So our book club as per below has been going for 20 years. At the beginning, long before I joined, they read mostly classics but more recently, contemporary fiction.
Since I joined, I've been suggesting books of writer-friends, who then come to book club. So far, Thalassa Ali (a trilogy on Victorian pre-Pakistan), Askold Melnyczuk (Ambassador of the Dead - poetry masquerading as a novel, his writing, breathtaking), Roland Merullo (my very own fiction mentor, have read this one three times: In Revere, In Those Days), Tomas Eloy Martinez (one of those I met on a train, remember?: Santa Evita) AND LAST NIGHT, God Is Dead, by Ron Currie, whom I met on the Internet train, Zoetrope.com.
Ron was there - sorta. Honestly, he was at a bar in Maine playing the home run derby -- but he had his cell phone and I had mine. So we texted, me pitching questions, him lobbing answers back over the wall, er, bar. Now I'm a great admirer of Ron so you may think I'm making this up but it's true. Book club has never gone on longer nor have we had a deeper conversation about our core beliefs than we did last night.
So this is a bunch of very well-read, very accomplished people, myself excluded, mainly doctors (including two shrinks and the guy who invented one of the earliest HMOs), a couple of social workers/psychologists, an artist (also a social worker at one time), and a feminist scholar. Oh, my hubby and me, trash collectors in the networking field.
Those who loved the book spoke first, raving, quoting a funny interview with Ron, pulling sentences and on like that. Others chimed in, then one of the two shrinks said he hated it, but as time went on, he relented, saying he was growing to like it. (He remarked that I was mad at him, which of course I was...no, I'm more mature than that.) Interpretations ran long and complex, allowing me to heave them toward Ron, who answered and answered, until his phone ran outta juice.
Then the real conversation began. Who believed in God? On a scale of 1-7 (seven? must have been the recent passing of 7/7/07). And what do you mean by God? Soon we were projecting 100 million years into the future, or, in my case, 30, and around 10:45, more than an hour and a half after we usually retreat to dessert, people were still talking. This, after we'd also had our annual barbecue, where the book was also discussed.
As we were leaving, we agreed that it was the best book club in all eternity. If you haven't read God Is Dead yet -- c'mon, it's been out for almost a week now -- do. And if you don't trust me, read this review by Tod Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. He describes the book this way:
Ron Currie Jr.'s impressive debut
It's a riveting end to the life of God, but only the first of many surprises Currie delivers.
Currie's strength rests in his ability to focus humanity's conundrums on the smallest physical particles.
the truth he presents is that the world has become absurd; he is merely delivering a steady-cam view.
In the book's finest moment — an interview with one of the feral dogs that ate God's corpse only to wake the next day enlightened and speaking a "mishmash of Greek and Hebrew"
Currie avoids answers and thus avoids sermons, opting instead to trust that his readers have already contemplated their own resolutions. The product is horrifying, kinetic and familiar to anyone who watches the terror-ticker on CNN and wonders whether we are already living among the dead.
