To
Navigate: Click each title to display the article. Click again
to collapse the article. If you are having difficulty viewing these
articles, e-mail Louis.
This book is by a man who wouldn't let experts discourage him from long-distance running, in spite of his injuries and his physical build.
Caught at the crossroads of medical warnings and anecdotal evidence of aborted running careers, on one side, and the growing awareness that most mammals and some people manage to run most of their lives without significant injury, Christopher McDougall embarks on a journey to learn to run without injury. His book Born to Run has a dual focus, the smaller emphasis being on his personal journey, the majority of the book on explaining the relationship between the Tarahumara people of Mexico and the larger world of running, including its commercial and technological mis-steps.
The writing style of this book, like my running style, suffers from excesses and omissions that frequently work against its intentions. As one might hope for a running style, the prose in the book improves with time, so that by the middle or so, the prose often reaches that remarkable standard described by George Orwell where it no longer draws attention to itself.
So my caution to potential readers is not to be discouraged by the hyperbole, mixed metaphors, and apparently unnecessary delays during the first fourth of the book. Perhaps those pages suffer from some of the habits of "sports writing," when it engages in a flamboyant style comprised of unlikely comparisons and forced exclamations. There is nothing, however, necessary or universal about sports requiring those writing habits, as several later chapters in Born to Run illustrate.
As McGougall sets out to discover the Tarahumara runners, he is leery of neighboring drug gangs, one of which made "five heads" roll "onto the dance floor of a crowded nightclub" (2). Five people dying and five heads rolling are not identical situations, the latter suffering from Hollywood imagery.
Going to great lengths to describe the Tarahumara as a people who have deliberately avoided the crass commercialism of the West, the author uses the unfortunate comparison of a good looking Tarahumara being "Hollywood handsome." Again, in describing a Tarahumara, the language draws attention away from the man, Arnulfo, to a conglomerate of a cinematic pirate and a robocop: " . . . a thigh-length skirt and a fiery red tunic as billowing as a pirate's blouse. Every time he moved, the muscles in his legs shifted and reformed like molten steel" (27).
In one final example, a young Tarahumara named Marcelino, " . . . looked like the Human Torch . . . he looked as if he'd burst straight out of the Steve Prefontaine poster on the bedroom wall of every high school track star in America" (41).
This kind of prose is the heel striking sort, and if that sounds good, it isn't in light of the book's excellent, short history of the running shoe. In Chapter 25, it traces the history of the shoe over the last forty years, and how the shoe helped hijack the natural ability of humans to run long and to run for fun. Being from Los Alamos, I'm more tolerant of one more grand comparison that summarizes the effect of the shoe industry as McGougall assesses it: "Asics spent three million dollars and eight years--three more than it took the Manhatten Project to create the first atomic bomb--to invent the awe-inspiring Kinsei, a shoe that boasts, 'multi-angled forefoot gel pods,' a 'midfoot thrust enhancer,' and an 'infinitely adaptable heel component that isolates and absorbs impact to reduce pronation and aid in forward propulsion'" (170).
The chapter traces the history of the running shoe in terms primarily of Nike, showing that well-intentioned technologies had serious negative consequences, and that various research continued to question these technologies. Not an expert except concerning my own experience, I was completely taken in by that chapter.
Earlier on, the book achieves a similar cogency after narrating the forays of the Tarahumara into the challenges of the Leadville Trail 100 in Colorado. While the Leadville narrative is interesting, it is after that, in Chapter 15, that McGougall--at his best--questions the recent trends in running. Using Coach Vigil, noted running instructor from southern Colorado, as a touchstone for the vision of running as a form of love and joy, the discussion notes that in the 70s, runners such as Frank Shorter made great advances. Soon after, shoes became more developed and endorsements became more lucrative, while long distance running achievements in the western world lagged behind the achievements of their forbearers. While there is likely some counter-evidence that should be sifted through, the book offers a challenging thesis, that there's an inverse relationship between commercialization/civilization and successful long distance running.
It is this realization that began to inform various training approaches, including Chi running and the POSE method, approaches that illustrate an almost spontaneous appearance of thoughtful antidotes to the excesses of heel-striking, jogging, and other inefficient movements (206).
While this book could have become perhaps another method book--which might not be a bad thing, given that the expository chapters such as 15 and 25 are so good--it chose to remain a narrative. And it is the last quarter of the book that ties together so many loose ends, bringing a handful of ultramarathoners to Mexico to join the Tarahumara (also known as the Rarámuri) for a rigorous run through the Mexican canyons, competitive but not commercial, a run most likely forgotten except for the memorializing effort provided by this book.
