Experiments in Criticism

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie

The first Hercule Poirot mystery, this novel is routinely voted the best mystery novel of all time. It’s a twist-ending book that makes Christie into the villain. She misleads us just like the novel’s guilty party. To teach us? To entertain us? To test us? Yes. The story is compelling. Christie’s prose isn’t flashy and has aged well. If you want a rearrangement of the mystery novel’s furniture, read Murder on the Orient Express. If you want someone who demolishes the house, read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

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The Nineties: A Book – Chuck Klosterman

Klosterman writes cultural criticism. His reputation-making first book, Fargo Rock City, examined what 80s heavy metal sounded like to a North Dakota farm kid. In 2022, Klosterman has worked at ESPN, Esquire, Spin, and the New York Times. He’s written books of fiction and non-fiction, and he’s earned the right to analyze the decade dominated by his Generation, the much-discussed Generation X. Klosterman talks about the topics you’d think he would: movies (like Clerks and Pulp Fiction), television (like Seinfeld and Friends), and music (like Nirvana and Tupac). But he also talks about general culture (the internet) and politics (Ross Perot and Bill Clinton get separate chapters). You get a fresh take on what’s important about Michael Jordan trying to become a baseball player as well as what is retroactively so strange about the Gore / Bush 2000 presidential campaign that ended the decade. This is a book primarily about REPRESENTATION, the celebrities we use as avatars for ourselves and the politicians we elected as our politicians. Implicitly, it’s also about SUCCESSION, the assessment of the past and what parts of it live on in the present.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Defense of the Faith – Cornelius Van Til

Van Til lays the theological foundations for presuppositional apologetics then systematically compares and contrasts it with Thomistic (Roman Catholic) and Arminian apologetics (evangelical and Protestant). The takeaway: your apologetics ends where it begins. Van Til’s admonition: begin with the God of the Bible.

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Ultralearning – Scott Young

Young works with Cal Newport. The two began working with each other when Young did the equivalent of MIT’s undergraduate Computer Science degree in a year while Newport was still an MIT post-doc. That should tell you all you need to know about Young’s purpose: offer guidance to people who want to take on ambitious learning projects. Through nine steps, Young guides you through intentional self-directed learning. Young’s examples run the gamut from language acquisition to creating a video game. The book is mainly about the ETHICS or RULES of learning, with some implicit commentary on the SANCTIONS that such projects bring.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. There’s no way I got everything I could out of one reading, and I got enough to inform my own ultralearning project.

The Courage to Teach – Parker Palmer

Palmer addresses the spiritual component of teaching. His chief concern is integrity, a teacher’s internal and external consistency. He insists that teachers can only do this in community. I read it after having multiple Christian educators recommend the book. I understand what they see in it, but I think the book is ultimately more of a provocation to good works (ala Dreher) than an illumination of an unseen path. I don’t know that you get a path from Palmer’s book. You mainly get the assurance that what you’re doing matters and that it’s okay to approach your subject in a way that honors it, the students learning it, and yourself. In comparison to secular pedagogy, Palmer is spiritually attuned. A true Christian educator would start with God and glorifying him. Covenantally, the book is about REPRESENTATION (all teaching involves a hierarchical relationship) and ETHICS.

RECOMMENDED if you want a chance to test your pedagogical commitments.

The Story Grid – Shawn Coyne

Coyne was a long-time book editor for major book publishers. This book reveals how he evaluated fiction: with a grid that allows an editor to chart a plot’s flow. It’s an extremely practical book, impressive in its insight and generative in the ways you can apply its insights. Interestingly, Coyne has a five-step diagram for a story’s plot that could connect to the covenant.

• Inciting Incident (TRANSCENDENCE)
• Complication (HIERARCHY)
• Crisis (ETHICS)
• Climax (SANCTIONS
• Resolution (SUCCESSION)

Coyne wants to help you write better fiction, but you could use Coyne’s model to analyze fiction or write and analyze non-fiction too.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

How to Read the Bible as Literature…and Get More Out of It by Leland Ryken.

In the Bible, God communicated through specific forms. Many are literary. Ryken commends reading scripture in a “literary” way, not just an “expository” way because such an approach echoes scripture’s content. The book offers a primer in that approach. PARTIALLY RECOMMENDED. Raid it for the bibliography/recommended reading and primary term definitions. The book won’t convince a skeptic or fully satisfy the converted.

Enjoying the Bible by Matthew Mullins

Mullins argues that we often use the Bible more than we enjoy it. The key to enjoying the Bible more is to read it like literature, specifically like we would poetry. The book thus offers an introduction to reading poetry and meditating on scripture. The book’s most helpful feature is exercises that help the reader apply each chapter’s concepts. Covenantally, the book is related first to REPRESENTATION and the image of God we get from the Bible and second to ETHICS and the right means of relating to His word.

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