, possessions and become willfully homeless and they would’ve been spared. The nerve of those Canaanites. They were clearly just asking for it.

I could go on, but it’s not worth dignifying Copan and Flanagan’s “argument.” Rather than supporting their thesis, the authors merely provide justification for horrific religious violence.

In both books, we inevitably come to the impasse of faith versus empirical evidence, and neither of them can bridge the divide between believers and nonbelievers. To his credit, Morrow raises some interesting questions and makes some good points along the way. Agree or disagree, I recommend giving Questioning the Bible a read. But despite his earnest effort, at the end we’re still standing on opposite banks.