2011/03/29 ©
If you are considering becoming a public health worker, a doctor without borders, and/or someone who cares for the poor, read this book. It is going in the same direction and will be a good companion.
The book narrates parts of the life, and the life's work, of Paul Farmer, MD, who grew up in the United States, sometimes on a used school bus and sometimes on a house boat. Unlike many who grow up under what may be considered impoverished conditions, Paul continues to embrace them in his adult life instead of taking refuge in cleaner, safer environments. Once he discovered the Central Plateau of Haiti, and began to establish a free clinic in Cange, he could never leave for long. He is a doctor who is refreshed and vitalized by his patients, and he is never at a loss for patients in the clinic, Zanmi Lasante (Creole for "Partners In Health."
The scope of the book goes far beyond Haiti, and follows Paul to Peru and Siberia (among other places) in his crusade to treat the poor who have Tuberculosis (TB), a poor person's disease by and large. The strain of TB he sought to cure was multi-resistant (MDR). His goal is to provide treatment that reflects a preferential option for the poor, fully independent of economic, geographic, political, or social considerations. The author sums up the attitude that pervades Paul's efforts in the following sentence:
He's still going to make these hikes, he'd insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you're saying that their lives matter less than some others', and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world. (294)
The friend who recommended the book to me wrote, ". . . it is so amazing and important (and well-written) . . . ." The good writing arises not only from Tracey Kidder's prose, but from Paul's extemporaneous speech. When he is quoted, one often hears a good aphorism, with epigrammatic irony and often a bid for the underdog. Following is a (nearly) random sampling from Paul:
I would read stuff from scholarly texts and know they were wrong. Living in Haiti, I realized that a minor error in one setting of power and privilege could have an enormous impact on the poor in another. (78)
"Surely someone is witnessing this horror show? . . . I was taken with the idea that in an ostensibly godless world that worshiped money and power, or more seductively, a sense of personal efficacy and advancement, like at Duke and Harvard, there was still a place to look for God, and that was in the suffering of the poor. You want to talk crucifixion? I'll show you crucifixion, you bastards. (85)
One thing that comes back to me, with all this cost-efficacy crap, if I saved one patient in my whole life, that wouldn't be too bad. What did you do with your life? I saved Michela, got a guy out of jail. . . . To have a chance to save a zillion of them, I dig that. (187)
And there's the preemie who worried me because she's no bigger than a peanut. But she looked fine. . . . For a tadpole. (188)
The book, published in 2003, ends on an optimistic trajectory. The Gates Foundation endows several organizations with money to fight MDR TB. Other donors help expand the work of Partners in Health in the Central Plateau. However, after the book's publication, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (an acquaintance of Paul's) was ousted by a military coup, in 2004. It is always worth noting when a democratically elected leader who has found favor with a humanitarian such as Paul Farmer is removed from his country. The ousting of someone who understands the poor probably fits into Paul's concept of the uphill battle that he fights, "the long defeat" that he finds so worthwhile.
2009/02/21 ©
Not having read him extensively, I've always thought Abraham Heschel (1907-1972) a writer who could be appreciated by followers of the Torah and of Jesus, alike. A Jewish philosopher, he wrote with great respect for the Torah and the rabbinical traditions. He also marched next to Martin Luther King, Jr. in one of the Selma civil rights marches (1965). And in this book, he echoes Jesus, writing, ". . . the Sabbath was a union that no one could disjoin. What God put together could not be set apart" (52).
The central concept of the book is that the first six days of the week allow humans to build and achieve things in space, whereas the seventh day is set aside to allow humans to appreciate time. The difference between the two modes of being is great. Space, and all its belongings, are temporary—easy to engage in, being visible and tangible, and easier, therefore, to be misled by. Time, by contrast and by Heschel's definition, is eternal and is the palace where we meet God. It is also the palace where rest and celebration replace ambition and labor. Not the rituals, but the psychology and the spirituality of the Sabbath are the primary concerns of the book.
I recommend the book for anyone who, independent of their attraction or rejection of ritual and tradition, seeks for a calmer, more meaningful life that is not governed by pace but by a balanced rhythm. It is fairly short, and even brief if one chooses to skip the middle chapters on the allegorical meaning of Rabbi Shimeon's life. This allegory is carefully explicated, but for those who do not savour that way of thinking, the conclusions in the final chapters are compelling apart from the allegory that leads up to them.
