wednesday books are theological

[landofnowhere]

I've been busy with non-reading stuff, mostly work and playing Blue Prince with A (but also I went to Scintillation!) But I do have some books to catch up on.

Nathan the Wise, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, translated by William Taylor. Looking at the Goodreads reviews, it looks like everyone in Germany has to read this for school, while it's much less well-known in the US -- I only learned who Lessing was because of his friendship with Moses Mendelssohn. I knew this was Lessing's plea for toleration between the three Abrahamic religions, but a post on tumblr made me decide to actually read it. Looking at the dramatis personae and seeing that one of the characters was the adopted daughter of a Jew made me concerned about the problematic ways that plot point could go, so I went and spoiled the ending for myself to make sure it would be okay -- the final plot twists take things in a much more interesting direction than I'd been worried about from the setup. The titular character is a bit too much the voice of wisdom (as one would expect from the title) to be the most interesting, but the supporting cast is fascinating.

The Falling Tower, Meg Moseman. A theological thriller about a group of college freshmen, written by a friend of mine from college -- she conveys the college atmosphere both recognizably and warmly, and the story is very page-turn-y. It is modern feminist take on Charles Williams, the lesser-known friend of Lewis and Tolkien, whose work I have not read (The Place of the Lion, about Platonic archetypes showing up in the real world, sounds intriguing, but I also hear it is not as good as its premise), and I'm not sure if I'm more likely to now. It is doing a lot of cool and ambitious worldbuilding stuff, and lets its characters have different relationships to Christianity; the spiritual aspects of the worldbuilding certainly are compatible with Christianity without it being message-y -- this is a story in which growing up in the way that college freshman grow up is more important than finding religion. I hope more people read it so that I can discuss it!

Comments

[oursin]

It's a while since I read any Charles Williams, but as I recall, just about any of his others are a lot better for women characters than The Place of the Lion.

[lunabee34]

It's so cool when the people we know do awesome things. One of my old grad school friends is now a novelist.

[landofnowhere]

It is! And in this case I can say that I was one of the first people to appreciate the author's writing, and in fact to publish it -- in a tiny online-only college magazine that was desperate for submissions -- so it's exciting that she now has a book out with a traditional publisher!

[lunabee34]

One of my friends from grad school who is now a colleague has become a trad published author with multiple books out, one of which is award-winning and I think a couple have been reviewed on NPR.

How wonderful that you got to be a part of your friend's journey in that way.

[primeideal]

What kind of game is "Blue Prince"? My friends speak highly of it but I am not really a video game person.

[landofnowhere]

It's an extensive puzzle game where you are exploring a mansion whose floor plan is different every day, shaped by the player's choices. I'm also not a video game person (in fact I occasionally find myself slightly motion sick from the more 3d aspects of the game), so A is the one manipulating the controls while we discuss together what to do, and this works well (I have another friend who is not a gamer either, but is doing the same thing with her partner.) I really like the game design, and I'd probably enjoy playing the game solo but would progress through it a lot more slowly.

[selenak]

Nathan the Wise is indeed one of the musts in German schools (and even those who don’t do the entire play do the Ringparabel, and probably the second most famous text of the German Enlightenment (second because Immanuel Kant wins for most famous). We also read some of Lessing’s essays, as he had lots of ideas about reforming/creating German drama (which was at the time on the verge of abandoning imitating the French and starting to discover Shakespeare), and in general was a key Enlightenment figure. (With some major tragedy in his later years, as he lost first his child and then his much beloved wife.) Him being bff with Moses Mendelssohn was one of various ways in which he didn’t just talk the talk but walked the walk regarding the things argued in Nathan the Wise; he’s a sympathetic figure, which not that many great writers are.

Nathan the Wise does get staged now and then but in general regarded as a Lesedrama, i.e. written to be read more than to be staged (as opposed to Lessing’s other two most famous plays, definitely written to be staged, i.e. Minna von Barnhelm and Emilia Galotti. So who intrigued you most among the supporting cast?

[landofnowhere]

Yeah, I was trying to figure out if Nathan the Wise would work well as a read-aloud, and I wasn't sure, but I thought part of that was probably just the English translation. I liked that the women got to be fully realized characters who drive the plot and whose stories are about family rather than romance. I liked Al-Hafi -- and chess as a means of interfaith friendship (echoing Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn's friendship). (And there are moments I like about Nathan, when he's not just being the voice of reason, as when he tells the story of how he found Recha after all his sons were killed in a genocide.) In general the Muslim characters didn't feel like they were a very culturally informed depiction (understandable as Lessing wouldn't have had that experience), but they also didn't come off as stereotyped. The Christian characters felt like the least interesting, partly because they were being used to critique Lessing's own culture, and Conrad came off as pretty bland. Recha is also in some ways more interesting as an idea of a character -- a synthesis of the three religions -- than a character, but she also gets to have a full and sympathetic arc that doesn't lead to conversion, marriage, or death. (More happy endings where they skip pairing people off romantically and just do the family reunification bit, plz!)

[sovay]

Nathan the Wise, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, translated by William Taylor. Looking at the Goodreads reviews, it looks like everyone in Germany has to read this for school, while it's much less well-known in the US

I read it because an actor of interest to me—Ernst Deutch—became heavily identified with the role in post-war German theater, performing it for more than a decade in the '50's and '60's. It definitely ends its adoption plotline better than La Juive.

It is modern feminist take on Charles Williams, the lesser-known friend of Lewis and Tolkien

Thank you so much for the heads-up that this book exists, because I have read Charles Williams and a feminist take on his metaphysics would be fascinating and it sounds like it is.

(The Place of the Lion did not take its premise in any of the directions which I would have wanted, but then its author's theology does not run in any of the directions which I believe in, which may have been an impediment.)