I'm just swinging by to say hi, I haven't forgotten you, my millions of blog fans ...
Several matters have converged that account for the recent paucity of posts. One is simply that I'm trying to stick to my guns about, as announced here a couple weeks ago, only posting when I feel I have something actual to add to the conversation on any given issue, and, more particularly, when I have something to add that relates to literary matters since that's the ostensible focus of this blog. The main reason I haven't had a chance to craft any substantive posts is that I'm sticking to a writing schedule with way more discipline than is usual for me. The result is little to no time and even less brain power left for blogging. There's this or that other reason too. I do have several potential posts brewing, though, so do keep checking in.
Here's a throwaway for now. A few days ago I read Philip Pullman's new novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. My rating: bleh. I don't know what I was expecting but it was more than what I got. I hugely loved the His Dark Materials trilogy--golly, what a rip-roaring story that was, what godawmighty fun to read--so I was eager for Pullman's next book. I knew it was to be his take, again, but in a different way, on religion, but jeez I guess I assumed it would be a great gripping twisty tale like Lyra's. Not at all. It is instead, as best I can make out, his all too earnest effort at knocking some sense into the head of any Christians whose heads might be susceptible. And maybe also his offering to those ex-Christians like himself who've sought a sadder but wiser take on the Jesus legend. In other words you'd have to be, I think, rather invested in the whole project of Christianity in one way or another, love it, hate it, be all twisted up over it, you'd have to be churchy or formerly churchy in order for this book to speak to you. Or so I'm guessing. All I really know is that it left me cold. A disappointment.
As ever, onward.