Following are a few of Heschel's memorable aphorisms:
Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work. . . . The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath. (14)
The faith of the Jew is not a way out of this world, but a way of being within and above this world; not to reject but to surpass civilization. (27)
If God is everywhere, He cannot be just somewhere. (81)
One good hour may be worth a lifetime; an instant of returning o God may restore what has been lost in years of escaping from Him. (98)
The book offers a bridge between the drive for occupying space and the necessity of allowing time to be an end in itself. When we control space we are bound to things, and time evaporates; when we submit ourselves to time, we are courted by eternity, and space becomes silent. "To men alone time is elusive; to men with God time is eternity in disguise" (101).
The Sabbath, being defined as a day that is not only good but holy, provides a portal to eternity. Each individual occupies space exclusively, with the result the human relations are rivalrous, and our attention becomes frozen on what (and who) is—and is not—ours. In contrast, the entire race can share the same time, with the result that everyone can share will all their praise.
While many of us are not committed to the Sabbath with either the rigor or the eagerness extolled by this book, we all find ourselves stalked by time. But it is not time that stalks us; it is the lack of time. Each effort to buy time, whether through another finished task or another, faster electronic communication—each effort uses up the time for which we increasingly thirst. The book invites us to let go of time, to stop seeking to control it, and thereby to finally appreciate it and the eternity that stands behind it.
2009/09/27 ©
If you have read The Shack, the following quote may echo your reading experience:
But the reader should be warned neither to expect a story nor to judge the book as such. Basically . . . the narrative outline advances the argument by providing the leads and transitional matter in the schematic conduct of the discourse. The voices in this enquiry are for the most part undifferentiated tonally, and bear labels chiefly in order to give a semblance of dramatic interchange to rational demonstration, and thus to lighten proofs.
That description was written 49 years before The Shack was published, and is part of Bertand H. Bronson's introduction to Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. The point is that The Shack shares something in common with other fictional works concerned more about certain ideas than about creating a fully nuanced world in which the actors might take control of the plot and lead it where they will. A kind of "dream vision," The Shack may disappoint any reader who is not in the mood for the priority of sentiment over ideas, as well as of ideas over character and phrasing. It does not have, alas, the quotability of Rasselas with its Johnsonian eloquence such as, "Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures."
What The Shack does offer is an imaginative detour from the rutted pathway of traditional Christian discourse to a fresher expression of (mostly) traditional discourse, landscaped with terminology that would not have been fashionable prior to the nineties. At times the words "relationship" and "relational" permeate the dialogue therapeutically. But that form of therapy became popular for a generation of westerners who were acutely aware of their inability to maintain relationships. And, similarly, The Shack addresses the root question of our inability to know our Creator, something that is seemingly either so basic as to not need instruction, or so far-fetched as to not merit discussion. And, yet, the need persists.
Readers may find themselves disagreeing with the book's theology. In fact, it seems that many readers feel a need to state that they did not agree on all points (although who would think they had?). But few readers who finish the book--except by assignment--will disagree with the importance of the quest the book portrays. Why, otherwise, finish the book?
The book offers a vision of a kinder, gentler God than the one often preached in many Catholic or Protestant circles, at least wherever the concept of the final judgment is conveyed. In a less elegant manner than CS Lewis' The Great Divorce, The Shack invites the reader to consider that the distance between humans and God is a specifically human orientation and that there is nothing in the divine promoting that distance.
This concept of an unfathomable love is something worth exploring, whether one does it through The Shack or in his or her own imaginary journey. If it is a valid concept, it is an absolutely important one in the long run.
At this point, my review ends, and what is left is a biographical note with its own imaginative turn. Prior to reading The Shack, I read an article that quoted various readers' reactions, among whom was a prominent Pastor of a prominent "church"[1] that I had thought was an organization that would have welcomed a book like The Shack. Far from it, this Pastor denounced the book for being dangerous and something to be avoided. Of course denunciations like that get movies and books higher on the best-seller lists, which is probably not what this Pastor intended.
At any rate, I mentioned to one of my friends that I was quite surprised this Pastor had denounced the book, and I was curious to read the book to find out what was so repugnant. At that point something like The Great Misunderstanding crept into our dialogue. Although my friend claims he did not say this (and I believe him, since he should know), what I heard was, "That's because the book puts that Pastor in hell."
Accordingly, I bought the book and read it, wondering how this easy going God was going to put the Pastor in hell. Toward the end of the book, I realized my expectations were skewed. But on reflection, I think the book could have afforded such an ending. I think this because whether or not we believe that the concept of hell that Jesus described applies to this life only or also to the next, it is a concept tied closely into how much grace we offer others.
In this ending--not that I'd want to wish this fate upon anyone--the main character would have returned from the shack and attended a popular fellowship, one where he could meet with the Elders and share his experience, somewhat as Paul did when he eventually met Peter and John.
