Between Two Worlds

Guest Post by Frank Turk

Oy. Christian retail. I have a lot to say on this subject, but at JT's blog that's somewhat bad form. If I link to a longer post of my own, Adrian Warnock is going to call me a "link troll", but I am that, so here's a link to everything I consider essential about what I have said about Christian retail.

But here's what JT's e-mail to me about this subject and guest-blog attempt said:

I was thinking of doing a short post today on the death of Christian bookstores and my ambivalence.

On Monday we are [on a business trip], so I’ll be out of communication all day.

Any interest in writing up a guest post for me this week, to post on Monday, on how we should think about Christian bookstores? I think your perspective would be very helpful.

"Helpful" in these circles being the short-hand for "we won't disavow you on 'Ask Pastor John'", which I appreciate.

Let's face it: the Christian bookstore is dying. Christian retail is, frankly, a sort of quaint and old-fashioned idea. I didn't grow up Christian, but the CBA indie store in my hometown looked like a flea market and nobody could answer questions for me; I have visited worse -- stores in locations arsonists wouldn't bother to burn down. And at one time, it was at least a novelty to have someplace that would put your name on your Bible and had exotic items like "anointing oil" and those plastic fish the really-devout put on their cars.

And that strategy, such as it was, built a $4+ billion dollar industry. But here's the thing: where does this industry come from? Can we tell? Listen: the fact that a CBA store cannot be seen as credible to the average customer unless it has one of those execrable plastic junk spinners -- home of the plastic fish -- should tell us something about why people shop there.

Let's make a quick comparison: think about Barnes & Noble for a second. When you walk into B&N, what's the first thing you see? You see books. Books are everywhere. I grant you that the first pile of books is usually closeouts, and the next pile of books is usually NYT best sellers at 30% off, but when you walk in, you see books. B&N is about books.

Now, why are they about books? Think about their annoying but usually-helpful staff for a second: you hate to ask any of them for help in spite of their usual helpfulness because they think they are very smart. B&N is all about books because books are for smart people. They employ people who think they are smart, and part of the thing going on there is that you could be more like them. So pay $5 for a coffee, full retail for all our books except the 25 titles on sale until they fall off the NYT best seller list, or maybe buy some of our phony "bargain" books which we publish ourselves in Asia to cut out the publisher and pretend we're doing you a favor, and buy a discount card which you have to really, really use to get back, and voilà: you can be smart like us.

And apparently, they are very smart because unlike CBA, B&N sells tons of stuff at full retail, causes people to buy club cards that only barely enhance consumer value but puts cash in the coffer early with no overhead, and people think highly of B&N because B&N sells something of immense value: books which make you smart.

If B&N went out of business tomorrow, the US would go into a state of shock because, in a sense, it would prove to us that we are really very stupid people because our smart bookstores have somehow failed.

When the local CBA store goes out of business, does anyone besides the owner feel stupid? Or guilty? Or somehow as if something bad has happened? The answer, as JT implies in his previous post on this topic, is "no": nobody feels like something bad happened.

This entry is already about twice as long as the average post on this blog, so let me make two observations about why nobody feels bad about a CBA store closing -- except the owner.

[1] Because it was only the place where we used to go to buy plastic fish -- stuff like that. Think about this for a second, because this is a critical issue: a plastic fish is a commodity -- some would say a piece of junk (Jesus junk, to be sure), but m-w.com says, "a mass-produced unspecialized product"; a disposable, consumable item for which you want to pay the least amount of money possible and still get something at all.

What the CBA store has, in the consumer's eyes, is inexpensive, consumable novelties -- and sadly, that image transfers over to the other things that may be more worth-while, like the 10,000 binding options available for your Bible, or 6-week bible studies.

CBA stores are not missed because they are merely novelty stores, and you can buy other novelties at WAL*MART (or for the upscale, at Tar-ghey).

[2] Because there's no association with the equivalent force of "you're not very smart" which we will abide from the CBA store. Look: if you walk into B&N and ask for a book (the Shack, for instance), and the clerk rolls his eyes at you and says, "what a horrible little book -- have you read any Rilke? It's much more spiritually challenging," you'd feel like that hipster with the pierced lip had just done you a favor. Ah. Rilke. As if it was Bach or something, or either of you were going to read it in German.

