Lance Schaubert

from watchmen wiki

Watchmen.

No wonder Time listed it as one of the 100 best novels. This thing rocked me to my core. When I set aside my philosophical biases, Moore & Gibbons continued to entertain me with this neo-noir graphic novel. My friend Alex Giltner, another fantasy writer, once said, “I don’t want to write about epic battles like Tolkien. We don’t live in that world. People don’t fear invasion anymore. They fear the little red button. They fear some guy in a room somewhere escalating everything to DEFCON 1.” Watchmen capitalized on that notion, balancing their world on a high wire, teetering toward apocalypse. Pessimistic like 90% of noir, Watchmen snaps a portrait of American society where everyone corrupts everything – a society where the watchmen need watching. In the midst of this brokenness, a former team of retired heroes go their separate ways to unearth an apocalyptic plot. Nihilistic and broken, this series asks the question: what is right?

Certainly Moore holds his own opinion on rightness since certain acts are universally condemned in his novel, however he shows no real way out, nothing to cheer on, no solution. In the words of Rorschach, “The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, ‘SAVE US!’ and I’ll look down and whisper, ‘no.’” A friend of mine said this week that the only difference between Christianity and Nihilism is the resurrection. How fitting I read this book soon afterward.

Surprised by Joy continually… well… surprised me. Part autobiography, part school-boy memoir, part philosophical musing on the shaping of Lewis’ early life moves from his intimate experience with Norse mythology through his aggressive atheism until we reach his decision to turn his life over to Jesus. S.B.J. (not to be confused with S.O.J., you Diablo 2 players) anchors Lewis’ experience inthe British school system and a compost pile of great literature. When I’m learning new names of dead authors, my heart races. This book was loaded with them and with humor and with a brutal honesty that Evangelicals neglect today. Whatever this book is, I don’t know that I would call it “Christian” literature. Here’re some quotes:

Christians are wrong, but the rest are all bores.

I have seen Oldie make that child bend down at one end of the schoolroom and then take a run of the room’s length at each stroke.

The Syrian captain was forgiven for bowing in the house of Rimmon. I am one of many who  have bowed in the house of the real God when I believed Him to be no more than Rimmon.

Life is as habit-forming as cocaine.

To explain what happened in me as I read this book is to define the phenomenon of a muse in a hot bubble bath with candles and paper. I can’t.

As I finished up my pre-holiday reading, Kiddo brought home TIME’s Person of the Year issue. It seems retroactive and behind the times to name “The Protester” but at least they acknowledge how much the future of the political landscape has changed and will change. I will say the best paragraph was a short little historical comparative on what this revolutionary year is like:

In short, 2011 was unlike any year since 1989–but more extraordinary, more global, more democratic… so 2011 was unlike any years since 1968–but more consequential because more protesters have more skin in the game…. It was, in other words, unlike anything in any of our lifetimes, probably unlike any year since 1848, when one street protest in Paris blossomed into a three-day revolution that turned a monarchy into a republican democracy…

I’m not gonna recommend you read it since it’s TIME and they lie like all other big media, but for those of you who did read it, I’d be happy in the dialog.

More to come…