During this meeting, not the book, but the main character would suffer complete castigation and rejection from the Elders, finding himself fully invalidated by the Christian leaders, and in a position worse than his initial state. Not only had he disclosed the secret of his miserable state, the culmination of years of guilt and months of grief, but he was left now without the only hope he had ever encountered.
And then the secret of heaven would be revealed, that heaven welcomes those who welcome others, excluding only the exclusive.
The narrative would zoom out on this character, Mack, as he was being expelled by the Elders. The reader would see Mack, collapsing to the ground beneath the weight of his discouragement. Across an expanse, perhaps a large parking lot, inside a building, would be the Elders, conferring with each other, affirming their response to Mack. But the temperature in the building would rise, and rise. They would find themselves in an unbearable heat, and would finally realize that this was more than a heating and ventilation problem. This was their judgment day. They could open the door and ask Mack for a second chance, or they could not.
[1]The word "church" should be voluntarily banned in English since it has lost its ties to the original Greek word, "ekklesia." The Greek word refers to the "called out" ones who have left the institutional system of false authorities for the intangible leading of the spirit. The word "church" refers to the "called in" ones who are finding security within an institutional structure.
2009/04/05 ©
Only a note on this book. By the author of Doctor on Everest (2000), this newer book extends Dr. Kamler's unique viewpoint as a medically trained, physically able adventurer to several other climates and terrains (including desert, jungle, and ocean).
The technique of the book is to begin narrating a harrowing experience (sometimes the author's) and to analyze the factors of survival at work from a medical point of view. One can learn how the bends occur underwater, as well as how pulmonary edema occurs at high altitude (to name a few maladies).
At times mental laziness caused me to breeze past the anatomical discussions, although they dip no further into technical details than a non-medical reader like myself could follow. My interest was more on the situations themselves—the things movies are made of.
One element that grew tiresome to me, although it probably would be unnoticed by many readers, is the recurrent reliance on "natural selection." While I do not care to explicate the patterns—and feel no need to persuade others of these—it struck me that "natural selection" explained everything and was explained by everything. Particular mechanisms and physical attributes gave evidence to the role of natural selection, and the theory of natural selection explained why those mechanisms were either present or not present in a particular instance. My quarrel is not with the theory but with its exclusiveness. The book allots some room for mysticism (lifegiving chants and inexplicable alternative medicines), but one imagines that if more were known, these, too, could be fitted into the naturalistic thesis. Perhaps this is all one should expect these days. But the recurrence seemed ultimately dogmatic and didn't allow for a universe with a creative intelligence guiding at least some of its development.
2009/01/17 ©
(Frank Furedi, Routledge, 2004)
This sociological study of the influence the practice and reliance on psychotherapy has had on Anglo-American culture stakes its subject matter on a data-rich field. Somewhere between the 1980s and the publication of the book, therapy has become institutionalized with our culture to the point where the therapists, their organizations, the popular media, and a large sector of the population recognizes therapy as the answer to nearly every unpleasant event, from birth to death. With the continuous (if unwilling) retreat of religious and moral "absolutes" in our society, therapy now fills the need for guidance and purpose. The peculiarity of therapy, in contrast to religious and moral codes, is that it is, on one hand, dependent upon an external authority (the therapist), and, on the other, free from external imperatives. The individual is the measure of all things, the goal of therapy being the harmonizing of emotions and thoughts so that the individual feels whole. When necessary, this process may require the cultivation of--or deliverance from--various emotions.
At its best, the book focuses not on the efficacy of therapy, but of the efficacy of the cultural patterns that derive from therapy. When it treats therapy as a metaphor, the book is most persuasive. In that context, therapy is a placeholder for this culture's dual trajectory: it searches for meaning and at the same time avoids reliance on external systems of belief. Therapy understood as a metaphor is appropriated by politics and commerce to lead the populace into easily manageable paths. The appropriation damages the reputation of counseling and has the capacity to turn entire nations into citizens who, in their search for self-esteem, learn that they really do not have that much within them worth esteeming.
Furedi is quick to point out various paradoxes, the most memorable being:
Some criticisms that arose in the reading of the book: "The lady protests too much, methinks" (Hamlet, Act III) is hard to forget when Furedi consistently discounts and at times ridicules the need for some kind of therapy among certain individuals. One wonders if there is something the author does not want to expose in counseling, with the result that the critique of counseling remains one-sidedly negative. When I wasn't wondering whether or not some actual denial was behind the discourse, the book made me doubt that the author had ever known closely someone who had been truly traumatized, with the fragility and danger that such trauma entails. When the book abandons its focus on the metaphorical nature of therapy and gets inside the therapist's office, it is at its weakest. By criticizing in a broad and vague way the curative power of therapy, the book makes one wonder about the individuals whose lives may be saved through counseling, even if it is a small minority of the clientele.