But if you walk into a CBA store and ask for a book (the Shack, for instance), and the staffer there who is wearing a "Third Day" shirt and has a pierced lip tells you, "dude, that book's no good for you -- you should try Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers instead," it's an insult -- because you know what? That kid works at a trinket shop, a novelty store, and for him to tell me that my reading choices need some work is an insult.

I'm a Christian bookstore owner, and let me tell you something: the only bookstore I would miss if it closed would be mine -- warts and all. We are hardly perfect, but we have striven over 5 years in business to show people that their faith can be more than a scripture on a mint. God forbid that our faith, and our choices to shore up our faith, are ever linked to the frivolous and the consumable. Our faith is not in something that moth and rust will devour, and if we have made it such a thing, may God have mercy on us.

I wonder if CBA will ever see it that way.

I found Lev Grossman's short article on the death of God in the Harry Potter series interesting. In it he writes:

Rowling's work is so familiar that we've forgotten how radical it really is. Look at her literary forebears. In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien fused his ardent Catholicism with a deep, nostalgic love for the unspoiled English landscape. C.S. Lewis was a devout Anglican whose Chronicles of Narnia forms an extended argument for Christian faith. Now look at Rowling's books. What's missing? If you want to know who dies in Harry Potter, the answer is easy: God.

Harry Potter lives in a world free of any religion or spirituality of any kind. He lives surrounded by ghosts but has no one to pray to, even if he were so inclined, which he isn't. Rowling has more in common with celebrity atheists like Christopher Hitchens than she has with Tolkien and Lewis.

I've not read the Christian books evaluating Harry Potter. But it seems most of what I've read from Christians has been critical of the series because of the real-world witchcraft it contains. Then I heard about John Granger's book Looking for God in Harry Potter which seems to find redemptive value in them. I'm curious where readers of Between Two Worlds fall on this issue. Anyone know about Granger's book? And if a secular writer like Grossman discerns the death of God in the Potter series should Christians take the time to go looking for him there?

Frank Beckwith, in the course of an interview largely about his conversion to Roman Catholicism, talks about his upcoming book on abortion. Having read and been significantly helped by his earlier book, Politically Correct Death, I'm looking forward to this one as well:

IgnatiusInsight.com: This fall Cambridge University Press will be publishing your book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice, which is described as "the most comprehensive defense of the prolife position on abortion ever published." Would you like to give it a shameless plug and tell readers what is unique about the book and what you hope to accomplish with it?

Dr. Beckwith: You gotta love publishers! Now to the shameless plug. Some of your readers may know of my 1993 book, Politically Correct Death: Answering the Argument for Abortion Rights (Baker Book House). Defending Life was originally going to be a revised edition of that book. But since so much has been written over the past decade on abortion, and because Politically Correct Death did not cover some issues and was a bit outdated, I decided to just write a whole new book. Defending Life covers not only the popular arguments for abortion, but also some of the most sophisticated cases offered by abortion-choice advocates in the academy. I deal extensively with the arguments of thinkers like David Boonin (author of A Defense of Abortion [Cambridge University Press, 2002]) and Judith Jarvis Thomson on issues of fetal personhood and the mother's obligation to her unborn child. But I also deal with the paucity of the legal case for Roe v. Wade, the cloning and stem-cell research debate, and whether prolife religious citizens have the right to shape laws in a liberal democracy, none of which I addressed in Politically Correct Death. Although Defending Life covers sophisticated arguments offered by professional philosophers and bioethicists, the publisher believes that because it is clearly written and includes sections on popular arguments, it will be marketing the book to an audience broader than academics and scholars. In fact, the publisher asked me to place the book's footnotes as endnotes in order to make the text attractive to non-scholars. I, of course, said yes.

What I hope to accomplish with the book is this: I want to offer my colleagues as well as the general public an intelligent, clearly articulated, and non-polemical defense of the prolife position on abortion that does not rely on theological or religious arguments. I also want to help college students and my friends in the prolife movement so that they are better equipped to deal with the best arguments offered by our fellow citizens who do not share our point of view.

A couple of items of interest:

The Life of John Murray, by Iain Murray (no relation, except in Adam and Christ). (This is also found in the four-volume Collected Works of Murray. It is a both a helpful set and an encouraging sketch.)