Finally, the book suffers frequently from being written within the jargon of sociology. If there were a corresponding term to "psycho-babble" I'd apply it to this book. How many sentences like these would a keen reader want to endure: "The process of medicalisation has been inseparable from that of professionalization" (100), or "The readiness with which the pathologisation of human behaviour is embraced indicates that the medicalisation of life has become an accomplished fact" (101)? This sociologisation of language has more than an aesthetic drawback. It deadens the discussion over the course of two-hundred pages. It invites the slightly suspicious reader to long for something concrete, for a description of modern life that is more nuanced, more lively, than the polarization of sociology and psychology. It may encourage the reader to put down the book and do something much more enjoyable. Having said that, I would still recommend the book, or parts of it, to anyone who hasn't taken full stock of the structuring role of the therapeutic metaphor in our daily lives.
2008/07/06 ©
This book offers an antidote to all those who have been poisoned by a pessimistic view of God's interest in—and ability to redeem—every human being, no matter where or when that person lived. It puts the "good" back into the news about Jesus, who is represented as the clearest representation of the God who in all times and places beckons people to follow the light they have been given.
"Sinners are not in the hands of an angry God" (177) the book concludes, after showing multiple ways to meet your Maker whether or not you have been exposed to an adequate portrayal of Christ. Where there is wrath, it is the anger of a loving Creator who sees his creation ignoring what is best for them and instead destroying each other. A person who seeks to do right and to honor God apart from the Christian tradition(s) is in a far better place than a person labeled as a Christian who eschews the opportunity to seek the Creator.
In times past, it was perhaps not so troublesome to think narrowly about Christianity, in exclusion of the merits of other religions. But, as the world is shrinking as a result of global communication, it is absurd to ignore the claims and values of other religions. This book urges Christians to open up dialogues with members of other religions, to look for grace and truth wherever they occur, and to openly share what is so appealing about the life of Jesus. In this way, Christians may be delivered from bigotry and those in other religions may be exposed to something truly worthwhile in the gospels.
Neither a universalist, nor a restrictivist, the author seeks to show that from the beginning God planned for the salvation of humankind. In executing this plan, God spoke to various people and nations in whatever way possible, and that these intentions were furthered, not countered, by the coming of Jesus into the world. When the purpose of God is understood in this way, then hell is logically understood as "not the prison from which people are longing to be freed, but [as] a sit-in where sinners have barricaded themselves in to keep God out" (180).
In addition to undoing the damage of overly pessimistic, conservative evangelical thinking, the book also insists that religious pluralism ignores important differences between religions. Not all religions are equally true or nobel. Even if God has spoken to various people in various cultures, it does not follow that the voice was as clear or as final as it was when it declared Jesus the "son in whom I am well pleased." Just as there is nothing arbitrarily exclusive about the salvation offered by Jesus, there is also nothing arbitrarily dispensable about his role in the human future.
It is fashionable and politically correct to preach a loving God who cares infinitely about every human being, independent of that person's lifestyle or beliefs. This concept thrives on an ethical sensibility that is shared by many of us who have no patience for bigotry or pettiness projected on a divine plane. However, the book suggests (but doesn't develop) the assertion that this appealing portrayal of God arises from the Christian revelation:Ironically, the proposal of theological pluralism, which would undercut the normativeness of Jesus Christ, removes . . . at the same time the very basis for knowing God as personal and gracious, loving and forgiving. The paradox lies in the fact the the universality of God's love is known through the particular event of the Incarnation. One can only be sure there exists a gracious and loving God if it is the case that Jesus Christ is Lord (45).
While I recognize that this assertion is not beyond dispute, it strikes me as a worthwhile inquiry. Before Jesus there was talk about a just and loving [if not personal] God, but the signal-to-noise ratio was usually pretty low. One does not always see the source of light itself but what the light illuminates. Similarly, our conception of a truly loving God (if there is a God at all), may be much more indebted to the words and actions attributed to Jesus in the gospels than to any other single source. Think about how God or the gods come off in ancient creation myths; in Greek and Roman myth, religion, and tragedy; or in the other ancient eastern and African faiths. Do not we gain something from the Sermon on the Mount, something that establishes a perfect Father who does not reciprocate evil for evil, who causes the sun to shine on the righteous and the unrighteous?
I think we do.
2009/05/30 ©
Return to L. Burkhardt's home page
Created 2008/06/07, Last updated 2011/03/29.