The Letters of John Newton. The author of Amazing Grace wrote wise, practical, insightful, pastoral letters that every pastor (and others) should read!

Doug Wilson begins a response to Christopher Hitchens's new book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Joshua Sowin interviews Tim Challies.

InterVarsity Press has launched three blogs:

InterVarsity Press launched three new blogs on its website that are intended to give readers an inside look at the publishing process as well as the discussions that take place as books are developed and sold. Combined, these discussion boards give an unprecedented glimpse into the thoughts and practices of a successful editorial department in the Christian book industry.

Behind the Books will deal with publications in the IVP Books line, and will include the thoughts and comments of editors Al Hsu, Cindy Bunch and Dave Zimmerman, as well as others in the editorial department, as they consider issues, trends and news related to the general publishing program. . . .

Andy Unedited will be written by IVP's editorial director for twenty-two years, Andrew T. Le Peau, and will include his thoughts on the publishing industry in general. According to Le Peau, the reason for the creation of the blogs is threefold: "We want to give readers and authors and folks in the industry a behind-the-scenes look at IVP, help create stickiness for our website, and increase customer loyalty and interest in our books. I also look forward to hearing what others have to say as we discuss our interests in publishing, books and the world of ideas."

Addenda & Errata will focus on the IVP Academic line, and will include contributions by academic and reference editors Dan Reid, Joel Scandrett, Jim Hoover and Gary Deddo. In explaining the function of this blog, Reid states, "Academically speaking, blogs are the faculty lounge or student commons-informal venues for exchanging ideas, catching up and even engaging in the occasional friendly debate. Editors inhabit this chattering world as comfortably as penguins on an iceberg-and while we may not be as cute, we can talk with style."

With over sixty years of combined academic publishing experience, there should be a great deal to talk about.

(HT: MB)

ABC News:

[The Children of Hurin,] released today by Houghton Mifflin, is a publishing event: It is the first new book by the creator of "The Lord of the Rings" in 30 years. The publisher calls it the culmination of an effort to bring to the public the vast body of work J.R.R. Tolkien had left unpublished, and largely unfinished, when he died in 1973.

Tolkien began writing "The Children of Hurin" 99 years ago, abandoning it and taking it up again repeatedly throughout his life. Versions of the tale already have appeared in "The Silmarillion," "Unfinished Tales" and as narrative poems or prose sections of the "History of Middle-earth" series.

But they were truncated and contradictory. Outside of Tolkien scholars and Middle-earth fanatics, few read them.

These works were, after all, largely unreadable dense, hard to follow histories and legends of Tolkien's vast, imaginary world, crammed with complicated genealogies, unfamiliar geography and hard-to-pronounce names. Readers who took up such books hoping for another Rings saga or charming yarn such as "The Hobbit" abandoned them after a few pages.

"The Children of Hurin" is the book for which these readers have been longing.

It is the fruit of 30 years labor by Christopher Tolkien, the author's son, who has devoted much of his life to editing and publishing the work his father left behind. By meticulously combining and editing the many published and unpublished versions of the tale, he has produced at last a coherent, vivid and readable narrative. . . .

Christopher Tolkien says that in reconciling the various versions of his father's story, he added no new material, save for an occasional transition. The words, he says, are virtually all his father's.

For a summary, see the rest of the article.

(Inquiring minds want to know: has Tim Keller read it yet, and if so, what does he think?)

Albert Mohler is beginning to post some lists of recommended reading. Here is his first entry, on
Ten Great Christian Biographies.

Here's a new bookmark-worthy site: takeupandread.com.

At takeupandread.com our goal is to sift through the thousands of good volumes to recommend the very best literature for your time and money. Our goal is to expose you to historically important volumes, old books that are timeless in application, excellent contemporary books hot off the press, multi-volume facsimile reproductions, small single-volume books you can read in one day, and searchable electronic books on CD-ROM. Our weekly reviews are published in the hopes of helping you build a diverse library of Christian volumes with tested theology and reliability.

HT: Conventicle

Also be sure to read this great reading interview with Tony Reinke, the guy behind the "take up and read" site.

Joshua Sowin interviews yours truly on books and reading.